Sunday, July 28, 2019 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Why Bother to Pray?

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 85
Luke 11:1–13

O gracious and holy God, grant us a mind to meditate on you, eyes to behold you, ears to listen for your word, a heart to love you, and a life to proclaim you.

Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547)

“It’s a very personal, intimate thing, one’s prayer life,” seminary professor Matt Skinner wrote this week. He continued, “Getting started praying is less like learning how to drive a car, how to play the banjo, or even how to preach. For most, it is more like learning how to kiss. You learn some by watching others do it. You should be discerning about whom you will allow to teach you. You certainly make some mistakes. And maybe you always worry deep in your head that you might be doing it wrong” (Matt Skinner, workingpreacher.org, week of 28 July 2019).

Now that I have your full attention, today we are going to talk about prayer. We are focused on prayer because Jesus was often focused on prayer. In particular, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus prays a lot. More importantly, almost every major move that Jesus makes is first preceded by a time of prayer (Lewis, Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org podcast, week of 28 July 2019). He withdraws to a deserted place and prays before he heals the paralytic. He goes to the mountain to pray all night before choosing the twelve apostles. He takes the apostles with him to withdraw and pray before feeding the 5,000. He prays before asking Peter and the others “Who do people say that I am?” and then setting his face towards Jerusalem. And so it goes.

Throughout this Gospel we see Jesus engaged in this rhythm, this routine of prayer flowing into action flowing into prayer again. This movement reminds me of our sermon last week when we considered the necessity for all of us to carry within us an internal partnership of being like Mary—inhaling God’s grace for ourselves, letting God fill our cups so they might overflow—and then being like Martha, exhaling that grace for others through our words and actions, not hoarding God’s justice and mercy for ourselves. We are invited to move back and forth, from one to the other, all the time. Jesus seems to have that kind of partnership reflected in his own soul.

Clearly his disciples noticed. They noticed his rhythm of prayer flowing into action flowing into prayer flowing into action—so much so that one of them wanted to learn more about it. “Teach us how to pray,” the disciple requested. Dr. Skinner, the scholar I quoted in the beginning, writes that this question was not so much about the mechanics of prayer as it was about the why of prayer. In other words, the disciple was not necessarily looking for a pattern to follow, but rather, he was looking to learn “more about Jesus’ love for God and his intense desire to see God’s reign come to full fruition.” “‘Teach us to pray,’ Skinner writes, “is about equivalent to ‘Show us your heart,’ or, ‘Tell us—what is it like to be in communion with God?’”

Jesus, tell us, what’s it really like to be in communion with God? It’s a beautiful question, for at its core that is indeed what prayer is all about, isn’t it? Prayer, says Roberta Bondi, is about nurturing the habit of being in connection with God (Roberta Bondi, To Pray and To Love: Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church, p. 54). It is about a regular, ongoing conversation. Prayer is the way we are able to attend to our relationship with the One from whom we have come. Various preachers liken our prayer time with God to a close friendship. When you are in a close friendship with another person and that relationship is important to you, then you take the time to sit down and pay attention to the other, to share with that person what is going on in your heart, and then to listen to what is going on in theirs. So it is with prayer.

Prayer is the way we nurture our relationship with God, sharing with God our needs, our fears, our hopes, and then listening for God’s response, trusting there will be one, even if it is not clear for a while. Yet it is not always easy to maintain a healthy prayer life. As a preacher friend once reflected, “My organized personal prayer life turns out to be pretty disorganized. . . . So [much so] I sometimes wonder if I am not a spiritual fraud” (Robert Holmes, a 2001 sermon, www.day1.org). I have wondered that sometimes, too. Have you? Have you ever found yourself in a disorganized season of, at worst no prayers, at best limited prayers?

Perhaps that was another reason the disciple asked Jesus to teach him how to pray. By watching Jesus day in and day out, that disciple realized that that he, himself, was feeling rather disorganized in his own spiritual disciplines; that he was beginning to feel like a spiritual fraud. Surely Jesus had the answer to the disciple’s dilemma. Every time Jesus prayed, he gained clarity and courage, wisdom and insight. “Tell me, Jesus, how do you pray?” the disciple asked. “What is it really like to be in full communion with God?” It just might be that the disciple who was brave enough to ask the question did so because he realized he would hit a wall of silence whenever he tried to pray himself.

Perhaps that disciple had gotten so caught up in the day-to-day busyness of following Jesus that his schedule crowded out any room he had for connection in prayer, and when you have not talked to someone in a long time, the conversation can be difficult to know how to start. So you just stop trying. Or it might have been that he had started to feel inadequate when it came to praying, especially out loud—he could never find the right words. The other disciples prayed with such fluidity and beauty, but he always just felt inarticulate and stumbling, especially in front of Jesus.

Or maybe the disciple wanted Jesus to teach him how Jesus prayed because that disciple felt that if he could just pray exactly like Jesus, then God would be more likely to pay attention to him. Given everything that disciple had experienced in his life—all the ways he had been hurt and disappointed even in and by the people who were supposed to love him—those experiences caused him to doubt he ever even really made it onto God’s radar. He had begun to wonder if praying was even worth it. Did God ever actually listen, or care, or respond to him? On that day, he could not say yes. So that disciple figured he had nothing to lose by asking Jesus point-blank how Jesus did it. Jesus, teach me how to pray. Show me your heart. Tell me what it is really like to be in full communion with God, because I don’t think I will ever get there myself.

So he asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and Jesus agreed. In good first-century rabbinic tradition, Jesus gave them a model prayer they could use. The late John Claypool said Jesus was like a piano teacher who gives the beginning scales to her new pupil—a way to get them going, to see what is needed (John Claypool, “Obstacles to Prayer,” www.goodpreacher.com). But Jesus did not just stop with giving them the model prayer, for Jesus knew there is more to praying than simply learning words, memorizing them, and then repeating them. Praying is a spiritual encounter that demands authenticity and honesty. It is an intimate, ongoing conversation. Therefore, Jesus decided to engage the disciples’ imaginations with the parable about the friend at midnight.

Now from a first reading, this parable seems quite troubling regarding what it seems to teach. When we read it, we assume we are cast as the friend who comes to bang on the door, shamelessly petitioning for help with hospitality duties, waking up not only everyone in the house but probably everyone on the block, as well. And if we are the friend banging on the door, then that must mean that God is the reluctant grouch—the one who gets up to give us the bread only because we won’t leave him alone and let him sleep or gets up only because God does not want to be shamed in front of the whole neighborhood. Is that who God is in this parable—the reluctant grouch? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. While it is true that Jesus used parables sometimes for comparison with God and to illustrate God’s reign, it is also true that Jesus sometimes used parables to contrast with God and the way God acts in the world (for example, the parable in Luke about the Unjust Judge).

When we keep reading, I think we see that contrast is what is going on in this parable. Jesus is not telling that disciple or us that the only prayers God answers are those that take the form of persistent harassment. He is not saying that only if we pray urgently and continually will God finally give in and respond. God is not like a sleepy friend who does not want to get up in the night. On the contrary, Jesus is saying that if even a reluctant grouch will eventually respond to our need, then just imagine how much more eagerly God will respond. After all, God is the one who initiates prayers in the first place. God is the one who stirs them up in our soul. When you find yourself drawn to pray, that is God at work. As the Apostle Paul writes, even though we don’t know how to pray, God’s Spirit gets it moving in us anyway.

Therefore, Jesus is telling that disciple, telling us, that no matter how many times you hit the wall of silence, no matter how many hours you spend without prayerful words, no matter how disorganized or discouraging your prayer life feels to you, no matter how often you wonder if you are a spiritual fraud, keep after it. Keep asking; keep seeking; keep knocking on that door.

Why? Because God will respond. Period. According to Jesus, there is no such thing as unanswered prayers. Now, the “answer” might not be what we anticipated or wanted or even discerned in the moment. But God always responds. Jesus, himself, even rediscovered that truth later in the Garden of Gethsemane and then when hanging on the cross. “Take this cup from me,” he prayed in the garden. “My God why have you forsaken me,” he prayed on the cross. We know through the witness of Easter that God responded to both prayers in God’s time and in God’s way, even though Jesus did not discern God’s response in those exact moments. But God did respond. God always responds. As Jesus says himself, even we “messed-up, mired-down” humans would never give our child a snake if she asked for a fish, or a scorpion if he asked for an egg. So how much more, then, of God’s living Spirit will God give to us every time we open our hearts in prayer?

That’s the key to this whole passage; that’s the promise, the hope. Jesus tells that brave disciple, tells us, that one way God always answers the prayers we utter is by giving us nothing less than God’s own presence, God’s own Spirit. Did you hear that at the end of the story? “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Jesus says.

Notice that Jesus did not say “How much more will the heavenly Father give you everything you want if you just ask and keep asking.” For Jesus knew, and deep down we know, there are many times when we are not wise enough to understand or to ask for what we truly need to make us whole.

Thus, Jesus promises that God will give the Holy Spirit to us every time we are opened up in prayer. That promise suggests that every time we pray, the wisdom and the goodness of God will always be at work actively shaping and transforming us, changing us through our prayers. That is why that one brave disciple was invited to stop worrying so much about how and when and for what he prayed. That promise is why we, too, are also invited to stop worrying about all the moments we try to pray only to find our minds are still going a million miles an hour. That promise is why we, too, are invited to let go of our stress that when we are asked to pray out loud, we might get our words mixed up and they might sound clunky and unsophisticated. That’s OK. That is not what matters, Jesus promises.

According to Jesus, instead of focusing on those things, focus on the promise that every single time we even attempt to pray, we are opening ourselves up to a God whose wisdom and goodness are greater than our own, a God who promises a response of nothing less than divine presence.

I have told you this before but I am telling you again: The late Dr. Jim Costen, a saint of the Presbyterian church, once told me, “Prayer works. It changes things. It changes us.” Perhaps that is what Jesus is saying. In this passage, he is promising us that every time we ask; every time we search; every time we knock on the door; every time we even just lift empty hands because we have no more words and only tattered faith; every single time we pray, whether we notice it at the time or not, we are receiving God’s own presence, flowing into us, slowly healing everything in its wake. I hope that brave disciple who first posed the question to Jesus on that day heard that promise for himself, for that promise of presence is an answer to prayer that far surpasses anything I could ever ask for or imagine. What about you?

Why do we pray? We pray because prayer changes things. Prayer is a way God changes us, fills us with God’s vision, brings about God’s reign, gives us strength and courage and hope, sparks our imaginations about what could be, about what is. And that happens even when all we have is silence. That happens even when we think we are too busy. That happens even when we don’t think we know how to do it or the poetry of prayer has stalled out. Even without the poetry, we still receive the Presence. What more could a disciple ask for? So breathe in. And breathe out. Amen.