Prayer (Part 2)
Prayer (Part 2)
Matthew 6:9-15
So, last week, Jesus showed us examples of people who did the right thing in the wrong way: the person who sounds the trumpets so that everyone will witness their contribution to the poor; the person who prays extra loudly in public or who speaks in some fancy voice or who just piles up words so that everyone will be impressed; the person who fasts but does its publicly and so loudly that everyone will take note of their great sacrifice. Jesus says these people are hypocrites. They say they are doing what they are doing as an act of faith but really these are acts of manipulation. What they want is attention and admiration which they often get. However, such acts are not pleasing to God. Instead, Jesus urges us to practice our faith quietly, away from the attention of the crowds.
When it comes to prayer, Jesus says we may want to learn to spend more time praying in our rooms with the doors closed and less time praying on the street corner. What I suggested last week is that prayer is not about impressing anyone or about getting what we want or even about telling God what God doesn’t already know. Prayer isn’t “Let’s Make a Deal!” Instead, prayer is about creating space for a relationship. It is about speaking honestly in our own words to the one who loves us unconditionally. It is about listening for that still, small voice that sometimes speaks to us in the strangest ways (in the words that pop from a page or the words that seem highlighted in bright yellow as soon as someone speaks to us or in the circumstances that seemed like such a coincidence until we stepped back and realized that maybe this was no coincidence at all.)
When it comes to prayer, Jesus even provides us with an example of what a different kind of prayer might sound like. In our translation, Jesus say, “Pray in this way…” He doesn’t say, “Pray these exact words…” Of course, most of us feel like we are praying the exact words that Jesus taught his disciples to pray because they are the exact words that our parents or our Sunday School teachers taught us to pray. All of this works until we are with someone who also believes that they are praying Jesus’ exact words, too. We cruise along just fine until I say “trespasses and trespassers” and the other person says “debts and debtors.” Then, we look at each other and each wonder, “Why are you messing with Jesus’ words?” Meanwhile, our Catholic friend fakes us out and ends early only to pop in after a moment with a “forever and ever.” What? Then, there is the time when I was in the Spanish speaking congregation and they said the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo that Jesus spoke English, right? What’s that? Jesus probably spoke Hebrew and Aramaic?
Of course, part of what gives the specific words of the Lord’s Prayer their power is the number of times we have prayed those words, whether they are the exact words that Jesus spoke or not. I’ve sat at the bedsides of the dying and said those words with them. I’ve led worship in nursing homes and seen the otherwise empty eyes of the person with dementia come to life and heard them join in this familiar prayer. I’ve felt warmth flood through me when the children of the church join in the prayer and it feels like we’re doing our job as a church family working with the next generation.
The Lords’ Prayer is what I turn to when I’m scared. There is a huge bay in the Quetico that has to be crossed in order to begin just about any canoeing adventure. It is called North Bay. Because it is so vast, the wind and the waves are almost always rolling. It is a place where a canoe feels very small. I can’t tell you how many times, crossing that bay, that I have said the Lord’s Prayer. Each time I finished the prayer, I would start it up again until the nose of the canoe nudged up on solid ground.
There is comfort in what’s familiar. There is power in having words that we can turn to when we realize that our words have deserted us. When we lay our heads on our pillow at the end of the day, we could do worse than to work our way through these words.
However, I’m convinced that it wasn’t necessarily Jesus’ intention that the words that he taught his disciples to pray two thousand years ago would define what we would be praying two thousand years later. There’s a big difference between “Pray then in this way…” and “Pray these exact words and try not to mess up the translation.”
I’m also convinced that because the words are so familiar, we don’t necessarily hear how revolutionary they were in his own time. That’s why I want to invite you to pause and hear the words that you pray so often as if you’ve never heard them before…
The revolution that is what we know as the Lord’s Prayer begins with the first two words: “Our Father…” Stop and think about this. Jesus doesn’t say “My father,” which would certainly have put us all in our place. Jesus doesn’t say “Your father,” which would have opened the door to thinking that he was talking only about those of us on “Team Jesus.” Here’s the thing. This is the man who would teach us that anyone can be our neighbor and that everyone is a child of God. The “our” that Jesus is talking about is not parochial or tribal. This is the all-inclusive term. God is the father of every human being, regardless of gender or race or religion, regardless of who you love, regardless of how many mistakes you’ve made or what a holier-than-thou, pain-in-the-you-know-what you might be. This is the “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” God that my Sunday School teachers taught me about.
Access to God—to approaching God the Father—is open to everyone. Therefore, this relationship is personal but it is not private. The default setting, initiated in this prayer is “us.” This, of course, makes things so much messier when from the first word, our faith has to include people who are different than us and who think differently than us. All signs seem to suggest, though, that God loves that mess.
Why does this matter? It matters because the human temptation is to begin our prayers from a selfish place: “Thank you God for not making me like them…” or “God, I need you to ‘tee someone up’ for me.” The first thing Jesus teaches us is that those prayers don’t work. Prayer needs to start with a reminder that we are all in this life together, that we are all God’s children.
Even then, Jesus teaches us, we need to spend time remembering and honoring a few things about God before we get to ourselves. “Our Father in heaven…” This is such a paradoxical statement. In four words we are reminded that God is both personally available and bigger than we can ever imagine. The “in heaven” side of things is a reminder not that God is far away but that God can see things that we cannot see. To put the matter differently, an essential starting point of the way that Jesus teaches us to pray is to approach God with humility.
How does this translate into a prayer in our own words? I remember a breakthrough moment early in my twenties when I prayed in my own heartfelt words for one of the first times. That prayer started, “Okay God…I’m ready to say this. You’re God and I’m not. I’m ready to stop pretending, mostly because I’ve made a mess of things. You be God and I’ll be Mark. Just help me to be helpful, okay? That’s all…” It doesn’t have the majesty of “Hallowed be thy name” which as a child I always thought was “Hollywood be thy name” which made no sense at all. It doesn’t have the ring of “Your will be done.” However, there is something powerful about finding the words to say, “I know you’re in this with us. I also know you’re not me and I’m not you. What I’d really like is to follow you. This is about what you want not what I want.”
When we’re at a loss for words, we can lean on the words that we’ve been taught that have been filtered through centuries of translations which nevertheless remain powerful. However, in the quiet of our own rooms, in the middle of the night, in the midst of our struggles, sometimes we need to take the teachings of the words that we’ve memorized to heart and translate them into our own words. Honestly, though, I want to tell you how transforming and even risky finding those words can be. When you come as you are and speak in your own words to the one who is the source of all that is, including you, you run the risk of being changed.
So, the first part of the Lord’s Prayer is about starting with God. We connect personally but not privately. We affirm that we are not God and that God is, in fact, pretty amazing. We concede that what matters even more than what we want is what God wants. We make ourselves available to play some small part in a world that is becoming a bit more of what God would have it be.
Part two of the Lord’s prayer is about us. (Finally, right? Just kidding…) “Give us this day our daily bread.” This is another killer moment. Our ancestors in faith were fed manna every day as they wandered in the wilderness. What did they want? They wanted to store away manna. Why? Because they didn’t trust that God would keep providing. This prayer says, “I’m willing to focus on today and let tomorrow go.” This prayer says, “Meet me God at the level of my most basic needs.” Can we trust that God is trustworthy?
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” There we go again, spilling out the words that commit us to a giant challenge: to take responsibility not only for seeking forgiveness but for being forgiving. Isn’t that easier said than done, right? By all appearances, our natural tendency is to be judgmental. Our other natural tendency is to be defensive. Why would I pass up the chance to point out someone else’s flaws? Why would I let go of a good grudge? The only answer is because we have been forgiven. And that forgiveness is only full when we can own up to our flaws with God and with ourselves and with those we’ve hurt.
“Lead us not into temptation…” Why would we pray this? The answer is simple. If we are honest with ourselves and with God, we know that though we may not all be tempted by the same things, we are all tempted. So, I can stand on some moral high ground and judge someone else because they are tempted by something that would never tempt me. The only problem is that my temptation is out there. Can I come to grips with the truth that the only thing that stands between me and my temptation might be that I just haven’t run into it yet on a vulnerable enough day? It is brutally difficult as a headstrong human being to pray, “Lead me…” A part of us loves to flirt, instead, with temptation. And yet, Jesus teaches us to pray that God will lead us away from such things.
“God…feed me…forgive me…lead me and guide me. Help me to be forgiving rather than judgmental. Help me to be merciful rather than vengeful.” In my own words, “God, get me out of your way. Help me to be helpful. Work through me today.”
We learn the Lord’s Prayer. At the same time, we are invited to learn to pray the spirit of that prayer, each in our own words, in our own honest translation.