When You Pray
Welcome to your annual soul checkup. Let’s together get ourselves ready for Easter. This will take us a number of weeks, about six to do this right. Let’s focus in on how your prayer life is going as one of the primary indicators of a healthy relationship with God. Let your soul be open to a preventive checkup that says there is more health and growth possible.
We know that the majority of humanity prays. It is an innate response to cry out when there are challenges and joys, trials and moments of awe. You heard it famously quipped there are no atheists in foxholes. Scholastically, a 2017 poll from the Barna Corporation found 79% of American adults have prayed at least once in the last three months.(1) The number increases if we extend the time frame. Most commonly, Americans pray privately, silently, with gratitude and for others. Jesus knew the question was not “if you pray,” but rather when you pray, how do you pray.
The disciples had been traveling with Jesus for a short amount of time, when they asked some clarifying questions about these practices of prayer. Jesus said, “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
“In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do.”(2)
During this season of Lent, it is not just about feeling holy, it is a lifelong commitment to that which sustains us. Prayer sustains us through the peaks and the deep valleys. The prayers of Jesus remind us of the width, depth, and the breadth of life. This Lent, we dive into the prayer Jesus taught with dedication and pay attention to the Lord’s prayer. Why is it that we teach the Lord’s prayer to children? Why is it that is the only prayer that unites around the world across denomination and division? The prayers of Jesus remind us that our experience of life is necessarily communal as much it is personal.
Some of you have heard me tell the story that Steve and I decided as young parents that we wanted to teach our children to pray. We decided that we would begin by teaching our children the Lord’s prayer, and then expound their faith life from there. When Alisabeth was born, we were excited to teach her the Lord’s prayer. I gave birth to Alisabeth by cesarean section and was physically exhausted. Three days after she was born, I was distraught when I realized that I had not been praying the Lord’s prayer with her. I came to Steve in tears. Steve calmly and lovingly told me that he and Alisabeth had been praying the Lord’s prayer since her birth. We prayed together that night and many nights since as our family has grown. When Steve and I shared that commitment, he carried it when I was not able, and I have done the same for him.
We pray together the Lord’s prayer in many voices. Some of our voices are strong and sure, others are shaky and coughing, others are young and still learning the words. Sometimes, we pray with confidence and other days, we lose our footing in the prayer depending on the vocal support of others to care us through. Our experience of faith is always communal and corporate. There are times when we outsource our prayer, our belief, as well as times when we carry others. There is no temptation that has overcome you that is not common to humanity. And yet, it is personal it is specific to us. But it is not private. Our relationship with God calls us into relationship with others. This is our collective God.
Have you ever found yourself referring to your children as your spouse’s children? When a son or daughter does something cringeworthy, and you look at your spouse and say, Oh! That is your son; that is your daughter. My siblings and I have been known to occasionally say, “What did your mother do?” In both the case of the children and the parent, we know that we share the relationship, but we smile as temporarily bemuse ourselves with singularity of relationship.
Sometimes we act this way with God, imagine God to be ours, alone. My Father, who art in heaven. My own Father in heaven. Our prayers reflected the brilliantly worded critique of Anne Lamott, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” (3) Ouch! That hurts! In our soul checkup, how are you doing?
When we pray our father, we acknowledge our identity with people of faith across the world and across time (St. Cyprian of North Africa in the 3rd century reminds us of that). Our baptism unites us together. Our prayer life knits us together. This is all well and good as a concept until we are challenged by someone with whom we are not sure we want to be included in the same OUR with. Someone who has hurt us, someone who is difficult, Someone who we can not imagine a way forward with. There seems to always a part of us that falls into the ways that Anne Lamott described of sculpting my own God.
Roberta Bondi, professor of church history at Candler Theological Seminary at Emory, describes this way forward in her impasse. She experienced a conflict with someone she called Jane Anne and began to pray the Lord’s Prayer privately this way, “Our Father, who art in heaven, my father, and the father of Jane Anne. She did this across time.” (4) She began to envision herself and Jane Anne before God in her prayers. Her posture changed. She realized that it was not specifically forgiveness that was needed (as she initially imagined), but a change of perspective for her to see Jane Anne with empathy and compassion, instead of holding her in the place she had initially.
Praying the same Lord’s Prayer, she had many times before, was prayed anew as she allowed God to move through her. By speaking the words, my father and the father of Jane Anne together, she had prayed our father and meant it in a new way.
This Lent, I invite you to pray words you have known and memorized in a new way – let them be vessels for change in your life and the lives of others. Who is God calling you to add to your prayer to stretch your understanding and experience of God’s fullness? Who is challenging for you to get along with? Who ruffles your feathers? Who makes your uncomfortable? Join me in praying the Lord’s prayer daily and add their name in Our Father who are in heaven, my father and the father of (insert your own name here).
Let’s be faithful as we pray and see where God changes us.
This is the Gospel, the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
(1) https://www.barna.com/research/silent-solo-americans-pray/
(2) Message translation of Matthew 6: 5-15a
(3) Lamott, Anne. Plan B: Thoughts of Faith. 2006.
(4) Inspired by A Place to Pray: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer by Roberta C. Bondi. Abingdon Press, 1998.