Teach us to pray (a sermon about kissing, baptism and the things we long for)

Luke 11:1-13

Last Sunday we celebrated Leo and Mia’s baptisms. As a part of their baptism, we also prayed for them. Each time we come together at church, we pray. We pray for a lot of different things around here. 

For the pain in the world, 
for stuff we’re worried about, 
for things on our minds, 
things we care about, 
for help, 
for healing,
for guidance.  

Some of us aren’t really into words when we pray, and we’re more of the “quiet your mind or stare at a leaf” kind of pray-ers. Hike it out. Others of us are really into the words.  Our Lutheran tradition is really into the words, which is good and fine and one of the many ways to pray. 

I have a friend who’s favorite moment of church is this presence and connection to God that she feels when she sits in the pew at the start of the service and watches as the candles are lit.  

Learning how to pray isn’t like learning how to read or how to drive a car. There’s not a checklist to work through or an instruction manual.  Someone once told me that learning how to pray is more like learning how to kiss.  We watch other people do it. We think twice about who we allow to teach us (hopefully we think twice!) We make some mistakes. And then, somewhere deep down, you always kind of wonder if you’re actually doing it right. 

When Jesus’ disciples come up to him and said “Lord, teach us how to pray,” I’m guessing they weren’t trying to get him to explain the technique of praying. 

You know, “Hey Lord, I’m a little concerned about those times I’m going to have to pray in public, could you just give me some pointers so I sound good? 

Or, “so, Lord, we were wondering if you could give us some best practices or even key phrases for praying that will enact some real change around here. Ignite some lightening bolts and stuff.” 

Or, “Lord could you just give us a little prayer that we can recite together in unison for the next couple thousand years—something short and snappy and catchy that we’ll remember?” 

Nah, these disciples were devout Jews.  They had grown up praying in the synagogues with all the right words and all that.  So, what were they after when they came up to Jesus that day and said, Lord, teach us how to pray?

What are any of us after when we reach for God?  Some peace and calm. Some help? (Jesus knows, we need a lot, of help around here.) Help for ourselves? For all these messes in the world right now?

What are we after? The disciples most certainly could see Jesus’ great love for God and intense desire for God’s kingdom to come.  Did they want to know more about it? Teach us to pray…

All these things that we long for—like those deep soul things that we long for, point us to a different world which Jesus often talks about as the kingdom of God.  Thy kingdom come. Were the disciples wondering “how do we get there?”   

If we only come to God for a formula or a rulebook or a driver’s manual or a checklist, we’re missing out on something.  If God is just a vending machine that we punch some numbers into and out comes exactly what we want, then we’re missing something.  God is very much in the business of transforming us exactly while She transforms the world around us.  But we have to be in some kind of conversation in order for the dialogue to bring us somewhere new.

Think, for a moment, about someone you have a real relationship with. A good friend, a co-worker.  Maybe a roommate. Maybe even a roommate you’re married to.  Or a niece or nephew or grandchild.  Spending time with this person—for better or worse—has an impact on you. They change you. They shape you.  When we pray day after day for understanding, our minds will open.  When we ask God over and over for compassion, our hearts will soften. Relationship with God in prayer will change us.  

A couple of weeks ago, Anne Lamott wrote an essay where she explained why she prays. “Prayer,” she says, “connects us umbilically to a spirit both outside and within us, who hears and answers… I pray a prayer, she says, some sober people told me to pray 36 years ago…because when all else fails, follow instructions. It helps me not to fixate on who I am but whose. I am God’s adorable, aging, self-centered, spaced-out beloved."

"One man in early sobriety told me that he had come into recovery as a hotshot but that other sober men helped him work his way up to servant…I pray to be a good servant because I’ve learned that this is the path of happiness…

"It is miserable to be a hater. I pray to be more like Jesus with his crazy compassion and reckless love. Some days go better than others,” she says reflecting that it blows her mind to remember how God loves certain members of congress equally as much as God loves her grandson because God loves, period.  “I will have horrible thoughts about others, she says…and I say to God, ‘look – I think we can both see what we have on our hands here. Help me not to be such a pill…’…I can’t turn politics around, or war, or the climate, but in listening, by opening my heart to someone in trouble, I create with them more love, less of a grippy clench in our little corner of the universe.” Her whole essay is great.

The truth is that God teaches us to pray through each other.  Our prayers articulate what it is we think about God and what we know about God. Jesus tells the disciples and us of his certainties about God in today’s reading.  He tells us, as theologian Matt Skinner says, “God hears. God provides. God forgives. God protects. God expects us to be generous to each other.” 

You as congregation, as friends, family, and community will teach Leo and Mia to pray. Through hearing about the things you long for, God will teach them to hope for a new word. Through your stories, they will learn of the heartaches in life and how they will live through them. There is no manual for faith or instruction book on how to pray or live this life God calls us to.  There is only you who enflesh God’s story and bring God’s word to life.

When we gather shortly around the baptismal fount, we will renounce the powers of this world that would try to divide and demean us.  We will renounce powers that justify mass shootings and ideologies of supremacy and inferiority based on race. We will commit to living in a such a way that brings about this radical kingdom of God even when it feels like the world is on fire around us. We will promise to teach our youngest ones to pray (and our oldest) and to let God form and mold them through the practice of relationship. We’ll promise to take care of the earth and each other (the little Each Other in our community and the wide Each Other in our society and world). And through it all, we will remind one another of our belovedness to God.

Luke 11:9-11 from our scripture today is famous: “Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” 

The first Nations version indigenous translation of the new testament reads differently and I share it with you as we close. It reads: 

“So, keep dancing your prayers, and the way will open before you. Search for the ancient pathways, and you will find them. Keep sending up your prayers, and they will be heard. Answers will come to the ones who ask, good things will be found by the ones who search for them, and the way will open before the ones who keep dancing their prayers.”

God bless you, Leo and Mia on this occasion of your baptism.