July 27, 2025

Pray Like This

The Gospel reading for today is Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, and it seems to me that it’s probably about time I had something to say about prayer.  It is not an easy topic because it’s not easily understood.  None of us really knows how prayer works, or even what it means for prayer to “work”.  We often pray for certain things to happen: for healing from disease, surgery, or injury, for justice to be done, for relief of the many ills of society and those around us.  Does prayer “work” if these things come about, and does it not “work” if they don’t?  If that were the case, we would have given up on prayer long ago.  Certainly good outcomes do result, but our overall batting average wouldn’t get us into the major leagues.  So why do we bother?  I think it’s because we have a profound, inexplicable need to send our thoughts, our hopes, our imaginations into the depth of Being and to wait in stillness for a reply.  That reply comes to each of us in different ways but over the millennia we have come to find it trustworthy.

There are a few things that strike me about the prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples.  When they came to him and asked him to teach them about prayer, he didn’t suggest that they empty their minds and meditate as many of us have learned to do from Eastern religions (a practice, by the way, I find very helpful).  He didn’t advise them to come out with whatever pops into their heads.  He didn’t say, as any well trained Rogerian counselor might, “It sounds like you have something to pray for.”  No, surprisingly, he said, “When you pray, say . . .” and he gave them the specific words to pray.  What that tells me is that these words he gave them are important and we should stop and pay attention to them.  So, let’s do that.

He begins with a word of praise to the One he referred to as “Our Father”: “Hallowed be your name”.  We don’t often in our private lives consider hallowing the name of the Almighty, partly because the whole business of that name is so confusing.  The Hebrews considered the Lord’s name to be so sacred that it should never be spoken, or even entirely written down.  When they came to the name of Yahweh in their writing they wrote only the consonants and left out the vowels.  Then when they were reciting the text aloud and came to those four consonants, they substituted the word adonai which means Lord.  Each religion seems to have a different name for the Lord of Hosts.  We often use the word God as if it were a proper name, but it really is more of a symbol to stand for that unknowable, undefinable “Ground of All Being”.  So, with all the possibilities for naming “Our Father” (as Jesus put it), what does it mean for that name, or for all those names, to be hallowed?  Maybe Jesus’ petition here is more like: May the time come when the Lord, by whatever name we use, be universally regarded as holy.

Which leads us directly into a related plea: that the “kingdom” might “come on earth.”  How unlike our prayers that is.  You and I generally begin with immediate and specific concerns.  How many of us put at the top of the list in our praying a petition for the advancement of the Lord’s will in the world?  I know I generally don’t.  And that brings me to one of the things about this prayer that makes me a bit jittery.  It reads like a prayer lifted up on behalf of the whole world.  Not only are we praying for the Kingdom to come on the entire earth, but it is all in the first person plural.  The “our” and “us” and “we” sounds like it means all of us.  Whenever we recite this prayer together I feel quite presumptuous.  Who am I to offer a prayer on behalf of all humanity?  Consequently, I often find myself praying more quietly, and sometimes even almost muttering the words.  I guess that’s the nice thing about Malotte’s choral version; when you sing it like that you have to belt it out, and presumption be damned.  A woman in one of my previous churches came to me once and mentioned that in the Episcopal Church they pray every Sunday for the nation and she missed that.  I think she was lifting up a significant idea.  Especially in times like these, prayers for our nation and prayers for our world are not only terribly important, they are part and parcel of what Jesus told us to be doing.  Perhaps we should be offering the prayer that is attributed to Mother Teresa: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”

After praying for the kingdom to come, Jesus then asks that we will all receive at least minimum sustenance: our “daily bread”.  It’s the only tangible thing he prays for.  He does not ask for a Mercedes Benz, or a low interest loan on a new house, or that the carpets that were damaged when the water pipes broke won’t be mildewed.  He asks that everyone get just the minimum they need to survive.  And, truth is, if that were the case all the way around, this would be a far better world.  I think so much these days about the children and babies starving to death in Gaza.  You might notice as well, that Jesus does not pray for health or healing, topics that constitute a major share of the prayers you and I most frequently lift up.  I find that fact interesting.  It’s as if Jesus, the great healer, doesn’t regard prayer as a primary means of bringing that healing.  I’m not sure what to make of this, but it does help me to think about the priorities of prayer.  Most of the things Jesus says to pray for (beyond basic sustenance) are related to broader themes like forgiveness, trial, and the reign and will of the One he called “Our Father.”

Which brings us to a real doozy.  He asks that our sins might be forgiven.  But most of us don’t pay attention to how this is put.  He says (in the version we usually repeat), “Forgive us our trespasses (or “debts” or “sins”), as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  I think you and I generally say these words as if they mean: Please forgive us, and we’ll try to forgive others, too.”  But I like Luke’s rendering because it brings the point into sharper focus.  He puts it: “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  In other words, we’re good enough to forgive absolutely everyone, so surely you, O Lord, must feel compelled to forgive us!  The point here is the assumption that, of course, you and I forgive everyone who is in any way indebted to us; there’s no question about that.  Really?  I think this is a part of the prayer that should really give us the willies.  Should we make sure we have forgiven everyone in our lives, before we presume to throw this prayer in the face of the Almighty?

Finally, he asks simply that we not be brought to the time of trial.  Good luck with that.  It sounds like Jesus.  He prayed fervently not to be brought to the time of trial in the Garden of Gethsemane just before he was arrested, whipped and executed on a cross.  Humanity is always brought to the time of trial.  So what might this petition be about?  My sense is that it means something like: Let us not be tested beyond our abilities.  And that, conversely, might be like saying: May our strength be sufficient for the trials that come.  Truth is, it’s in those times of trial that we find out who we really are. . . or, perhaps better put, we remember who we are (like Jesus, in the midst of his agony at Gethsemane, remembered who he was).

Ultimately, prayer is about remembering.  In spite of my discomfort, the prayer of Jesus forces me to remember that I am a member of the human family, and as such have as much right, and perhaps as much responsibility, as every other human being to speak on behalf of the entire race.  Prayer causes us to remember our relationship to the Creator, and therefore to the created order.  It reminds us that we are part of all that is, and bear a great responsibility for a covenantal relationship with all of creation.  Prayer helps us remember the needs of the world, to remember forgiveness, to remember the profound worth of the trials of life.

I want to share with you an excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize lecture delivered in 1986 titled, “Hope, despair and memory”.  He writes, “A Hasidic legend tells us that the great Rabbi Baal-Shem-Tov, Master of the Good Name, also known as the Besht, undertook an urgent and perilous mission: to hasten the coming of the Messiah.  The Jewish people, all humanity were suffering too much, beset by too many evils.  They had to be saved, and swiftly.  For having tried to meddle with history, the Besht was punished; banished along with his faithful servant to a distant island.  In despair, the servant implored his master to exercise his mysterious powers in order to bring them both home.  ‘Impossible’, the Besht replied.  ‘My powers have been taken from me’.  ‘Then, please, say a prayer, recite a litany, work a miracle’.  ‘Impossible’, the Master replied, ‘I have forgotten everything’.  They both fell to weeping.

“Suddenly the Master turned to his servant and asked: ‘Remind me of a prayer – any prayer .’  ‘If only I could’, said the servant.  ‘I too have forgotten everything’.  ‘Everything – absolutely everything?’  ‘Yes, except – ‘Except what?’  ‘Except the alphabet’.  At that the Besht cried out joyfully: ‘Then what are you waiting for?  Begin reciting the alphabet and I shall repeat after you . . .’.  And together the two exiled men began to recite, at first in whispers, then more loudly: ‘Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth . . .’.  And over again, each time more vigorously, more fervently; until, ultimately, the Besht regained his powers, having regained his memory.

Wiesel continues, “I love this story, for it illustrates the messianic expectation – which remains my own.  And the importance of friendship to [one’s] ability to transcend his condition.  I love it most of all because it emphasizes the mystical power of memory.  Without memory, our existence would be barren and opaque, like a prison cell into which no light penetrates; like a tomb which rejects the living.  Memory saved the Besht, and if anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.  For me, hope without memory is like memory without hope.”¹

Elie Wiesel gave us much to remember and much to hope for.  But we are like the Besht; we cannot pray if we cannot remember.  I know many of you, like me, are finding that our rememberer just doesn’t work the way it used to, but, thankfully, there is a guide for us. When we come together we help each other remember what truly matters in life. And when we repeat together the prayer of Jesus, it causes us to remember the great needs of our world, to remember the world’s need for the kingdom of holy love, to remember that forgiveness is stamped in our DNA and must be rendered to all, to remember that even the greatest trials in life can be the refining fire for our souls, to remember at last who we are and whose we are.

Let’s sing together the prayer that Jesus taught disciples to pray.

¹ http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html.