SERMON, PROPER 12C, LUKE 11:1-13

Delivered at St. Paul's by the Morning Prayer officiant while I was off to Wyoming.
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What is prayer? Prayer can be a time of asking. Prayer can be a time of confession. Prayer can be a time of giving thanks. Prayer can be a time to recognize God as God. All those aspects of prayer result in prayer being a time to connect with God in all facets of our life. Prayer is how we develop our relationship with God.

There is all manner of prayer. We pray in private and we pray in public. We pray silently and we pray aloud. We pray occasionally and we pray constantly. And prayer is pretty much a universal phenomenon in which people of all cultures and all religions participate. With all of that history, you would think we would be better at it. But I am willing to bet that most of us believe our prayer life could be better.

And we aren't the only ones who think that way. One of the disciples makes a request of Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." This request could have come from a desire to be more like Jesus; after all, the disciples saw him pray often. He was their mentor, teacher and friend, so this makes sense. It is also possible that they wanted a community prayer, something they could use that would be characteristic to their group -- sort of like a team motto.

Jesus answers his request by reciting what has become known as "the Lord's Prayer." The version in Luke is different from the one in Matthew, which is the version that gets used the most. The one difference that I want to address is the phrase revolving around daily bread.

Matthew records this as, "Give us this day our daily bread." The "this day" here might refer to a one-time event; a possible implication that once we receive that bread everything is fine. Luke, however, records the saying as, "Give us each day our daily bread." For Luke, this isn't a one-time event but a daily occurrence. This really ties back into Luke's idea that discipleship is living sacrificially on a daily basis.

Think back several weeks ago to the gospel of following Jesus. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke was saying that discipleship is a daily decision. It is a daily desire to live your life differently. Our cross is our faith which we need to proclaim and live daily.

Being a daily disciple and living sacrificially on a daily basis takes work. It takes effort. It takes courage. It takes nourishment. Luke is subtly letting us know that discipleship is a daily occurrence. Take up your cross daily. Give us each day our daily bread. We need to remember that we are daily disciples, not just Sunday worshipers.

This daily aspect of discipleship and prayer requires one thing: discipline. Doing something daily is a learned activity. We need to learn to get out of bed and be on time for a job. We need to learn to plan a daily menu. We need to learn to exercise every morning. We need to learn how to proclaim the gospel. We need to learn to pray daily.

The discipline of daily prayer can also be seen as persistence. After teaching his disciples a daily prayer that recognizes God's sovereignty, asks for the coming of God's kingdom and for daily nourishment, as well as asks for forgiveness, Jesus gives us an example of what prayer is like. The following story shows the importance of persistence (possibly translated as shamelessness) and determination in praying.

Persistence, or shamelessness, implies that we are to set aside our own prestige and security when praying. Being willing to be seen as a fool, or with backward priorities, is what Jesus is getting at here. Banging on your neighbor's door at midnight, or praying in a restaurant, or putting off an appointment until after your prayers is what is important. How willing are you to pray? And in that shamelessness, we become vulnerable. Not vulnerable to God, but vulnerable to what people think. We need to decide what is more important: how we are seen, or our prayers.

And then there's determination. Don't give up. Keep praying. Like a daily exercise program that moves you closer to a physical goal, daily prayer moves you closer to God and closer to that for which you are praying. Everyone who asks receives and everyone who searches finds.

But while the parable of the persistent and determined neighbor might be a good example, people misread this. "I've been praying for X for ten years and I haven't gotten it, why not?" Or, "I prayed for my mother to be cured from cancer and she died, why didn't God listen to me?" Those are hard questions. It's been said that every prayer gets answered; we just don't always like the answer God gives us.

Prayer isn't a litany of requests to make our life better. Prayer isn't a slot machine where we hope to strike it rich if we only drop enough into the slot. If that's not prayer, then what is it?

Prayer is our conversation and connection with God. Luis of Granada, a Spanish spiritual author of the 16th century said, "Prayer, properly speaking, is a petition to God for the things which pertain to our salvation; but it is also taken in another, broader sense to mean any raising of the heart to God." Likewise, the collects for Propers 10 and 11 address prayer rather nicely:

Proper 10: O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.

Proper 11: Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask.

What is prayer? Prayer is a process. It is how we deepen our relationship with God. It is how we learn to hear God. Through prayer we are not working to change the mind of God or force our will on him, but we are learning to cooperate with God in bringing about a Godly change, not only to ourselves but to the world around us.

Prayer, like any other interpersonal communication, takes work and practice. And in order to be successful, in order to be spiritually strengthened and grounded, we need to h ave the discipline to pray each and every day on a regular basis.