The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for July 29, 2007

Texts: Hosea 1:2-10/Luke 11:1-13

Title: “Just Ask”

              Merely a guess, but I think it is a good one.  The disciples approached Jesus out of frustration.  “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 

              Can I assume that none of you have ever grown frustrated with prayer?  That would be a very unwise assumption to make, wouldn’t it?  My prayer life, your prayer life, has stalled, and for any number of reasons.  We were disappointed when a particular prayer went unanswered.  We lived through, or even now, are living through, a dry season when prayer doesn’t really fit with our mood, schedule, or circumstances. Our prayer life has stalled because we are emotionally incapable of addressing some besetting issue in our lives through that means.  Our prayer life has stalled because God seems distant and inaccessible.  Our prayer life has stalled because we feel too guilty to place the state of our lives in review.

              Have you ever been frustrated with prayer? Of course, you have.  I submit that the disciples were frustrated, and I have got to believe that if Jesus was indeed “like us in every respect, yet without sinning,” as the Scripture’s prompt us to confess, I have got to believe that some experience in his ministry or other must have frustrated his attempts to communicate with God as well.

              Of course we have been frustrated with prayer.  How could we be otherwise considering the fragility of our faith and the meager status prayer maintains on most of our lists of priorities. 

              “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”  Given wide birth in addressing their need, Jesus may have selected any number of strategies in addressing their request. I know this because a vast literature has evolved on the subject of prayer. 

              “Teach us to pray.”  Jesus responded with a prayer of both substance and brevity that lives on as the Christian prayer above all prayers.  Yet while Jesus taught a prayer consisting of a series of petitions, he may well have taught another type of prayer.  He may have taught, for instance, a prayer of adoration, a prayer of confession or a prayer of intercession. You and I have been exposed to a wide variety of prayers.  We have heard them sung.  Some of us have even seen them danced. Jesus was certainly no less versed in the subject of prayer than we are.

              “Teach us to pray.”  Addressing his disciples, Jesus might have instructed them in such things as the proper posture for praying---kneeling, standing, back straight, hands clasped, hands folded.  He may have suggested so-called “centering techniques,” methods for breathing and channeling one’s thoughts.

              “Teach us to pray.” Jesus may have introduced “the prayer book of the Bible,” the psalms, as a textbook on prayer to illustrate the many different ways in which the psalmist used prayer in addressing God.    

            “Teach us to pray.” He may have stressed setting aside certain times for prayer.  He may have even recommended places to pray.  Scripture tells us that the Lord sought solitude in the mountains when he wanted to pray.

              “Teach us to pray.”  Jesus could have set out in many directions, but instead he confined himself to a single prayer.  Was it meant to be the only acceptable prayer to be used in addressing God?  No.  Is it the most elegant prayer ever composed?  No. Is it the most comprehensive prayer that has ever been composed? No.

              Prayer itself was the issue for Jesus, not the specific words or formula to be used in praying.  We are given great latitude and freedom by God in praying, latitude and freedom that, few of us, quite frankly, use. 

              The disciples might have been frustrated with prayer, but they were probably also more than a little intimidated by Jesus’ approach to prayer.  Prayer can be, and often is, intimidating. It is not what we naturally do.  In many instances it is an activity that removes us from our accustomed activity. It is activity for which few of us have been trained.

            Prayer typically requires time apart, a place conducive to prayer, and silence. It requires initiative, of course, on our part to set aside the time and create the space for prayer, and having done so we still face the issue of how to fill the time and use the space.

What is it that God wants to hear from us?  What is it that we want to say to God? We enter prayer with a series of questions, and if your experience is anything like mine, the questions can be so diverting that our minds remain ill at ease throughout the time we have allotted to prayer. Many of us have found relief from this state of dis-ease by creating our own individual prayer protocols.  Instead of a random, scatter shot approach to prayer, we settle on one structure or formula in praying.  We pray for family, friends, good health, world, current circumstance that concerns us, etc. Our prayers often become rote, repeatedly covering the same ground over again and again.  While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it can become stifling and unfulfilling over time.

               “Lord, teach us to pray.” John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray.  The disciples wanted Jesus to do the same favor for them. There are people who have important insights to offer on the subject of prayer, Holly Wilson’s, and now Cheryl Farmer’s, Sunday school class have benefited greatly from various workbooks devoted to prayer.  There is a vast literature on prayer, prayer techniques being taught in many places, a variety of prayer workshops available to those motivated to attend. 

             Though there is much information we can collect on the many, many dimensions of prayer, there are no professionals on the topic, only informed amateurs, who like us, seek to communicate with God in prayer.

              There are no professionals in prayer.  You can call the roll of saints both living and dead and you will not find a single professional on the subject of prayer.  What you will identify in that roll call, however, are persons whose ardor to establish and maintain relationship with God made them constant in prayer. 

              “Lord, teach us to pray.”  The disciples’ request prompted a beautiful prayer, however, Jesus instruction certainly didn’t end there.  Jesus’ instruction on the topic of prayer emerged through his own constancy in prayer. Jesus taught by example, allocating great amounts of time to prayer. 

               While prayer is never perfected, in this life at least, the legacy of the psalmist, and the saints of the church, from the Apostle Paul, to St. Benedict to St. Theresa, to Thomas Merton, and Mother Theresa have taught us that it is constancy, daily practice in the discipline of prayer, that fills the souls of those who seek God.

             We practice prayer, not that we might perfect our prayers, but we practice prayer as a means to establish and improve communication with the one with whom we seek relationship. Practically speaking, relationships simply will not develop without some commitment on the part of the parties to the relationship to be in relationship. By praying we declare our intent to be in relationship, by our constancy in prayer we express our intent to see the relationship grow and mature.

                I surmise that frustration with the inadequacy of their prayer life sent the disciples to the Lord for help.  Clearly one of the ways to address inadequacies whether it be in a skill like playing the piano, playing golf, or learning mathematics is to commit to a discipline of practice.

               Practice is indispensable to a maturing prayer life, but so too is perspective. Seated at my desk in the second floor room of the education wing I currently use as my office, I have a certain perspective on the world outside my window.  I have a very good view of the northeast portion of the sanctuary wall, a lesser view of Canal Boulevard and the neutral ground. To change my perspective I need to get up and move around. 

               Perspective can’t change if we remain stationary. Day to day the same people, the same circumstances and the same issues find there way into my prayers. That is not to diminish the significance of what I pray for, but if I remain content, figuratively speaking, to stare in one or two directions, my ability to communicate with God on a deeper level is undermined.

              Moreover perspective is not gained when I am doing all the talking, perspective is shaped in the reverent silence of expectation. “True silence which is creative silence, [writes Robert Llewelyn] is the most demanding activity God asks of any of us.  Here it is that heart and mind and will, meaning and imagination, are gathered and collected in God.”

               Perspective is in essence being “gathered and collected in God.”  Perspective is gained by allowing God space to direct our prayers instead of filling the space and the silence with list upon list of our own petitions.

                 A fulfilling prayer life requires practice and perspective, but it also requires persistence.  It is upon the latter issue that Jesus’ anecdote in our lesson focused.  The anecdote was introduced with the following question, “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; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’” Experience teaches that friendship opens many doors, but not all doors. It being midnight the friend whose sleep was being interrupted may well have told his friend to get lost. So be it. The man requesting those loaves, however, wasn’t to be discouraged.

                 The man persisted, Jesus tells us, until he got his bread. We persist in prayer, but not because God’s blessings must be coaxed out of him.  We persist in prayer because we trust God to do something about the concerns we lift in prayer. We persist because the God we meet in Scripture, the God who came to us in Jesus Christ, persists in his outreach to us.  In sum, we persist in response to a God who persists in reaching out to us even when his doing so seems an out and out waste of time.

                 God persists in reaching out to us and loving us against all the obstacles we erect.  Hosea, from which -----earlier read treats those obstacles at length, and so we read these words, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.  The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.  Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.  I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.” God was persistent in the face of Israel’s stubbornness.   

               Effective prayer requires practice, it requires perspective, and it requires persistence, persistence, not because God has to be nagged or cajoled into responding in us, but persistence to demonstrate that our relationship with God is something we value and wish to maintain.

                   “Ask and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”  There is in God possibilities you and I cannot begin to imagine. In prayer we make room for those possibilities to occupy greater and greater parts of our lives.  In persistent prayer the giver of those gifts becomes less and less the projections of our minds and imaginations, and more and more the God revealed to us in scripture and God’s son, Jesus the Christ.

                    There is in God possibilities you and I cannot begin to imagine. While the life Jesus lived celebrated those possibilities it did not exhaust them.  We are under no constraint to think as we did yesterday, act as we did yesterday, or pray as we did yesterday.

                 The Christian faith is all about exposing new possibilities, and it is in communicating with God in prayer that those possibilities emerge. “It’s all there for you, truth, hope, freedom [God declares], just ask.”

PRAYER

                “Lord, teach us to pray.”  The request voiced by Jesus’ disciples, O God, is also our request.  Teach us to pray after the manner in which Jesus himself prayed.  Teach us to pray with that confidence, with that persistence. Teach us to pray with a new attitude, a willingness, O God, for you to direct our prayers, rather than for our personal needs and wants to fill our time at prayer. Teach us even to pray for those we consider our enemies, those against whom we seek revenge.

                May those present today, O God, who derive no meaning or satisfaction from prayer be led to regard prayer in a new way.  May those of us who struggle to make room for prayer in our daily lives create time and space for that to occur.  May those who have been disappointed by prayers unanswered, O God, not lose heart but in the confidence you inspire persist in prayer.

                  O God, we continue to pray for a world upon whom the curse of war has descended. Even as we worship the specter of death moves across the earth, indiscriminately seizing the innocent in its path. We lift up those who suffer in this hour, those with no more tears to shed, those whom grief has consumed. We pray for hostages being held in Afghanistan who from one minute to the next live on not knowing if they will continue to live, or will die. Abide with and strengthen the despairing whose senses have become numb to the world around them.

                Lord, may those who are traveling this day do so safely. May the motorist be considerate of those with whom they share the road. Even as we pray for safety on the highway we thank you for the safe return of our young people and chaperone from the youth conference at Montreat.        

              O God, we continue to pray for the church in these challenging times. May your word go forth with renewed power and authority.  We pray for church leaders as they struggle to cope with declining membership and member giving.  We pray for conflicted churches for whom the concepts peace and reconciliation have lost all meaning. We pray for youth workers who are challenged to make Bible precepts accessible to children and youth.  We pray for those who leave worship unfed, who have become too discouraged to regularly participate in congregational life.

                 O Christ, you are the head of the church.  Breathe a new spirit into this body over which you reign. From age to age the faithful have persevered and imparted your truth, may our own confidence in that truth, and our ardor to promote it, continue to increase until the day when you come to claim the earth as your own.

                 We thank you, O God, for partners in ministry from across the church, blessed this day to greet friends from the Benton Heights Presbyterian Church in Monroe, N.C.  May these friends enjoy our hospitality as we together are reminded of the power of your Gospel, O Christ, to turn strangers into brothers and sisters.

                May your blessings reach those who deem themselves unreachable today.  We pray for the forlorn and guilt ridden.  We pray for those who feel estranged and forgotten.  We pray for those who struggle with unrelenting temptation. Bring freedom, O God, whose lives are mired in hopeless, who have nowhere to turn.

              Lord, may your presence be felt among all those who suffer trials today, the homeless, the jobless, the newly divorced, the single parent, those whose bodies are riddled with disease.  Abide with the nursing home resident who vacantly passes the day in a dementia induced fog.

              O God, ever faithful, we pray to you knowing that you who call us to pray also hear and act on our prayers.  In that confidence we once again pray the prayer our Savior Jesus taught us…