First Reading:
11He was praying in a certain place,
and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord,
teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.
2He
said to them, When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
3Give us each day our daily
bread.
4And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone
indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
5And he said to them, Suppose one of you has
a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend,
lend me three loaves of bread; 6for a friend of mine has
arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7And
he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already
been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and
give you anything.’ 8I tell you, even though he will
not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least
because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he
needs.
9So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search,
and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for
you. 10For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who
searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be
opened. 11Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks
for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12Or if
the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13If you
then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who
ask him!
Second Reading:
6As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord,
continue to live your lives in him, 7rooted and built up in
him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding
in thanksgiving.
8See to it that no one takes you captive
through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition,
according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according
to Christ. 9For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells
bodily, 10and you have come to fullness in him, who is the
head of every ruler and authority. 11In him also you were
circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of
the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12when you were
buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through
faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
13And when you were dead in trespasses and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him,
when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14erasing the record
that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside,
nailing it to the cross. 15He disarmed the rulers and
authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in
it.
Throughout the gospels, the disciples are always being taught. But
our passage today from Luke's gospel is the only place in all four of
the gospels where the disciples came to Jesus and specifically asked
him to teach them something. Even in Matthew's gospel they didn't ask
to be taught… There Jesus was in mid-stride of the sermon on
the mount when he spoke the words we all know as the Lord's
prayer… but here in Luke's gospel, the gospel that speaks the
most about prayer, they made a request. Teach us to pray,
they
said, and for most of us, it's not surprising that's what the
disciples wanted to learn… When we're growing up and we're told
that prayer is how we come to God who is the holy one who made the
entire universe, it's nerve racking… sometimes it can be a lot
of pressure. And it doesn't necessarily come naturally, especially not
in the way we often think about prayer. Some of us grew up in places
where prayer had to be spoken at a different cadence or a different
tone than our normal speech and it even had to use words we'd never
think of using otherwise… And those are just some of the things
that can make prayer feel awkward. It seems like there's something
about prayer that many of us just seem to feel almost perpetually
inadequate about. And so you know that I don't have some sort of
special exemption, let me tell you a story from when I started to pray
with other people.
A little over ten years ago, while I was working at a church as one of 5 interns for the youth ministry, we decided it would be good to set aside an hour every week to go into the sanctuary and pray together. On one hand I thought it would be great because it would hold me accountable to something I always said I wanted to do but didn't seem to have the willpower to make it happen regularly by myself... but on the other hand, it was hard for me because I didn't feel like I knew how to pray… when I prayed out loud, I didn't think I was doing it right and here were 4 other people who I figured must have done this before… in my mind, they knew what they were doing and I didn't and I was afraid that I was going to make a mistake… I was so scared that when we started, I literally didn't move during the hour that we sat in prayer.
We went down to the sanctuary and sat on the wooden pews, and we
arranged ourselves as best we could to be more or less in a
circle… and that first week, the sum total of what I got out of
the prayer time was first-hand knowledge that those pews were
incredibly uncomfortable… My leg fell asleep about half way
through and a couple of minutes after that there was a little twinge
in my back from the way that I was sitting and it just wouldn't go
away… I started out with the best of intentions and I hoped to
be really engaged in prayer but after about 40 minutes all I could do
was sit there and think to myself, when is this going to be
over… will somebody please say Amen
already. And
eventually they did… and we all walked out of the
sanctuary… I was limping a little bit because my leg was asleep
and my back hurt for the next two or three days, but I was doing
it… I was praying and I figured the next week would be better.
It almost had to be.
So the second week rolls around; and thank goodness we started this in
late November 'cause I wore a nice plush sweater that day which I took
off at the beginning of the prayer time and put it on the seat to make
the pew a little more comfortable… I knew that I had to be more
selective about my position this time… so I sat down where
there was an armrest on the pew so I'd be able to prop my head
up… I was thinking about it this time…, I made sure I
wasn't going to have to twist much to be part of the circle…
and before we started I got nice and comfortable… And it was
much better, at least at first. This time it took almost 45 minutes
for my leg to fall asleep, but the problem was that this time both
legs had fallen asleep… and it wasn't until after someone
said amen
and I started to stand up that I realized holding my
head like this for an hour didn't only hurt my wrist and my elbow, it
had also made me lightheaded… So, as everyone else got up and
walked toward the door, I decided that if I didn't want to fall over,
I'd better stay there for a minute or two. And apparently one of the
other interns noticed my discomfort… she came back and sat down
next to me and said, Dan, you know it's ok to move while we're
praying right? It's ok to open your eyes if you need to… it's
ok to get up and stretch. God doesn't really care about that
stuff.
When I look back on the story, honestly I'm a little bit
embarrassed about it now… it was a pretty silly hang up and I
have no idea where it came from, but I tell the story because it seems
like lots of us have some sort of hang up when it comes to prayer, and
maybe knowing how silly your pastor's hang up was might help you be
able to get past yours too.
You see the whole part of the passage that comes after Jesus' example
prayer points to the fact that God wants to answer our prayers. When
Jesus told the parable of the neighbor, he painted an impossible
scenario in an ancient near east culture… hospitality was among
the highest virtues and a neighbor wouldn't have refused the request,
especially a request made so boldly… in fact there are many
biblical scholars who say that a better translation of the original
Greek language would say… even though the man won't get up
because the neighbor's a friend, he will get up because the neighbor
got up the nerve to make the request at midnight…
It must
have been important. And Jesus draws a comparison to God… and
when he started saying things like if your child asks for a fish are
you gonna give him a snake? Or if the child asks for an egg will you
give a scorpion? Maybe what he's saying is that God recognizes that
what we're asking for in prayer is something we believe to be good,
and so when we know that it's a good God we're approaching, prayer
isn't something we need be afraid of or anxious about. We can ask
boldly… Our words may not flow perfectly, or be particularly
poetic but God doesn't expect us to be perfect in our prayer…
God doesn't care about our words or our praying position nearly as
much as God cares about what's going on inside of us that drives us to
pray, what's driving us to ask, to search to knock. And so the first
thing I want you to notice in our gospel text today is that when the
disciples ask Jesus how to pray, first he gives them an example. Then
he reassures them that God will hear them and he ends by saying don't
get so worried about it that the form of prayer stands in the way of
the function of prayer. When you pray, no matter how you pray you can
be sure that God is not only going to accept your prayer but also that
God will respond with delight to the fact that you are praying.
Now for some of us that's probably enough… to start to pray would be a step in the direction of growing in faith and that's good… that's the right direction… that's the direction I want us all to be moving. But there's more. For those of us who are already at the point of praying it's time to pay attention to the words and direction of Jesus prayer:
First the address, Jesus calls God Father, Abba
… Some
have suggested that it's more accurately translated Daddy.
Theologians of all sorts reject an image of God that's intrinsically
male but to get caught up in that totally misses the point that Jesus
was trying to establish a sense of familiarity. We can approach God
as someone we relate to intimately… as someone who will delight
in relationship with us… someone who will delight in the very
fact that we're praying. As praying people we become God's children
and we invite God to transform our lives.
The next two phrases are both declarations and requests. They speak
of who God is and they also say something about the hope of how God is
going to transform our lives by orienting us toward God's desire.
When Jesus said Hallowed be your name,
it was a declaration
that God is Holy and that God alone is worthy to be honored, and it's
a request that everyone would come to know it. Likewise, when he
says your kingdom come
it's a declaration that in Jesus Christ
God's reign has drawn near and it's a request that our every-day
reality would more closely reflect the justice and peace that we hope
and expect God's kingdom on earth will look like. As we pray these
two phrases, we're asking God to align us with God's purpose in the
world… we're asking God to orient our hearts and our minds and
our very selves with God's mission.
And then, when we have touched into the mission and purpose God has for us, then we ask boldly for the resources we need to effectively be part of that mission…whether the needs are physical: give us this day our daily bread; or whether the needs are relational: forgive our sins as we forgive everyone indebted to us; or whether the needs are spiritual: don't bring us to a time where our faith is going to be tested beyond what we can handle, we approach God boldly asking that God will make us part of what God's already doing...
Teach us to pray the disciples said: and Jesus gave them a simple
prayer, five sentences long, that clarifies our relationship with God
and points us in the right direction for how to live. When we
acknowledge who God is, when we align with God's priorities and when
we ask for what we need to be part of the mission, we can be assured
that God will not only hear, but also that God will answer and that
lives will be transformed... not the least of which our own. And so
the invitation is to pray boldly and to pray persistently: Father,
hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily
bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone
indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.
We Love
you Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on July 25, 2010.
© 2010 Daniel Holland
