July 24, 2022 + Lectionary 17c + Luke 11:1-13 + Pr. Craig Mueller
What do you expect to see posted on light poles, telephone poles, or bulletin boards across the city? A sign looking for a lost pet? An offer to baby sit? To give piano lessons? A poster advertising a concert in the area?
It caught me off guard. At the corner of Clark and Racine a small poster with these words: “Learn how to pray. Do you want to know how to talk to God?” There was a telephone number, and yes, a QR code! I wondered what brand of religion was offering this. What would be your guess? I traced the number to the LDS—Latter Day Saints church.
Maybe I should have called the number. We all need help with prayer. After all, Jesus’s words in today’s gospel today are: “Lord, teach us to pray.” We are all lifelong learners in the school of prayer.
Prayer is something almost everyone understands at some level. Some studies show that about 75% of Americans pray. Over 50% pray daily.
Maybe we learned bedtime and mealtime prayers when we were children. But what about now? What is prayer to you? Do you pray? Do we teach our children and youth to pray? Does Holy Trinity help teach you to pray? When was the last time you heard a sermon about prayer?
Let me say it now: the goal of this sermon is to expand the way we think about prayer.
So if you think that prayer is only a two-way conversation between you and God, over a Coke or a cup of coffee, there’s more. The liturgy, the eucharist, the mass, the service, is prayer. Not just the “saying prayers” part of it. But all of it. And you’re here. So you’re praying.
Harold Kushner, the rabbi that wrote Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, notes that when we come together, we transcend our isolation. A spirit is created which none of us brought alone. It is more than words. In our common prayer, the divine is present.1
So, prayer can be liturgy, written or memorized prayers. Like the Lord’s Prayer, the heart of Christian prayer. Yes, prayer can be talking to God. But for many, prayer is the silence of meditation and contemplation. Deep listening, we might say.
I came across a quote from Martin Luther that I did not know: “The fewer the words, the better the prayer.” As diverse as our personalities, so our prayer styles and preferences vary as well.
Writer Anne Lamott gives us a memorable prayer threesome to guide us: Help. Thanks. Wow. Asking for assistance. Appreciating the good in our life. And feeling awe at the world around us.
And then there’s the persistence that Jesus urges in today’s gospel. “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
To some this sounds like God is a great Cosmic Gumball Machine. Put in the quarter. Pray hard enough. And God will give you what you want. God will heal you. Save you from the bad guys. Give you an A on a test. Or send you the love of your life.
Or just maybe on a crowded Chicago street your prayer becomes: “Hail, Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking place.” I think I’ve heard that prayer in my car at some point!
I’m sure in our own helplessness, many of us bargain with God at times. Like Abraham in our first reading. Convincing God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for the sin of . . . it may not be what you think. The sin is pride, greed, injustice, lack of hospitality.
But is prayer transactional? Cosmic Gumball God. Or Santa Claus in the sky who rewards good behavior? Because life isn’t life that. People die. Relationships end. Injustice continues. Things get worse.
Yet, somehow. We pray anyway. We pour out our hearts to a mystery, a power, a presence greater than ourselves.
But what if you don’t feel anything when you pray? Consider this Hasidic story: a disciple comes to the rabbi and says, “I have a terrible problem. I can’t pray. I try to say the words but nothing happens. I don’t feel anything. What should I do?” The rabbi answers, “pray for the ability to pray.”
If you suffer from prayer guilt—that you aren’t praying the right way or enough, there is grace for you.
Prayer isn’t just saying prayers. But living prayerfully. That’s not to say that prayers, or going to church, or having spiritual practices aren’t important. Practices like meditation, yoga, tai chi, journaling, fasting, lectio divina, prayer beads, and many more can be life-giving.
Pray always, St. Paul says. Or let’s rephrase it: pray all ways.
Like singing. Eating mindfully. Slowing down. Holding a newborn infant. Sitting with a dying loved one. Calling someone who is struggling. Sharing generously of your time, money, and talents.
How can we talk about prayer without mentioning it in the news the past month: the Supreme Court ruling that a football coach can pray at the 50-yard line after games. It makes me think of Jesus talking about hypocrites who parade their piety on street corners in order to be seen by others. But that’s not a legal argument! Was this an issue of free speech rights or how the coach’s prayer affects or pressures young, impressionable students? Obviously, the conversative justices went for the former.
Maybe the more important question is this: does God answer prayer? What is the promise? And what do you get? In today’s gospel it is only this. But it is everything: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.”
Not a piece of bubble gum. Not a shiny toy. Or a new car. Or the love of our life. Though sometimes life brings these things. But what we receive is the presence of God. The assurance that we are not alone. The promise that life is worth living. And that from suffering will come new life and resurrection.
Pray all ways. Not just saying prayers. Lord, teach us to live prayerfully.
For prayer isn’t just something we do. The Spirit prays in and through us. With sighs too deep for words.
Sure, you may be a pray-er, one who prays. But remember this: Your life is prayer. You are a prayer.
1Harold Kushner, “Can modern people pray? in Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer.