Like This
Luke 11:1-13
July 25, 2010
Some smart analyst of the history of the Christian movement once remarked that if you want to understand how and why things changed over the centuries, often quite dramatically, then the key is in how people approached interpreting the Bible. We are Protestants because we read and still read the Bible differently.
There is, however, another way of measuring the mood of the church and that’s how the church goes about praying.
This being a Methodist building, I will start with John Wesley, an Anglican of no mean pedigree in 18th century England, the Methodist of Methodism. In the 1730’s worship was highly prescribed and controlled, following the Book of Common Prayer along with other requirements. Prayers had to be prayed exactly as written and often the sermons were to be read from a common source. Thus, no priest would pray or preach something unsuitable.
Wesley was tired of tired prayers people simply read out of a book. A prayer in public worship was meant to be an expression of one’s soul ascending to God in praise, which is something you cannot lift off a page of a book. Same goes for preaching, it has to come spontaneously from the heart of the preacher, certainly not from a one-message-fits-all version from headquarters. Chicken or the egg, Wesley was banned from preaching in Anglican churches because he started preaching in the fields to thousands of laborers. He was censured because he prayed too freely.
The disciples couldn’t help noticing that Jesus always seemed to be praying - up on a mountain, off in a garden, late into the night and morning - and it showed in the way he dealt with people. They wanted to live that kind of life too, but like most of us, we’ve seen and heard prayers galore, but just how do you pray? They asked Jesus exactly that - how do we pray? They weren’t looking for prayers, but for a life characterized, saturated by prayer.
Jesus’ answer was simple, pray like this, yet the Christian Church has ended up doing what the disciples did not want. We made it into a prayer we say and can recite without thinking about the words. Is reciting the Lord’s Prayer still prayer? And add to that all of the affirmations and responses that innumerable Christians utter almost by reflex in the midst of worship services in the liturgical churches? Is that still worship?
Ah, it is time to confuse matters, or a little more polite, to be paradoxical. Most of the people in this world who pray use already written or memorized prayers. During our children’s time, I have always made sure that the children and all of us pray the Lord’s Prayer together. Isn’t it ironic that in this day and age they will only learn it in church? Praying the Lord’s Prayer is, in fact, like learning a new alphabet. You cannot read a sentence unless you know all the letters and how they fit together. Sure, there are prayers that say a lot more than the Our Father, but we began with this prayer and it keeps bringing us back to the fundamentals of prayer and the Christian life.
There is a real sense in which the worship service is a drama in which we are the actors or at least the chorus. When you go to see a Shakespearean play you do not expect the actors to make up their own lines. We come back each Christmas, each Easter to hear precisely the same story and sing precisely the same carols. Are we not praying and worshiping at our deepest when we repeat the glorious words?
As for preaching and proclamation of the Word, there’s always the case of Charles Tindley, the black Methodist pastor of a church in Philadelphia, who preached the same sermon at Christmas, “Heaven’s Christmas Tree,” for over 30 years. The church had to rent out a nearby auditorium to accommodate the swelling numbers. People knew the sermon by heart, yet they came back faithfully each year to hear something new in it. He was also known as a great hymn writer, and it is his hymn, “I’ll Overcome Someday,” that was altered a tad to become “We Shall Overcome.” That song was sung over and over and nobody ever said, “We’ve sung that one before!”
For most of us, the biggest question here is about unanswered prayer - prepared words or extemporaneous inspiration matter little if nothing is heard and nothing happens. Jesus offers two rough-edged scenarios to show us in a way how it works. You go to a friend’s house late at night to ask for extra food for an unexpected guest, but the friend doesn’t want to be bothered at this hour. Jesus said that this fellow won’t get up and help you because you are his friend, but he will get what you ask for because you are bothering him so much!
It is the persistence and doggedness of prayer that matters. It’s not a transaction - you ask, wish granted or rejected - but an unceasing conversation and debate. Knock, knock, knocking at the door. What Jesus is saying is that God will tire out more quickly than you. He adds a bizarre element about what happens when your child nags you for a fish or an egg; you aren’t going to give him a serpent or a scorpion, no matter how evil and weird you are - so what do you think God will give to those who ask, but the Holy Spirit? Where did that come from?
What you need most when you pray is not the correct answer to your question or need, but to be in the presence of God, to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Most of the time there are no words that can express or describe such a divine sense of presence. I do not believe the disciples heard many words being uttered when Jesus prayed. I received an email the other day from a friend who ended by writing, “Now I should go and let God hear some of my silence!”
In a few moments we will have one more opportunity to let God hear some of our silence, only some I trust. Sixty seconds is seldom enough time to hear God’s silence clearly. But we know we are only beginners, still learning the alphabet of the tongues of angels.
This is not a totally satisfactory end for a sermon on prayer, although I believe the preaching professors are fooling themselves and us if they think there is a proper ending.
So now that I have messed it up, let me pose a question that might disturb your prayer. Tradition has called this prayer of Jesus “the Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father” - both titles having distinctly Christian connotations - but we really don’t need these titles, everyone recognizes it once we start. In this age desperately yearning for ecumenicity and a shared faith among diverse peoples, is it possible that other faiths - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs - could pray this particular prayer with us? Who would be changed more? I’ll listen for your answers.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan