Exodus
3:1-12; Matthew 6:7-15
Milwaukee
Mennonite Church
September
30, 2018
© 2018
I recently saw a video on Facebook that I
thought would be a good way to introduce today’s reflection. However, between
technical questions and the challenge of visibility on the screen, I thought a
little readers’ theater would be better.
Mom:
Last week I took my children to a restaurant. My six-year old son asked if he
could say grace. As we bowed our heads, he said,
Son: God is good. God is great. Thank you for the food, and I
would thank you even more if Mom gets us ice cream for dessert. Amen.
Mom: Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, I
heard a woman remark,
Woman: That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t
even know how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why, I never!
Mom: Hearing this my son burst into tears and asked me,
Son: Did I do something wrong? Is God mad at me?
Mom: As I held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job
and God was certainly not mad at him, a man approached the table. He winked at
my son and said,
Man: I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.
Son: Really?
Man: Cross my heart. (Theatrical stage whisper indicating the
woman) Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for
the soul sometimes.
Mom: Naturally, I bought my kids ice cream at the end of the meal.
My son stared at his for a moment, and then did something I will remember the
rest of my life. He picked up his sundae, walked over and placed it on front of
the woman. With a big smile he told her,
Son:
Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes; and my soul is
good already.
So we smile a bit. Maybe you
wouldn’t grump like the woman in the restaurant, but you’re thinking that
there’s much more to prayer than asking God for ice cream. To be sure, but
something about a child’s spontaneous innocence puts us on the right track. That
he responded to the woman with his six-year-old act of kindness is the fruit of
prayer. Focus statement: God is always present and active in our lives and in
the world. Our practices of prayer are like tuning into a frequency that
creates an awareness of God’s presence all around us.
If you listen to many prayers,
even your own, they can sound as though we think God needs to be told what to
do by us. Or that we need to talk God into doing what we want, and if enough of
us do it often enough, long enough, hard enough, God has to do what we say.
Think about it. Rather arrogant to presume that we should be telling God what
to do.
Something is a little awkward
about sharing prayer requests in a group and then praying about them, as though
God wasn’t listening until we formally started to pray. Not that we shouldn’t
be sharing our prayer joys and concerns with each other, but we can be aware
that God is listening at the same time as the rest of us. In New Jersey I led a
simple worship with lunch for what we might call street people. When prayer
time came, I would say, “What do you want to share with us so God will
overhear?” The wrap up prayer may not list every thanks or request but affirm
with gratitude that God heard.
You may have heard the slogan
“prayer changes things” as an encouragement to pray, and more recently you may
have heard this appropriate corrective “prayer changes you.” Indeed, it is not
so much that by praying we convince God to do what we want, but when we pray we
get in touch with God’s perspective and God’s power. I have found this
understanding of prayer from the Russian mystics Dimitri of Rostov (1651-1709)
and Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894) to be both challenging and helpful.
To pray means to stand before God
to gaze unswervingly at God and converse with God in reverent fear and hope.
The principal thing is to stand with the mind in the heart before God, and to
go on standing before God unceasingly day and night, until the end of life. [The Art of Prayer, 1966, Faber and Faber
Ltd. London. pp. 50, 63]
So what do we expect when we pray
about and for specific people and things that are important to us? If God
already know both the concern and what to do about it, why pray?
In Luke 11:5-13, Jesus tells the
story of a neighbor who receives a late night visitor and awakens his friend to
ask for food to serve his guest. As an encouragement to pray with persistence,
Jesus said that even though the neighbor will not get up to give him anything
because they are friends, he will do it because of the friend’s persistence.
In Luke 18:1-8 Jesus taught about
the need to pray always and not lose heart by telling the story of a widow who
took her cause before an unjust judge, who finally renders justice for her, not
because he feared God or respected anyone, but because she kept bothering him.
Some years ago Roberta Bondi, who
taught at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, wrote a series of
articles on intercessory prayer for The Christian Century. Her starting point
was that in Jesus, God has become our friend, and friends talk over their
concerns, good and bad, with each other. More than enlisting the friend to
intervene, such conversations elicit the support and insight of the friend. She
suggested when we know God as our friend, we can discuss anything with God, and
God will support and guide us with loving wisdom. That doesn’t mean that God
doesn’t act on our behalf, but that God is constantly active for God’s friends,
including us.
Luke’s Gospel gives more
attention to Jesus’ practice and teaching of prayer than the other Gospels. In
Luke, the Lord’s Prayer does not come in the context of Jesus’ sermon, but in
response to the disciples’ request, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his
disciples.” (11:1) Sometime, like the woman’s response to the boy in the
sketch, I think our concern about praying the right way is connected with
thinking that technique will move God to the action we want. Yet, something
about feeling like an inadequate beginner is healthy for our prayer life. Theophan
the Recluse spoke eloquently of this.
Always pray as if beginning for
the first time. When we do a thing for the first time, we come to it fresh and
with a new-born enthusiasm. If, when starting to pray, you always approach it
as though you had never yet prayed properly, and only now for the first time
wished to do so, you will always pray with a fresh and lively zeal. And all
will go well.
Jesus gave us some important cues
in the Lord’s Prayer.
We’ve gotten so used to saying, “Our
Father,” that it has become a tired cliché, and in our time a battleground over
gender and hierarchy. But when Jesus said it, it was radical and new. The word
is Abba. “Dad.” Familiar, intimate address. Almost unheard of in the Hebrew
Scriptures, and even in Islam today, considered disrespectful if not
blasphemous.
All of the pronouns are plural:
our and us. While prayer is personal, it is also experienced in community. So we
share concerns and joys together!
“Your will be done on earth as it
is in heaven,” means that prayer is about our life here and now.
“Daily bread” keeps us focused in
the immediacy of the present, not wallowing in the past or fearing the future,
but trusting God day by day, moment by moment.
Forgive as we forgive means not
only that we don’t have to be fully righteous to pray but live in grace, not
only between us and God but with each other.
Several recent translations
render “deliver us from temptation” as “do not bring us to the time or trial”
or “testing.” This acknowledges that life will be challenging and God walks
with us in our distresses.
And “deliver us from evil”
translated as “rescue us from the evil one.” To be sure, the “evil one” might
be the devil, but in the early centuries of the Church is was understood as
evil people who oppress not just Christians but all who are weak, poor, vulnerable.
Yes, I have led prayer workshops
and retreats, but my purpose with this worship reflection is not to teach you
how to pray. Rather I hope to give you a refreshing and liberating look at your
own prayers so you have an enthusiasm to begin again as if for the first time.
Start with the Lord’s Prayer, but if you want to keep learning to pray I have a
few suggestions.
Pray through the Psalms. These
have been the prayers of God’s people for over 3000 years.
Look up the prayers in the New Testament
Epistles and see how they will stretch your prayers into unexplored,
exhilarating territory.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Paul
wrote to pray without ceasing. Many in the Eastern Orthodox Church have found
that repeating the Jesus Prayer enables this. It is based on the prayer of the
Publican in Luke 18:13. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a
sinner.”
We easily focus so much on what
we say when we pray, that sitting silently with the mind and heart turned
toward God is also profound prayer, sometimes called Centering Prayer.
I want to end by returning to our
focus statement. God is always present and active in our lives and in the
world. Our practices of prayer are like tuning into a frequency that creates an
awareness of God’s presence all around us.
