An Ongoing Conversation

Luke 11:1-13

When I was young, I believed prayer could cure cancer and guarantee we’d find a parking spot at the mall. I knew ways to pray that would bring Jesus into your heart or cast demons out of it.  I even believed that I had a magic super power prayer. I thought, if anyone tried to kidnap me, I would only need to shout with confidence, “I rebuke you in the name of the Lord!” and they would flee in fear.  I almost hoped someone would try it.  Thank God nobody did.

I prayed all the time, for everything, I didn’t hesitate, I asked brazenly for what I wanted, expecting it to be given unto me.  

I am not sure what I thought about God, who God was or what God was about, except that I had the bead on God. I knew how to get God to do what wanted. I would say the right words, the right way with the right attitude, and whatever I asked for would happen. “Your will be done, Lord!” I had the code cracked.  I knew God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. Seek and you will find! Ask and you will receive! I got this.

Here’s what’s tricky about this. It would be easy now to say I got it all wrong. That’s not how prayer works at all. And it’s true; it’s not. But there was one thing in this that I got right.  

In the parable Jesus tells his disciples, about the neighbor who knocks on the door at night asking for bread for an unexpected guest, the word for persistence, is actually, in the Greek, “shameless, audacious, bold.”  He tells his disciples to boldly, brazenly ask for what they want. I had some boldness about me in those days.  That part of prayer I got right.

Yesterday I googled “How to pray” and got 795,000,000 results. We want to do it right. We are trying to live a good life, and we don’t want to mess it up.  We would love to have a magic ace up our sleeve, but at the very least, we don’t want to piss off the almighty.  Or maybe we don’t even know if there is an almighty, but we think it wouldn’t hurt to hedge our bets.  We have things we want done, things we wish we’d never done, people we want to save and we wouldn’t mind making sure we ourselves are saved too.  The world is scary. Bad things happen. We do bad things. Prayer must be there to fix all of this, right?

Teach us to pray! Jesus’ disciples ask him. John’s taught his disciples! They got the bonus lesson, we want that too!  Jesus seems to got it going on in the prayer department. Give us a little of your mojo, Lord.  

So Jesus does gives them some words. And I love him for this. They wanted something concrete to hold onto, and he gave them that. We want something concrete to hold onto, and God gives us that.  

We’ve made his words into The Lord’s Prayer, a procedure almost, something we can rattle off.  And indeed, we do rattle them off - I have been asked to slow down in leading them so they can be felt and savored, and I keep forgetting about this until I’m in the car on the way home, and then I swear I’ll do the Lord’s Prayer slower next week.

This sample prayer Jesus gives to his disciples begins with addressing God as Abba, Daddy, Mommy – extremely intimate, parental language. Already, he’s way outside the box as far as rabbis teaching their students to address the divine. This is the tradition, remember, that replaced the name for God all throughout the bible with THE LORD, so as not to speak the holy name aloud.  And Jesus is brazenly, audaciously, assuming a very familiar, familial connection to God, like a trusting toddler.  Maisy used crawl up my lap and face me, and pat her chubby hands on my cheeks and look into my eyes and say, “Hi Mamamama!” 

Pray like that, Jesus says.

And then the prayer has two movements. Immediately it invites God to draw us into God’s concerns. You are holy other, Your kingdom come, your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven. Reframe our perspective, God, give us your way of seeing and relating.

Then the prayer shifts to inviting God into our concerns – give us our daily bread, forgive us, as we forgive others, lead us not into temptation.  Help us with what we need for our survival, what we need for our being to be held in others, and in you.

Pray like this above everything, all-powerful and mighty God is actually your mommy, who cares about the intimate details of your life, and wants to be involved in them. Pray like you are invited also into the intimate details of God’s own life, like God wants you to be involved in them.

Two weeks ago I shared I was going on a silent retreat.  Well, I did, and it was wonderful, the walks and the naps and the writing and reading and the chanting with the monks. 

I recalled something I had read last year when I was there, about sabbath. God rests, so we rest because we’re made in God’s image. We all know that. But this person wrote something like, “God rests because keeping this world going is not the only thing to God. God has other interests and hobbies; it’s not all about us.”  And it struck me as so funny, so delightful, unexpected and surprising. Of course. We rest because keeping the world going is not the only thing that makes us us. There is more to us than the work we do to keep everything afloat. Why not God? 

So I tried something then.  I let myself wonder who God was apart from what God does to keep the world going. I let myself contemplate what it might be like to hang out with God in the rest of God, and not just the work, (the being of God, and not just the doing!) not just what I wanted God to do for me or for the world, but to be curious about who God is and what God was into, apart from keeping everything going. And on a trail deep in the woods, I cleared my throat and said, aloud, “Hi.”  

And as I walked along, feeling like I was walking along with God, in God, it became like a kind of centering prayer.  Every so often, I’d bring my attention back with my sacred word, which, in this case, was, “Hi.” And each time I got a little thrill. God was here. I was here. We were hanging out. “Hi God.” “Hi God, it’s me.” “Hi God, what are you into when you’re not keeping everything afloat? Hi God, Will you show me who you are?”

Last week, I got to go back and forth, between praying the Psalms, and being rooted in the liturgies of addressing God as the Great I AM, the mystery we must bow to approach, to trudging along the same path in the woods, stick in my hand, leaves crunching beneath my feet, praying, “Hi, God.” 

What Jesus is trying to show the disciples about prayer has far more to do with who God is, than how to pray. He gives them the how, because that’s what they’re asking for, he gives them some words and perspectives and even attitudes – pray audaciously! 

But he is showing them who God is by how we’re told to pray - Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened. God is a God who gives, who hears, who answers, who opens the door to us. 

Which of you, if your child asks for an egg will give a scorpion, or as Matthew 7 more helpfully suggests, when they ask for bread will give them a stone? If we, who are evil, can give good gifts to our children, how much more this God of ours?  

            

Our chapter this week in our book that we are reading together, Being Disciples, talks a lot about forgiveness.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness – both giving it and receiving it- returns us to the core of our humanity as a gift that is bestowed upon us, by God, and upheld by each other, rather than something we each possess and defend. Forgiveness breaks down the armor and shell of us, so the tender and defenseless human part inside is exposed – I need to admit my need, I need to let go my power, I need to see and be seen, I need to be ministered to.

We belong to each other and we belong to God – so the vulnerability of this connection means I am bound to uphold others’ humanity and I need others to uphold mine. We nurture each other’s dignity. 

Living is risky. Being human is an unsafe activity. We can get hurt. We can hurt others. But also, we can bestow dignity and uphold humanity. We can forgive; we can receive forgiveness. We can restore and be restored.

 “I cannot live without the word of mercy; I cannot complete this task of being myself,” Rowan Williams says, “without the healing of what I have wounded.” 

We need each other for this – the ones we wound and those who’ve wounded us. We are set free to live fully in our humanity when we release the hold we have on others with our unforgiveness.  And we are set free to liv fully in our humanity when we receive forgiveness from someone we have wounded.

Forgiveness pulls us into God’s life. And it pulls us back into our humanity.  

This is how to pray--as one connected already to God and to others, as one longing for that connection to be restored, shameless in asking for it to be.

We pray as a who, addressing a who, a personal being who is free to act or not, who has interests we know nothing about, who loves and adores us, and invites us to refer to the Great and all powerful Mystery as our closest, most trusted source and caregiver, We pray in an ongoing conversation that will never end.

Jesus prayed this way. Secure in his connection to God and all others, certain in where this is all going to end up –living from the complete here in the partial.  There is a kind of submission that happens, then. When I am in my most honest and vulnerable and human self, I return to the strength of the bond that will never let us go. 

During my life, my view of prayer radically shifted. 

I prayed, really hard in all the right ways, for a friend to be healed, and she died. 

I got a little more aware of the world’s suffering and a little humbled and scared to pray for my own puny old needs with so much worse tragedy unfolding on the planet. 

I got tangled up with people who used “prayer” as permission to do and say whatever you feel like in the name of “God,” with religious impunity.  

I got educated on histories, heresies, theologies and doctrines, and mixed up about which way was right and why it matters. 

I got suspicious of my motives, and curious about God’s priorities. 

So I got afraid about asking, and hesitant about seeking, and sheepish about knocking. I didn’t want to do it wrong. Perhaps it was better not to pray than to pray the wrong way.

We once said here that the only way to do it wrong, the only way not to pray, is not to show up as your real and authentic self, or not to acknowledge that God has shown up.  That if you do those two things- if you show up, and if you trust God is showing up, you’re praying.  

You’re praying with words, or silence, or walking, or breathing, or begging and pleading, or using formal written liturgy, or singing in your car, or dancing in a field, or crying with someone else in your arms. If you are present, and you attune to the presence of God, you are praying.

This sounds easy. This is not easy. 

We hardly ever show up in our real lives as we are. And we rarely expect God will. 

But the moment you say, “Hi God,” why, here you both are! 

God is already here, waiting, waiting for us to ask, to seek, to knock, ready to open the door. Not to open it with judgment or criticism, "Where have you been?” or ready to tell you how you’ve been doing it wrong, keeping track of how incorrectly you’ve been asking, or sporadically you’ve been seeking or how long it’s been since you knocked.

No, God is always, already here, with love. Ready to receive whatever we bring. God is inviting us to address the Divine with the audacious boldness of a toddler patting her mama’s cheeks, ready to soak in the gaze of love that is always turned to her. 

God is inviting us to be like an annoying neighbor pounding on a door demanding what we need to care for the unexpected guest.  If we can give good gifts to our children, How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

In other words, how much more than all the generosity and excitement I might have to show my own daughter that I love her, and she belongs to me no matter what, is God ready to draw me toward God’s own self through the power of the bond that connects the Father to the Son and breathes life into the world?

We don’t know why God does some things and not others. Sometimes prayers get “answered” how we hope they will, meaning, what we ask for happens. Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes God cures cancer, and even gives us parking spots when we ask.   Sometimes God doesn’t.  God is free to act and free not to.  And we are free to ask. God wants us to ask because God wants to be with us, to share our place, to invite us to share in God’s. God does love us and have a wonderful plan for our lives.  God came into this human life, taking on all suffering and death, with us and for us.  God will minister to us. God will forgive us.  God love us.  That’s who God is. 

God is always ready to return us to the core of our humanity as a gift that is bestowed upon us, by God and through each other.  And we can receive this gift when we’re ready to let go of our humanity as something we each possess and defend. 

Teach us how to pray, Jesus, like you do. Teach us how to be human again. Teach us to trust, to forgive, to receive, to boldly live in our belonging to God and each other. 

So find some methods you like. Try out different strategies. Find a good structure to help you. But however you pray, show up with your real self.  

Trust that God has shown up in God’s real self. 

Ask. Seek. Knock.

And don’t hold back. Be shameless about it. Be all in.

The good news is you can’t fail at prayer.  The other good news is you can’t succeed at it either.  It’s not a game to win.  There’s no code to crack. There are no rules to memorize. There’s no magic formula to master. 

Be you. With God. That’s it.

Amen.



We are in a series with Rowan William's book, Being Disciples. The first chapter's sermon, "Being Disciples," is found here. The sermon corresponding to the second chapter, "Faith, hope and love" is here. This is connected to chapter 3, "Forgiveness."

To Pray

Luke 11:1-13

Teach us to pray, Jesus. 

You seem to do it so well; God really seems to listen to you.

Teach us to pray, Jesus.

There are things we are carrying and don’t know how to put down.

There are things we are longing for that we can’t seem to find. 

There are things that are broken that we wish we could fix.

There’s so much we need, and we feel kind of alone or afraid.

We want so badly to be able to escape the pain, or solve the problem. 

Teach us to pray.

John taught his disciples; they’ve got their strategy down.

They’re going onto the field prepared. 

We want to feel that way.

Effective instead of helpless. 

Prepared and ready with a solution whatever may arise,

instead of confused, lost or wondering what to do.

If only we had some way to repair things, some way to feel secure.

If only we had an in with the Divine.

Lord, teach us to pray.

But Jesus gives them no formula or a method, not a foolproof strategy to get God to listen or make the things happen that you believe should happen.  

Instead, he invites them into his relationship with God. 

When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, he shows them prayer.

When you pray, he says, say 'Daddy, Mommy, one who knows and loves me most and whom I trust, hear me now.'  And then he says simple words about having what we need for each day and keeping us safe and making peace between us and the longing for things to be as God promises they will be. 

And then Jesus gives them a parable.

Say one of you has a friend and you go to him at midnight and demand bread, because a guest has arrived and you have nothing to set before him. You race outside in your slippers and pound on your neighbor’s door, hair askew and pajamas in public; you impose yourself upon your sleeping neighbor and ask for what you need.

I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you anything because you’re his friend, at least because of your persistence he will get up and give you whatever you need.

The Greek word translated here as “persistence” actually means something like, “shamlessness”.  Brazen blurting. Raw request. Freedom to say ANYTHING, no holds barred.  The friend doesn’t respond to your appeal because you ask over and over again, lightly knocking and phrasing it correctly, or politely persistently pestering them with your practiced whining until exasperated, they finally relent. 

You ask, blatantly and honestly, in boldness and full confidence that the one behind the door will respond to you.  Not because you asked so well, or so many times, but because they are trustworthy and you’ve been audacious with them.  You stand there with your need or your desire or your hope, knowing you can ask for anything, and not afraid or hesitant in the least to do so.  And so your friend responds.

Ask and it shall be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.

What about all the times we ask and it isn’t given? What about that?

What about when we seek and seek and seek, for years and decades, and never ever find?  What about when we knock till our knuckles are raw and get no response?  If this is a formula for getting what we want, it’s a pretty lousy one.

Our dog Kirby died yesterday. 

He had been getting sicker, or older, or something, but we did not expect it to come so soon.  And so it was a very sad and shocking and terrible day with tons of tears and lots of emotion and no real equilibrium at all.  He’s been through everything with us, through most of our time as a family.  And now he’s gone. 

And in my house, when anything swerves off the predictable path, theological questions come barreling along, never far behind.

Why, God? Why do people and things have to die? 

Why don’t you do today what you did in the bible? 

Why should we even believe you, God? 

What could we ever pray about and know you will hear us?

What about all those times we prayed for Kirby?

And at the same time as these big scary questions throw their broken bodies against God’s door, we’ve kept holding each other and crying together, and calls and messages of love have kept pouring in.  
We’re praying for your family.  
I know how it feels to lose a beloved pet; I’m holding you in prayer. 
You’re in our thoughts today – we loved Kirby too.

And I have no great answers for any of those questions, my love.

But I can be with you when you ask them. 

And I can’t do anything to make this sadness go away or bring back love that’s been lost. 
But others can be with us when we’re sad.  
And we can tell God how sad we are. 
And perhaps that is prayer.

What is prayer for anyway?

What does it accomplish?

Jesus seems to saying that more than how or what or even why, prayer is all about who we pray to, and who we are.  When we pray, God, like a loving parent, comes near; when we pray, God, who knows what we need and sees us as we are, is right here with us. 

One scholar says, “While at other places in Scripture we are told that God knows our needs without being asked (Mt. 6:8), here we are invited to make them known, to speak them into existence in the confidence that whatever may happen, this relationship can bear hearing these things and may actually even depend upon hearing them.”    (David Lose)

Maybe it’s not about asking for the right things or asking often enough, or in the right way.  Maybe its just about asking, period.  

Because in throwing all our questions and pain and need at God we risk being known, we open ourselves to being loved, we demonstrate that we are really in this with God, who is really in this with us.  And then come what may, we are not alone.

So how do you pray?

Just Ask.  Simply Seek. Merely Knock.  

Do what is right there inside you to do, say what is pressing to come out, and don’t hold anything back.

Come shamelessly, with your need, your hopes and your worries, your desires and your doubts. Just blurt them right out there without holding back.

And then trust. 

The one you come to will hear your voice and respond.

And if it doesn’t seem to happen, don’t back down.  Stand there and wait.

And even when the prayer is over, and the asking has died down, when the seeking dries up for a spell and the knocking goes quiet, God is still present. 

How much more than all our broken human care, and messages of love and support will this faithful and loving parent give the Holy Spirit to we who ask, no matter what it is we are asking for?

 So when the need is past, or when it’s unfulfilled and there’s grief and frustration and loss, still you’re not alone.  You’ve invited God into it with you, whatever it may be, and God is, and will, continue to be there. This relationship that prayer puts words to is ongoing and without end.  Even when the praying ends the relationship continues.

So, Lord, please,

teach us to pray.