Sunday: The 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Luke 11:1-13
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

Having hit what he thought was rock bottom, Greg dragged himself to AA, but found himself skeptical of this whole handing over control to a higher power stuff. The AA group had seen this skepticism many times before and taught Greg to pray in the simplest way. When you go to bed at night, they taught him, kneel down and put your shoes under your bed and while you are down there, say "Thank you." When you wake up in the morning, kneel down beside your bed to get your shoes and while you are down there, say "Please." "Please." "Thank you." "Please help me stay clean and sober." "Thank you for another day of sobriety." After a while, Greg had a new habit-turning things over to God. He was beginning to find himself in God and that was giving him power. That AA group taught him how to pray.
The disciples wanted to know how to pray too. Having seen Jesus feed five thousand and raise the dead, having been up on the Mount of Transfiguration to watch him pray and having heard him offer private prayers to God, the Gospel writer Luke has the disciples come right out and ask Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray." Luke carefully constructs the answer he has Jesus give, weaving together three separate stories. You see, when Luke was writing this Gospel in the last third of the 1st century, he had access to many stories about Jesus and told by Jesus. Luke's craft was to weave these tidbits together to effectively (or, I think, sometimes no so effectively) communicate his understanding of the message of Jesus. The different gospel writers did it differently. Matthew has a longer version of the Lord's Prayer and it is not provoked by a question from the disciples. Luke puts the Lord's Prayer right with the bit about seeking and finding, asking and the door being opened. The author of the Gospel of Matthew puts those stories in different chapters.

The story about the friend at midnight is not found in any other gospel, which made me wonder why Luke used it to answer the question about prayer at all. I actually think Matthew made the right decision by not including it. It throws us off the scent of prayer as finding oneself in God. Remember it? A man goes to his friend's house at night to borrow three loaves of bread, the friend yells, "I'm in bed, go away." He wouldn't take no for an answer, knocking until he got his three loaves. Comparing God to a friend too lazy to get up seems strange to me. Including a story that would suggest to people that haranguing God will get you what you want is even stranger. More than strange, misreading this can be cruel. I have seen people taking that route in prayer. My very first day on the job as a Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, I found myself in the room of a young women, in her 20s or 30s who patiently and clearly told me how she was possessed, how she had asked God for years and years to heal her, how she had asked pastor and priest to help her. She asked me to exorcise her. She was persistent. She knocked at the door over and over. I was young and I started knocking with her, wanting to get her the equivalent of the three pieces of bread. But what God offers in prayer is not so often physical healing, but rather the peace that passeth all understanding. If I could go back and talk to her again I would tell her about that, probably just by sitting with her every week. I hope that what Luke had in mind with this story was the persistence of good habits and not a persistence marked by clawing desire. For it is hard not to want prayer to be transactional. I wanted the young woman to be healed form her schizophrenia.

Thankfully, at the same time as I was working at Trenton Psych a priest mentor of mine recommended I read George Bernanos, "A Diary of a Country Priest," a fictional account of a young priest in France struggling with stomach cancer and struggling with the demands of a parish. This fictional young priest helped correct my understanding of prayer. "If [prayer] were really what they suppose," the priest says, "a kind of chatter, the dialogue of a madman with his shadow, or even less-a vain and superstitious sort of petition to be given the good things of this world, how could innumerable people find comfort until their dying day, I won't eve say such great ‘comfort'-since they put no faith in the solace of the sense-but sheer, robust, vigorous, abundant joy in prayer?" Prayer is not some superstitious sort of petition to be given the good things of this world but rather a way of knowing a God who will provide vigorous, abundant joy. We are essentially defined by our relationship with God. Prayer is recognizing that. When Gary the alcoholic kneels down and says, "please," it works but not because God says, "Oh, he said please." Rather it is because Greg is tapping into the deep love of God always present. I think the young woman's transactional understanding of prayer kept her from recognizing this deeper peace. We are not essentially defined by our social position or gender or whether or not we struggle with mental illness, but rather are defined by God's love for us. God made us and our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. That's what prayer facilitates.

Prayer is natural to us, like breathing, but we have to discover it. In Yoga, in running, in Tai Chi, in morning prayer, centering prayer, this liturgy... The mysterious God has chosen to allow his creation great freedom. That constrains God from, Pow!, ending Greg's addiction or, Zap!, removing the schizophrenia from the young woman in Trenton. But it does not stop God from healing people who still remain alcoholics and schizophrenics. It does not stop God from being in loving relationship with this world. God's love is real and so we pray, first of all, to be with God to be in relationship. We pray so that our hearts might find rest in God. Please, thank you, please, thank you makes the person praying more and more aware of something powerful, something supportive. The more comfortable we get in the presence of this loving God, the more we can own that vigorous, abundant joy. Prayer is natural to us, like breathing. We've just forgotten and need to remember.

I encourage you to develop a habit of prayer, but don't worry too much about technique. We don't have to pray well. Bernanos' country priest says, "I know, of course, that the wish to pray is a prayer in itself, that God can ask no more than that of us." But if you want somewhere to begin or re-begin, Greg's AA group did teach him one more way to pray. At the end of each meeting, they stood and said the Lord's Prayer. "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." Ask and God's peace will be given you. Seek and you shall find abundant joy. I know why Luke put those words after the Lord's Prayer. God is so close to us. Prayer is as natural as breathing. Prayer is the habit of becoming aware of that, of knowing ourselves as loved by God.

"Please keep my sons safe." "Thank you for keeping them safe." "Please get me through this day." "Thank you for getting me through this day." "Please give me the bread I need today, please forgive me, please save from trial." "Thank you for my bread, for forgiveness, for preserving me from trial."
AMEN.