The Simplest Form of Speech

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

July 29, 2007

Luke 11:1-13

There are few things we do that are as necessary as prayer----and few things as dangerous.

In Matthew, Jesus’ instruction on prayer is in a section of the Sermon on the Mount on the practice of piety. “Beware!” Jesus says. Beware of showing off your religious practices. Beware of wanting most to be seen by people and praised for your devotion. Watch out when you give money for the poor and needy for show. When you pray, Jesus’ says, “don’t be like the hypocrites” who love to be seen by others. “Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words.”

The biggest danger is that we will pray or give for the sake of impressing others with our eloquence or generosity. As one old rancher once told me, lots of prayers of preachers never make it past the attic. The danger is a confusion of audience.

Bill Moyers was asked to offer thanks at dinner with the Johnson family while visiting the Pedernales ranch. When he finished his prayer, President Johnson said, “Bill, you need to speak up; I couldn’t hear you.” To which Moyers replied, “I wasn’t speaking to you, Mr. President.”

Jesus’ advice was that we should pray and give in secret, with our hearts and minds lifted up to God; and we should pray simply and sincerely, aware that God already knows what we need and what is in our heart: no fooling God.

I am also aware of the dangers of public prayer. What a risk it is to try to lift up, to lead, a gathering in prayer! At its best, public prayers are really promptings for people to pray. (How I sometimes miss the call and response of the people, with their amens and “yes, Lords.”) Scott Cairns, a poet at the University of Missouri, also points out one of the dangers of pastoral praying:

            [The pastor] proceeds to coach The Holy One
            In the several ways He might pitch in and help, and opts to list
            The many ways our congregation might shape up,…(philokia, Lincoln, NB:Zoo   Press,2002):11.

I have heard prayers that were of the congregation, or advice to God, or even announcements in the form of prayer: “Lord, we ask your blessing tonight as we gather at 6 pm on the lawn for ice cream, each bringing our own lawn chairs.” Such dangers of prayer makes one want to keep one’s mouth shut! And yet we must pray. Or, to put it another way, we do pray. The hopes and fears and complaints and praises are lifted up to someone. We are in a relationship with our Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer. “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, unuttered or expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.” (Hymn 492, UMH) Abraham Heschel wrote, “The purpose of speech is to inform; the purpose of prayer is to partake.” The Apostle Paul says what we all feel when we are honest with ourselves: “…the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27) Or, as one of the ancient saints wrote: “We would be surprised to know what our souls say to God sometimes.”

In Matthew and in Luke, the disciples ask Jesus, how, then, do we pray? What do they really want to know? Perhaps they have noticed that Jesus prays often. And, being a disciple meant then more than to memorize the teachers words for an examination: it meant to become like the teacher. They want to be like Jesus, not just in knowing and passing on his words to others. They want to be like him in their inward being. They want to have what Paul later calls “the mind of Christ.”  They want to have the close, intimate relationship that Jesus has with the heavenly Father. Since all relationships involve communication in some form, the disciples want to know what they should be saying to God, how they should address God, what they should be praying for? So Jesus teaches them the prayer we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer. True to his own words about simplicity and brevity in prayer, Jesus lays out 5 simple petitions (7 in Matthew’s version.)

Each petitions is worthy of a sermon. But you and I do not have time this morning to ponder the meaning of each one. But I will share these observations. Praying the “Our Father” makes it possible to continue praying. Jesus would not have believed that God is male, but he trusted that God was intimately related to us----in the manner of a loving human father or mother. (For those of us who are fathers, this should be a humbling thought, not a source for bragging.) As a father would not think of giving a scorpion if his child asked for an egg, or a snake if he asks for a fish, so our heavenly father will not give us things that can harm us, but things that are good for us. If a human father or mother is this good, how much more will God give us good things.

God is for us and with us. If God cares for each sparrow, how much more does he care for you! God cares that we have bread (the necessities of living) day by day.  So, pray in the assurance that God’s mercy and active involvement on your life is steadfast and sure.

Sometimes, when praying the Lord’s Prayer myself, I stop with these two words. I rest a while in this assurance. In a world of such alienation and coldness and brusqueness, this awareness is a comfort. God cares for me, here and now. God cares for us, the whole collection of people and families who have made covenant with God. I pray for myself and for us. But we cannot stop there. If God is very close, God is also holy beyond our imaginings. And God has a dream for the whole earth, every last acre of it, every last person who dwells on it. Our God is not a tribal deity, caring only for those who recognize him. The only thing sadder than not believing that God loves you is  believing that God loves only you. Literally, the next words are translated: “holy be the name of you, let come the kingdom of you; let be done the will of you, as in heaven, also on the earth.” (Pocket Interlinear New Testament, Baker Press)

John Claypool wrote that the world is a battleground, not a playground. It is God’s will that the whole earth be redeemed, that not one will be lost. So we pray for God to re-make the earth after his will. And in so praying, we declare that our wills are one with God’s will. It is God’s will that righteousness and justice and peace be the norm in all the earth. With all that is chaotic and destructive, in a world where people seek to tear down, where so many live in luxury while “every day 3000 children under the age of five die….and most of them from diseases that can be prevented,” in a world such as this, we pray for God’s reign, to set things right.

The Lord’s Prayer expands our horizons. We pray for bread to sustain us and we pray for bread for all people who do not have it. We will speak up and show up to be instruments of God’s will for the earth. Each of us are called to discover our little piece of God’s vision and be at work in our arenas of influence, showing in word and deed the holy intention of our loving heavenly Father. And in a world which feasts on revenge, on getting even, on clobbering others before they can clobber us, we ask God for help to forgive others as God forgives us. Notice: this is not acting as if those who harm us are right. This would require us not to recognize justice. Those who sin against us may, indeed, owe us---at least an apology. But to forgive means that we can live without collecting the debt. And we won’t respond in kind. Such living will be a sign of God’s new order, God’s kingdom, God’s new way of being and living in human community.

The temptations will come our way. So we pray for our Abba to keep us from underestimating the power of evil, and overestimating our ability to resist evil on our own. Keep us, O God, from being unmade! Or, in Paul’s words, “Do not let us be squeezed into the world’s mold, but let us be transformed by the renewal of our minds.” Do not let us be overwhelmed by the evil of this world. Deliver us from evil.

These are deceptively simple words, these phrases from the Lord’s Prayer. They are a model prayer for all of our praying. What a gift Jesus gave his disciples, and through them, us. “How we approach God in prayer reflects our understanding of who God is, what God wants to do for us, and what God wants us to do for God.” (Raymond Bailey in Lectionary Commentary, Gospels)

The author, Elaine Ward, has written a simple story for children.

In the Garden the man and the woman talked with God. "That was a delicious fruit, God. Thank you for your plan for food," they would say.

Sometimes they said, "I'm sorry, God. Please forgive us."

Sometimes they asked God to help them take care of the animals they loved.

After they left the Garden they continued to talk with God. Their children, too, talked with God, and their children, and their children, and their children.

One day, a long time after the man and woman had left the Garden, an important person declared, "God does not have time for all this talk. We will only pray in church, and we will only use special words to speak with God."

The people came to church to pray, but they no longer talked with God, for sometimes they did not understand the special words. Sometimes they said the special words so often, they thought about other things as they prayed.

Then one day another important person declared, "God is so great! God deserves special words said only by special people"

Now the people came to church only to "hear" the special prayers prayed by the special people, and they no longer prayed or talked with God themselves. God seemed very far away.
Then one day a man, a very special man told the people, "You can talk to God yourself, using your own words, for God is like a loving Father." The man, the very special man, was God's very special Son.  (from Storytelling---With Stories to Tell, by Elaine Ward, Discipleship Resources, 1981)

The best gift of all is the Holy Spirit, the gift of God’s very self. How we long for this gift! How the worlds around us long for Jesus Christ, living in us.