Sun, Jul 28, 2019 Our Saviour
Proper 12
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Color: Green Assigned Readings (Proper 12 )
Track One Lesson 1: Hosea 1:2-10 Psalm: 85
Track Two Lesson 1: Genesis 18:20-32 Psalm: 138
Lesson 2: Colossians 2:6-15,(16-19) Gospel: Luke 11:1-13
Introduction
It just seemed to me wonderfully serendipitous when in the space of a week I read today’s gospel and someone who is very dear to me asked, “What are some bible references to help teach me how to pray.” I actually have given some thought to that question over the years, having been asked it, oh, maybe a 100 times or more.
It took me back to when I tried to teach and model prayer to my children. I could remember my own grandmother teaching me prayers, including a German one from her childhood. Sometimes it seemed productive and sometimes not so much.
Children and Lord’s prayer
Take, e.g. these stories about children and the Lord’s Prayer:
I had been teaching my three-year-old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord’s Prayer. For several evenings at bedtime, she would repeat after me the lines from the prayer. Finally, she decided to go solo. I listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer: “Lead us not into temptation,” she prayed, “but deliver us some E-mail. Amen.”
And one particular four-year-old prayed, “And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.”
Prayer (xxx’s question the other day)
The person who asked me the question about prayer was not a child. Although when it came to prayer I suspect he thought of himself as a child. Teach us how to pray. What a question!
The answer to such a question has to pay attention to the circumstances of the person asking it. It has to listen to try to discern what it is that the person is asking. I think of the story I heard many years ago:
A child returns from school and asks her mother, “Mommy, where do we come from?” The mother thinks to herself, "Oh my, now is the time that we’re going to have that talk. So she takes the child aside and begins to tell her in age-appropriate ways where babies come from. After a time the child says, “Oh, well, okay. You see today in school I met a new friend and she said that she was from Cleveland. And I was wondering where we’re from.”
ACTS
The answer I gave the person last week was to say that there are many ways to approach “prayer” but one very widely recognized one is think of 4 different aspects of prayer, following the acronym ACTS: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, and supplication.
Now part of what’s wrong with the acronym is that it uses words that nobody uses in ordinary language today.
Adoration
It’s really what I call awe. It’s being speechless, so it’s a kind of prayer that is familiar with not using words. I remember myself as a 12 year traveling across the country on a train. I wrote a diary that summer. I was traveling alone with my sister from Colorado to Illinois. I wrote in a little notebook. There was considerable Awe and Amazement as I looked out those train windows. It seemed that I could see God in those corn fields passing me by – or at least God’s handiwork.
Mary Pat looked at pictures from the Hubble telescope this past week. For 30 minutes she kept saying to me, “Oh my!” “It’s so awesome!”
The experience of seeing the familiar with new eyes, in playful splendidness in the glory of how the earth sustains us.
It is experienced in fathomless depths of relationships, love, communication of two souls.
Confession
The prayer of confession is, perhaps, more familiar. In our Sunday liturgies we weekly have a “confession” with forgiveness. We know the words. But it turns out that deep confession is not easy. It comes as one reaches the end of their rope. The prayer of confession, when a person accepts forgiveness that gives new life, is often expressed in wordless gestures. It truly gives life in a manifold of different circumstances.
Thanksgiving
Gratitude, it turns out, is something way beyond a “Thank you” card. It’s really an important courtesy that ought to be a habit that we would send “thank you” cards. And in spite of my mother’s nagging me when I was young and in spite of trying hard to develop the habit, I’m not that good at it.
But what I am convinced of is that the single most important thing I hope for is that I can get to the end of my life and say, “Thank you.” Now that’s a prayer.
Supplication
A, C, T, and we come to S – “Supplication”. Another word that nobody uses in today’s English. Asking God for … (whatever). I think that possibly this kind of prayer is what most people think prayer is. Ask and it shall be given … I first heard these words at a Summer Bible School at Trinity, Wauwatosa that I was in charge of. We compiled a songbook that included this song. It’s one of only a relatively few praise songs that made its way into the 1980 hymnal. I still love to sing it – especially if we can make it a round.
Seek ye first
- Seek ye first the kingdom of God
And His righteousness;
And all these things shall be added unto you.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!- Ask, and it shall be given unto you;
Seek, and you shall find.
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!- Man shall not live by bread alone,
But by every word
That proceeds out from the mouth of God.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!
Jesus is making a clear case that in fact God the Father provides for us, not just a little bit, but in unbelievable measures. It’s not just here but other places that Jesus makes the case, most notably in the parable known as the Prodigal Son.
Counter examples
I have seen children as well as adults struggle with their faith, learned at a young age, when what is asked for in prayer does not seem to be delivered. My daughter when she was age 11-12, suffered a great disillusionment after praying for months for grandma to be healed of her Cancer. But then she died. My daughter, I think, lost faith in God and her father at that moment.
For adults it’s something of the opposite. There is a deep conviction that everything costs. That life is unfair. Adults want us all to get the lesson that nobody gets – something for nothing.
daddy – “father”
Jesus’ response to the question about prayer is to give us the Lord’s Prayer. The Bible gives it in 2 different forms, in Matthew and in Luke. I have preferred for a long time to call it “The Our Father” after the opening words of the prayer as I learned it as a child.
If we can pray so as to know the father as Jesus knew the father, we shall be changed. I think of a story about a girl and her father. I want all children and adults who don’t know the Father as Jesus knew the Father to hear it:
Once upon a time there was a four year old girl who was lost in the mountains of Tennessee and her parents frantically looked for her. They reported her missing and an all-out search ensued to find the little girl as quickly as possible. As daylight faded into dark and the stars settled into the sky, they feverishly searched every square inch of the area. Meanwhile, the little girl found a soft spot under a tree and fell asleep with her stuffed bear in hand. As the sun rose the next morning, her father rounded a bend after searching all night and found the little girl just awaking. When she saw her father, she ran and jumped in his arms and declared, “oh good, Daddy, I found you!”
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What counts is not specific words, or even specific intentions, but a change of heart.
The Our Father
It is not as simple as we might first imagine. As those stories at the opening of this message show, what we learn as children is not always what we come to know as adults. And adults can get bogged down with details. The King James and BCP tradition of the Our Father are different from one another. And Matthew and Luke’s versions differ.
We have dutifully memorized at a young age these words. But I am convinced that the words themselves – in some literal fashion – are not what Jesus was getting at. (cf. “The finger and the moon”)
Not any particular words, but a conversion of heart, a new life, a changed trajectory in what one lives for.
Teaching a child to pray.
When I was in my 20-30s I was convinced that it was just plain important to learn prayers and scripture verses by rote, by memory. An illustration is the powerful testimony that Bp. Waite gave re. his captivity in Lebanon. For those of you who don’t remember:
Terence Hardy “Terry” Waite (born 31 May 1939) is an English humanitarian and author.
Waite was the Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs for the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the 1980s. As an envoy for the Church of England, he travelled to Lebanon to try to secure the release of four hostages, including the journalist John McCarthy. He was himself kidnapped and held captive from 1987 to 1991.
After his release he wrote a book about his experiences and became involved in humanitarian causes and charitable work. wikipedia
I myself was impacted and still am by his accounts of years in solitary, chained to a wall. Like John McCain. Waite befriended a rat. He kept his sanity by repeating over and over the psalms and hymns that he had memorized as a youth.
But I am just as firmly convinced today that we have to learn to pray over and over again, throughout our life. There is a well-known saying about prayer that it is not about changing God, but about changing us.
We must leave off childish ways and put on the full armor of Jesus’ prayer. As children we learned “lead us not into temptation” – and generations of human beings have “learned” that God is the sort of person who relishes leading people into temptation, testing them to see if they are good enough, strong-willed enough. Not the kind of Father that Jesus was introducing us to.
We must continually hear with new ears.
To prayer Lord’s prayer with single-mind focus – Simone Weil
In a collection of letters and essays by Weil, titled Waiting for God, there is an extended reflection on the Lord’s Prayer.
- She starts off with “Our father which art in heaven.” Just that is a ton to take in. “Our” – not mine, but ours. “Father” – not like any father I’ve known.
- And then we might observe that Luke doesn’t say Our father, he just says Father.
- We might continue through the whole prayer. But, as Weil says, that is a daunting task. In the end she concludes – (the last words in the slim volume):
“The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it once through, giving the fullest ossible attention to each word, without a change, infinitesimal perhaps but real, taking place in the soul.”
New Zealand prayer
Perhaps it can be enough for us to learn the prayer in many different varieties and variations.
Mary Pat and I achieve that in a tiny way by using a different version of the Our Father to pray in our daily prayer together. I have a few copies of the prayer if you are interested.
It goes like this:
From The New Zealand Prayer Book
Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is Heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your Heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on Earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. Amen.
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