July 30, 1995
Luke 11;1-13
Colossians 2:6-15

Who taught you how to pray? Take a moment to think about that. It has been my experience that prayer is often something we assume others know how to do better than we do, and that we are aware that we need teachers. Yet few of us ever ask others to teach us how to pray, and we would be embarrassed if someone asked us to do so. A few of us seek out classes, such as the one I took from Forster Freeman during his ministry here. Most of us, I suspect, learn to pray by osmosis, filtering through the semi-permeable membrane of our spiritual consciousness various prayer forms learned from the graces said at meal time, the prayers intoned by ministers and congregations in worship, or the specific instructions that we may have been given by a family member for our bed-time prayers.

From an osmosis point of view, my greatest teacher was my maternal grandfather, who was a Canon of the Episcopal Church. When we lived with my grandparents when I was in first and third grades, every evening before dinner, we were invited into Grandpa's study for Vespers. I remember that he would always read something boring out of a little book, which I since learned was the Book of Common Prayer, and then offer prayers. The prayers were never boring: prayers for family and friends; prayers for the church; prayers for our nation; prayers for the leaders of our nation and the world; prayers for people in the world whose lives had been torn apart by war, violence, or natural disaster; etc. When I was in prayer with my grandfather I felt connected to a bigger whole, which I could not define.

When it comes to prayer, most of us, I suspect, are self-taught. It is, after all, quite Biblical to withdraw by oneself to a quiet place to pray. It is the model we have of Jesus' prayer life and is in keeping with the notion that prayer is our own personal way of communicating with God. In today's Gospel passage, after observing Jesus praying, one of the disciples asks him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." It is too bad we don't have John's syllabus, because he obviously had a reputation for teaching prayer. I wonder if the question asked of Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples," implies that Jesus had been one of John's disciples and therefore would know John's method of praying, or was a comparative statement about two teachers? I find it interesting that the disciple did not just ask, "Lord, teach us how you pray."

In any case, Jesus responded by saying:

When you pray, say: Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.

When I first read this passage, I had all sorts of ideas on ways in which I wanted to expound on it. I had preached my very first sermon ever, while still a pre-seminary lay person, on this text, and remembered many of my insights. However, as I got into writing my sermon, I found myself less and less able to relate to the passage.

Modern scholarship, especially the Jesus Seminar, does not believe that Jesus actually taught Luke's version of this prayer. My own feeling, is that it is way too dogmatic for Jesus and too limited for the depth and breadth of his theology. For instance, Jesus' answer to the Pharisee's question about when the kingdom of God was coming, in Luke 17:20-21, contradicts the notion of "Thy kingdom come." For in the Luke 17 passage Jesus says:

The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say "Look, here it is!" or "There it is!" For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.

This, for me, is more consistent with my understanding of Jesus' theology. I also find it hard to believe that Jesus would have referred to his disciples as "you who are evil" or would have wanted to put words in our mouths such as "for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." While many of us desire to forgive others, we often do not do so. And certainly Jesus' ministry was not about saving us from the time of trial, but rather sending us out as "sheep in the midst of wolves." I feel Jesus was too good a student of human nature to have made many of the statements that are in Luke's version of the Lord's prayer.

Even the exposition of the prayer, the story about the man who had gone to bed when a neighbor came knocking, I find hard to reconcile with the man who prayed in the garden that the cup be taken from him, but not what he willed but what God willed. The notion of persistence in that story is what I find difficult. The danger is that, as my wife, Sue, pointed out to me from an article she read, through persistence we can end up confusing God and Santa Claus. We present God with our wish

list and then rationalize why we didn't get what we wanted or asked for. This can lead to depression, guilt that we didn't do "it" right (how ever we define "it"), and feelings of inadequacy. I am sure this is not what Jesus wanted for his disciples!

Furthermore, if we could control God so that God would do our bidding, then God would cease to be God. What we need to remember is that prayer is the communication that develops, maintains, and grows our relationship with God. If we think about the nature of the relationship we seek with God, I suspect our prayers would become less controlling and more open-ended. We all like to feel free in our relationship with others--free to listen, free to be heard, free to receive advice, free to act according to our will. None of us likes to feel that we are controlled by those with whom we are in relationship. Why should it be any different with God?

While we do not wish to control God, I do feel that we also have to believe that we can influence the outcome of events. Larry Dossey, in his book Healing Words, scientifically proves that this is possible. The challenge is trying to remember, in praying to influence God, that God, not we, is the decision maker; and, just as we do not have to follow every piece of advice we receive, God is not obligated to act on the advice we give God. It would be very presumptuous of us to discern what is in God's best interest.

Actually, the more I think about it I am beginning to believe that the function of prayer is to open ourselves to be in alignment with God's will for us. Thus, like a bio-feedback loop, our prayers are in some way addressed to ourselves, to help us come more fully into alignment. Even if such an alignment is attained, it is always dynamic, never static; and thus the continued need for prayer. Such prayer needs to be open-ended, prayer without boundaries. Larry Dossey points out that all prayer is effective, but the most efficacious prayers are non specific, such as holding someone in God's healing light, as compared to praying for the removal of a cancer.

When we are aligned with God's will we feel a sense of harmony, or "rightness." We know this feeling but cannot easily articulate it. The reason is that the words used in prayers are themselves limited and limiting. This would indicate the desirability of moving away from the use of words in prayer, a disquieting thought for many of us who believe all prayer is verbal.

Perhaps the easiest point of entry into wordless prayer is through listening. "Prayer without listening is like bread without baking. The ingredients are there, but they lack the essential element to make our prayer complete." John Grossman, commenting on this quote from Arthur Wuth, says:

The longing to be more spiritually-minded is satisfied less by venting our intentions and rehearsing our impoverishment than by patient listening to the purifying, elevating, inspiring ideas with which Spirit continually provides us.

What makes it hard for us to listen is getting our mind still. If we cannot quiet what my spiritual director calls our "monkey mind," anything we listen to, including God, is like a voice over our own self-talk tapes, and we cannot clearly hear either ourselves or others. The spiritual discipline is to convey intentionality while trying to be fully and wordlessly present in any moment. We usually don't get it the first time. It takes practice and discipline.

After all, we are a culture of doers. We gain recognition and status through the things we "do" and the tangibles we acquire. Many of us find there are not enough hours in the day to do the things that need to be done. It is hard for us not to "do" but to simply "be." If some of his friends had been more able to be simple be with Duane Garrett, he might still be with us today. We are not good at "being," but this is what I believe we are being asked to do in prayer. Simply be. Immediately we want to know how to do that, and there are a variety of techniques available to help us. This is why so many Christians have turned to Buddhist meditations, Tai Chi, and Native American spirituality for help. The common thread through all of them is a movement towards oneness. This same path is found in the Christian discipline of compassion.

All these are forms of prayer, but all are prayers without boundaries. They are prayers that do not seek to limit and control but, rather, to open and set free. The purpose of prayer without boundaries, I feel, is captured by Paul in our text from Colossians. As Christians, the oneness we seek is the oneness of living in Christ--being an incarnational presence of God. Paul asks that we live in Christ, be rooted and built up in Christ, abounding in thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a prayer without boundaries, for prayers of thanksgiving do not seek to control or manipulate, only celebrate.

Paul cautions us to allow ourselves not to be taken captive through "philosophy or empty deceits, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe." Whatever binds and controls and limits keeps us from being fully embodied in Christ. The mystery is that being embodied in Christ is a boundary-less experience. Our point of entry into oneness with Christ is our baptism, which is a time of dying to the old and the beginning of living into the new. Dr. Herman Waetjen of San Francisco Theological Seminary translates from the Greek the words spoken by God, in Mark's Gospel account of what happened when Jesus emerged from the waters of his baptism, as "This is my son, in whom I am beginning to take pleasure." Jesus was on the right path, but he still had a long way to go on his spiritual journey--a journey that would take him into the wilderness, into ministry in a hostile world, and finally to a cross on Calvary. This is where persistence appropriately comes in, for we have a lifetime of trying to live an ever more Christ-like life. To achieve this, like Jesus, we need the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This, as our Gospel passage for today points out, must the be thrust of our persistence in prayer, for God will never cease to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. Asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit is a prayer without boundaries.

Paul points out that God has done one other thing for us. While we were engaged in deeds against our neighbor--in Paul's words, "dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of our flesh"--God erased the record, nailing it to the cross. What a powerful image: "God erased the record, nailing it to the cross." We are a forgiven people who God knows will sin again. Prayers to live into our forgiveness are prayers without boundaries.

Because the human will is so strong and there are so many pitfalls, we need to seek each other's help in learning how to pray. We need to learn not to fear asking others to teach us how they pray, for others can give us guidelines and suggestions for praying without boundaries. However, each of us must be free to find our own path of prayer to strengthen our relationship with God. As each of us grows stronger in our relationship with God, the whole community grows stronger in its relationship with God; and the realm of God, which is in our midst, becomes ever more manifest.

Amen.