“Prayer 101”
A Sermon by Rev. Patrice Ficken
Luke 11:1-13
Sanbornton Congregational Church, UCC
July 29, 2007
(Please do not re-print or re-use without permission of the author)
“Teach us how to pray” so the disciples say to Jesus as they watch him complete his time of prayer.
Jesus’ answer in Luke’s Gospel comes in three parts. Before we look at this more closely we might reflect for a moment – why is it that when it comes to prayer and our prayer lives we tend to have a lot of resistance and confusion?
For example, when I asked you to team up with your neighbor and talk about prayer concerns with each other – I wonder how that felt?
I’d like to take some time to name what some of our obstacles are around prayer before exploring the guidance Jesus provides on how to pray. I do so with a hope and a prayer – that we can, as a community, bring prayer out of the sanctuary and have prayer be a more integral part of our time together.
Roberta Bondi, professor, writer and theologian names several important obstacles to our prayer life – based on her work studying the writings and spiritual practices of Christian monks in ancient
One obstacle is when we meet people who announce themselves as experts in prayer. We get the impression that there is a right way and wrong way to pray. In one sense, the disciples’ question “teach us how to pray” might get our defenses up right away. “Oh no,” we might think, “maybe I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.”
Let’s put this one to rest right now. No, there isn’t a right and wrong way. What is offered today is meant merely to help guide and inspire us, not to tell us what to do.
Another obstacle Bondi names, is the “prevalence of ‘ought’ and ‘should’ language” when it comes to the subject of prayer. She says that nothing kills a relationship faster that feeling a sense of duty to have to do something. When it comes to our relationship with God and our prayer life, it is no different.
Prayer is not about duty. It is something that arises out of our desire to have a relationship with God. For the monastic teachers of the early church – prayer was viewed as a time of desire and delight – not duty.
A third major obstacle to prayer – is the image we have of God. To whom or to what are we praying? It’s important to be aware how our early childhood experiences of prayer can often shape the view or the image of God we carry. Without realizing it – we may be projecting onto God an image of a strict, disciplinarian, or a highly judgmental God who does not approve of us. If we find we have a negative image of God – it may be time – to explore this more deeply and give our image of God a fresh, new look. (above insights gleaned from “Learning to Pray: An Interview with Roberta C. Bondi, Christian Century, March 20-27, 1996).
Finally, another obstacle – and this comes from the research of Martha Grace Reese, who was the keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Conference, UCC Annual meeting – us Mainline Protestant types – tend to get a bit nervous about the subject of prayer. It may seem too intimate a subject to speak about in public. Or it may seem too fanatical or evangelical to talk about the power of prayer in our lives. And yet, her research revealed that the churches that are thriving and growing are churches that have prayer as their touchstone.
So, had enough of the obstacles? Let’s talk about the enablers, the guidance from Jesus that will help us to develop and enrich our prayer lives.
The first part of Jesus’ answer to the question, “Teach us how to pray” is what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. The prayer has different forms and versions but it is one of the most precious gifts of our faith – coming directly from Jesus himself.
Yet, when we say the words, we often just say them by rote – without really considering the power and the gift of this prayer. We say the words almost casually and nonchalantly without realizing the power of what we’re invoking and calling upon.
As Annie Dillard writes,
“Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, p. 40)
Sometime we will do an adult education on just the Lord’s Prayer alone – for when we look at each phrase more closely and really think about what it is that we’re praying – we cannot help but be moved and changed by it.
I’d invite anyone interested in jump-starting their prayer life – to simply say this prayer every day. Say it mindfully and slowly. Mull on its words. Reflect on its meaning. Or, as the mystic St. Teresa of
The second part of Jesus’ guidance – in the form of a story – is about persistence. Jesus basically says – persist in prayer, keep knocking, keep praying, keep showing up. Sooner or later you are bound to see some results.
I don’t think Jesus means to suggest here that God is like the friend who is too lazy or sleepy to get out of bed and provide some help. Rather, the advice is for our benefit. We need to keep showing up, to keep praying, to keep presenting ourselves at God’s door. It is a reminder that God IS there all the time. We’re the ones who are absent. We’re the ones too lazy to get out of bed. We cannot expect to create an intimate relationship with God unless we’re willing to keep showing up on a regular basis. It is only by having a practice that we come to recognize the connection between our prayer life and how God is acting in our lives or to know when we’re truly feeling guidance from the Spirit.
Finally, the simple and powerful instruction – “Ask and it is given.” I like the Eugene Peterson translation of this part better – I think it is a lot clearer. It reads like this:
“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? ….you wouldn’t think of such a thing….And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?” (The Message, p. 1879)
The simple summary is: when we call on God, God answers. God answers with love, with presence, with guidance, with direction toward our hearts’ desires. The answer may not be exactly in the form, the timing we had in mind – but God is not some trickster. God is not in the business of prescribing a potion we would rather not swallow. God wants us to live the lives we came here to live – with abundance, with joy, with peace. Do we believe this? Do we know it to be true?
The question gets to the heart of our faith and trust in God.
What it comes down is this: do we REALLY want a relationship with God? Do we really want to be changed and transformed by this relationship? And are we serious about allowing this transformation to take hold not just of our personal lives, but of our life together as a faith community?
I ask you to pray and mull on this while I’m away on vacation this month. Because when I return, I want us to fasten those seatbelts, put away the kid gloves and integrate prayer more intentionally in all that we do together.
I’d invite us now to close with once again saying the Lord’s Prayer. And I’d ask us to first invite Jesus – who is present with us – to sit beside us – and to imagine that he is saying the words along with us. Let us say the prayer slowly, mindfully together….
Our father…..Amen.
