Let Us Pray
July 25, 2010
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 85, Luke 11:1-13
There was a minister who lived near Seattle, Washington. One day, the minister stepped out his back door only to notice a tiny kitten, meowing, stuck in a tree in the minister's back yard. Now the tree was young and small, but not young enough or small enough for the kitten to be reached. Even with a ladder, the kitten was beyond the minister’s grasp. The tree was too fragile to be climbed. The minister tried everything he could to coax the kitten down, but the poor thing was too frightened to move. It clung to its tiny branch, still meowing.
Then the minister got an idea. If he tied one end of a rope to the tree and the other to the front of his car, he could back his car up. As he backed, he would pull the tree over and down until the kitten was low enough for to be reached. The pastor ran and got a rope. He tied one end as high in the tree as he could. He tied the other to his front bumper. He began backing his car, and sure enough, it worked. With every foot the pastor backed up, the tree was pulled lower and lower. All the minister had to do was back up one more foot, and the kitten would be his. The pastor backed up. The rope broke. The tree sproinged back upright. The kitten flew through the air . . . and disappeared. The minister, scared and guilty, looked all over the place for the poor thing. He couldn't find the kitten. He asked all his neighbors. They hadn't seen anything. All the pastor could do was pray to God for the kitten's safety.
A few weeks later, the minister was at the grocery store when he noticed a parishioner in the pet aisle buying cat food. This was odd. The minister knew the parishioner to be a dedicated cat hater. The woman despised cats with a passion. The minister went up to her to ask her what she was doing. "Well," she said. "It's the strangest thing. My daughter's been bugging me for ages to get a cat. I finally got tired of being nagged, so I told her that if she prayed to God for a cat, and God gave her a cat, she could have a cat. She went out in the back yard and got down on her hands and knees, and began praying for a cat. Wouldn't you know, that very moment, a little tiny kitten came flying through the air and landed at her feet. So now we have a cat!"
Ask, seek, knock …it’s not always that easy, is it? We’d like prayer to work like that, and sometimes we behave as if it does, but our experience is that it does not. In fact, if we really want to learn about prayer, we will take a good look at Jesus, and his prayer life. And two things stand out – (1) he really believed in prayer. All the gospels tell us that Jesus prayed. By this point in the Gospel of Luke, he had been described in prayer 7 times, and the first three chapters were devoted to his birth and childhood! His devotion to prayer was noticed by his disciples, and commented on by the Gospel writers. Clearly, they felt it was integral to who he was, and how he lived.
(2) Jesus himself didn’t always get what he wanted in prayer. He did not view prayer as a wishing machine. In fact, let’s remember the most famous account of Jesus praying, his time in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and crucifixion. He prayed through the night, he prayed with such energy that he was sweating blood. He prayed that he would not have to go through what was about to occur. And he did not get what he wanted. Now some might say, oh but he didn’t actually pray that – he prayed that if it were God’s will, that he could avoid what was about to happen. Yes that’s right, but there is no doubt as to what Christ actually wanted, and the simple fact is that he didn’t get what he wanted. So we should not be surprised when we don’t get everything we ask for in prayer either.
Now, let’s look more closely at this prayer. First of all, there are some differences between the Lord’s Prayer in this Gospel, and in the Gospel of Matthew, which is the other place it occurs. That shouldn’t bother us too much – two different people are telling the story, and that usually results in differences. When I studied this passage at length in seminary, scholars believed for a number of reasons that Luke’s version was likely closer to what Jesus actually said.
The power of prayer in the life of Christ was so evident that the disciples asked him to teach them to pray, and he offered them this prayer and teachings. He started, “Father,” although some versions of the Luke manuscript read “Our Father in heaven,” as does the Matthew text. Three things about this stand out – the first is, he addresses God as Father. In the entire Old Testament, there are only 15 instances of God being called Father, and none of these are in prayer. In the first 3 Gospels, there are over 65 instances of God being called Father, and in the Gospel of John, there are over 100. This is a shift in understanding of the relationship between God and people. For one, it is a more individual perspective, rather than a group perspective. In the Old Testament, there was a sense of being in relationship with God because of being part of the nation of Israel – though there are many stories of peoples’ individual interaction with God, and most of the psalms are individual prayers. But in the New Testament, the basis for the relationship with God is the individual recognition of God’s love for us. Yet, in the New Testament, the community dimension of discipleship is also essential, and it’s important to note that this prayer is a community prayer – it is our Father, not my Father, give us the bread we need for today, forgive us our debts. The individual experience of God was an additional experience, not a replacement for the community relationship with God.
Secondly, the word for Father that Jesus uses is “Abba,” which is a more personal, intimate form of address. Some people have compared it to Daddy – that’s not quite right – it’s more like “Dad”. Abba is not a diminutive word used by a little child, but it is an intimate, and somewhat informal name.
Finally, the other notable thing in this phrase, “Our Father in heaven,” is heaven. And we have continued to use this in our modern version of the Lord’s Prayer: our Father, who art in heaven we say. But there is something very important to understand about this phrase, and that is that we usually misunderstand it completely. When we say, our Father who art in heaven, we tend to mean out there, way up in heaven. We are describing a different place than where we are. And every time we pray this, we are emphasizing to ourselves that God is out there, in heaven, someplace else. But the Greek word was heavens, not heaven, and it meant, our Father who is both as vast as the sky, and as near as the very air we breathe. So when we pray we want to remember that meaning – we are praying to a God who is as essential to our life as the very air we breathe.
Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come,” and in Matthew, the phrase we know is added “your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” That added phrase in Matthew is repetition – it defines what the kingdom is. The Kingdom of God is that experience where God’s will is done, and it occurs on earth as well as in the heavens. We know that in Luke’s gospel ‘Kingdom of God’ is a phrase he uses all the time – 40 times. But the concept occurs frequently in the other gospels, too, sometimes as Kingdom of Heaven, and so pretty clearly was an authentic phrase of Christ’s. The point here is, what we are praying for is an enlargement of God’s will being done, trusting that if we don’t get what we immediately want, we are still getting the best possible. More important, we are praying about what God wants instead of what we want – it is more like “let us be part of your plans” than “be part of our plans”. That orientation is an essential dimension of the way Jesus prays. In this prayer, he is placing himself within the mind and will of God, not giving God a list of his requests. This is one of the reasons that I am drawn to contemplative prayer – it is a prayer form that seeks to change me, and shape me by the mind and love of God, rather than giving God a list of my wants – even my wants for others. Jesus prays for God’s kingdom to come, or as Psalm 85 puts it: for steadfast love and righteousness to meet, for righteousness and peace to kiss! God’s love as the way of the world.
Jesus also prays, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us.” There are a couple of important things here – one is that as we grow to understand God’s forgiveness of us, it becomes impossible to remain hard-hearted to others. We are caught in a rhythm of grace – we receive God’s love, and we make it real to others. The other notable thing is that Jesus prays that we be forgiven our sins, as we forgive the debts of others – he is pointing out that our stuff, and our sense of entitlement, is what tends to disrupt our human relationships. That sense of entitlement is not restricted to things, but includes all the behavior we believe others owe us. But that sense of entitlement can lead us straight to resentment, and so Christ is reminding us to have a gracious spirit toward others.
Jesus prays for daily bread, assuming (1) that we are praying daily, so that we only need to ask for today’s needs, and (2) that our needs are important to God. Most of this prayer is concerned with spiritual matters, but for Jesus, our spirituality is lived out concretely – God is concerned with our physical, human needs just as we are called to love others concretely.
And Jesus prays that we will be delivered from evil, and from the time of trial. For Jesus, the trial was with both human adversaries and spiritual powers of evil, but the issue was always the same – it was a temptation to be and do other than what he was created for and called to. Jesus found prayer essential in energizing and empowering his ministry, in helping him to discover his call, and stay focused on who he was and what he was called to. So we too are praying that we will be who God created us to be, and do what he calls us to do. That is the central task of our discipleship, and it could be the subject of several sermons – but for today, let’s just realize that at its essence, our greatest temptation is to be other than who God created us to be. As we look at the issues facing our world – hunger, climate change, war – they all come from a way of life that is not in harmony with the interdependence of the natural world.
Finally, let’s note that Jesus, like the people whose prayers are recorded in the psalms, uses the imperative form of address. The imperative, for those who have forgotten their junior high grammar lessons, is the form that comes as an order “Come, here, do this, shut the door, go there.” In the context of the Lord’s Prayer, it is as insistent as the demands of a child tugging on a parent’s pant leg: give me this, do that for me. It is a form of speaking to God that assumes that God will respond, in other words, that assumes the relationship is alive and active. But this prayer is also a prayer that affirms God as God – it is a prayer of worship that acknowledges God truly being God – the Holy that is central to life. That is the essence of our prayer life with God, a lively, continuing dialogue that assumes that God is loving us, caring for us, interested in what we want, and is central to life. While we don’t assume that conversation with God will get us exactly what we are asking for, we do assume that the conversation accomplishes something. Prayer indeed accomplishes things. It changes things. And when we pray as Jesus prayed, it changes us.
Let us pray…
Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 85, Luke 11:1-13
There was a minister who lived near Seattle, Washington. One day, the minister stepped out his back door only to notice a tiny kitten, meowing, stuck in a tree in the minister's back yard. Now the tree was young and small, but not young enough or small enough for the kitten to be reached. Even with a ladder, the kitten was beyond the minister’s grasp. The tree was too fragile to be climbed. The minister tried everything he could to coax the kitten down, but the poor thing was too frightened to move. It clung to its tiny branch, still meowing.
Then the minister got an idea. If he tied one end of a rope to the tree and the other to the front of his car, he could back his car up. As he backed, he would pull the tree over and down until the kitten was low enough for to be reached. The pastor ran and got a rope. He tied one end as high in the tree as he could. He tied the other to his front bumper. He began backing his car, and sure enough, it worked. With every foot the pastor backed up, the tree was pulled lower and lower. All the minister had to do was back up one more foot, and the kitten would be his. The pastor backed up. The rope broke. The tree sproinged back upright. The kitten flew through the air . . . and disappeared. The minister, scared and guilty, looked all over the place for the poor thing. He couldn't find the kitten. He asked all his neighbors. They hadn't seen anything. All the pastor could do was pray to God for the kitten's safety.
A few weeks later, the minister was at the grocery store when he noticed a parishioner in the pet aisle buying cat food. This was odd. The minister knew the parishioner to be a dedicated cat hater. The woman despised cats with a passion. The minister went up to her to ask her what she was doing. "Well," she said. "It's the strangest thing. My daughter's been bugging me for ages to get a cat. I finally got tired of being nagged, so I told her that if she prayed to God for a cat, and God gave her a cat, she could have a cat. She went out in the back yard and got down on her hands and knees, and began praying for a cat. Wouldn't you know, that very moment, a little tiny kitten came flying through the air and landed at her feet. So now we have a cat!"
Ask, seek, knock …it’s not always that easy, is it? We’d like prayer to work like that, and sometimes we behave as if it does, but our experience is that it does not. In fact, if we really want to learn about prayer, we will take a good look at Jesus, and his prayer life. And two things stand out – (1) he really believed in prayer. All the gospels tell us that Jesus prayed. By this point in the Gospel of Luke, he had been described in prayer 7 times, and the first three chapters were devoted to his birth and childhood! His devotion to prayer was noticed by his disciples, and commented on by the Gospel writers. Clearly, they felt it was integral to who he was, and how he lived.
(2) Jesus himself didn’t always get what he wanted in prayer. He did not view prayer as a wishing machine. In fact, let’s remember the most famous account of Jesus praying, his time in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and crucifixion. He prayed through the night, he prayed with such energy that he was sweating blood. He prayed that he would not have to go through what was about to occur. And he did not get what he wanted. Now some might say, oh but he didn’t actually pray that – he prayed that if it were God’s will, that he could avoid what was about to happen. Yes that’s right, but there is no doubt as to what Christ actually wanted, and the simple fact is that he didn’t get what he wanted. So we should not be surprised when we don’t get everything we ask for in prayer either.
Now, let’s look more closely at this prayer. First of all, there are some differences between the Lord’s Prayer in this Gospel, and in the Gospel of Matthew, which is the other place it occurs. That shouldn’t bother us too much – two different people are telling the story, and that usually results in differences. When I studied this passage at length in seminary, scholars believed for a number of reasons that Luke’s version was likely closer to what Jesus actually said.
The power of prayer in the life of Christ was so evident that the disciples asked him to teach them to pray, and he offered them this prayer and teachings. He started, “Father,” although some versions of the Luke manuscript read “Our Father in heaven,” as does the Matthew text. Three things about this stand out – the first is, he addresses God as Father. In the entire Old Testament, there are only 15 instances of God being called Father, and none of these are in prayer. In the first 3 Gospels, there are over 65 instances of God being called Father, and in the Gospel of John, there are over 100. This is a shift in understanding of the relationship between God and people. For one, it is a more individual perspective, rather than a group perspective. In the Old Testament, there was a sense of being in relationship with God because of being part of the nation of Israel – though there are many stories of peoples’ individual interaction with God, and most of the psalms are individual prayers. But in the New Testament, the basis for the relationship with God is the individual recognition of God’s love for us. Yet, in the New Testament, the community dimension of discipleship is also essential, and it’s important to note that this prayer is a community prayer – it is our Father, not my Father, give us the bread we need for today, forgive us our debts. The individual experience of God was an additional experience, not a replacement for the community relationship with God.
Secondly, the word for Father that Jesus uses is “Abba,” which is a more personal, intimate form of address. Some people have compared it to Daddy – that’s not quite right – it’s more like “Dad”. Abba is not a diminutive word used by a little child, but it is an intimate, and somewhat informal name.
Finally, the other notable thing in this phrase, “Our Father in heaven,” is heaven. And we have continued to use this in our modern version of the Lord’s Prayer: our Father, who art in heaven we say. But there is something very important to understand about this phrase, and that is that we usually misunderstand it completely. When we say, our Father who art in heaven, we tend to mean out there, way up in heaven. We are describing a different place than where we are. And every time we pray this, we are emphasizing to ourselves that God is out there, in heaven, someplace else. But the Greek word was heavens, not heaven, and it meant, our Father who is both as vast as the sky, and as near as the very air we breathe. So when we pray we want to remember that meaning – we are praying to a God who is as essential to our life as the very air we breathe.
Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come,” and in Matthew, the phrase we know is added “your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” That added phrase in Matthew is repetition – it defines what the kingdom is. The Kingdom of God is that experience where God’s will is done, and it occurs on earth as well as in the heavens. We know that in Luke’s gospel ‘Kingdom of God’ is a phrase he uses all the time – 40 times. But the concept occurs frequently in the other gospels, too, sometimes as Kingdom of Heaven, and so pretty clearly was an authentic phrase of Christ’s. The point here is, what we are praying for is an enlargement of God’s will being done, trusting that if we don’t get what we immediately want, we are still getting the best possible. More important, we are praying about what God wants instead of what we want – it is more like “let us be part of your plans” than “be part of our plans”. That orientation is an essential dimension of the way Jesus prays. In this prayer, he is placing himself within the mind and will of God, not giving God a list of his requests. This is one of the reasons that I am drawn to contemplative prayer – it is a prayer form that seeks to change me, and shape me by the mind and love of God, rather than giving God a list of my wants – even my wants for others. Jesus prays for God’s kingdom to come, or as Psalm 85 puts it: for steadfast love and righteousness to meet, for righteousness and peace to kiss! God’s love as the way of the world.
Jesus also prays, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us.” There are a couple of important things here – one is that as we grow to understand God’s forgiveness of us, it becomes impossible to remain hard-hearted to others. We are caught in a rhythm of grace – we receive God’s love, and we make it real to others. The other notable thing is that Jesus prays that we be forgiven our sins, as we forgive the debts of others – he is pointing out that our stuff, and our sense of entitlement, is what tends to disrupt our human relationships. That sense of entitlement is not restricted to things, but includes all the behavior we believe others owe us. But that sense of entitlement can lead us straight to resentment, and so Christ is reminding us to have a gracious spirit toward others.
Jesus prays for daily bread, assuming (1) that we are praying daily, so that we only need to ask for today’s needs, and (2) that our needs are important to God. Most of this prayer is concerned with spiritual matters, but for Jesus, our spirituality is lived out concretely – God is concerned with our physical, human needs just as we are called to love others concretely.
And Jesus prays that we will be delivered from evil, and from the time of trial. For Jesus, the trial was with both human adversaries and spiritual powers of evil, but the issue was always the same – it was a temptation to be and do other than what he was created for and called to. Jesus found prayer essential in energizing and empowering his ministry, in helping him to discover his call, and stay focused on who he was and what he was called to. So we too are praying that we will be who God created us to be, and do what he calls us to do. That is the central task of our discipleship, and it could be the subject of several sermons – but for today, let’s just realize that at its essence, our greatest temptation is to be other than who God created us to be. As we look at the issues facing our world – hunger, climate change, war – they all come from a way of life that is not in harmony with the interdependence of the natural world.
Finally, let’s note that Jesus, like the people whose prayers are recorded in the psalms, uses the imperative form of address. The imperative, for those who have forgotten their junior high grammar lessons, is the form that comes as an order “Come, here, do this, shut the door, go there.” In the context of the Lord’s Prayer, it is as insistent as the demands of a child tugging on a parent’s pant leg: give me this, do that for me. It is a form of speaking to God that assumes that God will respond, in other words, that assumes the relationship is alive and active. But this prayer is also a prayer that affirms God as God – it is a prayer of worship that acknowledges God truly being God – the Holy that is central to life. That is the essence of our prayer life with God, a lively, continuing dialogue that assumes that God is loving us, caring for us, interested in what we want, and is central to life. While we don’t assume that conversation with God will get us exactly what we are asking for, we do assume that the conversation accomplishes something. Prayer indeed accomplishes things. It changes things. And when we pray as Jesus prayed, it changes us.
Let us pray…
Amen.