Teach Us To Pray
July 18, 2010
1He 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. 9“So 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!”
Luke 11:1-13
Over the last few months, many of us in here have been reading through the New Testament together. And one of the comments I have heard the most frequently is just how clueless the disciples come across in the Gospels. Even though they spend all of their time with Jesus, the disciples never seem to grasp what’s really going on. They’re always concentrating on the wrong things like who’s going to be the greatest or who’s going to sit at God’s right hand. And sometimes, it seems incredible that Jesus could have chosen such a group of misfits to carry out his mission.
But then we get a passage like the one we have today. And in today’s text, instead of asking a dumb question, the disciples actually redeem themselves a little bit. They have just watched Jesus praying and so, one of the disciples comes up and says, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Lord, teach us to pray. It is a genuine and heartfelt request. And it shows the disciples at their best. Because the disciples already knew how to pray. I mean, let’s not forget that these were observant Jews. They had a long tradition of prayer. And just like us, the disciples had probably grown up asking blessings over meals and saying prayers in their worship.
So, when the disciples make this request of Jesus, it is not because they are ignorant. The disciples already know how to pray. What I think they are really asking is, “Lord, teach us to pray like you.” Because even though we’ve been doing it since we were young, when we listen to you pray, we hear something different. We hear a passion and an intimacy with God. And that’s what we want. We know how to pray, but we don’t know how to pray like that. We know all the right things to say, but we don’t have that same sense of connection. And that’s what we want. Just knowing how to pray isn’t enough; we want to pray in a way that is meaningful, in a way that is authentic, in a way that really brings us closer to God.
That is the disciples’ request of Jesus in this passage of Scripture. But isn’t that what we all want? Don’t we all want to pray in a way that is passionate and alive? Because if we were honest, most of us in here this morning are probably very similar to those first disciples. Oh sure, we pray, but it’s kind of a drag when we do. We pray, but it is motivated mainly by our own sense of guilt and obligation rather than any genuine desire on our part. We pray, but we just aren’t that good at it. We get bored. We fall asleep. We start thinking about all the other million things we’ve got to do. And so, many of us in here have just given up on it completely. And the rest of us probably spend 5 or 10 minutes a day at most, awkwardly bumbling through a few words, until we get distracted by something else.
Now, I don’t want to over generalize too much, but don’t you think that’s a pretty accurate assessment of our prayer lives? And I’ll let in on a little secret—most pastors are just as bad. In fact, most of my minister friends and colleagues confess that they find it just as difficult to pray as the folks in their congregations. Maybe they find it difficult to pray because of the folks in their congregations; I don’t know. But this morning, I am not trying to lift myself up as the ideal of how to pray because I struggle with prayer as much as everybody else.
But when I hear the disciples’ request in this passage of Scripture, I get excited. Because it suggests that maybe there is a better way to pray. Maybe we don’t have to just keep going through the motions. And so, that’s what I want to us to think about at this morning. I want us to think about how we pray, but also why we pray.
And the place to start, obviously, is the response that Jesus gives his disciples here in Luke, Chapter 11. It has become known as the Lord’s Prayer. But the first question we have to ask is—Which version of the Lord’s Prayer are we supposed to use? Because if you were listening when I read the Scripture a few moments ago, you might have noticed some significant differences from the traditional Lord’s Prayer we use in church. For starters, there is no “Our Father;” it’s just Father. And in Luke’s version, the Father is not in heaven, nor do we ask for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Luke also leaves out the whole last section of the prayer: “deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.” So, what are we supposed to make of this pared down version? If Jesus really was trying to teach us a better way to pray, don’t we need to know the exact words?
I don’t think so. Over the years, different churches and denominations have used variations of the Lord’s Prayer for all sorts of reasons. For instance, when we Baptists say the Lord’s Prayer, we use the word trespass—forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. But Presbyterians always say debt—forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That distinction is really the result of a 400 year old argument between the English and the Scots about whose version is better. And if we wanted to, we could on and on like that forever, and quibble about which phrases should be included or excluded in the Lord’s Prayer, but we’d be missing the point. Because I think that more important than the actual words are the ideas being expressed behind those words. And it’s easy for us to get those two things confused. It’s easy for us to think that Jesus was teaching the disciples some kind of magic formula, and we better recite it word for word if it’s going to have the desired effect.
But I don’t think that’s the way this prayer, or any other prayer, works. Genuine prayer is not about saying the right words so that we can get what we want; it is about reminding us of the right ideas. It is about reorienting our hearts and minds to the things we should be focused on instead of the things we are focused on. And whether we use the word “debt” or whether we use the word “trespass” is beside the point; the basic message is the same.
So, I think the lesson here for us is to learn to let go of all our hang-ups about whether or not we’re praying the “right way.” I’ve heard it so many times--“Oh, I can’t pray, preacher…I stumble over my words, and I get tongue-tied, and I repeat myself, and I don’t know what to say.” And to all those excuses, I reply, “Do you really think God cares about that? Do you really think God cares if we say one word instead of another?”
Because I don’t. We’re not casting a spell here, folks. We’re not trying to be Harry Potter. We’re trying to have a conversation. And I think that’s what we need to keep in mind. You and I get so self-conscious about the way we pray that we lose sight of its purpose. We focus too much on style and not enough on substance. And when that happens, we get frustrated because our prayers don’t get us the results we want.
There’s a story about a journalist who was assigned to the Jerusalem bureau and her office window looked out on the Wailing Wail. Y’all know what the Wailing Wall is, right? It’s the last remaining piece of the Second Temple, where Orthodox Jews still come to pray every day in Jerusalem. And I’m sure you’ve seen pictures on TV of the men with long beards, who kind of rock back and forth towards the wall as they voice their prayers. So anyway, this journalist looked out her window and she noticed that every day, the same old man kept coming to the wall. One day, she decided to go down and introduce herself, and she asked the old man if she could interview him. And he agreed, so the journalist said, “I see you come to the wall every single day. How long have you done that and what are you praying for?”
The old man said, “I have come here to pray every day for the last 25 years. In the morning, I pray for world peace and the brotherhood of man. I go home, I have a cup of tea, and then I come back and pray for the eradication of illness and disease from the earth.” The journalist was amazed. She said, “How does it make you feel to come here every day for 25 years and pray for these things?” And the old man said, “It feels like I’m talking to a wall.”
I like that story because I think it articulates perfectly how many of us feel when we pray. We feel like we’re talking to a wall. We come to God with all our burdens and our concerns and in response, we hear nothing. Our friends and family members still get sick and die, our church still struggles to survive, our world still contends with poverty and disease and war. And so, it’s very tempting for us to just throw up our hands and give up. I think that’s the number one reason that people stop praying--because it doesn’t seem to work. It seems like even when we are genuinely trying to connect to God, we’re not getting through.
Believe it or not, this morning, I am not going to try and dismiss those questions and doubts. Because I believe the very act of asking those questions can become a prayer in and of itself. As a matter of fact, I think that if we read the book of Psalms, we would find may similar expressions of doubt and outrage about why God seems silent. It is a raw and realistic portrayal of prayer. And I think that’s the idea that Jesus is trying to communicate in this passage of Scripture.
It’s the idea that prayer really isn’t about results at all; it is about being drawn closer to God. Because if we really think about it, our typical idea of prayer doesn’t jive very well with the rest of our theology. We claim that God already knows our every thought and need. We claim that the Holy Spirit is interceding on our behalf in ways that we can’t even articulate. So, if God already knows what we need before we ask and the Holy Spirit can say it better than we ever could, what’s the point of prayer? Y’all follow me? It doesn’t make much sense. It seems like an exercise in futility to ask for what God already knows we want. Unless…unless there’s more to prayer than getting what we want.
Maybe it’s true that you and I will never be able to really pray effectively. Maybe that’s just a result of being human. We ask for stupid things and we’re short-sighted and we confuse what we need with what we want. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Because in spite all of our failings and selfishness and half attempts, the very act of trying to pray changes us. It transforms us. When we begin that prayerful conversation, we open ourselves up to the movement of God in our lives. And that, brothers and sisters, is what prayer is all about. It is about immersing ourselves in the wonder and mystery of God.
The challenge for us is to let go of our old model of prayer, the model in which God is the big teller in the sky dispensing whatever we want based on how well we pray. It goes back to the magic formula again. And yes, I know that in this passage of Scripture, Jesus tells us to ask and we shall receive. But I believe that the receiving is merely a side effect of prayer. It is the consequence of being in a loving relationship with the God who made us. In other words, we don’t pray to get stuff; we get stuff because we pray. Does that make sense? God gives us what we have and what we need, not because we use the magic words to demand it, but because God loves us. And the closer we are to the source of that love, the more likely we are to see how God is working in our lives.
But we have to be willing to make ourselves vulnerable. We have to get over our transaction oriented approach to talking with God. The truth is that you and I tend to gauge the effectiveness of prayer based on its tangible results, which makes sense, because we are Americans, and we judge everything by tangible results. But sometimes, there is no tangible result to prayer, unless we count a more fulfilling, compassionate life as a tangible result.
You see, prayer doesn’t always happen in the way we anticipate. It doesn’t always have a neat cause and effect outcome. It doesn’t always manifest itself in easily discernible ways. But that is what makes prayer so real. You and I claim that in praying, we are coming into relationship with the Creator of the Universe. That’s an awesome claim to make. And I don’t know about you, but a God I can control with my words is not a God I want to worship. I’d rather worship a God who takes pleasure in conversing with his creation, even if that conversation is sometimes difficult to understand.
Sometimes when I pray, there are moments of absolute clarity, when I felt like I know exactly what I am supposed to do. And sometimes, it feels like I’m just talking to a wall. But in both cases, I trust that God is using my prayer to bring me closer to him, and to change me, maybe in a way that I can’t even comprehend.
And that’s our goal. Not just to talk God into doing something for us, but to talk to God. To honestly share our joys and sorrows and hopes and fears with a loving friend who is always ready to listen. And so, this morning, let us join with those disciples of long ago, as we ask Jesus to teach us how to pray. AMEN