What Is Prayer?

Homily for Sunday, July 25th, 2010

The Lessons:

Psalm 85
Hosea 1:2-10
Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 11:1-13

Prayer is a very personal thing. If you ask a roomful of Christians how they pray, you will probably get a roomful of different answers--or, maybe, a few bewildered shrugs. Some might say prayer is an intentional effort to reach out to God. The 11th Step of AA's 12 Steps says, in part, "We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God..." When we try to make contact with God, we assume God will always be there to hear and answer us. Episcopal priest and writer Martin Smith describes prayer as our ongoing conversation with God, suggesting that God's end of the dialogue is always open to us.
Dame Julian of Norwich, 11th century mystic, envisioned God in this way: "Completely relaxed and courteous, he was himself the happiness and peace of his dear friends, his beautiful face, radiating measureless love, like a marvelous symphony; and it was that wonderful face, shining with the beauty of God, that filled that heavenly place with joy and light." Who wouldn't want to have a conversation with such a relaxed and courteous, friendly deity? I wonder why prayer is not easy for many of us.
Think back to childhood and your earliest experience of prayer. Was it your mother or your father who first taught you how to pray? Did you learn to kneel by your bed and say a prayer before you were tucked under the covers? That's the way my mother taught me to pray, and she knelt beside me. The prayer I learned was the one that goes like this: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." I bet a lot of us learned this same prayer as children, although to me it now seems like a grim and scary prayer to teach a child. [No wonder my childhood fear was that radioactive green slime hid under my bed!]
Of course, it is necessary to spend some time explaining prayer to children. I was dismayed when my then four-year old son asked why people were "reading their plates" during grace. I hadn't made it clear to him that prayer before meals is the way we express our gratitude to God for our blessings. It is said that gratitude makes us joyful, and since children abound in joy, they understand intuitively what it means to be blessed.
I still have a book of prayers for children that I was given as a small child, and I look forward to sharing the book with my grandchildren. Why is it that children take to prayer so easily once it is explained to them? The answer to that question is suggested by the Lord's injunction: "Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Children accept God with a very uncomplicated and simple faith. As a small child, I didn't have any doubt that God was nearby and would hear my prayer. God seemed not unlike a loving grandparent.
In today's gospel lesson from Luke, the very grown-up disciples ask Jesus for an explanation of how he prays. He responds by teaching them to pray as a child might pray, with trust, simplicity, and candor.
First, he instructs them to speak in the most intimate of terms to God, to invoke God as "Abba," as Daddy, to experience the closeness of God but not to forget the holiness. The phrase "hallowed be thy name" suggests that a balance should be struck between the tenderness of love and the awe of reverence. God is approachable because we are his children, but God is God and he answers our prayers with power.
Next, Jesus tells the apostles to pray, "Your kingdom come." The task for the apostles, as it is for all of us who follow their path as disciples of Christ, is to do everything we can to bring the Lord's kingdom to the place and time we inhabit. How do we do that? When everything we do is motivated by love, God's kingdom will have arrived, because God is love. Even when it is hard to imagine the entire Earth exemplifying love and becoming the kingdom, surely we can work to make it happen in our own homes.
Next, we are to say, "Give us each day our daily bread." We acknowledge the source of all of our blessings, the source of our very lives. That humble acknowledgement is the wellspring of gratitude, the origin of child-like joy in God. The same God we encounter when we look up at a sky filled with stars on a cloudless night or gaze out to sea from a windswept shore is the God who provides us with our daily bread.
Luke's version of the next part of the Lord's prayer differs significantly from the more familiar version in Matthew. According to Luke, the Lord instructed the apostles to pray, "And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us." Matthew uses the word trespass where Luke uses sin, and the Greek word for trespass is ophelema, meaning "that which is owed, or an offense requiring reparation." The Greek word for sin, as in Luke's version, is hamartia, which means "missing the mark," or not living up to the standard for moral behavior set by God. Matthew's "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" has sometimes led to debate about the meaning of forgiveness. Are we forgiven by God only to the extent to which we forgive others? When can we be sure our forgiveness is sufficient enough? When we forgive others, are we sincere, or do we forgive only on a kind of quid pro quo basis? Luke's version does away with this exchange system of forgiveness. Luke seems to say that the grace we experience when we are forgiven by God causes us to forgive others: "And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us." Mercy and love come naturally to us when we know ourselves to be steeped in the mercy and love of God.
Today's psalm reminds me of a perfect example of Luke's (and the Lord's) meaning about forgiveness, mercy, and love. Psalm 85 is one of my favorites, and key verses from it are quoted in a wonderful film called Babette's Feast. (Some of you may have seen it and chances are you like it as much as I do. ) Babette is a French woman who arrives mysteriously in a small village on the coast of Norway. The year is 1871, and Babette brings a letter of introduction to a pair of spinster sisters. The letter is from an old friend of one of the sisters, who asks them to take in Babette, a political refugee, and suggests that she would be a good housekeeper for them. The sisters are poor, but they are kind souls, and they agree to have Babette live with them, though they will be unable to pay her much of anything. In fact, the sisters live a very austere life as they try to keep alive the Christian sect founded by their father, who had been a pastor in the village and is now long dead. A verse from Psalm 85 had been the credo of their father's faith, and it is posted on the wall of the sisters' house: "Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other."
After fourteen years of living with the sisters and brightening their lives in simple ways, Babette learns that her lottery ticket has paid off. An old friend in Paris has been renewing it for her each year, and she gets a letter saying she has won 10,000 francs. When the sisters find out, they are glad for her, knowing she will now be able to return home to Paris, although they are also dismayed at the thought of her leaving. What will Babette decide to do?
Well, what she chooses to do is to bring the kingdom to the poor people of the fishing village, the spinster sisters and their friends. Out of her gratitude for the love and kindness the sisters showed her in giving her safe refuge, she more than amply repays her debt to them, as the Lord's prayer suggests. She spends every bit of the 10,000 francs to purchase all of the ingredients and delicacies she will need to prepare for her benefactors a magnificent French feast, intended as a dinner to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the pastor, their father's, birth. You see, it turns out that Babette had been a most famous chef in Paris.
As the preparations for the meal become more and more elaborate, the sisters, who like all of their neighbors are accustomed to eating fish stew and gruel, are alarmed by the possibilities being presented to them. Among themselves, they resort to the last part of the Lord's prayer, "Do not bring us to the time of trial." Although they know she means well, the sisters fear Babette will tempt them and their guests to indulge sinful appetites. What happens as the evening of the feast arrives and they eat the meal Babette has prepared for them is pure grace. In spite of their fears, what they experience with every mouthful is the love and generosity behind Babette's effort to please them. They are filled with the fullness of God and know in their hearts that "Mercy and truth have met; righteousness and peace have kissed each other."
So it is when we accept the gifts God gives us in the spirit in which they are given. Mercy and love indeed come naturally to us when we know ourselves to be steeped in the mercy and love of God. As the second part of today's Gospel lesson tells us, we shouldn't expect anything less than Babette's feast when we pray to God for his blessings, and we pray with persistence: "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then...know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
Pray like children, and pray with persistence. God will answer your prayers.
Amen.