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We have learned the words to say about prayer...and the words to some "prayers".... But do we know how to pray? Do we know what prayer really is?
Here's one concept of prayer that many of us have adopted. Have you ever shopped at a Service Merchandise store? Now they may have changed their system in recent years, but the last time I shopped there, several years ago, it worked this way. The store had lots of different kinds of merchandise, but everything you saw on the shelves was only for display. As you went into the store, you picked up a small clipboard. On the clipboard was an order form. As you walked around the store and saw items you wanted to get, you would write the name and stock number of the items on the clipboard. Then you presented the clipboard to the cashier, paid and went to wait at another counter. There, from a large warehouse area, someone would put all the items you had ordered on a conveyor belt and they would roll into view...just like the baggage area at the airport.
How often, when we pray, are we really writing items onto a cosmic clipboard... handing it to God and saying, "Now...please pull these things out of the heavenly warehouse and roll them on out to me." "I'd like for my mother to be different...for my friend to not be sick...for my boss to give me a raise...and for these bills to not be due. Give me health...a little wealth...the lover of my dreams...and, oh, yes, throw in some peace on earth while you're at it." And we wait for the conveyor belt of life to roll out our order. And we are often disappointed with the results.
Perhaps the deficit is not with what God provides but with our understanding of prayer. In that case, we are not alone or unique. Those who first followed Jesus, so long ago, had the same problem. The teachings that are recorded in this passage from the Gospel of Luke that we heard today can help us to understand some of the truths about prayer.
"One day Jesus was praying in a certain place." It was quite evident to the disciples that prayer held a central place in Jesus' life. Not so much because of what he said to them about it but because they saw him doing it so often. At crucial moments...before preaching to the crowds or encountering the hostile religious leaders who opposed him...in times of rest...in times of worry or fear...in gratitude and thanksgiving: Jesus prayed. Prayer was not just something he did...it was really a central part of who he was. What Jesus modeled in his life is meant to be a model for all who follow him.
The disciples saw all this praying and they thought about the disciples of John the Baptist. John had apparently taught his disciples a prayer they could say together...one that characterized them as a group. Jesus' disciples also wanted a prayer for themselves. So they said to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." And Jesus gave them a prayer or at least a model of how they could pray together.
He said, in essence, "Always begin by acknowledging and honoring God. Before any other requests, ask for God's dominion to be present and God's will to prevail. Express your trust in God for the provision of everyday things. Ask for forgiveness and promise to be willing to forgive; those two things can't be separated. And ask God to always help you endure and withstand whatever might come along."
That was it. Some years later, folks in the early church would add a "doxology" - an extravagant phrase praising God - to the end of this prayer: "for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever." That phrase is based on King David's prayer of praise and thanksgiving recorded in the book of Chronicles. Jesus, as far as we know, kept his prayer simple...short and sweet.
Now here's something we may have never realized before. This little prayer...which tradition has named "The Lord's Prayer," because the Lord gave it to us...was given as a "corporate" prayer - something the disciples could pray together. Scripture says, "Jesus said to them, 'When you pray, say...'" "The Lord's Prayer" or something like it. That word "you" was plural. This was a group thing. A model of prayer...an approach to prayer...for the group.
Along the way, many of us have turned those words into a personal pious chore - something that doesn't bring us any closer to God but which meets some daily obligation we think we have. For many, many years of my young life, I believed that I "prayed" because every night, just before going to sleep, I would recite the Lord's Prayer in my mind. Sometimes, before I got all the way through it, I would start to doze off. I would wake myself and start over; my goal was to complete the words of the prayer. Not unlike a little child reciting the ABCs. Being able to do that doesn't make her literate, of course. She's made no connection to how the letters are used and what reading is really about. But, by golly, she can say them all and in the right order, too! Her parent smiles with love and pats her head, knowing how much she has yet to learn. I wonder if God looks like that parent when we recite our memorized prayer, thinking that we've got it...while God knows: we have so much yet to learn!
Jesus wants to teach his disciples...including us...what prayer is really all about. Personal prayer. Genuine prayer. In our Scripture passage, Luke records that Jesus tells them a story about a person who keeps after their neighbor for a needed loaf of bread until the neighbor finally relents and gives the bread just to shut the person up. That story is followed, then, by Jesus' teaching about prayer.
Now this section of Scripture is one that is extremely familiar to many and one which has been sorely misunderstood. Because of the translation and arrangement of the passage, a literal, surface reading produces this idea: Keep banging on God's door...be persistent...ask over and over and over for what you want and eventually God will grant it.
That may seem like what the Scripture is saying...but that's not what the Scripture is meaning. What Jesus is saying is this: If another human being can be badgered into giving you what you need, then rest assured that God, who loves you more and will provide for you better than any human being could...more than even the best parent may love and provide for a child...God will willingly give you what it is that you need.
Now here's the thing. We think we know what we need. We need health and money and security and a lover and a new car and a better job and world peace. But God knows there is something we need far more than any of that. What we need...and what God wants to give us...is God!
Hear these words again: "What parent among you will give a snake to their child when the child asks for a fish, or a scorpion when the child asks for an egg? If you then, with all your failures and inabilities, know how to give your children good things, how much more will our heavenly Parent give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?!"
It's the very last line of this passage that is the bottom line about prayer. Prayer is our asking God to give us God's self - the Holy Spirit. Prayer is all about relationship with God. That's what we really need. We think we know what would make our lives better and fix our problems and make us happy. We're often wrong! God knows that what we need...before, above and beyond anything else...is a deeper, more meaningful, more real relationship with God. We need God's Spirit to fill us up and live in us. If we truly had that, we would discover that many of the things we think we need just aren't important any more. Many of our problems would cease to exist. So much of our hunger and desire would be satisfied.
The disciples asked for the wrong thing. Instead of "teach us to pray," they should have said, "Show us how to make every aspect of our lives a means of connecting with God. Don't just tell us what to say to God. Show us how to live with God."
A teacher and pastor named Jane Vennard shares this story about a woman who was attending a class on prayer. "When asked to remember her first spiritual experience, the woman told the instructor that she couldn't remember anything about a time of prayer, but what was flooding her mind and heart was a school girl memory.
When asked to describe the incident that had come into her awareness, she said, 'I was nine years old and playing with my friends at recess. I noticed a Jewish classmate sitting under a tree, crying silently. She had not been accepted in our school and was often teased. I hadn't paid much attention to her until that day. I remember seeing her all alone and without hesitation I left my friends and what we were doing to go and sit beside her. We didn't speak, we just sat together for the rest of the playtime.'
When she finished her story the instructor said softly, 'Your compassionate response to a person in need was a spiritual experience. Action can be a form of prayer.'"
Rev. Vennard goes on to say, "Often our understanding of prayer is too narrow. We exclude from our prayer life powerful experiences because they don't fit our definition of what prayer is or what prayer is supposed to be. I define prayer as any activity that nurtures our relationship with God. If reading Scripture brings you closer to God, that is prayer. If having tea with a friend nurtures your relationship with God, that is prayer. If sitting still in a summer garden feeds your soul, that is prayer. Listening to music, teaching Sunday School, serving in a soup kitchen - all can become prayer."
Prayer is all about deepening our relationship with God. Jesus used every aspect of his life as a form of prayer. We can learn to do the same. We need to release our image of prayer as a way of "ordering off the cosmic clipboard." The only thing that's ever going to come out of the heavenly warehouse is God.
And that is what we need...before, above and beyond anything else. And God is ready and willing to give God's self to us...fully. If we long to have God's Spirit in our lives, Jesus said, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." That's what prayer is all about. Amen.
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