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Written by Jeanne Knepper
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Sunday, 29 July 2007 |
TEACH US TO PRAY
Psalm 85; Luke 11:1-13
July 29, 2007
When Andrea was a girl and I was a busy parent, working, going to school, trying to read what I needed to read for class and citizenship, it was often the case that she would come into the living room and start telling me about something that was going on or important in her life. She would talk, impassioned, and the paper would remain up in front of my face. Finally, exasperated, she would protest, “Mom, you’re not listening to me!” And then I, in all smugness, would recite back to her exactly what she had said, word for word, with all the inflections exactly so, right up to the “Mom, you’re not listening to me.” She would walk off, knowing that she was right, and also knowing that I could play games with the best of them. For the fact of the matter was, in fact, that I wasn’t listening. I was playing the conversation back like something that had been recorded on tape, but I was not present in it, I was not affected by it, I was not there for her. These many years later, I am embarrassed by my pretense of presence—and in some ways, I still have a lot to learn about how to really be present in an encounter with others, or with God.
I was reminded of this when our adult Sunday School class decided to divide into prayer teams of two. For a week, and then for another week, we would covenant to pray daily, and to talk with each other about the experience. My partner was Jeff. In our first conversation, we were to decide and share with each other when we would pray each day. “That’s easy,” I thought, “I’ll pray while I exercise.” As part of my continuing practice of reclaiming physical health, I’m committed to exercising each day. Two or three days a week, I go to a facility where I use machines and guidance to develop strength and flexibility. Most of other days I ride my exercise bicycle in the morning. I’d just do my praying in the same time, legs pumping or pushing on the leg press, mind with God.
Surprise!—It was a crock. Yes, there had been a number of times, while riding the bicycle or walking, when my mind had turned to prayerful reflection, sometimes leading me to helpful insights or commitments. But to think that it could work like that—I was treating God just as I had treated Andrea so many years before. I’m too busy to give you my full attention—here, how about a scrap, along with my clever demonstration that I am really here for you! I wasn’t. Mostly, what I learned in that week was how slipshod and arrogant I was about the practice of prayer. It was pretty embarrassing when we gathered a week later and my turn came to report back on my week of prayer. All my thinking to myself—I decided years ago to devote my life to God’s will, I intend to live my life wrapped in daily on-going prayer, I’m a pastor, for crying out loud—it all sounded pretty phony when I looked at the reality of my attempts at prayer that week.
And so, I started over the next week. This time, I tried a time of quiet, but with a sort of a question in my mind, “How should I pray?” I felt a kind of leadership, to pick two of you to hold close in an attitude of care and concern for a while. No promises, just a leading to be intentional about active caring presence. I am trying to live into that call, and it feels good, right. I have no clear idea where it will lead, but I’m willing to keep listening.
It was with this experience that I came to today’s gospel passage, the disciples coming to Jesus and asking him, “Lord, teach us to pray, like John taught his disciples to pray.”
The question sprang from some cultural beliefs about the role of the religious leader and the nature of prayer. Some of these are rooted in our long history as human communities existing in the presence of powers we can neither understand not control.
If we go back in time to the earliest periods of human culture, we find people who lived in a world awash with mystery and beauty and terrifying power. Hunters who gathered around fires in caves tried to capture the powers present in the animals they hunted by painting the forms of those animals on the cave walls and watching them seem to move and run in the flickering light from the camp fire. The power of mystery, of life, the holy, uncontainable power was resident, they believed, in everything around them—in the animals with their graceful strong legs, in the shelter of trees, and the clouds that carried water and shade, in the sun that returned again after the low light of winter. Everything was sacred, holy, other and brother to them. To pray was to be humble and connected and grateful, a way of living in grace and gratitude. God came to them as brother sun and sister antelope, as the awesome and frightening holy power of creation, life and death.
If we look forward in human history, we come to the time when the first agricultural revolution led to the building of barns to hold surplus grain, large herds, and seeds for the next year. Now people gathered into cities and some among them began to specialize, taking up trades relying on currency for their sustenance. People in these new towns no longer lived so elementally connected to the animals of prey, to the spontaneous growth of nutritious plants in the fields and forests. Agricultural societies had new needs, for stability, for good crops, for peace among peoples, for reliable distribution of wealth. Some became rulers, judges, adjudicators in disputes. And, if that which was holy and other took the form of nature and the power of the natural world for the hunter/gatherer, in the new cities people identified power with rule, with authority over distribution, with wealth. The gods of the hunt fell away, and God took on new names, King, Lord, Ruler, Master of the Universe. Much of the language of the Psalms comes out of this worldview, which is why the psalms so often seem to be pleading with a distant and tremendously powerful but capricious ruler, pleading that that ruler would grant humans blessing and favor. In these times, the persons who were set apart as religious leaders were expected to learn the special words and rituals that would capture the attention of the gods and lead to favor and blessing for the one praying. The words of the disciples, “Teach us to pray,” heard in this context, mean, “Train us to know the rituals that will influence the behavior of the gods, teach us the special words that will control what sometimes seems to be the capriciousness of the gods, or of God.”
Teach us to pray, take us into your secret inner circle of priests who know how to manipulate the gods into pleasing human beings. Teach us the rituals and fancy words and sacraments of power, so that we might use them to attract favor and blessing from the gods, thus demonstrating our power to influence the gods and bring blessing to the patrons who might be willing to support us as religious leaders. Lord, teach us the magic, powerful, secret words and rituals of power and prayer.
And Jesus responded with such simple words. When you pray, pray a simple prayer, one that the editorial board of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translate as “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” Eugene Peterson, translator of the version of scripture called The Message, brings the words to us in this way: “Father, reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.” Both of these translations hint at but eventually avoid the most radical part of Jesus’ prayer. Jesus did not use a word that is the equivalent of what we mean when we say “Father,” with all its trappings of patriarchal power and cultural authority. His word was “Abba,” a word more accurately translated as “Papa,” or “Daddy.” This is what Jesus was telling his followers: “It’s not about magical sacred words. It’s about relationship. God is not some distant power, some ruler or king or lord or master of the universe. God is a God who loves you, loves you like a father loves his child.” I’m pretty sure, given the meaning that Jesus was trying to convey, that he would be more frustrated if by our choice to call God “Father” with a capital F than he would be if we were to call God “Mama.” What he was after was a word that captures that relationship of tender intimacy and care. Approach God with the same trusting manner that a small child uses to approach his Mama, her Papa. Be straightforward and simple; ask for what you need; believe that God will respond like a loving parent, listening, loving, giving good things, being patient and intimate and always present. Believe this is who God is, and lay your heart’s desire open. And if it seems that God isn’t listening, persist, knowing that God really does love you and desire good for you.
The words convict me. I had been distant as a parent and I prayed like someone who expects God to be equally distant and distracted—and who would respond with just that kind of detached, uninvolved distance. “Sure God, I’m here, multitasking as I pray. Wouldn’t want to be wasting time, you know.”
I think—or maybe I hope—that God shook her head, chuckled deeply in his throat, and said something like, “Okay, are you ready to try again? Let’s see if we can spend some time together, talking, listening, being glad to be in each other’s presence.” And then it came to me, another image, that God wants to be with us, in relationship, like the parent I am now who longs to spend time with my daughter, like two old lovers who sometimes talk and sometimes listen and sometimes just spend time together, quiet or busy, but fully aware of and present to each other, living together, in harmony.
There is a story about Mother Teresa, who was being interviewed about her remark that she prayed daily. The reporter asked, “What do you say to God?” Mother Teresa replied, “I don’t say anything. I listen.” “Well then,” continued the reporter, “What does God say to you?” “God doesn’t say anything,” she replied, “God listens.” Confused, the reporter asked, “How can you pray when both you and God do nothing but listen?” “Ah,” she replied, “explaining this would take far longer than you have time for.”
Prayer is not something we explain. It is something we do, wholeheartedly or not at all. And whether we do it or not makes all the difference.
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