Do you remember being taught to pray?
Who remembers being taught to pray, “Our Father in heaven…”?
I don’t actually remember being taught that. I feel rather as if I absorbed it out of the atmosphere and the services of the church. But there’s a good chance one of my parents, or a chapel leader, made a point of helping me learn the words, from before I remember.
And then as a young adult I wanted to “learn to pray”, so I learned about prayer.
This was before you asked google everything, so I read books, and went to adult education classes and learned mnemonics, like ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) and something else that used five fingers and separated “intercession” – praying for others – from “petition” – praying for your own needs.
I learned that the forms for morning and evening prayer in the Book of Common Prayer were meant for individuals as well as congregations.
I learned the Prayer of St Francis, and “the Sinner’s Prayer” and a nifty night prayer from the Anglican Church in New Zealand.
When I set out to learn to pray, I learned forms and formulas.
And so I assumed that that’s what Jesus is teaching, today.
That Jesus is demonstrating a specific set of words beginning “Our Father, hallowed be your name…” that we should repeat, in that same form.
In other words, that Jesus taught his earliest disciples, and eventually us, a prayer.
Or perhaps Jesus was teaching not specific words, but a formula: Greet God, praise God’s glory and God’s will for the world, ask for basic daily needs, for forgiveness, and for the protection of our faith. Amen.
That Jesus was teaching the disciples, us, how to pray.
And then this week I noticed that Jesus’ early disciples, watching him pray, don’t ask him to teach them a prayer, or ask him how to pray, but say teach us to pray.
To pray is action, not structure. In the way that learning “to walk” isn’t about a repeating pattern of specific steps, or a formula about putting one foot in front of the other in the same direction, but a fundamental skill, a deep habit, a capacity we use almost constantly.
Jesus has been modeling this praying life for them, for us, and now they ask – on their own behalf, and ours – teach us to pray.
And Jesus does.
The form and the formula are important. They are gifts and tools we need.
Praying “the Lord’s Prayer” – a specific set of words in any language, repeated over centuries in every possible circumstance on earth, has made “Our Father…” rich, and layered, and holy.
A short form of words that can carry every possible emotion and need from our lips and hearts to the heart and ears of God. A form of words that unites us with God and God’s people throughout the centuries – just as prayer is always supposed to do.
And the formula works, too. A pattern of greeting God, praising God, aligning with God’s will, trusting God for our necessities, seeking forgiveness – received and given, and requesting protection and guidance is a pattern that prompts us into helpful conversation with God in many different words, whether we pray on our own, or in communities.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there.
He begins to try to explain to his listeners what it means to pray – to be in relationship and conversation with God. In more dimensions than words, or even thoughts.
In our fundamental daily attitude, our deep habits, our nearly constant actions.
And, well, that gets a little complicated to describe.
Forms and formulas are much easier to convey in words than the attitude, the continuous relationship of prayer; a particular quality of trust, or friendship, or the habits of body and soul.
(It would be just as messy to try to teach the capacity and unconscious habits of walking with only words – just try explaining it!!)
So Jesus tells stories.
Stories which, to be honest, feel pretty awkward two thousand years and some significant cultural and linguistic leaps since Jesus first told them.
In twenty-first century New Jersey, few of us would text a friend at midnight to say “hey, my old neighbor from middle school just turned up to stay and I need your help to feed them”.
But for the folks Jesus first told this story to, life depended on being able to trust neighbors, old or current, to offer immediate and unstinting hospitality. No hotels, no Wawa, no way for a traveler to provide for themselves other than trusting the neighbors, wherever you are.
To convey the same sense of shock and reversed expectations here and now, Jesus might say to us, “imagine your home is on fire, and you call the fire department and they say ‘Yeah, sorry, can’t come. It’s been a day and we’re just about to take a nap.’”
Jesus is setting us up to respond, “What?! That’s crazy?”
Of course your neighbor is going to help you with the sacred obligation of hospitality.
Of course the fire department will come.
So of course God responds to us when we call upon the one we trust more than a friend.
Praying is a life in which we turn to God immediately and naturally, as to a friend, when something unexpected happens.
And also when something entirely expected happens, when our needs are ordinary, just as much as when our needs or hopes are extraordinary.
Ask, look, knock, as a matter of course, not afraid of doing it wrong, or asking for the wrong thing, or at the wrong time.
Turn naturally to God, knowing that God is going to respond.
Though not necessarily with precisely the thing we ask for, when we declare our wants and needs.
You might have noticed that in the “if your child asks for this, you’d give it to them, right?” examples, none of the kids cited are asking their parents for alllll the LEGO, now.
None are asking to have an entire case of Tastykake for dinner.
Jesus is not telling us that God gives us everything we have a whim or desire for.
Jesus is telling us that God is eager to give beneficial gifts, to give what will keep us whole, and healthy, and strong, and close to God.
And Jesus is encouraging us to never doubt that we should ask God for what is good.
That we don’t need to be pre-qualified, in any way, to ask God for the forgiveness, wholeness, health, life, love we need.
That we don’t need to be adult, or ordained, or special, or clean of conscience, or already holy to ask God to draw us closer; to invite God’s love, and generosity, and holiness to pour over us.
Because that is exactly what God is eager for us to do.
Jesus has taught us the form and the formula – a specific set of words, or a pattern of intentions – to help us convey our needs and hearts to God.
And Jesus modeled and lived and taught us to pray, invites us to live in the deep habit of relationship with God, rooted in trust, in friendship, in love.
And waits, in love, through the days and centuries, to see how we will take up that invitation.
To hear how we will pray.
