Lord, Teach Us to Pray
By
July 25, 2010
Lessons: Luke 11: 1-10
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
A homily delivered by Rev. Daniel A. Smith
At First Church in Cambridge, Congregational
Sunday, July 25th, 2010 – Healing Service
Lesson: Luke 11: 1-10
Lord, teach us to pray.
I wonder if these fives words ring as true for you as they do for me. Though I have a graduate degree in theology and have had a spiritual director for years, there are times when I still feel like a second grader when it comes to the practice of prayer, no offense to any second graders in our midst. Can any of you relate? I take comfort that even those who walked by Jesus’ side, who watched him do it again and again, still have the humility, the humanity, to ask how its done.
For some of us, prayer may feel like a place we’ve heard of but have never been, at least not to our knowledge. For others, prayer may conjure a deep feeling of being at home, a place where we feel held in a hammock of grace. For still others, the relationship may offer a mixture of experience. We can swing from moments of sublime intimacy and awe when our deepest, unspoken and even unknown yearnings come into focus to times of grave skepticism and self-devaluating doubt that as Martin Smith has written “cripple our capacity to honor ourselves as men and women of God.”
Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us to pray like John the Baptist, like Isaiah before him. Teach us to pray like Jesus. Teach us to pray without ceasing, like Paul. Teach us to pray like Siddhartha or Thomas Merton, like Lao-Tse and Brother Lawrence and Sister Julian of
Jesus’ answer is to our ears as traditional as they come. Jesus, who taught us to pray, by saying “Our Father, who are in heaven.” (I was wondering if any of you might start saying it with me out of habit.) I’ll come back to Jesus’ prayer in a moment. First, I want to read you a less traditional, ‘teach us to pray’ response offered by the Nobel winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz. I’ll read it slowly, and I’ve made a few copies if anyone wants one at the end of service to read it yourselves.
You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.
I love this image of our prayers building velvet bridges. I love the idea that prayer, whatever else it may be, helps our hearts to move someplace else, perhaps someplace opposite even, a place that broadens our perspective and our imagination of what is. I also love the collectivity of the “we” here, the sense that we walk the bridge together, feeling compassion for those entangled in flesh, and for all their grief and pain and even hope.
Did you notice how the disciple asks Jesus not, teach me to pray, but teach us to pray. Maybe he was onto something. So often we think of prayer as a solitary exercise and for good reason. Jesus prays alone many times. But oh how powerful it can be to share prayers with one another, to not only, in the words of Rabbi Heshcel, “make our hearts audible” to God but to make our hearts audible to each other as well. There is an encouragement we can each feel as we see others take a step onto that velvet bridge.
Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus’ answer in Luke 11 is far from comprehensive. But it’s a good starting point. Someday, I will offer a sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. For now, I just mention the first two lines here. Father, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom Come. As one scholar has noted, this verse seems to suggest that “through prayer believers participate in God’s commitment to bring forth God’s reign.” Indeed there’s a sense here not only of honor and praise but also of a yearning for fulfillment, not merely of our dreams for whatever healing, wholeness justice and peace but for God’s dreams for these things as well. Jesus connects the two, as if to say that when we honor God through prayer, when we lift our hearts in praise, we are helping to draw God’s kingdom, glory and power near. Again, so often we think of prayer in individual terms. Imagine, as Jesus did, that when we pray, we are not only airing our deepest feelings, doing our part to adore, to confess, to intercede, to give thanks. Imagine that when we pray, we are doing our part to establish the fullness of God’s peace here on earth
Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us to walk, aloft on a velvet bridge to the shores of your kingdom which offer to all that solace and comfort, wholeness and peace that the world cannot give. With each step, with every word spoken or heard, increase our compassion for those entangled in flesh. Even if we question whether such a shore awaits on the other side, God teach us to pray, teach us to move towards you, all the same. Help us to do it in our daily lives, in times of need and in times of joy, help us to teach each other and to learn together how to build an ever stronger bridge to You. And let us walk it together, even now. Amen.