Lord, Teach Me to Pray Luke 11:1-13 Pastor Andy Kinsey August 21, 2011 Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples, said to him, Lord, teach us to pray Prayer of Preparation - Luke 11:1 Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come, your will be done, on hearth as it is in heaven. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, and the power, and glory are yours, forever and ever. Amen. The Message With these words, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. In keeping with Jewish custom, Jesus takes a moment to instruct those who were following him on how to share in the life of prayer; he takes time to offer a way on how the disciples could address God and open their lives to God s mission. As we read through our passage in Luke today, we realize that Jesus spent a great deal of time in prayer and teaching about the importance of prayer: whether it was before baptism (3:21), or before choosing the Twelve (6:12), or before announcing his passion (9:18), or before the Transfiguration (9:28), or, of course, in the Garden of Gethsemane (22:39) or on the cross (23:44). We know Jesus places a great deal of value on prayer./1/ And so, when the disciples come and ask Jesus to teach them to pray, there is a sense of achievement. I say a sense of achievement because the disciples were not always the best at asking the right questions: On one occasion, for example, the disciples asked, Who among us is the greatest? Wrong question!/2/
Here, in Luke s Gospel, the disciples get to the point about prayer, and Jesus responds sharing what we commonly call the Lord s Prayer, beginning with Our Father. Now, it would be presumptuous of me to think that we could possibly cover all we need to cover in one sermon on the Lord s Prayer! We could spend several months on each petition. However, what we can do as part of our sermon series on belonging is to understand that learning to pray the Lord s Prayer is a great deal like learning to be part of a great adventure./3/ That may sound new prayer as adventure but I think it can help us to understand the importance of prayer: of seeing prayer as a movement toward God. To be sure, we can sometimes turn prayer into a strategy to get what we want. Prayer can become identified with piling on blessings : God bless me with this, God bless me with that! At other times we can turn prayer into simple recitation. We can forget how dangerous it truly is to pray the Lord s Prayer: Do we really understand what Jesus taught us? Are we really praying this prayer, as John Wesley suggested, from the heart? Or, are we too busy with other distractions? For example, as we were preparing this sermon, we found a little clip: It s called Having Coffee with Jesus, and it deals with how some folks can understand, or misunderstand, prayer. It is a humorous but honest portrayal of how many of us may pray, or, in this case, may not pray. Watch! Sound familiar? We can become so busy, so consumed with what we are doing that we can forget the One who is right there with us! We can forget how to pray, or how to move toward God! Jesus on Prayer In our passage from Luke s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples to pray in this way that is, prayer is like a man who keeps pestering his neighbor at midnight, 3
beating on the neighbor s door until the neighbor gets out of bed and gives the man the bread he needs (Luke 11:5-13); prayer is like seeking and searching and knocking until the door finally opens (Luke 11:9-10). To pray like this is to persist and persevere./4/ But to pray in this way also involves more than persistence and perseverance: it involves obedience. To obey Jesus command to pray is to bend our very lives toward God; it is to submit our lives to that trustworthy authority who can teach us to pray rightly./5/ That s not easy to do. It is not easy because it is not our natural inclination to submit, or to surrender, or to bend to anyone./6/ I think that s one of the reasons we ask persons to memorize this prayer and to repeat it again and again. Repetition reminds us that this prayer is not our idea; it s not about our feelings./7/ In praying the Lord s Prayer week-after-week, we are reminded that it takes practice to be a Christian similar to learning how to play the piano or soccer. It would be unimaginable, for instance, to learn how to play the piano without practice, without repetition. In the same way, it would be impossible to learn how to play the game of soccer without understanding the rules of soccer. When Jesus teaches us to pray, he does so knowing that we will need to be persistent in our practice. Discipline is clearly implied in praying this prayer, which is why we must always try to pray this prayer with others: Being a Christian is too tough to go alone./8/ Therefore, when we unite our voices together in praying the Lord s Prayer, we are reminded yet again that Jesus taught us all to pray saying Our Father. We are meant to pray this prayer as church (see also John 17). In fact, when we pray the Lord s Prayer as church, we are reminded, at least for one brief moment, that there is such a gift as unity. Despite all the different voices clamoring for our attention, there is in the moment when we unite our voices in prayer the unity of the Spirit in Christ s church (Eph. 4:3). 3
Commentary I don t know about you, but I find hope in this way of praying! I say hope because I know I can t go it alone. Over the last week I have learned how much fantasy there is in thinking how we somehow can go it alone! It s simply a myth to think that we can live as Christians detached from a wider tradition or community that marks us as Christ s followers. To be sure, I know we live in a culture that thinks we can go it alone, but I have yet to discover how, as a Christian, I can pray as if I am the only one who matters. Given how broken and sinful we are, we need to be reminded that it is possible to pray falsely: that is, it is possible, as the apostle Paul reminds the Romans, that we can pray in a way that forgets God and forgets that we are part of Christ s church: we can pray in ways that forget that it is God who is praying in us and through us, and that it is God s Spirit who is interceding for us; we can forget that it is God who is working for our good (8:28), and whose own sighs give us the strength to go on when we don t know how we could otherwise (Romans 8:26)./9/ There are ways to pray falsely: to think we can go it alone, without God and without others. In teaching us to pray in this way, Jesus is reminding us that the One whom we call Father is also the very One whose own kingdom will provide for our daily bread, and whose own grace will forgive us, and whose own love will deliver us from evil, from our own and others. In teaching us to pray in this way, Jesus is reminding us that prayer is not one more technique we have to learn, but is instead a lifelong act of bending our lives toward what God wants, not what we want./10/ There are, of course, many ways we can teach prayer, and we can certainly offer a wide-variety of classes on prayer and provide different ways of praying. We can speak about the discipline of silence and scripture reading in prayer; or, we can talk about the practice of confession and self-examination in 4
prayer; or, the place of thanksgiving in prayer. Prayer involves every part of our lives. Prayer is a means of grace, of receiving God s love. But unless we are bending our lives toward God, prayer can simply become one more item to do on a list rather than the adventure Jesus tell us it is! Invitation to Adventure It s why we want to encourage and promote the ministry of prayer as adventure in the life of the church. We all need to be in prayer: for our church, for our world, for our nation, for our families, for our community, for those who are hurting, for our own lives. The Lord s Prayer is simply the invitation to go deeper into the life of prayer: to move closer to God. It s also why we want to invite you to be in prayer and to open up different avenues of prayer in this congregation. Perhaps you have noticed the insert on prayer ministries in the worship bulletin. Look and see how you can grow in the life of prayer and how we can grow as a congregation in prayer. Fill out and check those items you would like to pursue. This is only a beginning, but it is a beginning that calls forth our own participation. Note how you can be involved: note, too, our new prayer space in the Adult Wing as a place to pray! Our prayer is that our church will be a house of prayer! Our prayer is to raise up persons who will be intentional about prayer. That s our prayer. May Grace Church be that house where the Lord hears our prayer in the unity and power of the Spirit, listening to what we say and teaching us always to pray! Amen. 5
Notes 1. See Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 153. 2. See William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord s Prayer and the Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 13-14. 3. Ibid., p. 15. 4. Ibid., p. 17. 5. Ibid., p. 17. 6. Ibid., p. 17. 7. Ibid., p. 17. 8. Ibid., p. 17; see also Fred B. Craddock, p. 153. 9. Ibid., p.19. 10. Ibid., p. 22. 6