PENTECOST 8

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 8
PROPER: 12C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: July 29,2001

TEXT: Luke 11:1-13 – Jesus 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.”

ISSUE: “Teach us to pray.” It is difficult for Americans and western culture to appreciate prayer. There are so many ‘scientific’ miracles around us, and we have so much relative control over our own lives that prayer doesn’t always seem very relevant, until we are out of control. Then, we make a dramatic appeal to God, and feel disappointment if there seems to be no answer or the answer is “No.” We have lost the concept of regularity in prayer as a means to intimacy with God in simpler things, and God’s great compassion for the human condition.

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I believe that one of the more difficult aspects of being a Christian is in understanding how to really pray, and in understanding what prayer is. Some of you may share with me some of the frustrations about understanding and comprehending what prayer is. Last week I addressed the story of Mary and Martha, and how busy Martha was, and how Mary had chosen the better part of listening to Jesus. In one sense prayer is listening to God’s direction. It comes through quiet meditation, scripture reading, perhaps a sermon, a poem, or some wise or catchy phrase that is particularly meaningful. The important part of the prayer of listening or discerning what God is saying is setting aside the busyness and thinking our thoughts and opening ourselves up to direction from God so that our lives become a meaningful extension of the love and compassion of God, and not merely activities that burn us out in the end.
On the other hand prayer is addressing God with praise and thanksgiving, but also with intercession, and asking for the help of God, if not a kind of pleading over and over again with God to grant our requests. It is a form of prayer that is often frustrating, because people will feel that their prayer is not answered, or has been ignored. Some will say that the answer was simply “No.” Others more frustrated or devastated will say prayer doesn’t work or even that there is no God.
Modern Americans are pretty much in charge of their own lives, and believe that they should be. With so much taken for granted from a technological and scientific point of view, we are not as needful of prayer, except that prayer becomes something we do in extreme situations. It is something foreign to us. We might even ask, “If God is God why is it necessary for us to pray without ceasing, or even to have to seem to plead and desperately implore God’s response to our human needs?” For us prayer is very mysterious.
It is helpful, I think, for us to appreciate what prayer was like and meant for the early Christian Communities, and to understand prayer as Jesus taught. Jesus’ disciples ask Jesus, “Teach us to pray.” It might be helpful for us to explore Jesus’ teaching as well. Be mindful of the fact that in Jesus’ time ninety percent of the population had little or no control over their lives. They were poor and constantly in debt. Nature determined the weather and the climate. Landowners determined what was to be planted, and how much the peasants could keep. The Romans determined how much taxes were to be paid, in crops, not cash. Peasants had to pray or implore people who controlled their lives for certain benefits to be granted. The peasant hoped his patrons, those who granted special favors and benefits, would treat them compassionately and as family. They hoped their patron (or landlord, etc.) would grant them what they could not provide for themselves. It was almost feudal like. The disciples want to know from Jesus how they could influence God to provide them favors.
Luke’s account is the simplest form of what we today refer to as the Lord’s Prayer. The opening word of the prayer is Father, Abba, in the Aramaic, which was a familiar form of the word ‘Father’, as we might refer to our father’s as ‘dad.’ It was an intimate form and metaphor, which gave the clear impression that a person was in the Family of God. And clearly offer praise that the Father’s Kingdom or realm is our reality. The basic prayer of Jesus was for three things: Prayer for basic sustenance, our daily bread, forgiveness from sins or alienation from the Father, and prevent us from ever being apostate or unfaithful. To be forgiven from our sins or debts was an interesting phrase. Everyone was in debt to everyone else. Just as these folk had to forgive the debts of one another, the prayer asks God to forgive them in their poverty, as they were forced to forgive others. The prayer is very basic: food (sustenance), forgiveness, forgiveness of others, and the ability to be always a faithful participant in the family of God.
Jesus also offers a parable. Suppose, he says that, you have a friend come drop in you late at night. Remember the basic honorable requirement of hospitality in this Middle Eastern culture. If you are out bread, you run next door to the neighbor’s house for bread. The neighbor is very upset about having to get up to get you the bread. These were basically one room houses, and you would wake up the wife, the children, the animals all bedded down for the night. But, to prevent you from being shamed and the community being shamed, your neighbor will get you what you need. God does not want to be shamed either. Approach him with you needs. Search, ask, knock, and you will receive. This statement is a statement of great confident hope on the part of Jesus.
If you are a father (or mother) and your child asks you for a fish, you wouldn’t give a snake (eel). If the child asked for an egg, you wouldn’t give her a scorpion (which when curled up looked like and egg.). You give what is best to meet the basic needs of your children. So even those who are and can be evil know what is good to give to their children. How much more will the heavenly Father give good gifts and the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
Keep in mind here the simplicity of this kind of prayer. Jesus says God is like a compassionate and loving Father, who did what was possible to meet the basic human needs of his family. It was an intimate loving compassionate relationship. Jesus did not see God as a great welfare system, or as a great magician, or even a great wonder worker who manipulated and disrupted the natural order. For Jesus God responded to human need in terms of what was basic, God provides basic need of nurturing, forgiveness so that no one will be beyond the reach of God, and will seek to maintain a faithful relationship. God will provide the Holy Spirit of love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Ask, knock, search, and grace will abound for you.
In this passage of scripture from the Gospel Account of Luke, you have a picture of God the Father as an intimate Father. People of the time had very simple basic needs; food and water, forgiveness from debt, and the temptation to lose sight of God, or to feel unworthy. Today in our affluence and materialism we tend to expect so much. Our prayers and expectations may be far more grandiose. But a good father or mother provides us with the realities of life. A good parent is well aware that you can’t have everything you wish. Some things are not good for us. Some things are out of the question. These are the realities of life. Meaningful life is not a matter of how much stuff we have, but what are our relationships like. Through prayer, we are invited into an intimate relation with God. He provides us love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and what is basic for the day. Through prayer we learn what the language of the Kingdom or realm of God is.
In and through this real relationship we live our lives. If the Father is compassion, merciful, forgiving, loving to us, then these are the spiritual things we have to give and share with others. If God is Father, then we are all brothers and sisters of one another. If God is held in awe and as holy, then so is his creation and his realm, and as brothers and sisters of one another we hallow and honor one another. If God is giving of human need, then we participate in that generosity. If God forgives us, then we forgive one another. If God will keep us faithful, then we minister to bring the faith of a loving God to others.
In our parish bulletin there is on the first page, a prayer list of people within our community for whom we pray. Many of those names appear week after week. We are reminded of our need to be constantly mindful and concerned and involved as the people of God, children of God to be continually involved in concern for their welfare. That prayerfulness is what Christians do. In remembering and lifting up their names before God, we visit, send cards, are mindful of their need for compassion, acknowledgement, healing through friendships and their perpetual belonging to the family of God.
We may wonder what is the use of praying for someone who has cancer. And we may all know of some folk who have gone into spontaneous remissions. Is it because they had more people praying for them than someone else? I doubt it. Prayer is hardly a popularity contest. The nature of the disease is that either some people have within them what is necessary to stifle the disease, or the disease itself dies within some people. Of course we long for the cure, but not just for one person, but for all. And our prayer is that God will enable and help those in research to continue to faithfully search, knock, ask for the way to healing. Prayer puts us all in union with God the Father, and opens us to the receiving of the Holy Spirit that enable us to be in partnership, in compassion, in faithful endurance with God, with God’s way and will. Prayer is the language and the way of the family of God to bring hope to the whole world.