"Lord, teach us to pray."

"Lord, teach us to pray."

And he said to them, when you pray, say:

"Father, hallowed be thy name."

We call it the Lord's Prayer, and we say it together every time we come to this place for worship. For many of us, perhaps even most of us, the prayer was memorized in our childhoods, and comes easily to minds and lips. We can say it without reading it or thinking about it. "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." It is the church's prayer. It is the prayer of all prayers. We learn what prayer is from this prayer. For when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus doesn't give instructions or explanations. He doesn't teach a class on prayer or preach a sermon on prayer or hand out a book on prayer. What does Jesus do instead? He prays. Do you want to know what to pray? Do you want to know how to pray? Then pray like this, Jesus says. The Lord's Prayer teaches us what prayer is all about.

"Father, hallowed be thy name." Abba, Father, make your name holy. Sanctify your name, O God. Prayer is speaking to God. Prayer is talking to God -- talking to God -- not talking to ourselves or to each other. So God's name comes first when we pray. It is to God that we pray. Maybe this is such a simple truth that we forget how important it is. A lot of people tell me they could never pray in public. And I understand the fear of public speaking. But prayer is talking to God. In our prayers, private and public, we address God, not the congregation, not any other hearer. So we really don't have to worry about how we sound. We don't have to wonder what kind of impression we've made. In his book, Grace All the Way Home, Mark Trotter offers this advice: "Throw anything up there. Stumble, use bad grammar, have long embarrassing pauses, split your infinitives and even dangle your participles. It doesn't matter. Just groan or sigh if that's all you can do, because God's hearing your prayer does not depend on your eloquence but on God's grace, which is already at work in your life." (Quoted by Rev. Robert M. Holmes in his sermon, "The On-Going Conversation," July 29, 2001, www.day1.net.) "When Bill Moyer was an assistant to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, he was invited to the family room of the White House for a meal one evening. Since Moyer is an ordained Baptist preacher, the President asked him to return thanks. As he was praying, the President could not hear him and addressed Moyer, 'Bill, I can't hear you. Speak up!' Moyer responded, 'I am not speaking to you, Mr. President.'" (Story told by Dan Flanagan in Lectionary Homiletics, June/July 2007, p. 80.) When we pray, we are talking to God.

But what kind of God -- who is this God to whom we pray? The God whose name is holy is the God of our faith, the one God, the God of all creation. When we pray, 'Hallowed be thy name,' we are praying that God be truly God. "Be holy for us God. Thou who art holiness, be holiness here and now. Be to us who you truly are God, O holy God."

The God of our prayers is the God of Scripture -- the creator, the law-giver, the loving parent who sent us Jesus Christ, the deliverer from death. Sometimes we pray to lesser gods, don't we? To a god more convenient, more pliable, more like us -- who sees things the way we see them, who does what we want done. But Jesus tells us to pray to the God he calls Father. And this God is the Lord of all creation -- not a private tooth fairy. This God is the Savior of the world, not a magical genie who grants us our three wishes. We pray to the God who raises the dead and heals the sick and finds the lost and comforts the sorrowful and strengthens the weak. The God of our prayers isn't a universal tinkerer or a candy machine in the sky. We pray not to a great magician; we pray to the One who for our sakes became flesh and dwelt among us. Prayer is speaking to God. And it is the God of heaven and earth, the God of our salvation to whom we pray.

"Thy kingdom come." Reign among us, O God. Rule us with your wisdom and truth. Bring about the time when we live in peace and justice. Thy kingdom come.

God has promised us a new heaven and a new earth. When we pray, 'thy kingdom come.' we are pleading for that promise to come true. For the future God has promised to enter into the present and transform what is to what shall be. And the only way for transformation to occur is for God to enter into this time and place and bring it about. So to pray for the coming of God's kingdom is to pray for the coming of God himself.

"Thy kingdom come" is the basic petition of all our Christian prayer. For what we ask is that God himself come to us, that God be near and present. Prayer then is our cry to God. "Come, O Lord, come now. Come quickly. Be with us God. Be God for us now. Be God for us here in this place. Come to us."

Because we need you, God. We need you, God. Think about this for a little while. If we always felt God's immediate presence, would we pray for God to come to us? If we have everything we need, if all our questions are answered, all our hopes fulfilled, all heartaches soothed, all fears relieved -- would we need to ask for any kind of help or assurance? No -- we don't write letters to people when they are sitting across the table eating dinner with us. We don't ask friends to come for a visit when they're already here. Praise and thanksgiving are our responses to God's nearness and our celebration of God's blessings. But the kind of prayer Jesus teaches is the prayer offered out of need, a prayer offered out of emptiness, not fullness. What this means is that we don't have to feel close to God before we can pray to God. We don't have to be in a special mood -- or create a certain atmosphere for praying. There's an old story about a monk who was bothered by mice playing around him when we prayed. "To stop it, he got a cat and kept it in his prayer room so the mice would be scared away. But he never explained to his disciples why he had the cat. So one day, the monk walked down the corridors of the monastery and noticed that each of his disciples had a cat in their prayer room. After seeing the monk with a cat, they thought having a cat was the secret to powerful praying." (Rev. Charles Reeb, I Wonder Why My Prayers God Unanswered, September 17, 2005, www.day1.net) There is no secret. No special gimmick. And prayer isn't only for people who think of themselves as religious, either. Praying isn't something that only pious people or educated people or church people can do the right way. Because prayer is for all of us. Because all of us have needs. Prayer is talking to God. And whether you feel extra close to God or not, you can still talk to God. And it's even okay not to feel close to God, because what we offer God in our prayers are not our feelings, but our brokenness, not our spiritual successes, but our yearnings and our achings for God to be with us.

And we pray, "Give us each day our daily bread." Jesus does not ignore our human needs. He teaches us to ask God to satisfy our needs. "Give us each day, God, what we need."

But what do we need? That's the problem, isn't it? For we are so consumer oriented and we live with such abundance all around us, that it's awfully easy for us to confuse what we truly need with what we want, or with what we imagine we need. If we use our heads, though, we can tell the difference: we need nourishment and warmth and shelter. Give us healthy bodies and sane minds. We need strength and courage and rest from our labors. We need to be touched and held. Give us companions to share our joy and our sorrow. We yearn for justice and liberty. Give us dignity and respect. Here is our daily bread. For these things we may pray. But there are some things we do not need -- a victory on the ball field, more riches than we could ever use, an elaborate church building, deluxe sports cars, vacation homes, winning lottery tickets, parking spaces. It is easy to pray for what is trivial or frivolous. And sometimes our prayers sound more like letter to Santa Claus, long rambling lists of everything we want for ourselves. Jesus assures us that God will not give stones to his children when they ask for bread. It is right for us to ask God to give us what we need. "Give us each day our daily bread." Our problem is that sometimes we are like children who ask for stones instead of bread. Our prayers turn into requests for what is unnecessary and selfish and sometimes even destructive. And you know what God does then? We ask for stones, for what we don't need, and God goes ahead and gives us bread! We pray to be left alone -- and instead God confronts us with our neighbor's need. Give us tranquil lives, we pray sleepily. Yet in the morning we awaken to the noisy sounds of human pain and joy. We pray to the great magician and we are answered by the crucified Savior. God knows what we need. To pray is to put our trust in God. God will give us our daily bread. God gives what God promises. Prayer is not a ploy for getting what we want out of God. God knows what we need. Give us our daily bread.

But sometimes we pray in earnest for what we need -- and yet we are met with silence. Hungry people starve. Sick people die. Relationships fall apart. Children are abused. What then? Keep on praying, says Jesus. Don't get used to the way things are. "Lead us not into temptation." Don't let us become complacent to the way the world is. It's tempting to give up on God and to assume that this must be the way things are supposed to be. It's tempting to accept what we see around us. Do not lead us into temptation, God. Do not let our trust in you grow weary.

For God has promised that one day our situation and the world's situation will be completely transformed. Prayer is holding God to that promise. Give us what we need. Bring to us your kingdom. Come to us, O God. Feed, heal, save and deliver the people of the world.

The people of the world. Christian prayer is always corporate prayer. We pray as a community. Even our personal prayers are prayed in solidarity with all those who call upon God.

Listen: the prayer says, "Our Father," not my Father. "Give us our daily bread," not give me my daily bread. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" -- not lead me, and deliver me. The Lord's Prayer belongs to the church and it teaches us that we are united by our faith in the one God. We are bound together. And we pray our common prayer out of our common plight to our common Lord for our common hope. What we hope for the coming of God's kingdom. Our hope is for the whole creation, not just for ourselves. God is the God of all nations and all peoples. Therefore we may not ask this God for anything that separates us from our neighbor. We cannot petition God for our daily bread in such a way that daily bread is denied to our neighbor. We cannot replace the one we call "Our Father" with a private guardian angel. God's kingdom cannot come to us apart from our neighbor and still be God's kingdom. For God's kingdom includes all creation. God's will is not just that you and I find salvation; Gods wills for the world to be saved. So we cannot pray for ourselves only. For the sake of all the world's people we pray, "Our Father." Be God for us here and now. Give us the things we need. Forgive us. Lead us not into temptation. For the glorious day when you rule in triumph we pray -- thy kingdom come. Come, come, O Lord. Hear our prayer, O Lord of heaven and earth. Hear our prayer. Come to us. Come. Pray with me now: "Our Father who art in heaven..." Amen.

Return to the Sermons index page

Return to our Home Page