Praying Shamelessly

Text: Luke 11:1-13

This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in.* So says Jesus in Luke, as he helps his disciples understand the prayer he just taught them. This is not a little formal dance we go through with God. Prayer is not a contrivance, some convoluted religious contraption designed to deliver effective requests to heaven. There is not a special way to pray. Just as there is no special way to have a conversation. There are some models for prayer, just as there are some models for conversation. But the models for prayer, just as the models for conversation, are starter kits, ice breakers, and forms of art.

A friend tells me he sits and talks “to the man upstairs.” Maybe that is how you think of prayer, too. It is a nice way to describe a relationship we might have with God. Respectful, direct, and expecting something. There is not need in our prayer to beat around the bush, to begin with elaborate preambles, to apologize ahead of time for bothering God, as we sometimes do. “If you have a moment, God.” God always has a moment. When we pray to the one upstairs, we can expect that God is listening, paying attention to what we have to say in our words and in our hearts, taking an active role in the conversation.

Master, teach us to pray, the disciples ask. The disciples have seen Jesus pray. He prays a lot in Luke. In the desert, at night, before he feeds a crowd, near his death. In Luke (and in Acts, the other book that Luke wrote), prayer is the first Christian practice. The community of the followers of Jesus is a community of people who pray.

Maybe “ask” is too weak a word for what the disciples do. They seem to have an urgent need to pray. Their request is immediate and demanding. Teach us to pray. We need to pray. They are not really wondering how to pray, in what way, what stance or attitude to assume (and if so, Jesus does not really tell them). They need to pray. Jesus gives them a prayer.

They are direct. Jesus is direct. When you pray, say this. And what they are to say, talking to the one upstairs, is direct.

This foundation in Luke to the Lord’s Prayer is short and straightforward. So is the similar one in Matthew. You may find the words from our usual Bible more familiar than the ones we read this morning:

“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.”

The prayer starts with a short salutation, a sort of respectful: “hello, how are you?” It identifies the person to whom we are speaking. We call that person “father.” I’ll talk some more about that at the end. Partly, this salutation is just polite. When you speak to someone, you get their attention first. Partly it clears up in our minds that person to whom this prayer is addressed. Not some vague deity, but the particular creator of the universe. A personality, so to speak. God, even if not the gray-haired old man in a white robe, is an entity, a person with whom we can talk. Who has a name. The one upstairs. God, I’m talking to you. It reminds both of us.

But God is more than a person. God is special somehow. Holy, formally meaning set apart. But more to the point, uncorrupted by the ways and things of the world. God is not just like a human, only more so, only bigger, longer lived, and more powerful. But God is actively interested in humans, not just cosmic, essential, and life-giving. God up there, but not just up there.

After this introduction, the prayer goes immediately into four petitions, four things we need. These sentences are demanding, pushy even, abrupt. Four imperatives: lead us, feed us, forgive us, save us. There is no begging, no “please,” no argument. There is no qualification, no “if it be your will.” (That part goes without saying. It is not our job to give God permission. And besides, Jesus seems to be telling us that it will be God’s will anyway.)

God the creator wishes to provide for creation. We get confused: we ask God to lead us rightly. We get hungry, we are dependent: we ask God to feed us every day. We do bad and stupid things: we ask God to let us off the hook. We live in a scary and demanding world: we ask God to protect us from evil circumstances. We are human. We get physically, mentally, and emotionally troubled. Jesus says to pray: God, you are God. We could use some help down here.

There are other kinds of prayer. Thanksgiving, for example, or praise. But this one, the prayer Jesus teaches his disciples, is a prayer for help. We are taught by Jesus to pray for what we want. Not to pray for something we think God wants, not to pray for polite things only, but things we actually want. Things that matter to us in the moment. I’m starving, please feed me. I’m confused, please show me what to do next. I feel like an idiot, please forgive me. I’m scared, please keep me safe.

Later, Jesus tells a story about an inhospitable friend. This story is an elaboration of the prayer he just taught his disciples. It is kind of a case study. One of the points of the story is that we can be persistent in prayer. That we can bother God about what we want. That it is OK.

A better word, though, than persistent, is shameless. We can pray and pray and pray shamelessly. We can ask for whatever we want shamelessly. This is the kind of God we pray to. In the first reading, Abraham negotiates with God to save Sodom. Abraham presents his argument, God agrees. Abraham presses his point, God gives ground. Abraham pushes beyond all civility. God relents. Abraham is shameless. He is not ashamed to speak to God this way, he is not ashamed to pray for the city, he is not ashamed to ask for more. Abraham knows his God. God expects shameless prayer.

The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. What Jesus teaches them, though, is what God is like. What kind of God they pray to. God is like this: God encourages prayer. God enjoys a good argument. God listens to people. God is interested in the day to day. You don’t have to do anything special to pray to God. God is, we might say, interactive.

“Here’s what I’m saying,” the reading says. I’m saying that though there are fathers who might torment their children, that’s not like God. Though there are fathers whom you have to approach cautiously, that’s not like God. Though there are fathers from whom you can ask only certain things, that’s not like God. God is like a father whom you can approach without fear, with words uncensored and raw, from whom you can demand much, and from whom you can expect much.

Not everybody thinks that God is like that. But Christians are a group of people who do. It is significant that in this prayer the people all pray together. Give us, forgive us, deliver us.

When we say this prayer in worship here, we acknowledge that we do so confidently and that we do in solidarity with the whole family of the followers of Jesus in every time and place. This prayer does more than give us words to recite. It defines what God is for us and what God is like for us. And it defines us. We are the ones who pray this way. It is what Jesus taught us to do.

*Reading today from The Message version of the Bible.