Teach Us to Pray: A Sermon for the 7th Sunday After Pentecost 12C

 

This passage from Luke, with a much more concise and shortened version of "The Lord's Prayer" seemed like a great opportunity to touch on a topic that always seems to come around: teaching people how to pray. Episcopalians, including me, tend to lean heavily on the use of a book to pray and if we don't have a book, we panic. So discussing what prayer is all about and why we do it felt like the thing I needed to preach about this morning. 

It's also necessary for me to remember the importance of prayer as the delayed-Lambeth Conference is set to begin. And, as if we're opening a time capsule, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby decided to drop a 58-page document on the bishops as they were en route to Scotland and England. In this document--called "The Lambeth Calls"-- +++Welby and other male bishop friends decided to stick in a call to reaffirm Lambeth 1.10, which states that the "one mind" of the Anglican Communion believes that marriage is between "a man and a woman" and rejects the ordination of LGBTQ+ people. This throws the group back to 1998, ignoring the sea change in many parts of the Anglican Communion on the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and the blessings of our marriages. It also is an ambush of bishops who are attending since they were led to believe this conference was not going to ask them to take votes on anything, and that they would focus on points of agreement rather than pick up old fights from Lambeth Conferences past. 

This morning, I had instructed our parish to pray for the bishops at the Lambeth Conference. Knowing that I have a number of people unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church, let alone the Anglican Communion, I did a very short and benign explanation of what the conference is, similar to the short explanation I gave about our General Convention which just finished meeting a couple weeks ago in Baltimore. I did indicate that there is a clear need for prayer for what is happening at Lambeth, especially for the bishops from the United States. God help them to pass through things temporal while not losing sight of the eternal! 

Needless to say, prayer was a timely topic! 

Text: Luke 11:1-13

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One of the courses I took in seminary was a class called “Teaching Others to Pray.”

It was in my first year, and it was taught by two of the brothers from the Society of St. John the Evangelist out of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

My classmates and I had completed our first two terms of seminary, managing to survive courses in Biblical languages and the fire-hosing of reading and writing and reading and writing some more for our courses in Old and New Testament and Church History.

This one-week-long course with Brothers Keith and Luke was a chance to get into something a little less academically intense…although we did have to read and write for their class as well.

I remember entering the room in the Academic Building and seeing these two men in their brown robes standing at the front of the class. There was a mix of seminarians from all three years, talking and taking our seats at the tables arranged in a “C” shaped structure.

The Brothers didn’t speak. They stood quietly, shifting from one foot to another, as our nervous energy kept percolating in the room.

And then…almost as if something was whispered in our ears…we quieted down and were ready to begin.

As each of us shared our reasons for wanting to be in the class… a common theme emerged. This room full of future priests all expressed the feeling that seminary had upended their own prayer life.

We were all so busy doing the work of seminary that we didn’t have time for being in seminary. There was frustration and lamenting and feeling parched and dry.

While nobody said this specifically, the truth was we needed to learn how to pray.

And what a gift to have two brothers from SSJE… an order steeped in prayer… to guide us.

As that week went on and the course unfolded, I found myself feeling a bit like a flower. I had been closed tight… a bud waiting for some sun and rain to help me grow. The brothers began with a simple enough question for us to answer: who taught us to pray. For me it was my parents, especially my mother. We went into the various ways in which we pray.

Do we sit?

Do we stand?

Do we move?

Slowly, my little bud self could feel the rays of sun and cool waters on my soul…as my soul started to open and bloom.  

I was especially taken with the way Brother Luke talked about the physical nature of prayer and incorporating our whole bodies into praying. Coming into seminary with a massage background, I was so grateful that…finally…someone was making that connection between our wonderfully knit-together human bodies and the divine.

Even a simple connection between noticing our breath…and the movement of the rib cage as our lungs fill with air…as that reminder of the movement of the Holy Spirit.

In preaching classes… I remember doing breathing exercises…and the sound of a room full of people doing an in-take of breath…and releasing it back out through their open mouths. That sound…Ru…ach….the Hebrew word for “Spirit” can be the starting point of quieting down our minds…and beginning the conversation with God.

And that’s so much of what prayer is. It’s about making the space and the opportunity to be in conversation and relationship with God. And if seminarians were having a hard time making that a priority, how much more so is it for the people who aren’t taking vows to regularly study the Holy Scriptures?

So I’m not at all surprised that the disciples were looking longingly at Jesus, a man who clearly made prayer a regular practice, and asked him to teach them how to pray…”Y’know, like John taught his disciples."

We don’t know exactly what John taught his followers out there by the Jordan eating locusts and wild honey.

But as we see in the Gospel…Jesus gives them a simple formula. A formula based on the idea that the one to whom they are praying…God…is so intimate and loving that he is “Father”…”Abba”…”Aveinu.” A trusted parent who will listen. It begins with praise, and then moves to the needs of giving comfort and shelter in daily bread, being merciful and so we can let that forgiveness flow to others, and please offer protection from danger. Those are the basics…and we have since codified this into what we call The Lord’s Prayer, probably the one prayer ever Christian knows.

But I think it’s the next several lines of the Gospel that are probably the more important. Because Jesus seems to be saying that there’s more to prayer then occasionally bowing our heads and repeating well-rehearsed lines. Prayer is also about perseverance and commitment.

I am struck by the words “Ask” “Search” and “Knock.”

Whenever we ask for something, there is a hope that the ask will be answered. We don’t know when or how. But there has to be a level of trust that when we go to a person and make an ask, they’ll hear us and respond.

Jesus gives a couple of examples.

He talks about the friend who shows up in the middle of the night searching for bread to help feed some unexpected guests. At first, the owner of the house is like, “Dude: it’s midnight. I’m in bed. Are you serious?” But even groggy with sleep and probably more than just a little annoyed, the owner gets up, gets some loaves of bread and gives it to his friend.

He also talks about the parent and child. The child is seeking out a fish from the parent. Do we think the parent would give the child a hissing snake instead? I mean, is that what a loving parent would do?

The same is true for God. When we pray, we put up our ask in the fervent hope that God is hearing us.

When we are in the middle of a dilemma…big or small… we search for God hoping that the blinking beacon of our prayer will get noticed in the vast ocean of petitions.

And then there is the knock. Jesus says that if we knock, the door will be opened.

It may take some time for that knock to be answered. We might even feel as though we must pound on the door. But the encouragement is to keep knocking and don’t give up or give in to despair. Persistence also requires patience.

And the answer we receive is spiritual. God is not like some angelic gumball machine that we place our quarter-sized prayer, turn the handle, and—et voila—prayer answered!

The change that comes with prayer is a shifting in us, our outlook, and our approach to life. It comes because we call upon the Spirit to be present in and around us.

Sometimes, we may find that we need new ways to ask, search and knock.

The author Ann Lamott has two basic prayers: “Help Me! Help Me! Help Me!” and “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Here at St. Barnabas, the members of our Daughters of the King have been working on a set of Prayers of the People for our Sunday service that represent the Prayers of our People, and not just the preset forms in our prayer book. We’ll be using those starting next month.

Maybe our prayers need to be less about words. Maybe we go back to that breath…the ruach…and give in to the Spirit to intercede on our behalf “with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

These days, “prayer” has taken some hits in our popular culture in large part because of that phrase “thoughts and prayers” every time something tragic happens. It’s unfortunate because prayer really is our means for making time and space to develop and grow the relationship that we have with God, so that we can withstand the challenges that come at us daily.

Prayer practices…whether it is slow walking meditation…sitting and studying a passage of Scripture… dancing like King David before the ark… or singing praises like the psalmist… all of it can help to strengthen and deepen our connection to the Divine.

The more we come into a relationship with God… the more likely we are to receive that gift of the Spirit that helps us to keep things together in our lives. And the more grounded we are in love…the better equipped we are to be in relationship with each other.

In the name of God….F/S/HS.