Scripture: Luke 11:1-13
In all honesty, I don’t have an urgent message for you today. We have some urgent business to do as a congregation after worship today, but I think I have said all I need or care to say about that three weeks ago, for now at least. Our possible building purchase is what is most on my mind these days, and there will be plenty to say, plenty we need to say to each other, as time goes on. But I think not today, as far as the sermon goes anyway. But that left me a little uncertain as to what I did want to talk about this morning.
So I decided to turn to the lectionary reading and to do something today that I don’t do very often, and that is do a close reading of a Biblical text, just look closely at what the Biblical passage says and comment on it. This is usually not my style. I look to the Bible to enrich and guide my own thinking. It is not a substitute for my own thinking. I trust the Bible to tell me not so much what to think as what to think about. I look to it for broad themes, and I expect that as I interact with the scriptures my own thoughts will become deeper, more spiritual, more faithful. I do not expect there to be a message in every word or verse. I don’t expect that there is great significance in every turn of phrase or choice of word. And so I don’t usually analyze a scriptural passage in that detailed sort of way. On the other hand, sometimes it can be worthwhile just to look at a passage without too much of a sense of a grand theme or message and just look closely at what a passage says and see where that leads you. As I say, that’s what I decided to do this morning, so here goes.
“(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.’”
Let me stop right there. Verse 1 right away makes me ask some questions. It’s a strange request that one of the disciples makes of Jesus. Not just “Lord teach us to pray”, but “Lord teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” What’s that supposed to mean? I ask myself. Apparently this is not a request just for some general assistance in praying. It’s not that this disciple really didn’t know how to pray at all and is asking Jesus to teach him how to pray, or tell him some thing that will make him a better pray-er. What’s at stake here is not generic prayer or praying but a specific kind of prayer. I thought at first that maybe John the Baptist and his disciples had some really cool way of praying and the disciples of Jesus wanted to imitate them: “Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.” Teach us to pray the way they pray. Of course since I don’t know how John taught his disciples to pray, that didn’t say much to me. But then I realized that it was more likely that the disciple was asking Jesus how to pray particularly as followers of Jesus. John the Baptist had some disciples and had a movement grow up around him. They had a particular way of praying, specific concerns and commitments maybe that got reflected in their prayers. The same will be true for the followers of Jesus. Lord, John the Baptist taught his followers how to pray; teach us how to pray as your followers. At this point I begin to connect to the passage a little better.
That simple request from the disciple begins to say to me: “We are what we pray.” Our prayers both reflect who we are and make us who we are. The disciple is saying, “Lord, teach us to pray as your followers. “ Lord, I want to be a Christian. Teach me to pray. As I think about it, I know it is true for me personally, as an individual. I am what I pray. My prayers both grow out of who I am, the joys and concerns that make up so much of me, that are the most important parts of me. My prayers, I am sure, also play a significant role in continuing to shape who I am becoming. They not only express me. They turn me in to who I am going to be.
And with groups of people too it seems true to say we are what we pray. If someone wanted to know who Sojourners is, what this congregation is all about, I would tell them that one good way to find out would be to simply listen to what is said during prayer time each week, the confession of our own needs to be held in prayer, concerns for the health and wholeness of family and friends, care for people we maybe don’t know so well but who have a place in our spirits, grief over personal losses and also over the destructive policies of leaders and legislatures, the weight of war on our souls, joy over the gifts and graces woven into our daily living and over steps taken in the long journey toward justice. Not all of Sojourners’ prayer life will be evident in any given week, but over the course of several weeks the prayers we offer to God and to each other, and that we ask from each other, will speak volumes about who we are as a people. And they continue to form, renew, and re-create us as a congregation. We are what we pray. In asking to be taught to pray, the disciple was not asking for advice on whether to pray with head up or head down, with hands open or hands together, not asking about any matter of style or technique or language. He was asking for help not in becoming a better pray-er but for a deeper sense of what it was to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus.
Jesus gave him a direct answer. He said, “When you pray, say: ‘Our Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread…’ And so forth. The Lord’s Prayer. In this case a pared down, bare bones version of the Lord’s Prayer. Here, Jesus said, is a prayer that expresses who we are and that will help us to become who we want to be. And of course that prayer did become the prayer of the Christian movement, uniting people through time and across the world. Of course it has ceased to express very much about who Christians are because it is so often said out of habit, quickly and thoughtlessly. It is worth thinking about, so I thought I would take three or four or five sermons to do that… beginning next week. I’m skipping over it this week and going on to the next part of the passage, the part where he compares praying to a man who goes and gets a friend out of bed at midnight in order to beg some bread from him to feed an unexpected visitor. Just a few chapters later Jesus is going to tell a similar story about a widow who goes begging at night to a judge who really doesn’t want to hear her but who finally gives in and gives her what she wants because she is persistent. That story begins by saying that Jesus told them a story about the need to pray always and never to lose heart. In both stories the person being appealed to is not really interested in even listening to the appeal. In both cases the asker, the pray-er, succeeds anyway because he or she is not intimidated by the likely cold reception. In neither case, if we connect God to the person being appealed to who doesn’t want to be bothered, does God come off very well. In neither case does what Jesus seems to be saying about the nature of prayer come off very well to me. And in fact in this morning’s reading, just a few verses later, Jesus goes on to say, “So I say to you, ask and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you”, words which—excuse me Jesus—sound to me rather simplistic, and I have to say even a bit offensive.
I know too many people who have sought sincerely and not found, who have asked with all their hearts and it has not been granted, who knocked and knocked again and nothing opened. I do not believe in the squeaky wheel theory of prayer. I do not believe we need to badger God into granting our requests. I do not believe we can badger God into granting our requests. I do not believe that the reason for unanswered prayer is inadequate prayer, or for that matter that the reason for answered prayer is wonderful prayer. I do not believe our prayer requests are granted according to how persuasive or persistent we are. I do not believe that God grants good things to those who pray and withholds good things from those who don’t. I don’t believe that prayer is a matter of coaxing or cajoling things out of God that we want. There are a lot of things about prayer that I find problematic to say the least. There are a lot of things about these passages that I find problematic, because at first glance they seem to imply many of those things I just said I don’t believe.
I could dismiss them on those grounds, just pretend that they are not there, or that I didn’t hear. Or, I could try to hear them better, and I can begin to do that by realizing that Jesus was almost certainly not unaware of the kinds of questions and problems I have with prayer, and the people he was talking to are almost certainly not very different from me. Jesus would not need to address the issue of prayer with his disciples if there were no issues with it. He would not need to encourage them to be persistent in prayer if there were no reason not to be. He would not need to speak in this way at all if there were no frustrations involved in prayer, no questions to be asked about it, if there were no people, disciples included, who had sought and not found, asked and not received an answer, knocked and heard nothing in reply. The presence of these stories in the gospels suggest to me that I am not alone either in the difficulties I have with what I consider to be simplistic notions of prayer or in the various inadequacies I feel in the area of prayer.
What I hear being said to me in this passage, as well as the other one I referred to, is not that I am supposed to believe naively that all my petitions will be granted, not that I have no right to be skeptical about certain approaches to prayer, not that my difficulties are illegitimate, not that I have no right to question whole notion of asking God for things or imagining God as one who grants or doesn’t grant our requests on some grounds we don’t understand. The point here is not that I am supposed to shut down my mind and keep it from asking questions or shut out from my heart all my experiences with people who have not had their prayers answered. What I do hear being said to me in these scriptures is that in spite of all this, in the face of all the things that are problematic or frustrating or that make me feel inadequate or that I simply don’t believe, I am being encouraged to keep on praying anyway.
Be persistent, Jesus says, or at least that is one translation of what he is quoted as saying, and is the word used most often in saying what these readings are about. The need to be persistent in prayer. Meaning to me in this case not just that we are not to be lazy about it, but that we are not to be put off or discouraged by any questions, frustrations, discouragements, or disbeliefs we may have, even though they may all be perfectly legitimate. In spite of them, nevertheless, persist in prayer. In the face of unanswered prayer and in the face of unanswered questions about prayer, persist in prayer. Even though you don’t have a satisfying theology of prayer, persist in prayer. Even though you don’t really know what it will get you or where it will lead you, persist in prayer.
And I am able to hear that message because I have also heard that first message I talked about at the beginning this morning. I can hear the admonition to persist in prayer and take it to heart not because I have such a good understanding of what prayer is all about but because it is all wrapped up in who I am, grows out of who I am and is constantly helping to remake and reform who I am. Several of the commentaries on this morning’s scripture point out that the word that is translated as be “persistent” in prayer is more accurately translated by the word “shameless”. We are to be “shameless” in prayer. Shameless in confessing our own vulnerability and need. Shameless in asking for the health and well-being of people we love. Shameless—and persistent—in praying for justice and peace. Not because there are any guarantees connected to our prayers, or because we have some image of God just waiting to dispense what we ask for if God were to see fit to do so. But because it is who we are, and as we pray we become who we hope to be.
I said three weeks ago in my semi-sermon then, that I hoped we would be prayerful as we entered into this time of discernment and decision-making regarding our possible building purchase. Today I can say I hope we will continue being prayerful, not only in our decision-making but as we look beyond that. I hope we will keep on being prayerful because our prayers will continue to make us who we are, and we don’t want to lose, cannot afford to lose who we are, and cannot afford to lose heart as we move past our decision-making and toward whatever future may await us, continuing our journey as a people of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
July 25, 2004