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Praying in Jesus’ Name       Luke 11: 1-13                 July 29, 2007

In keeping with the contemporary feel of our service this morning, I thought I’d begin my sermon by playing a bit of a rock & roll song.  Listen with me, if you will: 

I saw her today at a reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she would meet her connection
At her feet was her footloose man

No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you might find
You get what you need

This famous Rolling Stones hit song is from the album Let it Bleed, recorded on 1968.  It goes on for over seven minutes.  The voices you heard at the beginning are those of the members of the London Bach Choir, by the way, who join in again at the end.  If you’d like to hear the piece in its entirety, I’ll play it for you after the service.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, it’s the words from this song that I’d like you to focus on.  The verses don’t matter, really – the message of this Mick Jagger / Keith Richards tours de force is found in its wonderful, easy to sing along-with chorus:

No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want
And if you try; sometime, you might find
You get what you need. 

It is actually a rather profound message when you think about it.  And it nicely sums up a good bit of our life experience.

More importantly, while I am pretty sure Jagger was not thinking about prayer when he wrote the song – no one would accuse him of being a particularly spiritual man - the sentiment expressed in these popular lyrics are right in sync with what I would suggest is a healthy attitude toward prayer. 

And prayer is the subject I’d like to have us think about for the next few minutes.

Our Gospel Lesson for this morning is Luke’s account of Jesus’ familiar words on the subject of prayer.  It is a continuation of Jesus’ instruction of the disciples – a shift, if you will, from how to love your neighbor in the story of the Good Samaritan and how to love the Lord in the story of Martha and Mary to some thoughts on how to pray.

It all begins when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

When you think about it, the disciples’ question is perfectly understandable.  In fact, my guess is that most of us have no trouble identifying with their uncertainty on this subject.

For, while many of us pray every day (I hope so, anyway) and all of us pray again and again when we’re here in our place of worship, most people – even most Christians – stumble around a lot when we sit down – perhaps even more so when we stand up – to pray.

Praying, after all, can be quite intimidating – even for people who are not easily intimidated.  We find ourselves searching for the right words, and more often than not we find our minds wandering off in all sorts of directions, away from the subject at hand.

After all, prayer is a communication with God.  And that, in and of itself is a pretty intimidating thought.  For most people, God is awesome and powerful and all-knowing and we are – well – anything but.  So putting ourselves in a position to communicate with a force like God can make us uncomfortable – sufficiently uncomfortable, sometimes, to cause us to avoid the whole process and do something else.

Fortunately, our Text for this morning offers some help for those of us who would like our prayer life to be better.  The passage, you’ll recall, contains three elements:  The Lord’s Prayer, the parable of a shameless neighbor and Jesus’ assurance that God hears our prayers.

If we look carefully, I believe we will find three hints that all of us will find to be useful.

First, we need to realize that when we turn to God in our prayers, we are communicating with a friend. 

Jesus makes this point clearly in his answer to the Disciples question.

His parable uses the word “friend” not once but three times.   His clear inference is that our relationship with God can be – should be, in fact – like a dear, close friendship.  When we pray, we should pray with that friendship under-girding our prayer.

Friends want the best for each other.  So when we pray, we need to remember that God wants what is best – for us and for the whole world.  When we pray for our families or for that matter for the AIDS victims in Tanzania or the Katrina victims on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we pray out of friendship with God.

And another thing about friends is that they are honest with each other.  When dishonesty or duplicity creeps into the relationship, the friendship is harmed or even destroyed.

It doesn’t matter that God already knows about everything we are praying for.  For the sake of the friendship, we need to let God know exactly what we are thinking about.  Exactly what is causing us pain.

Our friendship with God doesn’t change Mick Jagger’s truism, buy the way.  You still can’t always get what you want.  Friends don’t necessarily give friends exactly what they want every time they ask. 

Even though we are assured by our text that God answers our prayers – that when we ask, we receive, when we seek we find and when we knock the door is opened for us – that does not imply a guarantee that we will get what we want.

One scholar put it this way: God’s response to prayer is not always what we expect. Sometimes the answer is hard to discover. Sometimes it is hard to accept.

God may say yes, God may say no, God may say wait, or God may respond, not with what we sought, but with something better.

Again, the words of Mick Jagger ring true.  Rather than always getting what we want, sometimes, we get what we need.

Second, we need to get past our need for our communication with God to be in words.

You have all heard the cliché, “80% of success is just showing up.” It’s been used in countless motivational speeches. It’s been used by corporate coaches and sports coaches, and used by all sorts of different folks offering encouragement to others.

It is also applicable to prayer.  Instead of our prayers being some sort of monologue in which we tell God what we want, or even a conversation in which we tell God things and God somehow answers back, we need to stop thinking of prayer as something which is tied to a lot of verbiage.

One of the things that hurts our prayers faster than anything else is starting with some sort of lofty idea of what it ought to be. To the contrary, prayer is a pretty ordinary, everyday kind of thing. Yes, it has its high moments, but a lot of prayer is just a matter of showing up, being quiet and listening.

That said, A word about posture is probably worth mentioning at this point. There are no hard and fast rules. Some people find kneeling difficult, or even impossible; some can't stand for very long; some find making the sign of the cross to be helpful, some find raising their hands into a praying position to also be helpful. Some find all of these physical gestures to be pretentious. But this doesn't mean that the physical expression of prayer is irrelevant.

The ideal posture, some say, is relaxed but not slumped; poised but not tense; alert but not fidgety; above all, humble but happy in the presence of the Creator whom you are learning to call Father.

Here’s the message:  Find the posture that does all that for you; find the gestures that express and symbolize the love of God for you.  Teach your body to pray—which, by the way, is not a bad way to teach your mind, heart and soul to pray as well.

Third, and finally, we need to recognize that God expects our praying to be bold and demanding.

Jesus’ answer to his Disciples question contains what grammarians call “imperatives,” words that command the respect and attention of the listener – who in this case, you’ll remember, is God.

Author and theologian Walter Wink puts it well: “Jesus' teaching on prayer,” he writes, “is impertinent, rude and a theological embarrassment. He understands nothing of Christian etiquette. Prayer as Jesus describes it is effrontery. He commands us to command God. We are to hammer on the door until God, out of pure irritation, answers our need. Like the widow haranguing the judge, we are to persist in prayer like a dog worrying a bone. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

It gets even better:  “Come on, God, be God!” Wink writes. “We are ordered, by Jesus, to order God to bring on God's domination-free order. And we are permitted, as children of the Abba, Father, to demand our daily bread, and to insist that we be forgiven and shielded from temptation.”

I think Wink is spot on-target.  And I don’t think his point contradicts either of the first two points I just laid out.  If we believe that God is our friend and that, God, like all friends, can be truly present with us in periods of silence, then approaching God with a clenched fist from time to time also seems perfectly natural.

If the notion of being demanding in the presence of God troubles you, by the way, try this exercise:  Find a place where no one is likely to hear you and shout the words of the Lord’s prayer at the top of your lungs. I assure you the forcefulness and urgency of Jesus’ words will come through loud and clear.

Brothers and Sisters, as Christians we need to be engaged in a lifelong process of learning how to pray like Jesus.  We can never afford to become complacent or take the process for granted. It requires work.  Day after day, week after week, month after month.

Thankfully, however, when it comes to prayer, Jesus does not leave us on our own.  He is here with us coaching us, prodding us, saying, “When you pray, say this….”

In fact, one could argue that the most perfect moment in our Christian worship, the most challenging moment, is that risky, against-our-natural-inclination moment when someone stands amid the congregation and says, “Let us pray.”

So, let me be so bold as to say, right now, Let us pray:

Holy one, perfect our prayerfulness.  Inspire us, by the leading of your Spirit, to learn what it means to call you Father, and Mother and counselor and teacher and friend.

Be present with us in song.  Be present with us in silence.  Be present with us when we shout at the top of our voice.  Surround us with your love. 

In Jesus name,  AMEN