Download | Duration: 00:10:41

THORNY PRAYER ISSUES

Luke 11: 1-13

Two Fridays ago, my class of doctoral students joined Professor Taylor in visiting a Masjid in Atlanta. Often called a Mosque in English, it is the place where, five times a day, Muslims and interested other people gather to offer prayers to Allah, their Arabic name for God. Why do I tell you about this? For just this reason: men, women: what are you usually doing on Friday at 1:00 p.m.? Are you taking a lunch hour as I usually am? Are you at work and can’t leave, or at home watching TV or starting a nap? In Atlanta, we observed what many Muslims were doing: they came for an hour of prayer. This was just one of five prescribed prayer times daily. As they arrived, they respectfully took off their shoes and placed them in wooden nooks in the walls of their vestibule; the only other time I had seen so many shoes in such nooks was at a bowling alley! But the wood was beautiful there, and the shoes carefully placed. There was no chit chat, just purposeful movement. Men and women went into separate locations, in part because arms and feet actually touch your brothers or sisters in faith. We witnessed men, blue collar, white collar, and boys, going into a special purification room where they washed their legs and feet, arms and hands, and face. They then went in to a huge carpeted room where we observed them standing and kneeling together with other men of the faith. They actually prostrate themselves with their face to the ground, their head touching the feet of the man in front of them, and their feet touching the head of the man in back of them; their elbows touched the man’s elbows on either side of them. How many were there on a Friday at 1:00 p.m.? We counted 700, besides women and girls in another room! Men prayed together, physically and fervently; women prayed together as well. We were moved by the reverence of their prayers.

Just three weeks ago I learned about prayer from a Rabbi. Rabbi Amy Mayer of Temple Israel just up the street reminded me of two things that Jews do and don’t do: First she said almost no one asks a rabbi to pray for them! She says Jews believe they should bring their own prayers to God, so synagogue services become a cacophony of a hundred people praying to God at their own speed and for their own purposes. The second thing I learned was that Jews never cut God out of their spiritual life even when a prayer seems to go unanswered. I know some individuals and even some professors who cut God out of their lives when they prayed and believed God did not hear or respond to them. “A Jew would never cut out God,” said Rabbi Amy. “We go back to God, crying out, getting angry, pleading, and asking, until we find the answer God wants us to find. And most often, it is not the answer we are looking for!” From Muslims I watched the power of reverent, corporate prayer. From Jews I learned to never stop knocking on God’s door! Now from Christians, we learn some things as well. Let’s listen to what Jesus tells his closest followers about prayer, paying special attention today to the eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to Luke.

First, Jesus sets the example of constant prayer. He prayed each morning, he prayed during his journeys, he prayed in the garden, and he prayed on the cross. Jesus prayed constantly, sometimes with petitions, sometimes just talking with his Father, sometimes to give thanks and sometimes just to listen! Such reasons for prayer should be ours as well. Prayer is to give glory to God, as well as praise; prayer is to acknowledge God and to keep us from falling into a philosophy of life that even some founding fathers had. Thomas Jefferson, it has been noted, was something of a Deist: that is, one who believes that God set the universe in motion and created the laws of physics, now does not interfere with or change any of it. Some Americans believe that, especially when they don’t think their prayer has been answered. But as I showed the children, we’ll need to get beyond the idea that prayer is like a gumball machine: put in your money and get out the result you want. People do that, of course, because of a line Jesus once said and it is in our text today too: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This week in the news an Agricultural Department employee who was accused of racism a week ago has received calls of apology because the quote on which the charge was based was taken out of context. Christians have a bad habit of taking one line out of the Bible and making it the galvanized truth. But when you do that with a verse like: “Ask and it will be given unto you,” it turns God into a wonderful gumball machine, or an overindulgent grandfather who gives you whatever you ask, or a spineless parent who creates a child who has no means to mature because she was never told “no” as a teenager. God is not any of those things. Prayer with God is about relationship; about listening, not just about asking. Remember that strange part of our text in verses eleven through thirteen; that part about scorpions and snakes and fish and eggs? Interpreter Raymond Bailey explains: “Luke draws on familiar images to make his point on parental care [concerning God.] There was an eel-like type of unclean fish in the Sea of Galilee. A loving parent would not give to a child anything that would be harmful, even if it fit the category of the request. A baby cries for food, but some food is harmful. A scorpion may draw itself into a ball and assume the appearance of an egg. The eel or scorpion might appeal to the child, but the parent would exercise caution on [their] behalf. A parent must be wise enough not to be fooled, and our heavenly parent is wisdom itself.” So Jesus prayed constantly, but not about getting what he wanted; he prayed ultimately to know and do his Father’s will. Prayer is intended to be more about relationship more than petition.

Second, we are in this world together. When Jesus gave the example that we now call the “Lord’s Prayer,” there was no first person singular pronoun in the whole prayer. While we are most accustomed to asking God to grant one of our requests, the Lord’s Prayer is plural throughout: like with Muslims, it’s a reminder to pray corporately, with one another, perhaps even touching shoulders or holding hands once in awhile. It invites us to find times to pray in the same room now and then, but when we’re away, we remember how many others are in prayer with God at the same time.

Third, be persistent in prayer.  In Biblical times families would usually bed down on the family floor, perhaps near a fire, for homes were usually just one room. Usually the father laid down next to the door, and almost like the men I saw praying two weeks ago, or like arctic travelers with huskies, the father would have his children nuzzle close to him for safety, and most often the mother was at the other end of the line; the children were in the middle. With a knock on the door, not only would the father have to move, the children would have to be awakened to move as well, so the first response to a request for bread at midnight is no. But if the neighbor was persistent, the man might give in a) to be hospitable, or b) to get the persistent man to go away so the father could go back to sleep! Persistence in prayer makes a difference with God.

Fourth, read one verse in light of other verses. If you stop with “Ask and it shall be given unto you,” people miss the shading that the next line adds: “seek and ye shall find” implies persistence; and the next part “knock and the door will be opened” also says that your request is not fulfilled right away, nor is it always fulfilled gladly, but there is a response because of the relationship the neighbor had already built with his neighbor. If a stranger pounds on a man’s door at midnight it will first be assumed he is a thief.

So the fifth and final thing Jesus teaches us about prayer is this:  “Do not be a stranger at the door of your Father.” God wants to hear from you; God wants to know you, not just as you were created, but as you have become; God want to hear your preferences, your choices and your beliefs. Certainly Christians believe in prayer; but do we practice prayer to make it a sacred conversation, inviting God into our space and for a few focused moments, making it holy?  Instead of just throw away words, I witnessed others who believe in God make a time, place, and a posture for prayer. Today I have listened to Jesus words and heard that he often sets himself apart for prayer with his Heavenly Father. Today our text commends to us regular and persevering prayer. Let prayer be constant, corporate, persistent, Scriptural, and familiar. Today let us reclaim holy time- once, twice, five times a day, or even more: when we can we praise, wrestle with, talk with, or even question God, who will be as involved in our lives as we wish. Like Jesus in our facet glass window, God is knocking on the door of our hearts today.

Jeffrey A. Sumner July 24, 2010