Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus answers disciples then and now by reciting the “Our Father,” telling a brief parable about an embarrassed host and assuring us that God is better than any human being not only in answering our pleas but in giving us more than we bargained for.
In teaching us to pray Jesus corrects our misunderstandings in at least three ways: whom we pray to, how we pray, and what we can expect from our praying. First, whom we pray to. Our Father, Jesus says. When you pray, pray to God, who is your Father in heaven.
Now, for many of us that is a good correction right there, because when we think of a father, we think of our fathers, and to think of God as our Father in heaven brings warm and generous feelings. And that’s an improvement over the way much of the world has looked at and does look at God. For instance, in her study of the images of God that grown men and women harbor, mental-health nurse Juanita Ryan found fearful, primal pictures populating people’s minds. Here are some of their statements: “God is waiting around the next corner with a club to punish me.” “God has a mean face. I don’t like to think of him looking at me.” “God is big, he is angry for some unknown reason.” “God is demanding and sadistic. You can never be sure if you’ve pleased him.” “He carries a club or a two-by-four that he intends to use.”
It’s hard to square these images with the one Jesus gives us of God as Father. But the fact that we have them tells us more about the sorry state of our own fathers on earth than it does about the character of our true Father in heaven. Jesus no doubt understood the peril of comparing God to an earthy father, but his point was more about how even the best earthly fathers don’t match up to the character of our heavenly Father. That’s why he asks which of us fathers, if our child asked for a fish, would give a snake? The reference is to a fish that looks like a snake. An eel, in other words. Or if your child asks for an egg, would you give a scorpion that, when it’s all balled up in the desert, only looks like it? You wouldn’t be so cruel. You wouldn’t give something less than or worse than your child wanted or needed. Now you and I as fathers are a mixed bag at best—a cocktail of good and evil, even on our best days. So why would you think a purely good God would give anything less than what is good to God’s children? God wills to give us more than we bargain for.
Which leads to another aspect of the nature of the God we pray to. This God wants to give us what we need. It’s God’s disposition to be eager to hear from us and answer us.
The parable of the urgent neighbor is a way of teaching this. Hospitality is the highest value of Middle Eastern culture. Even today, and even among the Taliban in Afghanistan, if you are received into their house, you are to be protected and provided for. Not to do so brings shame and dishonor on the host. Such a host would not be trusted. The Taliban leader in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, could have turned over Osama bin Laden to us when we demanded him, and we would likely have left the Taliban government in place, no matter how distasteful it was to us. He could have saved his own skin and his own power by doing so. But bin Laden was a guest in his country. He was duty-bound to protect him. How we don’t understand that boggles my mind. But that’s politics, don’t you know?!
So when Jesus tells this parable about a traveling friend who comes to stay with him unexpectedly one night and catches him without bread to offer him, the man’s honor is at stake. He does what anyone would have done: he runs next door to his neighbor. Now, the hour is late, and the man has battened down the hatches, so to speak. In the small house, the family would sleep side by side on pallets. The father would sleep closest to the door. When the neighbor knocks, the man wants to ignore him because he knows that to answer means he’s going to have to climb over all the kids, wake the baby, and disturb his own family in order to get to the kitchen and back. But because the neighbor insists, the man gives in. He understands that the honor of both of them are at stake. He’ll never be able to ask anyone else for help if he doesn’t help this man right then and there.
And Jesus’ main point is that God is eager to answer as a friend and doesn’t need to be shamed into it. But sometimes we don’t understand why God is slow to answer our prayers. What’s God doing behind the door? We fear that the answer lies in God: God really doesn’t want to answer, or can’t. Jesus takes care of the first part of this by assuring us that God wants to answer our prayers. But the second part, the part about whether God can answer them, is more challenging.
Jesus says that persistence in prayer is part of the key in getting our prayers answered. Now, this doesn’t seem to agree with what Jesus says in another place about long pagan prayers designed to get God’s attention. “Your heavenly Father already knows what you need before you ask,” Jesus says. But apparently we need to pray persistently for some reason. Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened unto you. The words Luke says that Jesus used—ask, seek, and knock—are actually verbs of continuous action. They should be translated as keep on asking, don’t quit seeking, and knock your knuckles raw if need be. But why is this necessary if God already knows what we need and wants to give it to us?
God doesn’t act alone; that’s why. This is something I think we have to get through our heads, and it’s one of the reasons we pray. From the first moment of creation, God has committed to a way of working with the world that is relational. God will not violate our free will. God will not turn the steering wheel to save you after you’ve decided to drive drunk. You can pray all you want, but if you abuse your children, God isn’t going to make them forget and want to spend time with you when they grow up. It doesn’t work that way.
The way it seems to work is this: God always, in every case, purposes to bring the best possible outcome out of every situation. Jesus tells us we can count on God’s character. But can God get us to the door to ask, seek, and knock? That’s the real question. When we pray, the principle effect is what it does to us. And that changes what God may accomplish because God then has an accomplice.
For example, when the Berlin Wall finally fell in 1989, God’s will was done on earth as it is in heaven. But why did it take so long? Christians prayed consistently enough that they gained courage. They gathered in churches weekly, and it spilled over into the streets until all the bullets in East Germany could not kill the revolution. The prayers of the people were like little hammers that chipped away at the wall and finally broke the power of Communism. God was putting the spirit and heart into the people for freedom, but until the people prayed and acted, God couldn’t single-handedly accomplish God’s will.
Which leads to the second thing. Jesus changes how we pray. Now, I want to be careful here and say that God does care for every little concern that keeps you and me from participating fully in God’s kingdom. But sometimes we pray amiss. We pray—whether we use these words or not—My Father, who art in heaven instead of Our Father. Jesus teaches to remember each other every time we pray. We are to pray for our daily bread, for instance, but only for our daily bread. We are not to pray for a feast at The Mansion for ourselves while the homeless go hungry. God may be willing to bless your business with success, but only if God already believes you are ready to share the blessings. If you get rich and keep the blessings of your wealth for yourself, God didn’t bless you with it.
The so-called Prosperity Gospel plagues the airways of this nation. Televangelists promise that God will give you financial rewards if you have enough faith and pray just right, and of course if you prove it by giving some money first to the preacher. Even the hip-hop world is getting tired of this Jesus abuse. The Chicago rapper Rhymefest has written a song called “Prosperity” that includes these lyrics: … For the low low price, you too can live the glamorous life,/you too can have the blood of Christ,/three easy payments, order tonight…/I know I’m spiritual/I need a financial miracle/ Please God, you’re the king imperial/And I’ll take the bible literal …/On TV, I’ve seen it/They sell forgiveness, how convenient/Master, Visa, the [stuff’s] ingenious/Why go to church, stay home with Jesus…/I’m talking about televangelists, need to be sued for spiritual damages …/And I don’t know what right is,/And I ain’t all self-righteous/I just want to know what Christ is/I just want to know what Christ is….
I especially like the line And I don’t know what right is. We have the right to pray any way we want, but that doesn’t mean we always pray rightly. One reason to pray the Lord’s Prayer is to learn how to pray rightly.
The Roman orator Cicero once said that people pray to the god Jupiter for material wealth, but they never ask him to make them good. We still tend to ask God for goods, not to make us good.
Still, sometimes we pray for things that might be good, and we don’t get them. Sometimes it seems that we have done our part and that God is more like the reluctant neighbor who won’t answer the door, no matter how hard we ask, seek, and knock. As a pastor I can’t give you platitudes about how your unanswered prayers are for your own good and that God knows best. Truth is, you and God may be cooperating perfectly and others that are crucial to an answered prayer are not. I can’t say. But we can learn, I think, to spend most of our time praying for the hungry to be fed and justice to be done and God’s will to rule for all of us and not just for ourselves. This is how Jesus teaches us to pray.
And when we do, we can expect that we will get more than we bargained for, even if we get something other than what we asked for. Jesus says that God will give us the Holy Spirit. In other words, God will give us … God.
Leslie Weatherhead told a beautiful story about an elderly Scottish man who was quite ill. The minister came to see the dying man and noticed an empty chair on the opposite side of the bed. The chair was pulled up especially close to the bed. The older man said, Let me tell you about this chair. Many years ago I found it quite difficult to pray, so one day I shared this problem with my pastor. He told me not to worry about kneeling or about placing myself in some pious position or about speaking in high-sounding words. Instead, he said, just sit down, put a chair in front of you, and imagine God sitting there in that chair, and then just talk to [God] as you would talk to a friend. I’ve been doing that ever since.
Some days later, the man’s daughter called the minister to tell him that her father had died peacefully. And then she said this: For some reason, his hand was on that empty chair on the other side of the bed. Isn’t that strange? “Oh, no, it’s not strange at all,” the minister replied. “I understand perfectly. He was reaching out to his Best Friend.”
When you get God as the answer to your prayer, what more is there to bargain for than that?
