Pray This Way

Sermon

I was grateful to find our Gospel text today is the Lord’s Prayer. It’s universal and personally formational prayer. Even though there were only five people there when my wife and I got married, I made us all say it and half said it with debts and half said it with trespasses and at least one of us stumbled and didn’t know what to say, as is the nature of worshipping together. But we, me and you, Westminster, we’ve worshipped enough together now the last two years that I know I can be honest with you about when I think I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer the most in my life—while working out, before COVID, at a gym, and now, next to a stationary bike. I would never say it out loud at the gym—it matters to me that you know that, and my workouts have gotten a little less intense as I’ve aged, but I’ve not grown out of this practice. I realized a long time ago that it took me 20 seconds or so to say the Lord’s Prayer, so I could say three Lord’s Prayers if I needed to hold a yoga type plank position for a minute, and maybe that would possibly make my workout a little bit more formational than praying for the exercise to end.

You may say this practice is weird, sure. But this is one of the few things Jesus told us to DO, very clearly, so why not? Why not say it more and see what happens? I believe it has shaped me at least as much as the exercising I’m doing—and it’s refreshing to stop, and not be out of breath now, as we look closer at what we often rush through. And here we find that, spoiler alert, Jesus was praying, which is already an important thing to note: he’s not instructing us to do something he’s unfamiliar with. I went through all the Gospels once and circled all the moments that Jesus went off by himself to pray, and, bonus spoiler alert: it’s quite a lot. So, if you find the world gives you a hard time about needing alone time, be reminded of how often Jesus needed that, and then remind those around you that you aren’t God incarnate, and therefore, you will be needing even more time and space.

Aptly, the disciples asked to be taught how to pray. Jesus said: “Say this,” which doesn’t happen nearly as often I’d prefer, Jesus clearly telling us what to do in a way we can do it right now. Usually, we encounter Jesus and he’s speaking in what sounds like riddles, parables, or jokes, like he does after this prayer. But in a few places, Jesus is merciful with my slowness and says things like, baptize, like we did last week, or “Take, eat, DO THIS,” as he said at the table, and we’ll celebrate next week, or “Pray this way.” And in a world where much seems out of our control, it’s good to know there is something we can do. We can accept this invitation to pray as Jesus taught. We can have this shameless audacity to approach power, as it says in one translation, and we can see this in the first two words of the prayer. “Our Father,” as Jesus was known to call God, in braving closeness and in connection. There is good scholarship to note that Joseph doesn’t appear in the Gospels much after Jesus’ birth, so, it’s quite possible Jesus was grieving a familial loss.

Jesus praying “our Father” doesn’t mean that we must always address God as Father, but it gives us a view into a beautiful way Jesus saw God, and one way we can know God, too. Recently I read an interpretation of the prayer that addresses God as Mother, from a favorite writer of mine, Claire McKeever-Burgett. It starts: “Our Mother, who art everywhere” (which is what my mother taught me about herself, so I relate). “Holy is your name; Divine is your feminine presence. May your reign of love come […] Give us today what we need. Forgive us. Forgive us. Forgive us. Lead us to the fire where weapons burn into tools for the harvest. Lead us toward peace; Birth us into love. For Yours is the reign, the power, the grace, the poetry, the beauty, and the rebirth that we need both now and forever. Amen.” There are ways for us to understand this prayer for the better.

Reverend Eileen used another interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer in the early service; it’s in your bulletin. It’s a prayer I’ve enjoyed hearing Eileen use in worship before. When I was in seminary, I had to memorize the Lord’s Prayer in Greek, which is a biblical language, but it wouldn’t have been the language Jesus used to share this with his disciples, and that changed how I thought about the prayer, reminding me that it’s been memorized and translated again and again throughout history. And Jesus following his instructions to pray with a joking, exhortation-type narrative makes me think we should play with prayer more for our understanding.

Try doodling around it, try writing it as if to your child-self, try Creator instead of Father, try saying it in traffic when you feel great and not when you’re ready to be done. Try kindom instead of kingdom. Elaine Park, one of our favorite adult education teachers and scholars, explained this clearly earlier in the year in one of her classes. Jesus asking for the kingdom to come would’ve been very anti-empire, specifically the empire of the time, which would’ve had an emperor. More recently, many of the empires of our world have had kings. Many of you have been to “no kings” protests. Saying kindom, to remind us of the communion, the community of God, is less a gender-neutral term (though it is also gender neutral, which is nice!) and more a way of trying to remain true to the meaning of Jesus’ prayer.

Still, whether you pray kingdom or kindom, your will be done or your Holy Spirit come upon us, this is referring to the long-awaited reign of God. And after the events of this year, I know many of us are aching for the reign of love, for justice and healing and peace! Forgiveness in every direction, forgiving each other, being forgiven for the things we don’t even know we do, the ways we take part in the awful news of the year without knowing it. What is the reign of God? Forgiveness and daily bread, what we need for today, which is why one of my favorite arguments to have with peers in seminary was that debts IS THE right translation. Pray how you need to, however, wherever; I’ll pray every day debts is the right word because the thing Jesus talked most about was money and how we use our resources. That we have for today, or tomorrow, not for hoarding more than we can use.

Jesus tells us a joke of sorts to explain. A friend pounds on a friend’s door in the middle of the night asking for bread. In reading, or perhaps better in our dramatic expression, perhaps it sounds out of sorts, but this “shameless audacity” (NIV) is a way of both causing and knowing unrest, the lack of rest, because without unrest there will be no rest. This makes me think of the Black Lives Matter movement, or those who have worked tirelessly for gun reforms, or those who will not keep silent about the continuing immoral, unnecessary starvation and violence in Palestine. They know that none of us can rest until some unrest is caused to show and resolve the underlying issues of unrest; there is no justice for one without justice for all. I know both the friends in this story, the one who had the courage to knock and the one who had to get up, and get what was needed, slept soundly.

And though I said I wouldn’t rate Luke’s version over Matthew’s version, I do love the more embodied nature of Luke’s context. It made me think this week of the work of Cole Arthur Riley, creator of Black Liturgies, which we’ve leaned on often in worship. She said in her book, This Here Flesh, “I think activism is a virtue. To be a person who cares and honors creation is to be a person who acts in favor of its flourishing. I am distrustful of spiritual people who are not roused in their bodies on behalf of justice. We can disagree on what activism should look like, but not on the necessity of its existence or your participation in it.”

Jesus continues, “If your kid asks for an egg, will you give a scorpion? And if this kid asks for a fish, will you give a snake? …How much more then will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?” That makes sense, that makes me feel better at first, that sounds nice—but I also really want to call Jesus out on this, because I can easily name some things I or others have prayed for that felt like asking for eggs and getting a snake.

I’m confident you can think of some moments where you’ve asked for nourishment and were met with pain. And I don’t imagine that Jesus is saying that is okay, that we should be okay with that and pray through that. Not at all. But Jesus did not say that the disciples would get exactly what they asked for, he said: how much more then will we receive the Holy Spirit—which of course makes me say: “I didn’t ask for the Holy Spirit!” I asked for breakfast, a job that covers my cost of living, health to do that job, a friend, peace, stability, no kings on the side…

I asked, I knocked, I sought, and I’m always finding that that’s the tiring, annoying, and formational part of the exercise of prayer. Even if I embody it, what am I really doing? This week I saw a story shared by a friend of mine. She is one of the best seekers of justice I know. The story was about some children and their families in Egypt, who, instead of spending their creative days making lemonade stands, are putting grain in bottles and throwing the bottles into the sea, praying, “God who parted the sea for Moses, bring this food to the children of Gaza.” It sounds unorthodox, but who would debate them? When an interviewer asked one of the children if she thinks the food will arrive where they are wanting it to go, she didn’t hesitate. She said, “Yes, it will.” For thine is the kin(g)dom and the divine feminine presence and the glory forever. Amen.