“Teach Us To Pray” -- a sermon

Text: Luke 11:-13

            I have always been taken aback by the disciple’s request here – teach us to pray. I mean, these disciples have been traveling around with Jesus for quite a long time; they have been observing him 24/7; they have seen him at prayer time and again; he has just come from a time of prayer. And still they ask, teach us to pray.

            So I take some heart from their request, figuring if they needed some instruction on prayer, maybe it is okay that I feel that I do, as well.  And let me tell you, I have always felt that I needed LOTS of instruction on prayer.  I think part of that is because I was raised in the Episcopal Church, and we always read from the Book of Common Prayer, and, for those who know the difference, the 1928 version! It is basically full of the most beautiful, well-crafted, formal prayers ever written in the English language. Lots of “thee”s, “ye”s, “beseeches”, and so on.  Pretty intimidating stuff, so much so that I grew up thinking that if I were to pray to God, the only acceptable prayer was in similar, flowery form, and I just knew that I was not up to it. 

            But looking back, I think my uncomfortableness with the techniques of prayer masked something deeper, and that would be an uncomfortableness with my relationship with God. Because prayer is, at heart, all about relationship, not form, not technique, not frequency, not any of that stuff. It is about relationship.

            Folk often have lots of questions about prayer. In my experience, perhaps the most common question people have about prayer is, “Does prayer work?” These days I tend to ask in response, “Does friendship work?”

            Folk usually draw back at that question, because they recognize that the assumption underlying the question – that our friendships are about success, about getting something out of them, about them working – is false. We are friends with someone not because we calculate that we will get something out of it, that it will work to our advantage. True friendship is all about the relationship, about sharing the same deep desires, about giving of ourselves, about being able to open our self up to another, and finding that the other does the same with us. The moment the relationship is about one getting something, it dies.  Now this is not to say that we don’t benefit from friendships – of course we do – but that is not the reason for them.

            So what if we thought of prayer in this way?  What if we moved away from imagining God as like some sort of cosmic vending machine in the sky, ready to mechanically dispense whatever goodies we wanted – health, wealth, freedom from challenges, a bed of roses, clear skin or whiter teeth -- if only we would insert the right number and kind of prayers? What if, instead, we thought of God as a confidant, a companion, someone who walks the long trail with us, someone who always has our best interests at heart and will go to any length for us?

            Perhaps you think this comparison of prayer to friendship to be a bit far-fetched. But it was not far-fetched to Jesus. In our reading for today, immediately after Jesus is asked to teach his disciples to pray, he begins, “Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night….” He asks the disciples to imagine that they went to the home of a friend in the middle of the night, seeking nourishment for unexpected late-night guests. Even if friendship was not enough reason for them to get out of bed, surely they would do so because of the persistent knocking at the door. In the same way, Jesus says, your Father in heaven, who is a much better friend than you will ever be, will answer you when you pray.

            Which brings us back to the disciple’s request – teach us to pray.  Because what I only recently got was that the question here is not, “teach us how to pray.” A question  about technique. No, the request is “teach us to pray” – a question which goes to the need to work on the relationship. A question just as relevant for us, of course.

            So, thinking of prayer in this way, as working on the relationship, what would that mean for us? Jesus follows up by telling the disciples: ask, search, knock. Keep the conversation going. Persist. Make the effort, and hang in there. You may have heard the saying, “95% of life is showing up”, so show up. Show up, even if it seems that your conversation partner is failing to make an appearance, at least on your time table.

Prayer is, at base, about relationship, but it is also what is known as a “spiritual practice.” A practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it, as in the phrase "practice makes perfect". So prayer is something we need to be intentional about, if we hope for our relationship with the one to whom we pray to flourish. I read of one person who put a little pink dot on the rear-view mirror of his car – and every time he was in the car, this dot would remind him to pray.  Some people set a time aside each day, perhaps to read a psalm, or to meditate. Others pray at mealtime, or before bed. Others make sure to come to worship on Sundays.

But still, what of technique? Is there a right way to pray? If we think of prayer as relationship, then we also realize that it is something we already know how to do. We know how to be in relationship with another, to talk to them, to share our hopes and fears and deepest needs, to ask for something, to say thanks for something, to even endure the silence when our friend might not find anything to say. We know how to pray.

            The disciples come to Jesus asking to be taught to pray, and Jesus responds not by giving them magical words to say, but by teaching them about the nature of the one to whom they pray. God is, Jesus assures us, a father and a friend, one who loves us and attends to our needs not because of our cajoling or because we have found the right words, but because that is God’s nature. Friends, God cannot help himself, he’s just a big softie who has a tender spot right here for each of you.  

So who here today is standin’ in need of prayer? I know am. How about you?