PRAYER: KNOWING & LIVING CHRIST
Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13
7th Sunday after Pentecost, July 24, 2022 The Rev. Dr. Ritva H. Williams
St Stephen’s mission statement is expressed in one simple phrase, “know, live, and share Christ.” Our first scripture reading lifts up the idea of living Christ.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
The author distinguishes between living in Christ and living out human philosophies, ideologies, traditions, and superstitions. Living Christ does not require keeping a long list of laws made up by ancient communities which may well have helped them survive but don’t work so well today.
The good news is this: in Christ we are accepted just as we are — heavy laden with shame and guilt, wounded and broken by life’s trials. In Christ we are forgiven and released from the judger within us and the judgers in the world around us. We are healed and restored to live a new life rooted in Christ’s love.
A word of caution, Christ’s love heals and restores by changing us little by little to become more more loving, generous, kind, patient, and gentle with ourselves and the folk around us. Living Christ is about finding peace and joy in the midst of a world that always seems to be falling apart.
In our Gospel reading, the disciples notice that Jesus prays a lot, and that his prayers keep him centered in all the busyness and craziness of their life in mission together. So they ask Jesus, teach us to pray. He does, teaching them what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer. It covers all the basics: our relationship with God, the overall direction of our lives, our physical needs, our relationships with others, and our need for safety and protection.
This is the one prayer that every Christ-follower was and still is encouraged to know by heart.The earliest followers of Jesus prayed this prayer three times a day — in the morning, mid-afternoon, and evening. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism recommends we begin and end each day with this prayer.
In the morning, as soon as you get out of bed ... make the sign of the holy cross and say, ’Under the care of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.’ Then ... the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.
Do the same in the evening, when you go to bed. Luther advocated these prayer practices because he believed that “to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
The Lord’s Prayer presents us with a sketch of who God is and how God operates: God is like a loving parent who hears, provides, forgives, expects us to be generous with one another, protects and defends us.1 Jesus enhances this picture of God by way of two negative contrasts. (1) God is NOT like the friend who objects to be woken up in the middle of the night and has to be nagged and shamed into helping out. (2) God is bigger and better, more loving, more forgiving, more everything than any human parent could ever be. I hope that is good news for anyone who may be disappointed in their relationships with their human parents. Because God is by nature gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love Jesus promises:
Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches find, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Ah ... and this is where so many of us stumble and slam on the brakes, “because our experience contradicts Jesus’ words. So often we have asked and not received; we have searched and not found. In spite of our most
1 Matt Skinner, “Who Taught You How to Pray?” Sunday, July 21, 2019, www.workingpreacher.org.
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fervent prayers for their health and safety, we have lost loved ones to cancer and senseless accidents. In spite of the fervent prayers of people around the world, daily we hear of tragedies of violence, hunger, disease, and natural disasters. If God is like a loving parent who desires to give what is good and life giving (11:1-13), why do so many prayers seem to go unanswered?”2
There are no simple answers to this question. Here are two that are biblically and theologically sound.
First, not everything that happens in the world is God’s will. God is not the only power in the world. There are other powers at work, the powers of Satan and his demons, the powers of evil and death, often manifested in [decisions, traditions, and the systems built by human beings gifted with free will and trapped in the consequences of their own actions]. ... Consequently, God’s will can be — and often is — thwarted.”3 You do it every single day!
Second and more importantly, Jesus never says that God will give us everything and anything we ask for. God is not a vending machine. Prayer is not like inserting the right number of coins and pushing a button that causes the vending machine to miraculously produce whatever we want.
Hear again how Jesus wraps up his teaching on prayer, “If you then, you who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” What God gives consistently is the Holy Spirit who nourishes and nurtures the image of God within each of us so that we can know and live Christ more fully.
To quote Martha Grace Reese, “Good prayer habits act like an incubator for our relationships with God. If we pray, if we show up, God has a much better chance of getting through to us. Over time, we know ourselves and God better” (Unbinding Your Heart, p. 115). We know about Jesus from scripture, but we know Christ through prayer. Prayer allows the Holy Spirit to pour Christ’s love into our hearts, to infuse our minds with Christ’s wisdom, and to energize us to use our gifts, talents and strengths for the common good.
Here are a few of my favorite teachers on how prayer works:
Soren Kierkegaard:
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
I found I had less and less to say, until finally I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God.
Mother Theresa:
I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things.
Our spiritual practice of prayer can and should begin with the Lord’s Prayer. We can speak it out loud or in the silence of our hearts. We can even sing it. But we can and should expand our prayer practice to include many different kinds of prayers. One of my favorites is an ancient breath prayer around one single sentence, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, your beloved child.” I spent several minutes praying this prayer in my office on the day of Alex’s funeral in August 2021, only a month after my own son’s funeral. It helped me stay centered when I was on the verge of being overwhelmed by grief.
Here’s how this breath prayer works. Sit comfortably, rest your hands on your lap, close your eyes, breathe slowly. As you inhale, silently pray “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God.” As you exhale, silently pray “have mercy on me your beloved child.” Ready ... [2 minutes]. Amen!
