Pray Tell

Lenten Vespers, Week Three

A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to St Matthew:

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

So far this Lent we’ve discussed the Law of God and the Trinity. In keeping with Luther’s Small Catechism, the next item of Christian instruction is the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is not meant to be the only prayer we ever pray, but a template and example for our relationship with God through every stage of life.

It is simple and straightforward, an eminently practical prayer; not childish but childlike. God is to be known as Father, as the provider and head of His household—which is to say, the whole of Creation. God wills us to love and to trust Him. In doing so, we live the life of Heaven here below on earth. We ask for daily bread, or more literally for tomorrow’s bread, for sustenance without anxiety or fear. We pray the forgiveness of our trespasses and debts, as we pray that we be enabled to forgive those indebted to us.

And we have every indication, mind you, that Jesus intends for this to be taken literally: not simply that we forgive abstract sins but that we pardon real wrongs and cancel actual debts. “Save us from the time of trial” likely means a court of law. “And deliver us from the evil one”—well, that could be Satan, certainly. But it could also be an evil man, an Ebenezer Scrooge, dragging poor folk off to debtors’ prison. While we prefer to paper over it, Jesus does talk quite a bit about the wickedness of wealth, ever reminding us that we cannot serve both God and Mammon.

As Luther loves to point out, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer will come about with or without our coöperation. God’s Name will be hallowed, period. God’s Kingdom will come, period. And God’s will shall, at the last, be done, period. What we are praying, in effect, is that these things come in and with and through us. May His Name be hallowed in us; may His Kingdom come in us; may His will be done in us, as it is in Heaven—that we might bring a foretaste of Heaven to earth.

The temptation, of course, is to get caught up in the unholy trinity of the devil, the world, and the flesh: those powers beyond us, around us, and within us that would draw us from the love and promises of God. Thus come we now to the heart of prayer. For a prayer is not, as might popularly be imagined, a sort of magic spell or spiritual email presenting our requests to God. God already knows, better than we ourselves, what it is that we want and we need. Why then does He will us to pray?

As you’ve doubtless heard me preach before, there are differing levels or types of prayer. They are classically formulated as oration, meditation, and contemplation. Oration is verbal prayer, be it silent or aloud, impromptu or prepared. Meditation, in the Christian understanding, is prayer that focuses upon a passage or symbol or story such that we chew on it, digest it, let it seep into our bones. Prayer ropes, such as the Rosary, are classic examples of this.

And then there’s contemplation, which is—not to put too fine a point on it—silence. We sit attentively in the presence of God, for as long as it takes, as long as we have. In some ways this is the easiest sort of prayer, as we don’t do anything. But for postmodern American society, it is surely the scariest form of prayer, as we don’t do anything: no music, no distractions, no-one and nothing but your soul and your God, alone with the Alone. And that can be hard for us to handle for five minutes, let alone 30 or 45.

Now, in truth, these distinctions are largely artificial. One sort of prayer often bleeds into another with no clear demarcation between the two. Attentive silence is surely the one most needed in our own day and age, as we have neglected it so for so long. But all of them are, at heart, time taken to be still and know that the Lord is God. Bidden or not bidden, God is always present. What’s lacking is awareness. We do not pay attention, to ourselves, to our world, or to our Creator, not in the way that we should. And this is what Jesus would have us reclaim.

Yet even in this, we should not think of prayer primarily as something that we do. For a Christian understanding of prayer follows from a Christian understanding of God—and we know God not only as Creator, as Father, but also as Jesus Christ, our great High Priest; and as the Holy Spirit of Christ within us. When we pray, we pray to God the Father, but we do not pray alone. God the Son prays with us, prays for us, as Christ our High Priest. It is the Lord’s Prayer not simply because He taught it to us but because He prays it unceasingly on our behalf.

And when we pray, as St Paul points out, God the Holy Spirit prays within us, interceding with sighs too deep for words. So God is the One praying, God is the One hearing the prayer, and God is even the prayer itself arising from our soul. Thus by prayer we are drawn into the eternal dance of Trinity, into the deepest Life and Being of the Godhead, Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. This is no coin tossed into some wishing well. This is the Word of God alive in us, drawing us into Himself.

Mystics and theologians call it theosis, or deification; that is, human beings made One with God in Jesus Christ for all of eternity—that we might inherit not just all that God has, or even all that He promises, but that we might become all that God is. “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” And therein lies the answer to all our prayers, including those we could not begin to dare to imagine.

God has commanded us to pray. He has taught us how to pray. And He has promised always to hear our prayer. The Lord Himself prays in us and with us and for us forever. What then is left for us to do, but to “be still and know that I AM God”?

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.