Sermon Recording:

In Adriana Trigiani’s latest book, The View from Lake Como, the narrator speaks of her family’s spiritual practices. She writes: 

“In my family we pray because we’re terrified. We have an unshakeable faith rooted in the paralyzing fear of burning in hell for all eternity.”

Oh, my. If you feel this way about prayer, you may want to make an appointment with one of the clergy. 

Prayer is not about fear of God. It is about encounter with the Holy; becoming present to a divine Presence that waits and yearns for us to join an ever flowing conversation. That doesn’t mean it isn’t challenging at times. We bring (I hope) everything to God in prayer, including our fear, not OF God, but for ourselves, our loved ones, our world. We bring our anger to God, raging at God’s silence or perceived noncompliance. We bring our joy, our wonder, our grief, our desires, our questions, our contrition, our need just to rest in silence. 

“Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’” 

We see Jesus in prayer all the time in the Gospels. The disciples were familiar with his practice of making time to withdraw to be with God. We see Jesus speaking to God, sometimes in gratitude, sometimes in anxiety, even in surrender: “Not my will, but yours be done.” We also know that the disciples were perfectly aware of, and engaged in, the spiritual practices of their Jewish faith. So why would they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, and further, to do so in the way John the Baptist taught his disciples? 

What was it about the prayers of the prophet that touched the yearnings of Jesus’ followers? Perhaps they felt that their prayer life had become a little flat, a little rote, a little routine? Perhaps they needed a refresher? 

Perhaps we know what that feels like?

John the Baptizer was shaking things up; proclaiming the Reign of God, calling people vipers, being a thorn in the side of the Roman elite. Surely his prayer life had something going for it since John was able to energize people from all over to come to him for baptism, to hear his challenging preaching, to hear his call to repentance and renewal.

“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

We’ll have what he’s having.

Unlike the longer versions of the Lord’s Prayer that we see in the context of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, and that have become part of our Christian DNA, Luke’s version is terse, yet it speaks powerfully to its time, much like John the Baptist himself. This prayer is at once subversive, intimate, humble, and earthy; a prayer that, for those with ears to hear, equips and challenges us for these days.

Dear One, Holy One,

May your Dream of reconciliation for Creation be fulfilled.

May those who know hunger be fed, and may those who are fed, know hunger for justice.

Forgive our sinfulness, our disregard and disrespect of your children and your world…

…As we forgive others who sin against us…uh-oh.

Forgiving. That’s the challenging bit, every, single time. We ask God to forgive us, but choke on the corollary. 

This is the most disturbing line in this passage. Because in these days the idea of even praying for, much less forgiving, those who seek to harm us or our siblings in Christ; those who perpetrate evil, who collude in it, or are complicit in it—and make no mistake, the Bible has a lot to say about those who disrespect the image and likeness of God in all persons—these are hard words.

People ask me all the time; how do we pray for THEM? And this applies to anyone who hurts or betrays us, not just the wider political climate. How do we hear the words of the Lord’s Prayer to forgive, or at the very least to acknowledge the basic humanity of those who would deny mercy to someone else? Because if we accept God’s forgiveness for all that we do and leave undone, then we are expected—it says so right there—we are expected, not given an option—expected—to do the same for our neighbors—even the ones we don’t like.  

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said how hard it is to pray for anyone when we hold righteous anger against them and their actions. I sympathize, even empathize with their feelings of—of what? Anger, yes—also betrayal, powerlessness, fear, even trauma. Here’s a question: Do we feel that withholding prayer and forgiveness will change THEM? Change anything? If we’re honest, maybe that’s what we think on some level, but in the light of day does that really make sense? 

Not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and waiting for them to die. Nelson Mandela; a man who knew a little bit about responding to injustice.

Mandela knew that our feelings of anger and powerlessness in response to cruelty and injustice can calcify our spirit, harden us, and fuel a cycle of more anger, resentment, and rigidity. If we continue to feed these feelings with more and more of the same, we risk becoming what we hate in the other—in THEM. Jesus calls us to forgive those who harm us because the harder our hearts become, the more comfortable we become with our hurt and anger—whether righteous or not—the more we wall ourselves off from the Dream that God offers us. The purpose of our prayer is to change us, not THEM; their change is up to them and up to God. But our well-being and our world’s well-being depend on finding a way to let go of what holds us back from forgiving others as God has forgiven us, time and time again. 

So how do we pray for the THEM in our lives? How do we make the barest beginning of envisioning loving kindness when we feel so prickly and wounded and furious?

A member of our Wednesday book group gave me an idea when we were discussing this. There is a sarcastic remark that people sometimes use in response to someone whose opinion they dislike: “Who hurt you?” Who hurt you, that you’re being such a jerk right now? I guess it’s not an awful rejoinder if you’re in need of a verbal weapon. 

But what if it were a prayer? A sincere prayer? What if it were the barest beginning of something like loving kindness, a dandelion seed in the sidewalk of your heart? 

Who hurt you, that you carry your wounds around and throw them like hand grenades at people you don’t like, or people you don’t care about? Who hurt you, that mercy is a foreign language to you? 

“Who hurt you?”

What might that simple change in tone, from judgement to compassion and curiosity, pry loose from our heart?

It may not be much. But it may be all we can manage. God can work with that. God has done a lot more with a lot less.

“And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

We live in a time of trial right now. Perhaps it’s not like the early Christians who were pressured by the Empire to renounce their faith, but we are in a time when choosing to follow the teachings of Jesus, and trusting in a God who is faithful to us, has become countercultural. Jesus calls us to pray for a different world, a merciful and forgiving world, and to do it persistently and authentically; seeking, knocking, and asking to become the change that we yearn for.

My favorite comment on prayer is from social gospel activist Vida Dutton Scudder. She says, 

“If prayer is the deep secret creative force that Jesus tells us it is, then we should be very busy with it.” 

When we pray, we hope.  Let’s get busy.