The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 12, 28 July 2013

“Prayer”

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 12

28 July 2013

The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour

Mill Valley, California

Genesis 18:20-32

Psalm 138

Colossians 2:6-19

St. Luke 11:1-13

INI

Images of Prayer

What are your images of prayer?  What comes into your mind when you hear the word prayer?  I’ll give you some of mine.  There are the praying hands by Dürer, and other hands by Maillot and others – hands clasped together almost in a sense of urgency.  Then there is this hymn.  It doesn’t appear in the 1982 hymnal, nor in the 1940.  It is a Methodist hymn that I learned as a child since it was in the Lutheran Hymnal:

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!

That calls me from a world of care,


And bids me at my Father’s throne


Make all my wants and wishes known.

In seasons of distress and grief,


My soul has often found relief,


And oft escaped the tempter’s snare,

By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!

Nice, but almost saccharine. It reminds me of a Calgon advertisement – “Calgon, take me away!”  But that is not prayer’s job or concern.  The way prayer appears here is in the guise of a quick panacea, a rapid fix.  I do have other images as well: A kneeler, a bedside, a table, a starry night, a rock in Gethsemane.  These all come to mind.  What comes to my preacher mind is that the universe of prayer is much broader than these images of prayer.  So I need to ask again.  What is prayer?  What is prayer for you?

Stories about prayer.

I have a story about prayer that I love.  It is a personal story, one that I have shared often, because it jolted me out of a sentimental view of prayer and praying.  My first parish was a mission parish in Taunton, Massachusetts – a small industrial city south of Boston.  It was home to many churches – a number of Roman Catholic Churches that represented every major immigration to this country, Congregational, Unitarian, two Episcopal Churches – on white collar, the other blue, and then Methodist, Baptist, etc.  Mine was the humble Lutheran one, eking out an existence in a storefront.  We had a mimeograph machine.  Do you remember those?  It had a central drum into which you poured ink and then brushed it around the drum.  I had no secretary, so I did all of that – preparing bulletins by typing a master stencil and then running the bulletin off on the mimeograph.  One day, I mounted the stencil, made five copies when the stencil tore, rendering it useless.  So I sat down, prepared another stencil, mounted it on the machine, ran 6 copies, and the stencil tore.  So I again typed up a new stencil mounted it, and – the stencil tore.  At that moment, in anger, I hit the handle of the machine, causing the drum to rotate wildly, making a great deal of noise, and screamed to the ceiling, “I’m doing this for you, don’t you know!” 

Prayer.

It isn’t anger or torn stencils that motivates Abraham at Sodom.  It is rather his memory of G-d’s graciousness.  We have to remember that this scene in the first reading happens immediately after the vision at Mamre, which we read about last Sunday.  Abraham intercedes for Sodom out of his experience with G-d, having been promised so much, and out of his relationship with Lot, his nephew, who lives in Sodom.  There are two dimensionalities to Abraham’s prayer – family, and his knowledge of G-d.  It is in that intersection that Abraham explores how far he can go with G-d in dealing with the “sins” of Sodom.  We won’t explore the nature of the sin, this morning.  We’re only interested in the nature of prayer.  Here it is prayer that explores all kinds of conditions and situations.

In the book of Job, after Job having lost all of his wealth, and most of his family,

Job explores the nature of his situation with G-d with friends.  He is convinced of the relationship he has with G-d, and struggles to retain his sense of belonging to G-d.  In the midst of this conversation, Job’s wife interjects, “enough with integrity, curse G-d and die!”  Give up, stop the praying, it’s all over – seems to be her message.  In Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the knights are confronted by a very medieval appearing vision of G-d, and as they make suitable obeisance, G-d shouts from on high, “Oh, stop your groveling!”

Abraham approached G-d with a sense of his relationship with G-d.  Job does as well.  It is the standard approach of all of Israel, as they pray to the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Prayer always begins from this sense of relationship, and in that relationship anything can be the subject of the conversation, a sinful city, an errant mimeograph machine, a confused and disillusioned Job.  That is why Jesus begins his template for prayer with the words, “Our Father”.  All is allowed when we speak to our parents – or at least it should be – and all the emotions are appropriate.

There are other examples of this free-wheeling prayer.  Martha complains/prays at the death of her brother Lazarus, “Lord, if you had only been here!”  Hannah weeps her prayer at the Tabernacle – she wants a son, and then sings a wonderful hymn in response to the answer that she receives – a song that serves as a model for the Magnificat.  Jacob wrestles with G-d, and pins him down expecting a promise.  Paul writes in Romans about the difficulty of prayer – that sometimes it’s unutterable, words simply not being sufficient:  

“In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.”

But you, how do you pray?

Jesus and prayer

One thing I’ve found in my life as a priest is the ubiquity of the Lord’s Prayer.  It is not my uncommon experience to have a meeting either opened or closed with the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s OK, I suppose, but I wonder what the prayers are lingering below the surface, just waiting for the Holy Spirit to give them voice.  One gets the sense from both Matthew and Luke, whose prayers differ slightly, that they are not prayers so much as a means to prayer – a technique, a template. 

Using that model then, how does Jesus’ prayer teach us to pray?

1.     Begin with the relationship.  Knowing that G-d is father or mother, that G-d loves you as one of the family; begin your praying at that point.  Bring to mind all that G-d has been in your life, good times and bad times.  Speak as a member of the family.

2.     Honor the relationship (Hallowed be thy name).  And maybe that part doesn’t need to be said aloud so much as remembered and brought to mind.

3.     Expect G-d to answer (Thy kingdom come).  And expect to make your case, as Abraham did.  Argue, and get involved.  The answer may be waiting in your own words and advocacy.

4.     Ask for the basics:  daily life (bread), forgiveness, and deliverance from difficult times.  And take a clue from the forgiveness part.  We ask for forgiveness promising to give it in return.  Should we also do it with bread – give bread to others in return; give solace and comfort in difficult time to others in their time of trial.

Jesus prayer is four simple approaches to prayer that he follows with words of advice and examples.  Be persistent in prayer.  That is something our prayer group here understands.  Almost daily I receive prayer requests from them, as I involve myself in their circle of prayer. 

Then Jesus prescribes three simple actions: Asking (having no fear – like Abraham), Searching (like Hannah who kept searching for an approach to G-d and her request for a son) and Knocking (like the impertinent neighbor).

The final expectation that Jesus give is both profound and utter wisdom itself: Expect good not only from G-d, but also from yourself.  Now that is prayer.

SDG