10th Sunday after Pentecost – Year C(Lectionary 17)
Genesis
18:20-32 Luke 11:1-13
Teach
Us to Pray
"Lord, teach us to pray, as
John taught his disciples."
Here is the first thing I want you
to notice in this one-line request from the disciples: they are pointing out to Jesus something that
he OUGHT to do, after having seen it being done effectively by someone else. Imagine the gumption of saying to Jesus, “Here
is something that you seem not to have thought about doing, but we really think
you should try.” “Teach us to pray,
as John taught his disciples.”
IF the Jesus story is THE STORY
which defines our lives then from this sliver of the Jesus story we ought to
gain the insight that nothing sacred is ever upset or annoyed with the suggestion
that maybe we could do things a bit differently or in a way that might be a bit
more helpful.
I pull this out for consideration, not merely for interesting conversation, but as a way of expressing how deeply concerned I am for the future of the Church, and to begin to share with you that I am moving more and more into the camp that thinks that unless we change the way we do things, the trend of fewer folks being involved in Church, and the average age of those who are involved getting higher and higher, is going to continue till we just simply all die out.
And one of the things that seems
to be working, though you would at times get the impression that we hadn’t
thought of it, yet, is to spend less time on Sunday morning talking about what
Jesus thought and more time learning to live as Jesus lived.
There is no way that I have
something interesting enough or smart enough or powerful enough to make weekly attendance
worth your while. What might bring the
change to your life that you seek is for this hour to help you practice being
the person Jesus calls us to be.
"Teach us …, as (others have
been) taught."
So here is where we are going to
start this morning. I want you to take
out a pen or pencil or snag the one from the pew book thing, and on the edges
of your bulletin write down the place or places, the person or persons, who
have in the past helped you to learn how to pray. Seriously – do some writing.
I am going to talk while you write,
but I don’t want to see you looking at me, I want you to be looking at that
piece of paper in front of you.
Prayer is very important. Prayer is at the heart of one’s
self-expression of the relationship with God.
Prayer reveals, as well as informs, the way we perceive God and the ways
in which we expect our relationship to God to affect our lives.
So who taught you to pray? Where did
you learn to pray?
Write it on that blank bulletin
before you.
If you learn to pray as a result
of attending Sunday morning worship and listening to the pastor or the worship
assistant, then your prayers are probably pretty formal. I wonder if you tend to pray for things in
the same, generic/non –offensive way we say Sunday prayers.
If you learned to pray at a
summer camp, I would imagine your prayers tend to encourage you to return to
that mountain top experience. They may
tend to want to remove you from the gritty events of life back home.
I learned to pray, or at least my
most formable formation with regard to prayer – came in the midst of social
activism – the same sort of action that seems to have formed the attitudes of
Pope Francis. (That probably doesn’t
surprise you.) So my prayers are as much
actions as they are words flowing from my mouth.
Who taught you to pray? Where did you learn to pray?
Was it kneeling at the side of
your bed with a parent or grandparent kneeling beside you? Did you learn to pray later in life? Perhaps even in the midst of a terrible and
horrible experience?
Or, is your piece of paper blank
because you don’t know when you learned?
Or if you even want to say that you have learned?
Truth be told – I was actually
hoping for a few blank sheets. I was
hoping we might have the courage to admit to one another that we are unsure how
to pray. I was wondering how many of us
were as courageous as the first twelve of Jesus’ disciples, willing to stand
before this altar and confess: "Lord,
teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."
How do we begin, as a community
of faith, to learn to pray? How do we
develop the knack and the ability and the courage to speak to God and of
God?
Let me make my own
confession: way too early in the lives
of my children I stopped the practice associated with every TV children’s
drama. I didn’t go into my children’s
room at the end of the day, get down on my knees with them, and say a
prayer. I wonder, if Kat-Smith-Caleb
were here this morning, if they would have written my name down on the cover of
their bulletin?
So how do we develop this
skill? This art? This avenue for strengthening our
relationship with God?
One starting point might be
longer periods of silence, during the Prayer of the Day, to see if anyone (in
addition to Martin Schneider) will offer a prayer petition from the
congregation. Why do so few such
petitions get offered?
One of my favorite experiences is
the opening of Congregational Council Meetings, when a member of the Council
(not a pastor) offers a reflection – AND A PRAYER.
Want to hear one of my pet peeves? NEVER – EVER – when you find yourself to be
the one who MUST offer a prayer for the group or event – include in the call to
prayer the words, “Okay, let’s have
quick prayer.” A “quick”
prayer? Do we have something more important
to do? Some business to attend to that
is more important than speaking to God?
I was hoping for some laughs – I don’t mean to shame anyone. I know that those words are spoken because
the person who finds themself pressured into praying for the group hasn’t had
sufficient support to feel as if they are ready for the moment or equal to the
challenge. That is OUR fault (your
pastors), and the thing that we need to change about what we do when we are
together.
We may need to begin with gaining
knowledge about the differing types of prayer.
I made reference to the formal, generic prayers offered in Sunday
morning worship. That is one type of
prayer.
Another type is the style offered
by the bedside of one who is gravely ill.
There, prayer is a bit more intense and purposeful.
There is a prayer style which we
would call “meditation,” or “reflection.”
And sometimes prayer is an affirmation of what it is that the prayer
believes. The book in the bible we call “Psalms,”
is a collection of hymns – but most of those hymns take on a format that could
be called a prayer.
The opening reading for today is
an interesting prayer. If all
conversation with God is prayer, then Abraham’s prayer serves the purpose of protest. He will not accept that God will kill the
righteous with the unrighteous. Interesting in that exchange – does God not
already know how many righteous there are in the cities? Is Abraham insisting that God take a head
count (something God had not yet done)?
Or does God know there aren’t even ten so he can play along with Abraham’s
game?
I had asked you to review Luther’s
Small Catechism on The Lord’s Prayer. Did
you realize they printed the Small Catechism in the ELW? Turn to page 1163. During the time of distribution of communion,
read over this. Read it to your
children.
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John
taught his disciples.”
Jesus hadn’t thought of
everything – at least not yet. The courageous
disciples, while remaining grateful for all that Jesus had done, stepped
forward to identify what they needed and to seek that which would sustain them
in the long haul.
What they needed – and what we
need – is to learn to make our relationship with God a living
relationship. We can’t form
relationships unless we interact. Interaction
with God involved doing God’s will in the world (Petition 3), it involves being
clear about who God is and how God views us (Petition 1), and it involves the
confidence that we are in God’s heart and that God is in ours (Conclusion.)
“Lord, give us the courage and
the strength to learn to pray.”
Amen.
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