Sermon - July 25, 2010

9th Sunday after Pentecost – Year C
Luke 1:1-11

“Teach us to Pray”

This past Thursday, I needed to travel to Atlanta to meet the newly appointed campus pastor at GA Tech. The cut-backs in campus ministry budget have reduced the church-wide staff from eight down to two and one half. Duties once taken on by these folks have been passed to local staff – like me. So on Thursday, I traveled to Atlanta to meet the new staff person who will be heading up our work at Tech, GA State, and Agnes Scott.

I was very impressed, and pleased, and am confident that in a few years he will build a strong program and be the one visiting me, to share insights. But for now, I am clearly the senior, and no matter how hard I tried to tell him that I was there to lay the foundation for a long and supportive collegial relationship, there remained strong overtones of “authority come to town.”

I had anticipated some of this. So I had built in a safety valve. Since I was going to be in Atlanta anyway, and since Kat’s Father’s Day gift to me were a couple of tickets to see the Braves, I called Ben Edge to see if he might want to sit patiently and wait for me to finish the meeting, then go with me to the game. He did. The Braves won. And I had the perfect antidote to a morning filled with cautioned conversation. Whereas I needed to think about each comment to be made to my new colleague, with an ole friend I could speak freely and comfortably. (Sorry, did that sound like I called Ben “old?” I didn’t mean to. I meant to refer to a friend with whom enough time and interaction had been shared as to allow one to feel at home and at ease.)

Communications experts teach us that interactions between such individuals are honest, mutually enhancing, and productive. We all seek such interactions. But getting there isn’t as easy as taking a course on communications; it comes as a result of the work done in building up the relationship. It unfolds when we have become comfortable and at ease with our conversation partner.

This is the approach taken to interpreting today’s Gospel lesson in an article recently published by Pastor Peter Marty. His writing helped me to realize that for most of my twenty-seven years of preaching, I have looked at Luke 11:1-11 and tried to explain how Jesus’ prayer, the one he taught the disciples to pray, is good instruction. Drawing on the works of Martin Luther, I would expose the nuances of Jesus’ prayer, explaining the depth and insight of each petition. I won’t insist that the position taken in this recent article is the only legitimate sermon to be preached, but I do have to say that he made a believer out of me. It may just be the case that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, they weren’t looking for the correct words to speak, so much as begging him to help them transform their words to God from the guarded, cautious words of a newbie into the deep, honest expression of a well established and mutually appreciated relationship.

“Lord, teach us to pray.” Is the request the disciples make of Jesus. They had observed his prayer life; they had seen the ease with which he spoke to God and listened for God. This ease of interaction is what they were seeking; this is what they wanted. The limitations of language leave open the potential for misunderstanding. And, particularly for those who struggle with prayer, it is tempting to seek words or technique which might overcome a lack of intimacy. But learning to pray begins with learning to be at ease with the One whom we are addressing.

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Let me acknowledge how difficult it is to talk, honestly, about this topic. What caught my eye about the article from Pastor Marty was his honesty in acknowledging his own struggles with prayer. Doing so is tough. It is revealing. It can be disastrous. I remember on internship being one of only two pastors present for a study of the upcoming Sunday’s texts. With an honesty that impressed me, my colleague talked about prayer, concluding with “If the people in my parish knew how much I struggled with this it would be all over.”

Early on, my spiritual director helped to realize that one’s prayer life is deeply intimate and not something that we easily talk about. The only things less likely to be discussed with members of the congregation are their finances. My experiences in ministry have bore this out. I have lots of pastoral conversations about concepts and ideas; fewer about prayer life or spiritual direction.

It is tough to talk about how we talk to God.

Now, if one is looking for a model, of what to say to God, then Luke 11 is your answer. There is a reason why we repeat this prayer every Sunday, and at most of the Church’s other gatherings. It captures well what it is that needs to be included in the content of our prayers. At some point, in the not so distant future, every one of us should review Martin Luther’s Small Catechism for support of this prayer as a form to be followed. Each petition is ripe with content.

But all of that content starts with the simplest of reminders that whenever we speak to God, we speak to one who loves us more than we could ever love back. Jesus instructs his disciples that all communication between us and God should be framed with an understanding that the exchange is between a loving parent and a devoted child. “When you pray, (begin your prayer by acknowledging God as) Father.”

Let me throw in an acknowledgment that not all father-child, or for that matter parent-child, relationships are as they should be. A group of us have been meeting on Sunday mornings to discuss Young’s novel The Shack. In that book, God appears to the main character as a woman. We are told, in the novel, that God does this as a way of avoiding the hurt and harm associated with the main character’s relationship with his biological father. Not all relationships with “fathers” or “mothers,” has been ideal. But, never-the-less, we ought to be able to understand the form such relationships ought to take. When lived out as God would hope, these relationships are the prime place where we experience unconditional love.

Jesus tells his disciples to approach God with such expectations. Jesus tells us to begin our prayer to God with the address used to talk to a loving parent. All the content in the world; everything that could possibly follow is eclipsed with the simple acknowledgment that our talk with God is not of the forced and strained variety, but rather the casual and comfortable exchanges which take place between persons who are deeply appreciative of each others person and their presence.

“When you pray, say: Father.”

You aren’t trying to talk God out of something that God doesn’t want you to have. You are not trying to hide from God all the things that God already knows. You are speaking with the one person in the whole of the cosmos who most wants you to be happy, and healthy, and whole. This is what parents do for us. This is why their blessing and their support is so important. And, when parenting wasn’t done in this way, why the children in such households have such difficulties throughout the rest of their lives. (There are other reasons why children can have extreme difficulties. No parent, no matter how loving can avoid them all. But when the children don’t have this unquestioned love, their battle is even more of an uphill struggle.)

“When you pray, say: Father.”

Prayer will (probably) always be difficult. It isn’t easy. It exposes us. And we have been taught, carefully taught, not to ever seem vulnerable or weak. Prayer is one of those topics we find it embarrassing to address. And seldom do we find ourselves in a relationship where we are comfortable sharing the details. God knows this; Jesus knew it. And while he may have wanted to be as helpful to his disciples as John was to those who followed him, Jesus realized that neither technique nor formula would enable his followers to overcome the obstacles. The only reason they would want to spend time talking and listen was if they first came to understand the relationship God is inviting them to enter.

“When you pray, say: Father.” And if you can’t think of anything more to say, you may have said enough.

Amen.