Lord teach us to pray...

NOTE:  My worship notes for Sunday, July 28, 2013.  (How did this happen? Where has the summer gone?!) If you are around, there will be some sweet music @ 10:30 am.  Please join us.

Introduction

When I look at the heart of American society today, as I frequently do in prayer; when I look at your lives and those of your families at the close of the day in my pastoral prayers; when I look at the brokenness of my own soul and my need for God’s grace and hope, I often pray:  Lord, thy kingdom come.  Not my kingdom come, not America’s kingdom come, not your or even our kingdom come, but “thy kingdom come.”

·      It’s an old prayer from a version of the Bible I no longer read – it comes from the King James translation of Matthew’s gospel published 400 years ago in 1611 – but I still use it because I know it so well.  It feels like part of my blood or DNA:  thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

·      John Dominic Crossan, a feisty old contemporary Biblical scholar, says that to pray for thy kingdom come – God’s kingdom to come – means that we both long for and work for the way of Christ on earth.  The way of peace and forgiveness, the way of equality and compassion, the way of sharing by all so that there is scarcity for none.  To pray thy kingdom come is to become an ally of the Lord’s counter-cultural movement and all its upside-down values.

And the reason I pray thy kingdom come over and over again – year in and year out – is because I can’t make it happen.  I have a part to play and work to be done, but mostly what I must do for thy kingdom to come is trust the Lord when I really want to be in control.  The late Henri Nouwen once put it like this:  “Frequently, I see many of us restlessly looking for answers to the problems of our lives, going from door to door, from book to book, or from church to church, without first having really listened carefully and attentively to the questions within.”  We want answers and solutions – results and progress – we want things to improve without first getting our bearings or being grounded in trust.  Eugene Peterson was even more blunt when he wrote:

(Throughout America…) most of the individuals (I meet) suppose that the goals they have for themselves and the goals God has for them are the same.  It is the oldest religious mistake: refusing to countenance any real difference between God and us, imagining God to be a vague extrapolation of our own desires, and then hiring a priest to manage the affairs between self and the extrapolation.

So Jesus teaches his disciples – then and now – to pray:  to practice trusting the Lord in all things while doing our small part to be open to the upside-down kingdom to come.  So I thought it would probably be a good idea this morning to do likewise – spend some time learning or even re-learning how to pray in the spirit of Jesus – so that we too might mature in trust. 

Insights

You see, I believe that the adults of a congregation need to have spiritual elders peppered throughout the community who know how to pray, who pray for one another regularly and who can train and show our children and youth how to pray.  But if sociologists are right – and my experience suggests they are – then it is true that many adults in our churches have never been taught how to pray.  And if the adults in a congregation don’t know how to pray, then we will never pass on this tool to our children.

·      St. Paul in his words to the early church in Ephesus put it like this: We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…

·      And one of the practices that mature people of faith know how to do is pray – pray out loud, pray in private, prayer for one another and pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is already present in heaven – ok?

So let me first give you a few words of background context for this morning’s Bible lesson and then we’ll do a little practice in prayer together.  Three important things to remember:

·      First, Jesus did not teach his disciples to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the King James Version that so many of us learned as children.  Those sweet words are poetry – ideas shaped and fashioned by the scholars and artists of Elizabethan England rather than the itinerant preacher of Palestine we know as Jesus of Nazareth – so while the sounds of the prayer some of us know so well are lovely, the whole point is not recitation, but rather learning a simple outline for constructing our own prayers.  The goal is not to look backwards and be frozen in time, but to master a form of prayer that we can bring into the present and perhaps the future, too.

·      Second, there are just three elements in the prayer outline Jesus gave us:  praise God, ask for what you need and open yourself in trust to living in ways that mirror’s God’s kingdom of forgiveness and mercy.  That order is important even though it is so simple. To praise God first is to practice humility – it means you know that God is God and you are not – so this is where we start:  by hallowing or honoring the Lord.  Next we simply ask God for what we need – and Jesus suggests there are only three real needs – “sustenance (daily bread), relationships (forgiveness) and safety (keep us from the time of trail)” (David Lose @ workingpreacher.com.) Prayer doesn’t have to be complicate or even poetic to be faithful.

·      Third, prayer is always grounded in trust.  Ask, seek and knock he tells us over and again because God is like a loving parent who yearns to provide.  The more we practice trusting, the more we “realize our utter dependence on God… and when we experience this we will know that we are loved by the One who created, redeemed and sustains all of life.” (Rhonda Mawhood Leed @ The Christian Century.)

Is that clear?  That the Lord Jesus Christ’s outline for our prayers is about being simple and direct in the spirit of trust?  Do you have any thoughts or questions or concerns before I go on to ask you to practice creating your own prayer?

Now let’s try something together first as practice before doing it on your own, ok?  I am going to ask you to use the outline Jesus gave his disciples to help me construct a group prayer:  we will simply work our way through the three steps – I’ll ask you to say out loud some of the parts that speak to you – then I’ll write them down.  So that together we create our own version of the Lord’s Prayer for this moment in time.  And then after we’ve done it together, I want to give you a bit of quiet space to construct and write your own prayer based upon your own words and your own needs.

·        First we begin with words of praise:  clear and direct words that say something about the Lord – Jesus used “abba” which we might translate as “poppa” to connote intimacy with the Lord – so what words of praise speak to you?

·      Second, in the spirit of hallowing God’s truths – living in a way that honors God – Jesus invites us to speak of our needs.  What are the essentials that we want to ask God to share with us today?  What do we need for sustenance?  What about the condition of our relationships?  What are we concerned or even afraid about?

·      And third, what words do you want to say to return thanks to the Lord in trust?  How do you want to close this prayer that expresses our trust in God's love?

Rephrase the community prayer out loud for the community

Do you see how that works?  Do you have any questions about the elements of prayer based upon the Lord’s Prayer? 

Conclusion

One of my favorite authors, Stephanie Paulsell, once said that each of us:

Need places to pray as if someone were listening, to study as if we might learn something worth writing on our hearts, to join with others in service as if the world might be transformed. Churches were born to be places where we learn to practice – with others – a continual conversion of life and a permanent openness to change.

So let us write a practice prayer unto the Lord now as we take it one step deeper.  In the safety and quiet of our Sanctuary, surrounded by the presence of Christ Jesus and the saints who have gone before us, let’s take a little time and in our own words, as we feel led by the Spirit, pray unto the Lord…

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare, should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
Will you set the pris’ners free and never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?
Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around,
Through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

Please join us singing together in unison for the closing verse:

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

credits
1) mattstone.blogs.com
2) thegospelcoalition.org
3) www.stedmundsbury.anglican.org
4) http://thesamaritanhouse.org/2011/12/14/last-minute-christmas-shopping-that-benefits-samaritan-house/lords-prayer-poster-sm-2/