Sermons from the Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Teach Us to Pray

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 6:5-13

September 6, 1998

Garrison Keillor tells us the story in Leaving Home: "In the Sanctified Brethren Church, a tiny fundamentalist bunch we were in, there was a spirit among certain elders that defied peacemaking. They were given to disputing small points of doctrine that to them seemed the very fulcrum of the faith. We were cursed with a surplus of scholars and a deficit of peacemakers, and so we tended to be divisive and split into factions. One dispute when I was a boy had to do with the question of hospitality toward those in error, whether kindness shown to one who holds false doctrine implicates you in his wrongdoing.

"Uncle Al had family and friends on both sides of the so-called cup of cold water debate, and it broke his heart. The dispute was really between two men, brother William Miller and brother James Johnson, who had dragged others into it, and so, one fine August day, Uncle Al tried to make peace between those two marbleheads and prevent a great deal of unhappiness for the rest of us. He arranged for them to meet at his and Aunt Flo's one Sunday, a few Millerites and a few Johnsonians, not to discuss the hospitality-to-error doctrine but simply to enjoy

a dinner of Aunt Flo's famous fried chicken.

"It took weeks to arrange. Uncle Al worked through an intermediary, Brother Fields, who had never shown hospitality to anyone, whether in error or not, and was therefore neutral on the question. Finally they arrived in two cars, both Fords, the Brethren being united on the General Motors question. Out climbed, slowly, some gaunt, flinty eyed thin-lipped men in floppy suits and their plump obedient wives, and they came into the house and sat in awesome silence around the living room until the call to dinner, and they trooped in around the long dining-room table, extended with two leaves so they wouldn't have to sit close, and the Millerites and the Johnsonians bowed their heads in prayer.

Prayer was a delicate matter. Brethren were known to use prayer before dinner as a platform, and so Al, the peacemaker, concerned lest one brother take prayer and beat the other brother over the head with it, said, 'let us bow our heads in silent prayer and give thanks for the meal,' and they bowed their heads and closed their eyes and--a long time passed; the old clock ticked on the bureau; a cat walked in and meowed and left; a child snickered and was stilled; cars went by; there were dry sniffs and throat clearings; and soon it was clear that neither side wanted to stop before the other; they were seeing who could pray the longest.

"Brother Miller peeked through his fingers at Brother Johnson, who was earnestly engaged in silent communion with the Lord, who agreed with him on so many things. His forehead almost touched the plate. So Brother Miller dove back into prayer and the other Brethren stayed under too, sneaking glances around the table to see if anyone else noticed how long it was. Minutes drifted by. Heads stayed bowed, nobody would come up. To stop praying might imply a weakness of faith. "Al said 'amen' to offer a way out of the deadlock, and said it again, amen." Brother Miller looked up and saw Johnson still bowed, so he went back down just as Johnson put his periscope up and saw Brother Miller submerged, so down he went. It was becoming the longest table grace in history. It ground on and on and on."

You'll be relieved to know they aren’t still there praying. The impasse was finally broken by the delicious smell of Aunt Flo's famous fried chicken. But Keillor, in the artful way of the great story teller, reminds us that prayer can be used in a lot of ways--not least of all as a weapon.

Prayer can also be a sermon. This is especially true in larger, churches where the pastor who isn't preaching wants to get in his or her licks. "Oh Lord, who tells us in 1 Chronicles 26:18--" those prayers, complete with three points and a poem, can last forever. Mark Twain characterized one prayer he hard as being the finest aver offered to a congregation in Boston." His point was that the eloquence was directed at the congregation — but not to God.

In our Book of Confessions is the Second Helvetic Confession that dates from the 16th century. In it we find this guidance: "In public prayers, there is to be a standard lest they be excessively long and irksome. The greater part of meetings for worship is to be given to evangelical teaching, and care is to be taken lest the congregation is wearied by too lengthy prayers and when they are to hear the preaching of the gospel they either leave the meeting or, having been exhausted, want to do away with it altogether."

That has an awfully modern sound.

You know, prayer can even be used for announcements that were omitted earlier in the service. "Lord, help the women to remember the luncheon Thursday afternoon at Grace Skinner's and help those with last names beginning A-H to bring a green salad. And, lord, help some of the men to come Saturday to fix the plumbing in the church kitchen--especially those who know what they're doing."

There are a lot of ways to misuse prayer. But the problem of prayer is not new in our century. It was not new even in the 16th Century. There were a lot of bad prayer models even in the first century. So Jesus' disciples ask him according to Luke 11: "Lord, teach us to pray."

Why? Because Jesus has something they don't have and they haven’t seen anywhere else. Jesus models it. The know they don’t have it and they want it.

In Matthew's account, before teaching the prayer, Jesus says: "do not pray like the Gentiles, for they think they will be heard for their many words." We don't have to impress God with the richness of our language, overwhelm God with the quantity of our words, or give God an intelligence briefing on things He might not be aware of unless we provide the details.

Jesus teaches that our prayer should be brief, intense, personal, frequent and confident. Our prayer should deal with the very basics of your life and mine -- with reality. This is what Jesus shows us in the Lord’s Prayer.

Jesus is recorded as teaching the Lord's Prayer twice--in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. And each time He uses a slight difference of words to introduce the prayer and instruct us on its place in our lives. In Luke, Jesus gives the prayer as a model for our own prayers. He says: "pray in this way." In Matthew, Jesus gives the prayer for us to use as our prayer. He says: "when you pray, say." That’s what the Greek means.

This is why we pray the Lord's Prayer almost every Sunday. Jesus tells us to pray the prayer. That makes it a good thing to do. But there is a danger that I suspect most everyone here has succumbed to at one time or another. The danger is that the prayer will become so familiar with use that we no longer interact with what we are saying -- we repeat the words but don't engage our brains. We move our lips but our minds are remembering to rotate the tires on the car.

Now that doesn't mean that we should stop praying the prayer. But it does mean that we need to step back and take a look at what we are actually saying. We need to refocus. On communion Sundays we are going to look at the Lord's Prayer -- phrase by phrase. We are going to ask Jesus to teach us to pray. We need to hear and interact with our words and consciously make them our own. For there is a danger that even the greatest mysteries can be rendered trite by familiarity.

This is true of the Lord's Prayer. And it is also true of the Lord's Supper. It can become so familiar that we forget what it means. We have perhaps heard the story so often that we can listen to it with no reaction at all.

Florence Barclay tells how when she was a little girl she was taken to church for the first time. It was Good Friday, and the story of the crucifixion was read. She heard Peter deny and Judas betray; she heard Pilate's bullying cross-examination; she saw the crown of thorns, the mocking of the soldiers; she heard of Jesus being delivered to be crucified, and then there came the words with their terrible finality, "and there they crucified him." No one in the church seemed to care. But the little girl's face was buried in her mother's coat and she was sobbing her heart out, and her little voice rang through the silent church, "why did they do it? Why did they do it?"

God keep us from ears that have lost the ability to hear and hearts that have lost the ability to feel the agony of the cross -- borne for us. As we gather at the table of the lord, we need to hear the words, "this is my body broken for you" and see in our mind's eye Jesus' body broken on the cross. We need to hear His words: "this is my blood shed for you" and in our mind's eye we need to see Jesus' blood poured out for us. And then we need to be able to say: "He did this for me. This is for me."