Sermon: The Lord’s Prayer: Teach Us To Pray
March 10th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Luke 11:1-11
I read an Ann Landers column this week where she shared stories she had received from her readers about children’s misunderstandings of the Lord’s Prayer. One woman wrote that when her twin daughters were young, she taught them to say the Lord’s Prayer before going to bed. One night as she stood outside their bedroom door, she could hear them say, “Give us this steak and daily bread, and forgive us our mattresses.” A reader from Uniontown, OH recalled thinking the prayer was, “Give us this day our jelly bread.” A man from Grand Junction, CO wrote that when he was younger, he believed the line was, “Lead a snot into temptation.” and thought he was praying for his little sister to get into trouble. A reader from San Francisco learned the prayer as, “Our Father, who are in Heaven, Howard be thy name,” and always thought that was God’s real name. Another wrote from Montana, that his son came back from preschool to share a prayer he learned: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, how didja know my name?”
Maybe some of you have similar stories you could tell about misunderstandings of the words in this prayer. And while as we have grown beyond these kinds of silly misunderstandings, there may be other kinds of misunderstandings that persist. Did you know that just 3 months ago, Pope Francis announced that the Catholic Church will be making a change to the line, “Lead us not into temptation” because it seems to be causing a misunderstanding? The pope said, “It’s not the Lord that tempts. It is not that God [leads] me into temptation and then [watches] how I fall. A father does not do this. A father quickly helps those who are provoked into Satan’s temptation.” The line Pope Francis is now using is, “Do not let us enter into temptation.”
In addition to misunderstandings, sometimes this prayer can become so familiar to us that we stop paying attention to what exactly it is we are praying for. So for both of these reasons, I have chosen to use the Sundays in Lent to focus on the Lord’s Prayer. We’ll take it line by line, using Luke’s version. It is shorter and simpler than the version found in Matthew’s gospel, though Luke goes on to add the little parable stories and sayings that are not part of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew. It’s these parables and the conversation that happens around the actual prayer that I would like to focus on this morning as we set the stage to dig deeper into the contents of what Jesus taught the disciples to pray.
As I prepare for this sermon series, one of my conversation partners is a book published by Judson Press about a year ago, by Alice Burnette Greene, titled The Revolutionary Power of the Lord’s Prayer. Rev. Greene is a retired pastor who served in American Baptist churches in the Chicago area as well as in Washington D.C. She is married to Rev. William Greene, a retired Methodist minister. (We too know that Baptists and Methodists can get along very nicely!) This book has been chosen as the 2019 ABC Reads book, recommended for church and small group study.
As I read Pastor Greene’s book and studied the passage, I began to see that the verses just before and after the actual prayer teach about what our approach toward prayer should be, as well as what God’s approach toward prayer is.
The Disciple’s Approach to Prayer
Let’s start with what we learn about our approach to prayer:
1. Be teachable.
Did you notice that Jesus didn’t initiate this conversation about prayer? It wasn’t Jesus saying, I think you all need to get better at this prayer thing and here’s how I want you to do that. No, it was the disciples who asked! And who then listened attentively enough so that they could put it into practice, and so that it could be passed on to others, and so that it eventually could be written down for all disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are to approach prayer with a teachable heart, asking God to teach us about prayer, eager to learn about prayer from Jesus. In my own experience, I find I am always learning new things about prayer, finding new aspects of prayer that are meaningful and keep me growing in my relationship with God. There is one member of this congregation who eagerly reads every book I give her about prayer. Be teachable in prayer.
2. Desire a deeper experience of God and a greater power for living
It’s not just the young who need to be teachable about prayer, children or those young in their faith. The disciples that asked Jesus to teach them to pray were grown men. As far as we know, they had all been raised and trained in families that practiced their Jewish faith. These disciples had left their jobs, their families, their security and comforts to follow a wandering preacher. By the time they asked Jesus to teach them to pray, they had been with him for some time and had experienced much – they’ve heard many sermons, witnessed many miraculous healings, evil spirits being cast out, even people being raised from the dead. The 12 of them have been sent out in pairs to proclaim that God’s rule is near and were given power to heal the sick, to cure diseases and drive out demons themselves. Then they were sent out in pairs again, 72 of them, to prepare the way for Jesus, to preach and heal some more. They have seen Jesus’ power and authority and have put it into practice in their own lives. Yet they long for more. They long for an even deeper experience of God and a deeper power through which to touch the lives of those around them. It is essential for us also, to come to prayer with a longing for a deeper relationship with God and a deeper power for living and serving that results from prayer.
3. Be audaciously bold; Be confident; Be persistent
In the stories and sayings following the prayer, Jesus is showing his disciples the attitude with which they should approach prayer. He likens us to someone knocking on a friend’s door at midnight asking for help, and names the quality/characteristic that we should emulate in prayer (11:8). The NIV describes it as “shameless audacity.” The CEB, on the back of the bulletin, uses the word “brashness.” Others use “boldness”, “impudence” or “shamelessness.”
There are things that I might be ashamed to ask for from a neighbor or friend or one of you, but would not be ashamed to ask for from my husband or my parents or one of my daughters. Jesus seems to be saying, approach God like a close friend, with whom you are not ashamed to name your needs. There is nothing that you should be ashamed to share with God or to ask for in prayer. Come with boldness, with brashness, with impudence even.
Ask, seek, knock, Jesus teaches. We are to approach God in prayer with persistence. Ask, and keep on asking. Seek, and keep on seeking. Knock, and keep on knocking. Yet this persistence is not generated out of doubt that anything will come of the efforts, that we somehow need to convince God. This is the persistence born of confidence, the persistence that trusts in the goodness of God. We come to God in prayer, confident, because of what Jesus also teaches us in these stories about God’s approach to prayer.
God’s Approach to Prayer
1. God will hear and will respond
Jesus gives us this image of God as friend, asleep with his children around him. Yet when summoned by someone in need, friend or not, Jesus says, “he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.” (11:8) Rev. Greene explains, “Jesus wanted the disciples to understand that if they could expect a not-so-good friend to respond to a knock on the door in the middle of the night out of moral obligation to do so, they could surely expect God, who is holy and loving and worthy of praise, to respond to their prayers. Remember that Jesus was talking to faithful disciples who wanted most of all to do God’s will. Jesus wanted them then, and he wants us today, to know that God will always respond to the prayers of faithful disciples.”
What a reassurance and encouragement it is to all of us who may have had moments when we’ve wondered if God is really paying attention to our prayers. If you are wondering that right now, Jesus is telling you that God is listening, and that God will respond. Jesus makes that clear by adding the sayings, “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find…”
Unfortunately, too often these verses have been lifted out of the context of Jesus’ teaching in this passage and used to convince people that if they pray faithfully and sincerely enough, God will give them anything they want. Then, when they don’t immediately receive what they pray for, they become confused and think something is wrong with their prayers or with their faith or with God. It is important to hear these words of assurance in the context of the prayer that Jesus has just taught them to pray: for God’s kingdom to come, for daily bread, for forgiveness, for help staying away from temptation. When we ask for these things, when we ask for what is necessary for us to be in right relationship with God and to faithfully fulfill God’s purposes in our lives, we can be confident that God will provided what is best for us.
2. God will not harm
That is also the point in the story Jesus tells about the child asking his father for a fish or for an egg. Just as we wish to give those we love good things, so does God even more want to give us good gifts, to give us what is best for us. Answers to prayer are never like a cheap gag gift that looks like a beautiful jewelry box on the outside but when you open it a scary spring-loaded snake jumps out. God will never trick you.
Some of you may have had fathers who you could not trust to give you good things. That can make it harder for you to trust God, but Jesus assures you that God is the Good Parent, the one will never give you something that will harm you. God is good, all the time. God responds to prayer as an opportunity to pour out evidence of His love and care over us.
3. God wants to give God’s self to us in prayer
In fact, Jesus concludes this teaching about prayer with an amazing revelation. He says, “…how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.” God doesn’t just want to give us things, give us opportunities, give us guidance, God wants to give us God’s very self, God’s Spirit! That happens in prayer and through prayer. Isn’t that amazing? God longs to give us the best gift of all – God’s Holy Spirit.
So we come to prayer, teachable, audacious, brash, persistent, confident, trusting in a God who has invited us to ask and seek in prayer and who will answer and give us good things. We come to prayer eagerly anticipating the best gift of all, Godself. What an amazing Father and Friend!
Closing Song: “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” # 622
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