Luke 11:1-13; The Lord's Prayer I

"He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ 2 He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’ 5 And he said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” 7 And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 9 ‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’"

Introduction

This exposition will consist of three essays. They are derived from my chapter, "Jesus and the Life of Prayer" in my 1997 book (with Glandion Carney) entitled Yearning Minds and Burning Hearts: Understanding the Spirituality of Jesus (Baker, 1997, pp. 77-97).

I once had a pastor with a sign on his desk that said, simply, "Prayer changes things." After more than 20 years of thinking about that brief sentence, I believe I would say it differently. I would say, "Prayer changes us." The ultimate value of prayer is that it opens us to understand God and the world in fresh ways. Prayer gives us new spectacles to see the world--glasses that put the seemingly huge demands of contemporary life in a new perspective. Prayer helps us listen to the voice of God, accept the will of God and ask for the good things of God.

The practice of prayer is a standing rebuke to the wisdom of the world. The practice of prayer affirms a dimension to life that is unseen and unmeasurable, while the wisdom of the world considers something important only if it is visible and quantifiable. The practice of prayer proclaims that people are spiritual beings, rooted in the heart, while the wisdom of the world assumes that we are economic beings, concerned primarily with our personal net worth and an adequate retirement income. The practice of prayer indicates that God is the watcher, guide and protector of our lives, while the wisdom of the world teaches that unless we stand up for ourselves, no one will. The practice of prayer proves that "nothing will be impossible with God" (Luke 1:37), while the wisdom of the world says we need all the resources ahead of time and all the right people speaking up for us or we will not be able to get what we want out of life. The practice of prayer says, "Don't worry." The wisdom of the world says, "Calculate."

Prayer is one of the principal ways of enlarging our awareness of God and of the universe. Prayer assumes there is more to the world than we can experience with our five senses. The great diversity of living things in the world should not only increase our sense of wonder, but also give us an awareness of our human limitations. Just as it is true that blind people often develop superior sense of hearing and deaf people have refined senses of touch, so it should be the case that those who long for spiritual realities develop a more refined sense of God and the spiritual nature of life. We spend hours at the "Y" trying to hone our limited physical capabilities; why not spend some concentrated effort attempting to strengthen our spiritual endowments?

Prayer is the unique opportunity which God gives us to develop a deeper understaning of God and of the world. On one occasion Jesus chided people for their shallowness of spiritual awareness:

"He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?," Luke 12:54-56.

Note that this passage occurs directly before Jesus' teaching on prayer. It is almost as if he is trying to give those with "ears to hear" the "heads up" that interpretation of the unseen or spiritual realm is of the utmost importance in life. Jesus found fault with this crowd because their skill at "spiritual meteorology" didn't compare with their ability to predict a coming storm.

Three Characteristics of Prayer

What is the essential nature of prayer? First, prayer is the door or threshold to the spiritual world where God dwells in unapproachable light. It is the door to the inner world of the heart, whose contours have never fully been mapped. Prayer is the means to a "cartography of the soul," to a process of spiritual mapmaking. When we pray, we pursue Jesus into the deep things of life, where light and darkness dwell together and neither fully extinguishes the other. Prayer is the door into understanding the heavenly realms as well as the inky abyss. It opens new realms to us.

Prayer is also the anchor of our lives. It not only opens new vistas into the spirtual life, but also ties us ever more firmly to God in the process. One summer during college I worked at a large office building in San Francisco next to where a skyscraper was being built. It took the crew weeks just to drive the pilings deep into the ground. I still remember the ear-splitting crashes of hammers, the rush of pressurized air and the shouts of workers. They were anchoring the building, now among the tallest in San Francisco, deep into the bowels of hte earth so taht not even a major earthquake would topple it. Prayer is like that. It anchors us to God by blasting through the layers of debris and dirt of our lives so we might have a sturdy and strong life.

Prayer is, finally, a process of working the earth of the hearth, as the ancient monastic writers might say. In her book The Closter Walk, Protestant author Kathleen Norris writes about the ways that the Catholic monastic tradition provides a rhytym and depth for spirituality that many Protestants have never explored. When she says that the life of praer works "the earth of the heart," she means that prayer is like the act of cultivation. In order to work the soil, one must break up the hardened dirt clods, water the ground, free it from weeds and then plant a crop. Prayer is the way to "loosen up" the heart. During the natural course of our lives the "earth of our hearts" becomes parched, weed-infested and hard as flint. Unless we take care to break it up to run our fingers again through the rich soil that we know is there, our lives become as destitute and as desiccated as a desert.

More thoughts on prayer follow...

[Next]

2781