It Can All Be Prayer

Luke 11:1-13

by Scott Elliott @ Palm Bay, FL

Interesting scripture reading this morning.

Interesting scripture reading this morning.Pretty famous stuff.

The verses contain Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer, a powerful mantra really, that helps us be mindful of God while addressing the core of the gospel: honoring God, longing for God’s kingdom here on earth, provision of basic need, and forgiveness for not just our transgressions, but, our forgiving others’ transgressions, as well.

The verse also has “The Knock at Midnight” parable, perhaps best known in our generation from Martin Luther King’s sermon about it being midnight in America and African Americans were not going to stop knocking until the bread of justice in the form of civil rights was provided. Knock, knock, knock until what is needed comes to you, if not in kindness, then only because you are persistent! God’s will being done by our insistence. And the civil rights movement Rev. King led proved the truth of the parable.

And there is also that famous passage about “ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find,” which gives not only hope, but, empowerment to all who pray, to all in need. If we as humans would not give the opposite of what is asked of us, how could God who is love itself not provide the power of the Holy Spirit in response to our requests?

Today’s scripture is, to say the least, a very meaty passage. We could spend hours dissecting it, weighing it, holding it up to light to see many, many facets.

But today, today, I want to focus on a somewhat plain facet, something obvious, something maybe not so much meat, but bones. It is the skeleton upon which the story hangs. The disciples, the first saints of the church, the followers of Jesus are worried about how to pray. Remember the story starts with them saying “Lord teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

These are the men and women who hung out with Jesus, and they want help with prayer! Not only that, we know from the story that John the Baptist’s disciples had similar concerns.

I find great comfort in knowing that the followers of John and Jesus needed assistance with prayer. In seminary as I interviewed for an pastoral internship I confessed to a very seasoned pastor that a concern I had was I felt inadequate with prayer, and his response astounded me, he confessed that he also felt inadequate at prayer.

It is not just John and Jesus’s disciples, and seminarians and clergy that worry about prayer, most folks in the pews don’t feel they know how to pray very well. I suspect right now that many of you would agree that prayer can be a difficult, if not, scary topic.

Being asked to pray aloud can be downright frightening. Even if everyone is saying something in a circle, as we await our turn we are not so much listening to others’ prayers, as we are thinking about what we will say or should say, trying to get it right.

Even something as common as our weekly request to hold others in our prayers can be intimidating. How could you take the two dozen or so folks on our weekly prayer list and pray for them, when you can barely pray for your own needs and those of your family?

Since prayer can be scary, confusing and uncomfortable I thought I’d share a few ideas, theories and theologies about it, but, first I want to be clear on one point: if you do not remember anything else about the sermon or scripture today remember that John the Baptist’s and Jesus’s own disciples worried about how to pray, so those of us with concerns about prayer are in the best of company!

Speaking of good company, earlier this month I had the great privilege of working with about twenty-five of the sweetest coolest children, and almost as many wonderful volunteers, during our vacation bible school: Sacred Earth Adventures.

Originally I thought Sacred Earth Adventures was going to focus on educating children on how good creation is and how we can partner with God to be the good stewards we are called by God to be. We did discuss theses things, but, as Cathy Carnes, Nancy Cook, Adrienne Schier and I worked on putting the program together, it dawned on me that really it’s all about prayer.

The more I thought about it the more obvious it became that all we do as God’s partners in care of creation and of each other can be, and should be, prayer.

In today’s scripture Jesus answers the disciples request to be taught how to pray. One way that he answers the request is to teach the disciples words to a specific prayer, but, Jesus also teaches that those words are not the only words we can pray. Jesus notes that asking God anything, anything is prayer.

And if we think about it, it’s not just words that Jesus teaches are prayer. We often overlook in these verses that Jesus includes non-verbal acts like persistence, searching and knocking in his lesson on prayer.

Jesus, of course, is not alone in claiming prayer can be non-verbal. The bible includes many other acts of prayer: singing and dancing, even just being still and quiet are forms of prayer.

In Psalm 46’s famous phrase we are told to “Be still, and know that I am God: I am exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

In Psalm 47 we are told to “Clap your hands all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of Joy.”

In Psalm 136 we are told to “[G]ive thanks to the Lord, for [God] is good, for [God’s] steadfast love endures for ever.”

In Psalm 147 we are told “Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for [God] is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.’

Remarkably we are the ones with the power to get closer to God. We control how close we get to God! If we draw ourselves near to God, the very source of the universe, of life and love, is near to us.

Why is that? How could that be? Well, we live and move and have our being in God.( I’m pretty sure I’ve said that the last five sermons) say that almost God is ever-present soaking all of creation through-and-through and if we just focus on it God’s there. God’s here.

For example if we reach out and just rub the wood on furniture and focus on God, like a genie God rises out, not because we made God appear in the wood, but because we took the time to sense God’s presence there. If we touch, or see, or say, or feel anything in order to sense God, we will find God’s presence in that thing in that moment! We will be drawn nearer to God and God is, then, near to us.

The power of prayer, whether it is touching, seeing, feeling, talking, singing, dancing, walking, thinking or just sitting in quiet solitude, the power of such prayers, is drawing ourselves to God–who is everywhere, all the time.

That God is everywhere all the time not only means that we are swimming and soaked in what is a great ocean of God, but it also means that all of creation is connected by that very God-ness.

No human quite knows how, but, somehow when we focus our prayers on the God-ness in others even miles and miles away we not only draw nearer to God in that prayer, but, we seem to draw God nearer to them as well.

It’s like an inter-galactic knock on door of the cosmos to get the presence of God some attention, we must knock, knock, knock persistently, not to get God’s attention, but to get us humans up and pay attention to God.

To use another biblical metaphor, Paul refers to the Body of Christ as being a made up by the conglomeration of all of us. I like that image. When parts of a body are wounded, the wound knocks with pain until it has the other cells and body parts’ attention. The cells communicate and rally round to tend to the wound and the result can be healing.

Conversely when a part of the body experiences pleasure the body is awaken with that good news and as a whole rejoices.

This is a good metaphor for how we live and move and have our being IN CHRIST! Being in Christ’s body necessarily means that Christ is always, always with us–because we are in Christ. Our prayers are signals to the rest of the body of our needs and joys.

More importantly they remind us that we are not only a part of the Body of Christ, but also make us aware that Christ, the very God of love, is what we live and move and exist in. And we are electrified by consciously making that connection, we are awaken to God’s presence with us.

Prayer is turning to sense God wherever we are. To bring our focus and other’s focus on that Sacred presence.

Henri Nouwen, often called one of the great spiritual writers of our time, puts it like this:

At the end of the day I went out, tired and worn out to pick some things up in the circle and I looked at the altar in the quiet of the woods and there were all these rocks with drawings of trees and flowers and bugs and houses and people, and some had words like “bless the needy” “I like trees” “love,” God [hearts] U,” “love, and “I like my life”

It was such a powerful sight to see the prayers out there, it pepped me up and made the rest of the day go a bit easier– those simple prayers in that Scared space touched me deeply. We decided to leave a pile of small river rocks and a pen out there for others to write a prayer and leave it beneath the stone cross when visiting that Sacred place.

Prayer does not have to be difficult or time consuming. It’s all about focusing on God. If we pick up the bulletin and just turn to the page in back thinking about God that is prayer.

If we look at the names and say something as simple “God let your healing presence be experienced by these brothers and sisters that that is prayer to.”

If we hold the list up and say “God let your healing and comforting presence be felt by (read the list) that is prayer too. The more we pray the better. The more things we do as prayer the better.

But even the smallest shortest prayer matters.

Prayer is swapping thoughts or feelings with God. We can pray by talking, dancing, singing, drawing, playing music, thinking, walking, even by being quiet.

It’s prayer if you do it and mean to listen to God or have God listen to you. And the cool thing is the more you pray, the more you knock, knock, knock, the more the Empire of God enters the world, all of our world.

As you go out today remember as I asked, that the disciples of John and Jesus had questions about prayer.

Also do something, anything, with God in mind– it’s good for us all, and know that it’s prayer.

Amen.

– ENDNOTES–

1.Nouwen, Henri, The Only Necessary Thing, Crossroads Publishing Co., (1999), p. 40

Copyright Scott Elliott © 2007 

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