Genesis 18:20-33
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:6-15
LUKE 11:1-13
The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
He was praying in a certain
place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord,
teach us to pray.” Luke 11:1
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is amazing how often we find
Jesus praying – for forty days in the wilderness after his baptism, up before
dawn or all night during his ministry, at his last supper with his friends, in
the garden on the last night of his life just before his betrayal, and even as
he hangs on the cross. The Gospels do
not dwell on Jesus’ praying, but a careful reading of them makes it clear that
prayer was central to his life and ministry.
If prayer was so important in the
life of the one we declare to be “of one Being with the Father,” the perfect
revelation of God, how important must it be for our lives?
Praying may well be one of the
most important things in a Christian’s life!
There have been thousands of
books and articles written on prayer, and probably millions of sermons preached
on it. I want to touch on just a few
points that I think are particularly relevant this morning.
Prayer is first and foremost
about our relationship with God. Jesus
refers to God as “abba” (daddy). I
believe that it is through prayer that Jesus, the human, came to that
relationship, that intimacy with God.
For us, prayer is foremost about and central to our relationship to
God. How much time we spend in building
a relationship is critical to the quality of that relationship. How many relationships have you known that
failed because one or both of the persons were too busy to put enough time in
on building a strong relationship with the other? If we are always too busy to spend anytime in prayer, what will
our relationship with God be like? Will
God be our close intimate or a distant stranger? Will God be the one to whom we naturally turn at all times and in
all things or an unfamiliar person about whom we hardly ever think? Will God be someone with whom we can be
completely honest or will God be for us someone for whom we must put on a good
face? In today’s lesson from Genesis,
Abraham knows God well enough that he knows he can argue with God. Can we?
Or do we think that we have to fake being good? You are in a truly intimate relationship
with another only when all of you can be in that relationship. God yearns to be in relationship with
us. Do we yearn to be in relationship
with God?
Prayer is formative. What we spend our time on shapes us. We do not often use the word “formation” in
our discussions, but I think formation is central to almost everything we do as
a church – the form and content of our worship, the music we sing, the
activities that we sponsor and in which we participate, our educational
opportunities for both children and adults, the gifts that we give and the ways
we help people – all are formative.
Prayer is one of the most important parts of our formation. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,
he says: “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but
a new creation.” Over and over again,
Paul says that an external act by itself does not make a difference but how we
are made new. Have you ever been met
someone and quickly realized that they had a rich prayer life, a close
relationship with God and through that prayer and relationship they have been
formed? There is something different
about them, and that difference touches us.
The sentence from the Gospel that
I quoted above also tells us that praying is something that we learn. We all start somewhere and, in a real sense,
we all are beginners. Like those
disciples, who as devout Jews had been praying all of their lives, we all come
to Jesus to have him teach us to pray.
From my knowledge of and
experience of the people and community that we call St. Barnabas, I feel that I
can confidently say that collectively among its members there is a lot of
praying done.
I am also sure that if we were
able to talk to each other about our ways of praying, we would soon find that
many of us pray in similar ways and others have very different ways of praying.
We all start somewhere. Many a spiritual teacher, when asked about
how a person should pray, has urged:
“pray as you can.” We often get
the impression that there is a correct way to pray, that someone else can pray
better than we can. As I talk to
people, I sometimes get the impression that because they cannot meet certain
standards, they should not pray. That
is rubbish. Each of us can pray, and we
should pray as we can. Each of us is
unique, and our praying should reflect who we are. Our prayers may be no more than a simple ‘Help’ or ‘Thank You.’ If that is how we can pray at the moment,
then it is good. Pray it often!
On the web site explorefaith.org
(which I highly recommend to everyone) there is an excellent essay on prayer by
Mimsy Jones. In her essay, she relates
the following:
“I once asked a woman whose prayer life I admired (coveted is more
honest!) what was the ‘secret’ of her prayer life. ‘Oh, honey dear,’ she exclaimed, ‘All I do is open my eyes every
morning and say ‘May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be
acceptable to you, O God, my strength and my redeemer.’
Her words started me off on a whole new way to live … Just remember God
yearns to be in relationship with you.
It will make a world of difference in your prayer life.”
Prayer at its richest is not just
a monologue. Tragically, too often our
prayer life does not go beyond that stage.
In our prayers we stand alone or as a group before God and inform God of
what we need or want from God. There
are many dangers as well as limitations to that form of prayer. For one, it is a very lonely place to
be. There we are out there before God
by ourselves, depending on ourselves.
Our collect for last Sunday also spells out a couple of other
limitations as well: “Have compassion
on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness
we dare not, and for our blindness, we cannot ask.”
A good relationship includes both
the ability to speak and to listen. With
time, our prayer life should include both speaking and listening. Silence should become more and more a part
of our life so that we can be with God, be in God, hear God and touched by
God. When our words cease, God’s can
begin.
Finally, St. Paul says to us:
“pray without ceasing.”
Amen.
The Rev. William O. Breedlove, II, TSSF
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church,
Monmouth Junction, NJ