We look at what Jesus taught about Prayer in this latest in Rev. Geoff McKee’s series on stories from Luke’s Gospel.  The scripture (Luke 11:1-13) – The Lord’s Prayer – is followed by Geoff’s sermon from 24 July 2016. If you would like to download the text of the sermon as a pdf document, you can do so by clicking here.

Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer
11 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”
5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Attendance at the weekly prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings was expected of all keen Christians. That was the way it was in one church I attended a good number of years ago.

There were plenty of other things that were more attractive than the prayer meeting but other enjoyments tended to be spoiled a bit by the knowledge that one really should be with the faithful in the church hall on a Wednesday evening.

Despite my best intentions, I never was a regular at the prayer meeting.

One of the things that really put me off was the behaviour of two regular attenders.

The minister would finish his wee talk and then he would call the meeting to prayer and immediately one of them started and he would pray and pray and pray and the hands of the clock would shift a quarter of an hour and upon his ‘amen’ the other would jump in, and off he would go in intense competition until he had outlasted the previous competitor.

Of course, after his ‘amen’, silence reigned as no-one else had any energy left to contribute.

Prayer sparring is not attractive

Thankfully, I have never encountered it anywhere else.

Also, it wasn’t just the length of the prayers, in competition, that made the heart sink. It was the content as well.

There was a tendency for one to try to outdo the other in a kind of grovelling

This was very odd. The glories of God were expounded and the depravity of the human condition was highlighted – and lamented – but neither protagonist got much further than that.

All in all, attendance was a terribly depressing affair.

Sometimes in churches, the old timers will mourn the passing of the weekly prayer meeting but, if the meetings were anything like my experience, then their demise should be heralded.

We have in the passage in Luke’s Gospel a very different model of praying offered to us as an example to follow

You’ll notice that the Lord’s Prayer, as recorded in Luke’s Gospel, is a little different from the version in Matthew’s Gospel, which we are used to reciting each time we gather for worship.

The differences need not bother us, however, as the gospel writers have no doubt shaped the prayer through a memory of Jesus’ words to reflect their own particular theology and emphasis.

This is one of the delights of having four Gospels: four different perspectives on the life of Christ that reflect the needs and experiences of four different communities.

We are the beneficiaries of that diversity.

So what does Luke’s text teach us?

What specific emphasis does he wish to bring out?

Well, in common with Matthew’s version, God is addressed as ‘Father’. Despite the fact that God’s name is hallowed and therefore quite distinct from all others, in terms of honour, and despite the fact that concern for the coming of God’s kingdom has precedence before all else – despite these facts – God is addressed in a familiar, intimate way, as ‘Father’.

The foundation for prayer is not the otherness of God, remote from our situation and condition.

The foundation for prayer is the relationship that the Christian has with God, who is our Father

Note that here, in Luke, there is no mention of the Father in heaven. The otherness of God is trumped by the familiar relationship.

It’s this relationship that sets the tone for all that follows in the prayer. If the relationship was not like that – Father to child – then the prayer could proceed no further.

It is sometimes suggested that the use of the word ‘Father’ in relation to God is not helpful because, for some people, their relationship with their own father has not been a good one. And I think it is right we are sensitive to that and we also recognise that Luke is sensitive to it as well. In verse 13, he contrasts the often poor motives of human fathers with the exuberant love of the heavenly Father. In God, there is a quality of fatherhood which far outstrips all other examples.

As the prayer progresses, we are presented with another remarkable fact

Unlike the long-winded, timorous prayers I mentioned earlier at the unfortunate prayer meetings, here we find a quite remarkable forwardness: ‘Give us’, ‘forgive us’, ‘do not bring us’.

These are the list of imperatives, of requests, offered to God. There is no ‘please’ attached to any of them. There is no standing on ceremony.

There is an open, honest declaration of need and its satisfaction in the love of God

What did Jesus say?

“Ask, and it shall be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you”.

Furthermore, it’s maybe not enough just to ask once.

Jesus told the rather curious story of the man who visits his friend in the middle of the night

He asks for bread and receives a short answer: “Go away! What time of the night is this to be bothering me?”

But no, he won’t give up.

He keeps asking and, because of his persistence, he gets what he needs.

There was an obligation in the culture of the day to show hospitality

It would be shameful for a friend to retreat back to his bed when he knew his friend was in need and he could help. Of course he will get up and answer the call for help. The honour of the sleeping friend required him to respond.

We are praying to a God whose name is hallowed. There is honour in his name and so he is going to answer the prayers of his needy friends, his dear children. There is no question about it.

We must note that Jesus’ model prayer is about needs, not simply desires

It is about daily food; the necessities of daily living.

It is about the forgiveness of sins – that we wouldn’t be crushed by our own guilt and that we wouldn’t be holding anyone else under our control by denying them forgiveness.

It’s about sparing us from the time of trial.

These are all explicit needs that every human being requires to be met.

It may be that what we desire is what we need, but it isn’t always the case

We can easily become obsessed with trivialities that can dominate our thinking and attention.

It’s not a big leap to ask for God’s approval of these things as we bring him in on our plots and schemes. But none of that is consistent with the coming of his kingdom and that’s where we fall down. Our true needs are kingdom concerns and, as we learn to pray for them, so we learn to pray in God’s will.

C.S. Lewis sums this up very well in his book, Mere Christianity:

“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

Boldness, persistence, shamelessness before our Father who desires to answer our prayers

I hope this morning that you feel better about your prayers and, if you don’t pray – or don’t pray frequently – that you might be encouraged to change your practice.

It’s good to check back to the example that Jesus offered and to ignore, in the first instance, all the praying practice that we have encountered that might hinder us. We must never say, after listening to someone else’s prayers, ‘Well, I could never pray like that’.

Instead, we must ask ourselves: ‘Could I ever pray like Jesus wants me to?’

I hope the answer to that is ‘yes’, after all we have looked at together today.