Last week seventy-one people were arrested for praying the “Lord’s Prayer” in the rotunda of the Senate Office building in Washington, D. C. Rose Marie Berger, one of those taken away in handcuffs writes: “My prayer was — and is — to end the warehousing of immigrant children in cages — 63,624 of whom have been apprehended by southwestern border patrol during the last twenty months…and seven of whom have died in federal custody since September.” It wasn’t just their praying the Lord’s Prayer that got them in trouble. It is that they refused to obey the Capitol Police who ordered them to stop praying and leave that space. It is that they persisted in praying there. And their prayers were interspersed with the telling of the stories and showing of the photographs of the children being held in detention. They named the names. They laid their bodies on the floor in the shape of a cross. They wouldn’t shut up and wouldn’t go away. Their unison words echoed in that rotunda. “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus prays a lot, usually off by himself, and at some point, his disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Truth is, they already know how to pray. They are good Jews. Like Jesus they were raised on the Psalms which are basically a collection of prayers. They many of them by heart. There are prayers of praise for who God is and what God has done. Prayers of thanksgiving for God’s faithful presence all of the good gifts that God is giving in creation. Prayers of petition, asking God to give what is needed, to shelter, to care, to deliver, to heal, to provide not only for the one praying but for others too. And prayers of lament, prayers said with tears streaming down the face, crying out in grief and suffering, and in anger and anguish because it feels like God has gone away, stopped listening, stopped caring, stopped connecting. And all of these prayers are about communion, an intentional, unguarded, from the heart talking with God, and listening for God. These prayers assume a personal, intimate relationship with God, and they are the means of nurturing this relationship—opening, deepening, growing in communion.
And in many ways, prayer is like the way we are in relationship with family and friends. We talk together. We praise each other, and say “thanks,” and we ask for things, and speak through our weeping. With our words we reach each other. We show ourselves, we share our hearts, and minds, spirits and feelings. We connect. We speak. We listen. Sometimes when I am mad at Richard, I just stop talking. I disconnect. I take myself away with my refusal to speak. Obviously, my relationship with Richard still exists, and in my silence I am communicating something, but Richard has to work really hard to find out what it is that I am not saying!
I assume that the disciples long for deeper communion with God and that they pray, and yet they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Why would they do this? What motivates their request? I think they sense that there is something about Jesus’ praying and intentional communing with God that keeps him centered, and refreshes him, and helps him stay clear about what he is doing, and makes him fearless and peaceful in the midst steady criticism and opposition, and fills him with love, and gives him the power to teach with authority, confront demonic powers, and heal people in body, mind, and spirit. The disciples have a hunch that all of what they treasure most about Jesus has something to do with his practice of praying. They want what he’s got.
So Jesus gives the disciples this prayer to pray every day—I say every day because there is in this prayer a request for daily bread. And Jesus gives us this prayer which we pray every week, together in worship. In the gospel of Luke, in the person of Jesus, we get a practice and a theology of prayer. In Jesus, Luke is showing us what happens when we pray in the way that Jesus has taught us to pray. Luke has no doubt that prayer changes things. And what is changed, what is affected is the people who pray in Jesus’ way.
Prayer is the means by which the dynamic energy of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus is more fully apprehended by us. Prayer is complementary to the Spirit’s activity—the point at which the communication of divine influence becomes increasingly effective in us. Prayer is the means by which we intentionally open ourselves, consent to, surrender to, and give in to the Spirit’s power and influence. The Spirit is in us, in every person, and also beyond us, greater than us, more than the sum total of her presence within the whole human race. Through prayer we deepen and broaden our communion and our cooperation with the Spirit. We are drawn more fully into what God desires for us, and what God desires for our neighbors.
Through this very particular, very simple prayer which Jesus gives us, we are reminded that we live in the plural. We live and move and have our being in relationship with God and other human beings. And Jesus says, when you pray, start with God. Address God as Father. If this metaphor, this way of naming God doesn’t work for you because your father was absent, or hurtful, or undependable, then name God as mother. If naming God as mother doesn’t work for you, then name God as the eternal, unfailing source of your life, the one who loves you with perfect love, the one who provides what you need to live, and gives you the stars in the night sky, the beauty and fragrance of the roses, the wonder of your own self, fearfully and wonderfully made, broken and healing. Pray to this one. Open yourself to this one who stays with you through thick and thin, and holds you in life, now and forever.
This prayer invites us to acknowledge our utter dependence on God and to grow in trust that God is dependable. God is for us, the Spirit of God is in us, the source, the center, the generous giver, the keeper, the lover, the fresh start, the peace, the resting place, the light, the eternal life, the creator of a realm, a kingdom, a commonwealth in which all that is exists in communion, and feasts on the beauty and goodness of God. Pray to this one says Jesus. Don’t live as though you were self-made and independent. Acknowledge your dependence. And pray for God’s kingdom to come. Pray for God’s will, pray for God’s desires to become all in all, on earth just as they are in heaven.
It is this prayer for God’s reign to come, and God’s will to be done that frames the story Jesus tells about the neighbor who comes asking for bread in the wee hours of the night. It is a story about persisting, asking, searching, knocking. Jesus says if you persist, if you keep asking, searching, knocking, you will receive, and find, and the door will be opened. But in the end, it isn’t a story about begging God to give bread, or whatever else it is that you or I need or want. It is about persisting in opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit, the divine Spirit, the imminent, intimate presence of God, who is always and everywhere, in us and beyond us, bringing the kingdom, energizing our desires, shaping our wills to be synced and saturated with the will of God.
And what God desires, what God wills is that we live in the plural. That we pray in the plural. We don’t pray for my daily bread, for my needs to be met, but for our daily bread, for others and for ourselves to have what is needed to live and flourish. Just prior to giving the disciples this prayer, Jesus has been working hard to bring them into the recognition that life in God’s kingdom is sourced by God who fills the world with gift, and calls us to love and look out for our neighbors. In the story of the Good Samaritan that Rob preached on two weeks ago, Jesus answers a young lawyer’s question: who is my neighbor? Who am I called to love and care for? His hope is for a well-defined, relatively small, manageable neighborhood with neighbors who look pretty much like him. But Jesus doesn’t give him that. Jesus says, anyone in need is your neighbor, and the one you most don’t want to live by and interact with, the one you’d like to tell to go back to where they came from, turns out to be your neighbor, the one you should imitate, and live in plural with.
The people who were arrested last week in the Senate office building for refusing to stop praying the Lord’s prayer and telling the story of migrating children who are being held in cages had been praying and living in the plural for a long time. They were moved by the needs of these children, these neighbors in need. They were moved by the divine Spirit to act in keeping with God’s desires. They were persisting, asking, searching, finding, and manifesting the presence of God’s reign, the fullness and the daring of God’s love.
Just before Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing that he would be executed, he prayed part of this prayer that he gave us: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.” Beginning and end Jesus prays, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Pray this prayer with me says Jesus. And we who do are ourselves bits of earth, formed from star dust, lumps of clay. If we really want God’s kingdom to come on earth, we should of course expect that the earth in question will include this earth, this clay, each of our physical bodies. We are dwelling places for the eternal life-giving Spirit who prays without ceasing, and receives our prayer as an invitation to deeper communion and fuller co-operation with the One who persistently searches and finds and fills us with a love that fears nothing, and dares everything in the power of that love.