26^th July 2010

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley

Lessons -- Psalm 19; Colossians 2:6-10; Luke 11:1-13

One of Jesus' disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray . . .' (Luke 11:1)  . . .  And Jesus said 'Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.' (vv 9,10 RSV)

For many people it as natural as breathing to ask God for anything they want. They believe in the 'power of prayer' to meet their every need and enable them to live happy, successful lives. At times of illness and trouble they automatically call upon God for help, support and guidance, confident that God will give them answers to their problems, large and small alike.

Jacques Ellul tells of 'a strange custom in France which involves inscribing prayers on plaques in churches. These graffiti . . . are surely a most direct expression of popular prayer. . .. There are requests by the thousands for success in school examinations, requests to be loved by "X", or to be healed. . .. These inscriptions reveal the true content of popular prayer, always quite simple, very concrete, very immediate. Not once have I seen a request for the Holy Spirit. We can only be persuaded that such is indeed the content of the prayers of millions of Christians.'  (Prayer and Modern Man)

Today, however, prayer is often thought to belong to a bygone era -- a quaint or dangerous relic of a superstitious and immature past. For many of us, prayer is a useless monologue with a non-existent or silent deity that is designed to allay our fears, meet our needs and excuse us from taking responsibility in the face of hardship and uncertainty.

We might expect that Jesus' followers would belong to the 'power of prayer' brigade -- confident that whatever they ask of God will be granted. In fact, followers of Jesus are so uncertain when it comes to prayer that they ask him 'to teach them to pray' (v1). Paul even admits that 'we do not know how to pray as we ought' (Romans 8:26). No! Prayer doesn't come naturally to Christians who need to be properly educated by Jesus so that our prayers aren't self-centred or irresponsible but are in sync. with God's good and gracious purposes for humanity.

* The first thing to learn is to whom prayer is to be addressed. Jesus doesn't begin with a method -- 'six steps to a successful prayer life' -- but with a Person. He doesn't teach them 'how' to pray but 'to whom to pray'. It can't be assumed that we know whom we are praying to!

We are to address God as 'Father'. As we know, there is a great deal of sensitivity today about addressing God in this way. It is thought to be unacceptably sexist and authoritarian in a non-sexist and egalitarian society. This is not the place to debate the theological, relational and cultural issues involved in this criticism, except to say, emphatically, that Jesus' reference to his 'Father' doesn't fit such criticisms. The 'Father' isn't tyrannical, self-indulgent or aloof!

Instead of using the more common term 'Abinu', which refers to God in a formal and rather austere manner, Jesus uses the term 'Abba' which refers to the nearness of Almighty God. The One to whom we are to pray is the 'Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'. We pray to the God who has come into the midst of our broken world to forgive sins and overcome evil in the costly, victorious suffering love of Christ!

* Now that we know to whom we pray we learn for whom we are first bound to pray. Christians must first pray for God! We are to 'ask' that 'God's name be kept holy and God's kingdom come!' (v2). Thus we are to pray that the unparalleled goodness, holiness and mercy of God to sinful human beings, and God's reign over all things, shall be acknowledged by us and all people. We are taken 'out of ourselves' into the sphere of God's gracious love for all.

* At last, we get to pray for ourselves. But that doesn't mean we can happily forget what we've already learnt about 'asking' and give free reign to our problems. 'Asking' has strict limits: limits set by the freedom to address God as 'Father'. We are to pray for ourselves in accordance with his good and merciful will for humanity and the whole creation, as embodied in Christ's life, death and resurrection.

When we pray for the necessities of life -- bread, mercy and courage -- our requests are utterly transformed. They flow from faith in the 'Father's' gracious purposes embodied 'in Christ' -- from a 'fullness in Christ' not an 'emptiness of purpose'!

* We are summoned to pray for real physical, social, economic and political needs as we receive them as 'blessings' from God and commit ourselves to resist self-indulgence and indifference to the plight of the hungry, the destitute and the neglected.

* We are summoned to pray that our self-centredness, self-indulgence, self- righteousness and apathy shall be forgiven, as well as for the freedom to forgive those who have wronged us. Resentment and hatred must not be allowed to fester.

* And we are summoned to pray for courage in the face of threats to our faith, for which we are no match in a world that is opposed to the 'Father's' good, holy and gracious will displayed in Christ crucified and risen. And so we are to pray 'save us in time of severe trial'.

It now becomes very clear that prayer, as taught by Jesus Christ our Lord isn't the kind of natural activity practised by some and mocked by others.  It goes against the grain! That is why Jesus calls us to 'ask, seek and knock' only after he has taught his disciples to whom prayer is addressed and for whom and for what they are bound to pray.

And that is why, either side of the text, there is a story which illustrates the importance of praying for good things, like food and hospitality, which are consistent with the good and gracious will of Jesus' 'Father' for humanity.

The incompatibility between our natural ideas about prayer and Christian prayer is emphasised by Jesus' promise (in v13b) that 'the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him'.

Now, this would be misunderstood if we were to forget all that has gone before and 'ask' for our 'spiritual' desires to be satisfied by a Spirit of our own choosing. The 'Holy Spirit' in Luke is the presence of God who brings reconciliation, mercy, healing, strength and joy in the midst of evil, affliction and death. The Holy Spirit makes known the Father's will embodied in the Christ and summons the Church to declare the Gospel in word-and-deed among the nations.

Therefore all our praying is to take place as members of the Body of Christ. By 'asking' for the presence of the Holy Spirit we are praying that everything we do as a community of disciples will be conformed to the will of the 'Father' as displayed and embodied in the costly and triumphant ministry of Jesus Christ, Lord of all.

So we are taught that true prayer is a means of grace by which the Church participates in the love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the world.  (Here we have an early expression of God as a 'triunity' of love.) We are taught to 'ask', not for anything we want but for the Holy Spirit, that we (and our fellow men and women) may follow the costly way of Christ and so honour his Father and ours.

To pray in this manner is to be placed in the midst of a fierce battle between good and evil! It commits us to oppose beliefs and practices that dishonour God and demean the splendid humanity for which we have been created and redeemed in Christ. To pray like this, as Paul puts it in Colossians, is to challenge pagan atheism, self-centred spirituality and apathetic relativism.

It can't be assumed that we do or want to pray in this manner.

• Do we pray that the will of God shall triumph over evil so that God is known as God, or that everybody's idea of God will be accepted as true for them?
• Do we pray for the forgiveness of our sins and the power to forgive others, or do we reject the very idea of sin and look for the 'little bit of good' in ourselves and others?
• Do we pray for courage to stand firm in the faith of the crucified Christ or for tolerance to accept others' beliefs and lifestyles?

No wonder we need to be taught to pray for courage, mercy and bread. In a world where so many people mock the Gospel or are timid, resentful or neglected, we must re-learn what it is to pray for God, the world and ourselves. In this way, we shall know what it is to pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit as disciples of the crucified and risen Christ who delight to freely worship God as our most good and gracious Father and to seek his will for our own time and place.

Prayer of Martin Luther:

Dear Lord, here do thou convert and restrain. Convert those who need still to be converted, that they with us and we with them may hallow and glorify thy name both with true and pure teaching and with good and holy lives.
But restrain those who will not be converted, that they may cease to misuse, profane, and dishonour thy holy name and mislead the poor people.
Amen.

Martin Luther, A Simple Way to Pray, for a Good Friend (1535) in The Minister's Prayer Book (1986) ed John Doberstein, p 440

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.