Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
July 28, 2019 7
Pentecost
The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling
Jesus taught his disciples how to
pray, at their request mind you, because they have seen him praying in that
“certain place”, and they want to learn how to pray just like him. Or maybe
they compared him to John the Baptist, who also taught his disciples how to
pray. “Why don’t you teach us just like him?” they might have asked Jesus.
Getting a text from someone while he was praying, Jesus responded immediately.
“This is how you do it,” he said. “Just pray these six short phrases and you’re
done.”
Not really; for Jesus then told his disciples that they
needed to persist in their prayers. It’s not a matter of “one and done.” Like
the man who ran out of bread in the middle of the night, and persisted in
knocking on his friend’s door, Jesus told them that they should keep on
praying. It wasn’t the friendship that mattered in this midnight run. No, it
was the man’s annoying persistence. In today’s jargon, we might tell them to
“keep on trucking” or “keep on, keeping on!” with their prayers.
According to this story, the man first told his friend at
the door to go away, but the friend persisted. Having pressed the snooze button
many times, the man finally got out of bed just to stop the racket outside.
Flinging open the door to his home, he told his friend, probably not in the
most hospitable voice, to take whatever he needed and go home so that he could go
back to bed! Persistence trumps friendship, said Jesus.
The request for bread, quite frankly, doesn’t seem to
warrant such urgency; but then I am living an extremely privileged life. In
truth, I’m a little appalled that this man is pounding on the door of his
friend because he needs bread for his guest. Can’t it wait until the morning?
Presumably, he has a home, and so, isn’t there some hummus, or grapes, or dried
fruit in his kitchen that he could offer his guest until the morning? Really, I wondered, what’s so important about
bread that this man leaves his guest in the middle of the night to go to his
friend’s house and knock on his door?
Now what comes next in Luke’s gospel seems equally as
annoying to me. Jesus claims that if we are persistent in our prayers, we will
also get what we ask for. When we search for something lost, God will find it
for us. When we knock on the door of God’s mansion, which has many rooms, God
won’t tell us to go away because his children are sleeping and God is too. No,
Jesus says, God will get out of his king size bed and respond. Opening the door
in the middle of that dark night, God will not be annoyed, nor will God tell
the servants to fetch whatever is needed. Indeed, God will personally and
graciously hand over the goods. Goods as simple as daily bread. Gifts that are
good and won’t hurt us like a snake or a scorpion.
You would think that praying would be simple;
and yet, for many people it’s not. Although basic, prayers can be hard to
understand, let alone do, which is why I have a gazillion books written on the
subject. Prayer is both a holy mystery and a simple task; and I’ve found that
my prayer life keeps changing over my lifetime, rising like yeast, then getting
stale, or becoming flat like unleavened bread. My prayers come in all sizes and
shapes, colors and tastes. They can be home-made or store bought, sliced thin,
or with a thick crust. We all pray differently; I like multigrain bread with
lots of seeds, while my husband prefers toasted Italian.
Fortunately, we have a basic text book that we call The Book
of Common Prayer. For us Episcopalians, this book is like having a religion
course called Prayer 101. With this book in hand, we don’t have to rely on the
Holy Spirit to teach us how to pray. We can just read the lines that are right
in front of us. Besides Jesus already taught us how to pray using those six
simple lines from scripture.
Perhaps you, like me, will resort to the Lord’s prayer, when
you’re in a pinch or on the spot and don’t have a book in front of you. It’s
one of those prayers that serves us well when we’re feeling at a loss for
words, we don’t know what to say, or how to pray. And yet, we forget that Jesus
also promised to send us the Holy Spirit to teach us those things that he could
not teach us while he was among us.
As St. Paul reminded the Christians in Rome, the Holy Spirit
“helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that
very Spirit intercedes (for us) with sighs too deep for words.” Is this not
what Jesus said in Luke’s gospel, that our “heavenly Father will give the Holy
Spirit to those who ask?" When we ask, seek, and knock on God’s door, God
will give us God’s Spirit, who knows what we need. It may not be exactly what
we want, and may even be something we don’t like. It may even hurt a little
bit, but it won’t kill us like deadly venom; and so we persist in our prayers.
For God’s Spirit will help, heal, teach, comfort, and guide us.
When I am desperate, that is when I am asking, and knocking,
and seeking something that I need or want in the middle of my dark night, I
persist with my “arrow prayers.” These are prayers that come from my heart,
like that man who was pounding persistently on the door of his friend. I ask
God, “Please, help me.” Or dropping to my knees in fear, I quietly whisper
these very same words. When we pray like this, our words rarely come out in
“stained glass voices” or from a book. We beg the Spirit, or Jesus, or Mary to
intercede for us, to wake up our sleeping God. We ask God to get out of bed,
and give us the bread that we need today.
To be honest, I have prayed fervently and faithfully
throughout my life with mixed results. There were times when I could not pray
at all, and so I leaned on those who could. My requests have never been for
actual bread, but rather requests for help. Unfortunately, God has not
delivered the goods on more than one occasion. To be fair, sometimes it was a
time delay, or unfamiliar packaging, that confused or disappointed me. And
then, there have been those moments when God has delivered what seemed like
manna from heaven, and I have been overcome with gratitude. My prayers of
supplication and petition have then turned to prayers of adoration and
thanksgiving.
As N.T. Wright once wrote, our prayers are often because
“we’re usually in some sort of mess and we want God to get us out of it. Or we
have some fairly pressing needs, like bread in the middle of the night, and we
want God to supply them.” (The Lord and His Prayer) Because these things can
lead us astray, forgiveness is part of our prayers. While God is not Marie
Kondo, the one who promises to declutter our lives, reorganize our closets, and
sort out our problems, we do know that God has forgiven us, loves us, and gives
us the power and courage to do what we can, through the gift of God’s Holy
Spirit.
On my credenza at home I have a sign that says “prayer
changes things.” While I remain unconvinced about whether or not prayer changes
things, I do know that prayer changes me, and sometimes even changes other
people or events. And so it has always been a comfort to me when I hear Jesus
say “this is how you pray” and when scripture tells me that the Holy Spirit
knows what’s going on in my life and in our world. In the meantime, I “pray as
I can, not as I can’t.” Or as Brother David from SSJE will say, “If a certain
place or way of praying is not helpful to you, then don’t do it. Find something
that is helpful.”
These days, I pray much less formally at home. I build my
prayer muscles at Body Pump classes, and defend myself against evil spirits in
Body Combat. I go for long walks along the Charles and find peace in Body Flow,
stretching places that have become tight with fear. Sitting in my living room
in silence, I ponder life’s blessings and challenges, as I piece together my
latest puzzle, letting God’s Spirit search me out and make things known. All in
all, I believe that we pray through our words and actions on a daily basis; and
that holy mysteries and simple tasks are part of that process.
I love being part of a community of faith because it holds
me accountable to a life of prayer, of listening to the words of Jesus as
recorded in scripture, and hearing what the Spirit is saying to God’s people in
church. When Jesus teaches me to pray,
saying “Our Father,” I acknowledge that we are all beloved children of God.
Recently Pope Francis approved a change in the wording of
the Lord’s prayer. Instead of saying, “Do not bring us to the time of trial or
temptation” we can pray “Do not let us fall” absolving God from all blame for
our human sins. Our prayers change over time; we use words when necessary. In
the Eucharistic prayer, I thank God for Jesus, who is the Word of God, and who said, “I am the bread of life and whoever comes to me shall never perish.”
In 1996, N. T. Wright wrote, “If you think it was relevant
for Jesus to teach his disciples over 2000 years ago how to pray, then how much
more for us even today.” And so we pray, as Jesus
taught his disciples, then and now. Amen.
Genesis
18:20-32
Psalm 138
Colossians
2:6-15, (16-19)
Luke 11:1-13
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