Teach Us to Pray
Reflections on Luke 11.1-13
RCL Proper 17C
28 July 2019
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Luke 11.1-3
11.1[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.”
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!”
Teach us to pray.
When I was twelve years old, I joined the rest of my cadre at Saint Michael’s Parish in confirmation preparation. Father Palmer, our Rector, was a firm man who had a knack for working with young people. We all looked up to him and he became on of my mentors on the road to ordination some sixteen years later.
He had to help us organize our thinking and to look at life and the challenges of faith as a gift of God that is often misunderstood. I remember one of my friends asking Father Palmer why we fall into sin. ‘More often than not,’ he said, ‘sin is the misuse of one of God’s gifts when we are motivated by fear of losing it. Good stewardship of God’s gifts can become greed, enjoyment of the gift of food can become gluttony.’ There was no question we could not ask because he taught us that asking a question was a step towards wisdom.
One of the little lessons that he gave us that has remained with me all these years is the acronym ‘ACTIP’ as a way of remembering what prayer should include. Prayer, Father Palmer taught us, should begin with adoration of God, then confession of our sins of commission and omission, then thanksgiving for God’s goodness to us and to all of creation, then intercession for others in their needs and troubles, then close with our petitions for our own needs and concerns. For fifty-four years ACTIP has been embedded in my soul and has served me well in times of uncertainty about how to pray.
‘Teach us to pray,’ an unnamed disciple asks Jesus in today’s gospel from Luke. Beneath those words I hear the desire to have the same rich spiritual life that Jesus has with God, that same sense of connectedness that enables Jesus to radiate God’s life into the hustle and bustle of the disciples’ everyday lives, that ability to meet the reality of human confident in God’s purposes to bring us all into life-giving, life-sustaining relationships.
What Jesus gives them is the core of the prayer that we’ve been praying for almost two thousand years. It’s the prayer that an early Christian writer in the second century thought every Christian should pray three times a day, slowly and thoughtfully, in order to find the spiritual grist for the mill of the soul to grind into Christian maturity. It’s a prayer that challenges us to ask ourselves some key questions about our own spiritual lives.
To whom are we praying?
Father, hallowed be your name. In the time of Jesus, to call God ‘Father’ was to evoke the image of the most powerful figure in any human family in Palestine and throughout the Greco-Roman world. Fathers had the power of life and death. But Jesus reveals God as a father who welcomes home a wayward son, a shepherd who seeks for one lost sheep, a despised Samaritan who cares for a man who falls into the hands of bandits.
Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are given an opportunity to ponder our own understanding of who is the God whose name we are holding sacred. The Scriptures as well as our own experiences are full of images of God. Our ‘desert island’ Scriptures, those portions of the Bible that we find particularly meaningful, tell us a great deal about how we understand God.
For what are we praying?
Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. We’ve all probably prayed for a parking spot when we’re frantically trying to finish some errands. If it were possible to set up a prayer indicator near any BC Lottery dealer, the readings would probably go off the dial.
But our prayers are actually simple. We are praying that the world becomes what God want it to become, a place where all God’s children can be free, a place where all God’s creatures have what they need for a full life, a place where we are each valued and loved.
We are praying that our needs and those of others are filled. Those who are ill in body and soul are made whole. Those who are lonely find companionship. Those who are held captive by addiction and poverty are liberated. Those who mourn receive comfort. Those who are hopeless discover hope.
We are praying that we become more Christ-like in our relationships. If we are clinging on to old hurts, we pray for release. If we are holding others emotionally hostage, we pray for release. If we are seeking power and control at the expense of others, we pray for release.
In what times are we praying?
And do not bring us to the time of trial. Our times are no less fraught with danger than when Jesus and his disciples travelled throughout ancient Palestine. We face political and social conflicts. We live in the midst of what many of us consider to be a climate emergency. We witness the growth of political movements that deny the full humanity of millions of people. We know that wealth and power are not equitably distributed, whether in the so-called ‘developed’ world or the so-called ‘developing’ world.
Times such as these have the potential to generate considerable fear. Human beings are not at our best when we are faced with the choice of fight or flight. And so we pray that God will empower our ‘better angels’ in order that we might be beacons of hope rather than torches of anger, that our communities might be open to and embracing of all rather than closed to and suspicious of whomever we might call ‘the other’.
Pray without ceasing.
Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened . . . . If you . . . 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!
For two thousand years the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, in many forms and many languages, has been a quiet centre around which we can remember to whom we are praying, for what we are praying and in what times we are praying. It is a prayer that is prayed unceasingly throughout the inhabited world. Just as a single prayer wheel spins its invocations in one location, so this prayer has transformed our whole planet into a prayer wheel, invoking God’s name, praying for the coming of the kingdom and asking for strength to meet the times.
Let us pray it, slowly and thoughtfully, when we rise in the morning. Let us pray it, slowly and thoughtfully, when we pause in the middle of the day. Let us pray it, slowly and thoughtfully, when we bring our day to close. Pray it, slowly and thoughtfully, when we are uncertain about how to pray or what to pray. Pray it and be prepared for the Holy Spirit to move in us and through us to more than we can ask or imagine.
No comments:
Post a Comment