"Lord, teach us to pray"

 Luke 11: 1-13, Ordinary 17

Dr. Al Reese
Parish Associate

July 29, 2007

             I want to begin this sermon with a double disclaimer. First of all, I am old, and I can’t remember what I said or didn’t say last year, much less 14 years ago. Second, I have a very limited repertoire … much more limited than most clergy … so when I go back to a church which I have previously served, the chances are pretty good that I will repeat some of the same stories and ideas and hopes which I previously shared. I am beginning the sermon today with a very poignant story which occurred in 1971, so if I used this story as your interim minister 14 years ago, I hope you have either forgotten it or will forgive me for using it again. I believe it is germane to the text today.

In 1971, as an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida trying to write a dissertation and teach a full load of classes, I agreed to direct a five hour independent study in social problems for a very bright young lady named Elizabeth, whom I had previously taught. Elizabeth was doing her teaching internship in a very poor school in eastern Hillsborough County, and she needed the five hours she could earn with me to graduate. One of the social problems she was to research and write a paper on was prayer in the public schools, a very hot issue in Florida in those days. Most of Elizabeth’s students were the offspring of migrant laborers who worked in the tomato and strawberry fields of east Hillsborough.

While Elizabeth was writing her first paper for my class on prayer in the public schools, she came into my office one day to share a very moving story:

One of my students whose name is Natalie came to me after class yesterday and asked me this question, “If the Florida legislature passes the bill before it on prayer, would you please teach me how to pray? Can I please pray that the farmers will pay my mother and dad more than a dollar an hour? Can I please pray that my dad will stop beating me and my sisters? Can I please pray that my uncle in Vietnam will not be killed? And, can I please pray that my dad and mom will stop spending so much money on whiskey and cigarettes? Miss Elizabeth, would you teach me how to pray?”

I may be wrong but I believe Jesus’ disciples were asking him a question not unlike Natalie’s. If prayer is so important, and certainly the disciples must have thought is was for Jesus, then how do we pray? How do we escape the fear that our prayers won’t be heard; and how do we pray with the trust you have, Jesus, that prayer makes a profound difference? Lord, Teach Us To Pray like you do.

That has always been for me a strange question for Jesus’ disciples to ask. At least four of them were disciples of John the Baptist, and John taught his disciples liturgical prayers to offer three times each day. They were all Jews, and Jews, all Jews, knew the importance of prayer. But something was different with Jesus and his prayers, and the disciples wanted to learn how to pray like Jesus did, just as Natalie wanted Elizabeth to teach her how to pray for things which only God could fix in her terribly confusing life. At one time or another we have all asked the disciples’ questions.

Lord, Teach Us To Pray!

Prayer is terribly confusing for us. How can we pray for peace when we are waging war? And how can we pray for forgiveness when our list of those we need to forgive keeps getting longer and longer? And how can we pray to end poverty and homelessness and no insurance to 25 million children when we give less than one percent of our income to charitable groups working to mitigate these social disasters, not to mention the deep resentment most of us feel for every tax dollar used to alleviate the hunger, health, and security needs of the one in every five people who live in the U.S. today? Prayer is tricky business if we take it as seriously as Jesus and his disciples did.

I want to make two responses to the question the sermon title asks. There are many more directions which this sermon could go, but this is the way it goes today for me, and hopefully for you also. I am indebted to my friend and former classmate, Donald Shriver, who was President of Union Theological Seminary in New York City when his book on the Lord’s Prayer was published. You may have studied the book 25 years ago; if you didn’t it would make a great study today, for his understanding of this prayer is just as relevant today as it was then.

First of all, Jesus says to the disciples that in order to pray, they must find a name by which to address the one to whom they prayed. That name must have the potential to create a very special bond, but at the same time never let them forget that this bond is not between equals or buddies or power brokers. James McBride Dobbs, a brilliant southern writer and poet said once in an address to theological students:

The hardest lesson you have to teach your flock is that the awesome God of the galaxies and the loving God of the hearth are not two gods, but One. You can’t resolve that mystery even if you had the wisdom of Solomon. But what you can try to teach your sheep is that they can’t get too chummy with either one. To call God “father” and to call God “Creator” are both legitimate names for God. Jesus told us to call God “father,” but that does not put God on the same footing with your daddy. The bond between you and your heavenly father is a bond of deep and tender intimacy which recognizes God’s holiness, power, and compassion … all of which become accessible to you when you pray, Our Father.

It is hard for us in the church today to recognize how radical that was. God had many names in Jesus’ day but church law demanded that none of them could be spoken. Only once a year, and then by the High Priest, could a name for God be spoken by a human being. Yet Jesus said if you want to pray like I do, call God Father, and when you do, you will honor both the scriptures and our tradition. Listen:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son …. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, and I took him up in my arms. (Hosea 1: 1,3)

As a mother (the other parent implicit in the parental metaphor) cares for her suckling child, so also do I care for you, O Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:13)

Thus Jesus told his disciples when they prayed to use a word which was theologically, biblically, and personally intimate enough to bond the God who created the heavens and the earth to the God who, like a caring parent, never forgets the needs of their offspring. The disciples saw deep down how special this bond was for Jesus, and they wanted to be able to approach that same intimacy in their own prayers. That’s dead serious stuff, not at all like some of our prayers.

Father, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come.

Then follows three petitions in Luke’s version of this prayer.

1. Give us bread for this day, and take us through the day, never worrying about tomorrow, or next week, or next month. That’s what daily bread means … and like the manna in the wilderness, if we try to hoard it, it rots and smells. Give us bread for today.

2. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. That is not a quid pro quo … it is not trading this for that. It is grace for grace …it is as natural as George’s grin or Amanda’s smile. Difficult? No more difficult than realizing how many idols we have made for ourselves by asking for more bread than we need.

3. And do not bring us to the time of trial. Remember Jesus in his own time of trial, to turn stones to bread, to arrogate power to himself as God’s son, or to pursue popularity and goodwill among the people instead of their redemption, which cost him his life? These are still the devil’s favorite wares … power, pride, and prestige … and they are still the temptations and trials which destroy solidarity and peace in the church and in the world. Father, do not let me go that way, but if I do, save me from my own foolishness.

What a different world this would be if we all prayed like that … like Jesus taught us. These are not instructions for prayers at football games, or rodeos, or flower shows … but they are instructions for those of us who sit on these pews. And since they are all spoken with plural pronouns, they are our prayers, mine and yours together.

Amen.