Prayerful Disciples

July 29, 2007 Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Sermon: Prayerful Disciples Text: Luke 11: 1-13 Our lesson today is a teaching about prayer and our need to be persistent with our prayer requests. There is encouragement to always ask, seek, and knock. The promise is that God will answer if we are listening. The story is told of a four year old who was spending a night away from home. At bedtime, expecting the usual prompting, she knelt at her hostess' knee to say her prayers. Finding the woman caring for her unable to help her and being somewhat unhappy staying with this person, the little girl prayed, "God, please excuse me. I can't remember my prayers and I'm staying with a lady who doesn't know any." There are times when we feel exactly like this four year old, we can't remember our prayers and there is no one around to help us to remember. Or, we may be like the author who wrote a poem he titled, "I'm Not Sure How to Pray." (Kenneth Phifer, A Book of Uncommon Prayer) How should I pray, O Lord? Should I wait until my life is cleansed and my spirit is hot? Or, should I come just as I am with my half-hearted commitment and my on-again, off-again faith? How should I pray? Should I choose my words carefully and phrase my petitions with discrimination? Should I sit very straight and very still? Or should I let my needs roll out and my doubts and difficulties show? How should I pray, God of morning sun and evening shadow? How should I pray in the high, hot noon of life? I really do not know. (poem goes on but I'll stop there for now) Can you relate? We all can relate, so we, like Jesus' disciples of long ago, come asking "teach us to pray, Lord." In this passage from Luke (as well as in Matthew 6:9-13), Jesus disciples are asking him to teach them to pray. This was a regular custom of a Rabbi, to teach a simple prayer which might be habitually used when bowing to speak to God. The "model prayer" or "the Lord's Prayer" is the prayer Jesus taught them. Since I have been your pastor, I have learned that for you this is a very important prayer, a prayer you pray a meetings or other gatherings often. At the Volleyball game last Sunday evening, it was prayed before the match. So, have we stopped to asked about what this prayer means to us? A few years ago, I met Rev. John Bodycomb, a campus minister from the Uniting Church in Australia, who wrote a little book he titled The Prayer That Could Change the World. He visited Bentley College, where I served as Protestant Chaplain, in Waltham, Massachusetts. The little book is a commentary on this prayer we call "The Lord's Prayer." He believed this prayer that Jesus taught, one that we know by heart, changed his disciples and can change us. The change was about articulating what we believe, how to apply the beliefs to our actions and how to listen and talk with God. Let's break it down the way he does in studying the Prayer more closely. He suggests that the prayer is for us: a model of conviction, a model of conduct, and a model of conversation. How is it a model of conviction? It is about naming God and acknowledging God's presence. When we stop, at a meeting, a volleyball game, or a church service, to say "Father, hallowed be your name, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done" we are affirming God's real presence. God is good and personal, like a loving parent. God is mystery yet God understands and cares for our deepest need. With our opening words to this prayer, we are saying, "may all that is done in my life today bring honor and not dishonor to God's good name." How is it a model of conduct? The prayer addresses our need to demonstrate behavior that is mature and responsible. We do this on a daily basis. We are to pray "Give us each day our daily bread" in a way that is mindful that we need to be thankful for our daily blessings. Sometimes we take our daily blessings for granted. Often, we must learn to live with our past. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." There is the need to live with the past losses, wrongs we have done, the sorrow we wake up to and regrets that linger. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." We must be aware that we are creating our future. To do this, we must ask ,"what are my temptations?, what are my tests in life? or what choices do I have? How is the prayer a model of conversation? We pray, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The prayer is not addressed to ourselves, but to God. It is a two-way conversation, the most satisfying of all relationships. What is our will, what is God's will? Are they the same? Rev. Bodycomb points out in his teaching that prayers sometimes have a danger of being addressed to ourselves rather than God. Our prayer becomes thinly disguised preaching, practical atheism in which God doesn't really matter because we are talking to ourselves. In asking God, "Your Kingdom come, your will be done," prayer is conversation with God, not magic and merely prattling on to ourselves. Our prayer is worshipful recognition that God is continually acting in the world and inviting us to be a part of God's divine activity. God is working for the good of the world, bringing order out of chaos, inviting us to be makers of peace. Prayer as conversation means that we are listening for God to remind us that our doubts, disbelief and anguish do matter. When we do not have answers to our prayers, sometimes we feel our prayers do not matter. We may not understand why we pray for badly needed rain and get none, or ask for a tumor to be healed and it becomes worst. Prayer does not answer the "why." Prayer can give us the faith to live in spite of the lack of answers. We may be like the man who said, "I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered." Jesus taught us to be persistent in our prayers because the promise that God is always there for us: "Be not afraid, for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." God is listening! We leave today grateful for this prayer Jesus taught us so we may be prayerful disciples. We continue to ask as we pray it, again and again, how is the prayer a model of conviction, a model of conduct, a model of conversation, so we can be drawn closer to the presence of our loving God. I share with you now in closing, the last portion of the poem "I'm Not Sure How To Pray": How should I pray, O God? I do not really know how I should, But I have prayed as best I can. And where I have left unsaid What should have been said, O Lord of the heart, Take the intention for the deed. Amen.