“Lord, Teach Us To Pray.”
Posted by stpauls on July 25, 2010 under Sermons | 
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[This sermon was written and delivered by The Reverend Dr. Yazeed Said on July 25, 2010, Ninth Sunday after Pentecost.]
Both of our first two readings reflect some sense of struggle and conflict, but also a word of hope. In Hosea, God is struggling with the unfaithful house of Israel. And it seems it is possible, just about, that God could be good enough to spare the house of Judah. Yet, at the end of the reading, we still have this verse in which we are told: “In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God.’” This anticipates the amazing verse later in Hosea 11: 8-9: “how can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?…my heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender…For I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” God is the way he is by giving away, forgiving, and loving, not by clinging and defending.
Paul’s struggling in Colossians is different: Here is the call to the Church to stay “rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith…. see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit… for in Christ you have come to fullness.” Paul is at pains proclaiming that Christ is not someone who simply did spectacularly well in the past. He is the one “in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Paul speaks of Jesus as the one who is opened to the horizon of God’s own nature. In him, we are renewed. In him, we were buried in baptism. In him, we are forgiven. In him, we have come to fullness of life.
So as always, listening to the story of God and his dealing with us in the Bible is a time when the questions are turned round upon us to put to us the basic questions of conversion (even if we do not call ourselves Evangelical with a capital E): “What is the form in which you think of yourself?” You may understand yourself as someone who retains their security and freedom. You have the liberty to establish yourselves freely and fence around your self so that you have everything you need, well anchored in secure fences. Yet, the Bible shares with us the story, both in Old and New Testaments, of one who does not cling to defence, but has risked his life into our hands, and what a risk that was! Reflecting how good human beings are; and despite it all he has forgiven us for it. Which is the way that you and I want to choose?
When we come to prayer, as we do now, we are defining ourselves differently. We pray, simply because we acknowledge that we are in need. The legions of people around who do not pray, are simply saying: we are not in need. We come to pray, because we have taken the risk of putting our lives in the hands of the living God. We have come to empty ourselves like Jesus has done, and make room for God.
The disciples come to Jesus asking: “Lord teach us to pray.” We should be glad to know that this is not just a modern question! And the bottom line is that to pray is about growing into the humanity that Christ shows us. And so, just as Jesus calls God “Father,” we too, are called to stand where Jesus is, and learn that we are daughters and sons of God. The implications of Paul’s words in Colossians is simply that Jesus made it possible for us to talk to God in a different way. In other letters, like in Romans 8 and Galatians 4, Paul says that it is the Spirit that makes us call God “Abba, Father.” So to pray “Our Father” is simply to allow the Spirit pray in us, and to let the prayer of Jesus be our prayer. “Our Father” expresses that clearly. We begin where Jesus stands and pray what Jesus prays. Everything that we say, when we acknowledge that God is Father, reflects our willingness to see the world as transparent to God: “May your kingdom come, your will be done.” May what God wants shine through in our world and shape what we are called to be. Only after that, do we go on asking for what we need. We need sustenance, daily bread, mercy and forgiveness; we ask to be steered away from the tests we are not strong enough to bear.
And when we come to pray and acknowledge our need and dependence on God, we are not simply embarrassing ourselves as many think in our society who do not pray. Rather, in acknowledging that we are not self-sufficient, we are standing in a place of dignity. Failure does not belong to those who pray, but to those who think that they are self-sufficient. Prayer, therefore, shows the arrogance of those who think that they are not in need, and presents to us the treasure that the needy fully possess. And this treasure is something that we receive as part of our dignity not only in creation, but also in the active life of our relationship with one another: the father to his son, as Jesus says in the gospel today; we to our neighbours, friends, and even strangers around us. Such is the dignity that we have received, to the extent that we cannot keep it to ourselves, and cannot preserve it at the expense of others. It is rather a reminder that we remain vulnerable people, and to pray the prayer of Jesus is also to remind ourselves of how we so often destructively defend ourselves against others. How can we ask for bread when we think too highly of our self-righteousness? How can we ask for forgiveness, when we do not forgive others?
We shall in a moment pray Jesus’ prayer, as we literally stand where Jesus stands with us at the altar, and in his presence. He invites us all. There is no room for grudges in him. But, his generous invitation to all of us is a bit of a loaded invitation. It makes us ask ourselves: “Who do we really trust? Ourselves, or God? Who do we want to be? People full of the life in abundance in God? Or grudging people worried all the time to defend ourselves, thinking that we are safe and secure on our own.” In fact, we are too busy defending ourselves, to the extent that we forget to live on our soil, the soil that we are so eager to defend. Our prayer anchored in the crucified and risen Christ is our only security, reflecting our pilgrimage from glory to glory, trusting in God’s victory over all that hurts his world. We are reclaimed and recreated every time we stand at the altar.
As Paul reminds us: “Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.” We came to be nourished and held by him at the altar.