When you consider all the crazy things that Christians do, praying has to rank near the top of the list. For the last two weeks we have been looking at things that Christians do that make them stand out from the rest of the culture – things that make us look different from the world around us. To borrow a phrase from Cardinal Suhard, we are exploring, in this 8-week series, the things we would not do if the gospel we proclaimed were not true. There just would be no reason.
Now you might protest about prayer. You might say, “But Alex, praying is a natural impulse. When we’re facing a major illness, it’s a natural thing to want to pray. Last week we remembered the awful tragedy of 9/11 and we remember that what the whole country wanted to do after that happened was to gather and pray. When Hurricane Katrina hit three years ago and when Ike came ashore Friday night, what we felt we were supposed to do was to pray. When a child is born we want to give thanks and pray. When I get ready for a test I haven’t studied for…it’s natural to pray.”
Is it? Or is that just a cultural residue? Is it just something that we have grown accustomed to having as part of our landscape like singing the national anthem before ball games or having Dick Clark at Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Like them, we turn to prayer because we’ve always done it that way before.
No, I think prayer, especially prayer in the name of Jesus, is something that seems odd to people who don’t go to church or who don’t know Jesus. What does it do for you? Does it help you heal quicker? Does it change things? What’s the proof that prayer makes a difference?
There’s an old Burt Reynolds movie called The End in which Burt’s character, Wendell, has become so discouraged with life that he decides to do himself in. In the final scene of the movie he goes to the ocean and just starts swimming out to sea. The camera shows the scene from above and we hear Wendell’s thoughts as he is swimming. He gets far out from the shoreline and he realizes that he really doesn’t want to die. There are too many things he wants to live for. But now he is a long way from the beach and he doesn’t think he can make it back.
So he starts to pray to God. He says, “God, I know I haven’t been a great guy, but if you’ll just give me the strength to get back to shore I will change. I’m going to start giving half of all I make to the church. Fifty percent, Lord. I’m talking gross! Just let me live. I want to live!”
As he returns to shore he starts to realize that he’s not going to die. “I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it,” he says. “Thank you, God! I’m going to start giving that 10%. I will!”
His prayers were a matter of convenience and he didn’t really change. This is the cynical way our culture often looks at prayer. Prayer expresses our aspirations and our best intentions, but we don’t really see it as dialogue between us and God. Prayer can easily become us telling God what we’re going to do, or us asking God to do what we want…to give us what we want. We don’t consider that a real relationship based in prayer means that we will be transformed, that we will need to listen, that we will need to be open to having some new thing done in us.
The Bible tells us many things about prayer. It’s there from the beginning of the scriptures. In the Old Testament men and women pray for children, for salvation, for relief from their enemies. We find David praying for forgiveness for his sins, Solomon praying for wisdom, and Jonah praying for deliverance from the belly of a great fish.
In the New Testament Jesus regularly goes away to a quiet place to pray. Luke tells us that in the garden of Gethsemane as he awaited his betrayal and crucifixion, Jesus prays with such earnestness that his sweat is like drops of blood. In the book of Acts, the disciples pray and the Holy Spirit comes and shakes the whole place and fills them so that they can speak with boldness. Later Paul tells his churches to pray without ceasing. James tells the Christians to pray for healing for those who are ill. Prayer is all over the Christian story.
Then there is the passage which we read from the gospels this morning. The disciples see Jesus praying and after he finishes they ask him to teach them how to pray. Evidently John the Baptist had taught his disciples a prayer and they thought that it would be good for them to have a prayer, too. So Jesus teaches them a prayer that has come down to us as the Lord’s Prayer.
As a prayer, it is very brief. In Luke’s version it only takes three verses. “Father, hallowed is your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted to us. And lead us not into the time of trial.” That’s it.
Jesus seems to be giving us a model for prayer that keeps us straight. We praise God, recognizing that God is holy and wholly other than anything we can imagine. We pray that God’s kingdom will come. Matthew adds, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a reminder to us that our prayers will be answered, not when we get our way, but when God gets God’s way.
There is a plea for our daily bread, which is just a way of saying, “Give us the basic necessities of life. No more than we need but no less.” There is a request for forgiveness but notice that it is tied to how we are forgiving others. (We’ll get back to this one in a few weeks.) Finally, the prayer asks that we be spared the time of trial – that we have our minds focused on good so that no temptation to evil will lead us astray.
This is a prayer that lifts up our basic needs but it happens within larger networks. We are always already embedded in the life of God to whom we pray as a child. We are always already connected to others whom we are called to love and forgive.
Notice what is not in this prayer. It is not a prayer that tries to straighten God out. It is not a prayer that presents a laundry list of desires. It is not a prayer that depends on a lot of flowery language. It is simple and open to what God is going to do.
Which means that like so many things in the Christian life, prayer is ultimately a lot more about God than about me. I will find my life in Christ; that is the promise. But only if I give myself over to being remade. So in my prayers, it really doesn’t matter how I say it. You don’t need a preacher’s degree to be a pray-er. You don’t need anything more than these words that Jesus gives us.
Then, see what Jesus says, after this prayer. He tells some stories about prayer. He says, “Suppose you have a friend who comes in the middle of the night and asks you for three loaves of bread. Even though you’re settled in for the night, you will get up and give him what he asks for because he is persistent.” The implication is that God will also respond to us when we are persistent in prayer.
“What if your child asks you for a fish?” Jesus asks. “Would you give your child a snake instead? Or if they asked for an egg would you give them a scorpion?” Of course not. And neither would God withhold what you need if you ask. Notice that these petitioners are not asking for a lottery ticket. They are asking for bread, a fish, an egg – good things for sustaining life. Notice that all of these petitioners are also already in a relationship with the person from whom they are requesting something. A friend, a child to parent. God does not hold back from giving to those who are in relationship with God.
There are so many more things to be said about prayer. Perhaps one day we’ll do a series just on this. But here’s what I want to say about prayer today. You are invited and charged to pray as a Christian. Not because it is a ticket to prosperity. Not because there is a direct correlation between the quality of your earthly life and the frequency of your prayer. You are invited to prayer because when you pray, things change. You change. The world changes. And the most important relationship you could ever develop begins to grow and deepen – the relationship you have with the one who created you and called you and claimed you and reaches out in love to save you from sin and to remind you of who you are and can still be.
A few years ago when I was still in campus ministry I took a group of students on a pilgrimage. We went to a place called Taizé in eastern France. Now if you know anything about Christianity in Europe these days, you know that Europeans are becoming very disconnected from their Christian roots. All over Europe churches are being converted into restaurants and coffee shops. One old stone church in the Netherlands has even become a skate park. Those that are still open are almost deserted. The few churches that are alive and vibrant are those of Christian emigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.
So even though Christians have been going on pilgrimage in Europe for many centuries, it might seem a strange thing to take a group of students there to learn how to pray. But something very unusual has been taking place at Taize – young people are coming. In this small village in the middle of World War II a Swiss man by the name of Roger came with a vision. He said, "The defeat of France awoke powerful sympathy. If a house could be found there, of the kind we had dreamed of, it would offer a possible way of assisting some of those most discouraged, those deprived of a livelihood: and it could be a place of silence and work." He found a house and began to pray for fellow Christians to join him.
Eight years after he arrived, the first brother came. Soon others came. Though Brother Roger was Protestant the community belonged to no denomination. Catholic and Protestant came. They dedicated themselves to work and prayer. Three times a day - at 8, 12 and 8 – the brothers set aside an hour to pray. It is very simple. Chants and scripture readings in several different languages. Prayers for the reconciliation of the world. And silence. Ten solid minutes of silence in the center of each service to pray and listen for what God has to say.[i]
Over time something very interesting happened at Taize. Young people began to show up for the worship and to work with the brothers. Thousands of young people. Now on summer weeks there are over 6,000 young people from all over the world in this little village. They are not fanatical. Most of them have no desire to live in a monastic community. The atmosphere is like a rock music festival. But three times a day they sing and pray. In between they have small group studies and everyone has a job to do whether it is cleaning toilets or welcoming new arrivals. The food is very sparse – perhaps a bowl of green beans for dinner. A roll and stick of chocolate for breakfast. And they are all 29 and younger, plus a few hangers on like me who come to stay in the old folks camp up the hill.
I had a strange experience at Taize. I came not knowing how I would like the services. It was very simple. You sit on a carpeted floor with a canopy of orange cloth and candles in front of you. You don’t understand most of what’s being sung or said because it is in other languages. And while I was recovering from jet lag, for the first three days I was there I fell asleep every time we got to the silence.
But on the fourth day I got it. We were having communion. The brothers were serving us all following the silence. And when I had received the wafer and the cup and went back to sit on the hard floor with my students and 5,000 French, Swiss, Dutch, Spanish, and German young people, the cumulative power of being in that place and praying in that place came through. I knew that if I let myself stay in prayer long enough my own true self would start to emerge. Maybe that’s what draws those young people – the chance to find something new about yourself in practices that are as ancient as God’s people. I came back dedicated to establishing daily prayer in some way in my life.
Prayer is the heart’s sincere desire. So goes an old hymn in our hymnal. Most of us would not claim to be experts in it. Most of us still wonder how to pray and what it means for us to pray. In the end, Paul tells us in the letter to the Romans, we don’t know how. So the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words to continue the prayers our hearts seek to offer.
We will never know the depths of what God has to offer us in prayer, though, unless we do it. Just do it. With whatever method we have. With whatever words we have or don’t have. Maybe you’re saying, “I don’t have time to pray.” Two of the busiest and most productive people who ever lived, John Wesley and Martin Luther must have been tempted to say the same. Yet John Wesley wore out the knee rail on his home prayer altar which he kept in a closet that looks out a window facing a brick wall. And Martin Luther said, “I’m so busy these days that I find I can’t get by on less than three hours a day.”
Hey, I know you’re overwhelmed and overworked. But there is power in prayer and God is waiting to form a relationship with you. The world is dying to change and waiting for you to change. Prayer is a crazy thing to think about doing. But don’t think about it. Just do it. Thanks be to God.
Luke 11:1-13
Now he was praying in a certain place and it happened, as he finished, that some of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just like John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, may thy name be held in reverence,
may your kingdom come.
Give us the bread we need for the coming day,
and forgive us our sins
for we also forgive all those who are indebted to us.
And do not lead us into a time of testing.'"
He also said to them, "What if one of you has a friend and you go to him in the middle of the night and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because my friend has arrived on a journey and I do not have anything to set before him.'? And he answers from within, 'Don't bother me; the door has already been shut and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even if he doesn't get up and give it to him because he is his friend, then because of his shameless persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
"And I tell you this as well: Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For all who ask receive and all those who seek find and to the one knocking the door shall be opened.
"Is there a parent among you, who, when their child asks for a fish will then, instead of a fish, give the child a snake? Or if the child asks for an egg will give a scorpion? So if you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?"
[i] Patrick J. Burke, “The Spirituality of Taize,” Spirituality Today, Autumn 1990, http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/904234burke.html.
Now you might protest about prayer. You might say, “But Alex, praying is a natural impulse. When we’re facing a major illness, it’s a natural thing to want to pray. Last week we remembered the awful tragedy of 9/11 and we remember that what the whole country wanted to do after that happened was to gather and pray. When Hurricane Katrina hit three years ago and when Ike came ashore Friday night, what we felt we were supposed to do was to pray. When a child is born we want to give thanks and pray. When I get ready for a test I haven’t studied for…it’s natural to pray.”
Is it? Or is that just a cultural residue? Is it just something that we have grown accustomed to having as part of our landscape like singing the national anthem before ball games or having Dick Clark at Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Like them, we turn to prayer because we’ve always done it that way before.
No, I think prayer, especially prayer in the name of Jesus, is something that seems odd to people who don’t go to church or who don’t know Jesus. What does it do for you? Does it help you heal quicker? Does it change things? What’s the proof that prayer makes a difference?
There’s an old Burt Reynolds movie called The End in which Burt’s character, Wendell, has become so discouraged with life that he decides to do himself in. In the final scene of the movie he goes to the ocean and just starts swimming out to sea. The camera shows the scene from above and we hear Wendell’s thoughts as he is swimming. He gets far out from the shoreline and he realizes that he really doesn’t want to die. There are too many things he wants to live for. But now he is a long way from the beach and he doesn’t think he can make it back.
So he starts to pray to God. He says, “God, I know I haven’t been a great guy, but if you’ll just give me the strength to get back to shore I will change. I’m going to start giving half of all I make to the church. Fifty percent, Lord. I’m talking gross! Just let me live. I want to live!”
As he returns to shore he starts to realize that he’s not going to die. “I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it,” he says. “Thank you, God! I’m going to start giving that 10%. I will!”
His prayers were a matter of convenience and he didn’t really change. This is the cynical way our culture often looks at prayer. Prayer expresses our aspirations and our best intentions, but we don’t really see it as dialogue between us and God. Prayer can easily become us telling God what we’re going to do, or us asking God to do what we want…to give us what we want. We don’t consider that a real relationship based in prayer means that we will be transformed, that we will need to listen, that we will need to be open to having some new thing done in us.
The Bible tells us many things about prayer. It’s there from the beginning of the scriptures. In the Old Testament men and women pray for children, for salvation, for relief from their enemies. We find David praying for forgiveness for his sins, Solomon praying for wisdom, and Jonah praying for deliverance from the belly of a great fish.
In the New Testament Jesus regularly goes away to a quiet place to pray. Luke tells us that in the garden of Gethsemane as he awaited his betrayal and crucifixion, Jesus prays with such earnestness that his sweat is like drops of blood. In the book of Acts, the disciples pray and the Holy Spirit comes and shakes the whole place and fills them so that they can speak with boldness. Later Paul tells his churches to pray without ceasing. James tells the Christians to pray for healing for those who are ill. Prayer is all over the Christian story.
Then there is the passage which we read from the gospels this morning. The disciples see Jesus praying and after he finishes they ask him to teach them how to pray. Evidently John the Baptist had taught his disciples a prayer and they thought that it would be good for them to have a prayer, too. So Jesus teaches them a prayer that has come down to us as the Lord’s Prayer.
As a prayer, it is very brief. In Luke’s version it only takes three verses. “Father, hallowed is your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted to us. And lead us not into the time of trial.” That’s it.
Jesus seems to be giving us a model for prayer that keeps us straight. We praise God, recognizing that God is holy and wholly other than anything we can imagine. We pray that God’s kingdom will come. Matthew adds, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a reminder to us that our prayers will be answered, not when we get our way, but when God gets God’s way.
There is a plea for our daily bread, which is just a way of saying, “Give us the basic necessities of life. No more than we need but no less.” There is a request for forgiveness but notice that it is tied to how we are forgiving others. (We’ll get back to this one in a few weeks.) Finally, the prayer asks that we be spared the time of trial – that we have our minds focused on good so that no temptation to evil will lead us astray.
This is a prayer that lifts up our basic needs but it happens within larger networks. We are always already embedded in the life of God to whom we pray as a child. We are always already connected to others whom we are called to love and forgive.
Notice what is not in this prayer. It is not a prayer that tries to straighten God out. It is not a prayer that presents a laundry list of desires. It is not a prayer that depends on a lot of flowery language. It is simple and open to what God is going to do.
Which means that like so many things in the Christian life, prayer is ultimately a lot more about God than about me. I will find my life in Christ; that is the promise. But only if I give myself over to being remade. So in my prayers, it really doesn’t matter how I say it. You don’t need a preacher’s degree to be a pray-er. You don’t need anything more than these words that Jesus gives us.
Then, see what Jesus says, after this prayer. He tells some stories about prayer. He says, “Suppose you have a friend who comes in the middle of the night and asks you for three loaves of bread. Even though you’re settled in for the night, you will get up and give him what he asks for because he is persistent.” The implication is that God will also respond to us when we are persistent in prayer.
“What if your child asks you for a fish?” Jesus asks. “Would you give your child a snake instead? Or if they asked for an egg would you give them a scorpion?” Of course not. And neither would God withhold what you need if you ask. Notice that these petitioners are not asking for a lottery ticket. They are asking for bread, a fish, an egg – good things for sustaining life. Notice that all of these petitioners are also already in a relationship with the person from whom they are requesting something. A friend, a child to parent. God does not hold back from giving to those who are in relationship with God.
There are so many more things to be said about prayer. Perhaps one day we’ll do a series just on this. But here’s what I want to say about prayer today. You are invited and charged to pray as a Christian. Not because it is a ticket to prosperity. Not because there is a direct correlation between the quality of your earthly life and the frequency of your prayer. You are invited to prayer because when you pray, things change. You change. The world changes. And the most important relationship you could ever develop begins to grow and deepen – the relationship you have with the one who created you and called you and claimed you and reaches out in love to save you from sin and to remind you of who you are and can still be.
A few years ago when I was still in campus ministry I took a group of students on a pilgrimage. We went to a place called Taizé in eastern France. Now if you know anything about Christianity in Europe these days, you know that Europeans are becoming very disconnected from their Christian roots. All over Europe churches are being converted into restaurants and coffee shops. One old stone church in the Netherlands has even become a skate park. Those that are still open are almost deserted. The few churches that are alive and vibrant are those of Christian emigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.
So even though Christians have been going on pilgrimage in Europe for many centuries, it might seem a strange thing to take a group of students there to learn how to pray. But something very unusual has been taking place at Taize – young people are coming. In this small village in the middle of World War II a Swiss man by the name of Roger came with a vision. He said, "The defeat of France awoke powerful sympathy. If a house could be found there, of the kind we had dreamed of, it would offer a possible way of assisting some of those most discouraged, those deprived of a livelihood: and it could be a place of silence and work." He found a house and began to pray for fellow Christians to join him.
Eight years after he arrived, the first brother came. Soon others came. Though Brother Roger was Protestant the community belonged to no denomination. Catholic and Protestant came. They dedicated themselves to work and prayer. Three times a day - at 8, 12 and 8 – the brothers set aside an hour to pray. It is very simple. Chants and scripture readings in several different languages. Prayers for the reconciliation of the world. And silence. Ten solid minutes of silence in the center of each service to pray and listen for what God has to say.[i]
Over time something very interesting happened at Taize. Young people began to show up for the worship and to work with the brothers. Thousands of young people. Now on summer weeks there are over 6,000 young people from all over the world in this little village. They are not fanatical. Most of them have no desire to live in a monastic community. The atmosphere is like a rock music festival. But three times a day they sing and pray. In between they have small group studies and everyone has a job to do whether it is cleaning toilets or welcoming new arrivals. The food is very sparse – perhaps a bowl of green beans for dinner. A roll and stick of chocolate for breakfast. And they are all 29 and younger, plus a few hangers on like me who come to stay in the old folks camp up the hill.
I had a strange experience at Taize. I came not knowing how I would like the services. It was very simple. You sit on a carpeted floor with a canopy of orange cloth and candles in front of you. You don’t understand most of what’s being sung or said because it is in other languages. And while I was recovering from jet lag, for the first three days I was there I fell asleep every time we got to the silence.
But on the fourth day I got it. We were having communion. The brothers were serving us all following the silence. And when I had received the wafer and the cup and went back to sit on the hard floor with my students and 5,000 French, Swiss, Dutch, Spanish, and German young people, the cumulative power of being in that place and praying in that place came through. I knew that if I let myself stay in prayer long enough my own true self would start to emerge. Maybe that’s what draws those young people – the chance to find something new about yourself in practices that are as ancient as God’s people. I came back dedicated to establishing daily prayer in some way in my life.
Prayer is the heart’s sincere desire. So goes an old hymn in our hymnal. Most of us would not claim to be experts in it. Most of us still wonder how to pray and what it means for us to pray. In the end, Paul tells us in the letter to the Romans, we don’t know how. So the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words to continue the prayers our hearts seek to offer.
We will never know the depths of what God has to offer us in prayer, though, unless we do it. Just do it. With whatever method we have. With whatever words we have or don’t have. Maybe you’re saying, “I don’t have time to pray.” Two of the busiest and most productive people who ever lived, John Wesley and Martin Luther must have been tempted to say the same. Yet John Wesley wore out the knee rail on his home prayer altar which he kept in a closet that looks out a window facing a brick wall. And Martin Luther said, “I’m so busy these days that I find I can’t get by on less than three hours a day.”
Hey, I know you’re overwhelmed and overworked. But there is power in prayer and God is waiting to form a relationship with you. The world is dying to change and waiting for you to change. Prayer is a crazy thing to think about doing. But don’t think about it. Just do it. Thanks be to God.
Luke 11:1-13
Now he was praying in a certain place and it happened, as he finished, that some of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just like John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, may thy name be held in reverence,
may your kingdom come.
Give us the bread we need for the coming day,
and forgive us our sins
for we also forgive all those who are indebted to us.
And do not lead us into a time of testing.'"
He also said to them, "What if one of you has a friend and you go to him in the middle of the night and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because my friend has arrived on a journey and I do not have anything to set before him.'? And he answers from within, 'Don't bother me; the door has already been shut and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even if he doesn't get up and give it to him because he is his friend, then because of his shameless persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
"And I tell you this as well: Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For all who ask receive and all those who seek find and to the one knocking the door shall be opened.
"Is there a parent among you, who, when their child asks for a fish will then, instead of a fish, give the child a snake? Or if the child asks for an egg will give a scorpion? So if you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?"
[i] Patrick J. Burke, “The Spirituality of Taize,” Spirituality Today, Autumn 1990, http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/904234burke.html.
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