A student of Jesus

When it comes to prayer, we should always start with Jesus.  I call Luke 11, a primer on prayer.  Jesus was in a certain place and he was praying we are told.  His disciples were with him.  When he finished praying his disciples asked him, "Lord, teach us to pray..."  Jesus response was to say, "When you pray..."

I am always intrigued by two things in this exchange.  First, his disciples ask to be taught how to pray.  As I said in the message on Sunday these were all Jewish men, raised going to synagogue, raised in a highly religious culture.  They had learned many prayers over the years by rote.  They had prayed all their life.  Yet they are asking Jesus to teach them to pray.  There had to be something different about Jesus praying, which they had heard numerous times by now.  Or perhaps they were like us, and never felt they mastered this mysterious aspect of the life of faith, praying to God. 

I think it was a combination of both.  Jesus prayed differently.  We know that.  He didn't always pray the memorized prayers of the Jewish traditions, the psalms and rabbinic prayers.  For we know in the garden in his last hours he prayed a spontaneous and a very need centered prayer of agony.  "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."  Mark tells us his use of Father in this situation was the childlike Abba, not the formal Jewish address of Ab.  There must have been a real-life groundedness to Jesus prayers that his disciples were captivated by.  As the psalmist said, "These things I remember as I pour out my soul."  Jesus poured his soul into his prayers.  His disciples wanted to learn to pray with this kind of authenticity and honesty.

They also, though, must have found prayer confusing.  Like us prayer brought them up against this great mystery.  Does God really hear us?  Do I matter to the creator of a vast universe?  Is he attentive to someone so small and unheralded as me?  Is this God gracious and compassionate towards me, or is he angry and upset over my many failings?  And then like us all they must have wondered, is there a right way to pray, a pattern to be followed? 

Jesus took their desire to be his students, to learn very seriously.  He would teach them to pray and in this brief lesson on prayer he answered all their questions and more.  He said that God does hear us, is attentive to our needs and his love and compassion are like that of an earthly Father, but "much more."  Jesus even gives them a pattern to follow.  Woe are we if the "Lord's Prayer" is only another mumbled, meaningless, memorized prayer we chant in church.   It reveals to us so much of the meaning of prayer, not least of which is that God is our Abba, as he was to Jesus.  More on the Lord's prayer later, but Jesus' disciples desire to be taught to pray is what first intrigues me in this exchange.

The second thing I am intrigued about, though, is Jesus opening words, "When you pray..."  For Jesus prayer isn't an option, or reserved for the verbal elite, or even a great mystery.  It is for everyone.  "When you pray..." assumes that we will all pray.  Perhaps this assumption will even go to those who are not disciples of Jesus.  Prayer somehow springs forth spontaneously when we find ourselves up against the terrors and uncontrollables of life.  Yet for us who do believe and call ourselves followers of Jesus, prayer is a given.  We will pray and even more it will come to be the center of who we are. 

I have often remarked that Christians at times divide into three camps, the thinkers, the doers, and the devotionalists.  Or to put it more clearly, some see the Christian faith as what we believe, the dogma, others see it as how we live, the moral or loving lifestyle, and still others view it as a daily discipline of reading the Bible and saying their prayers.  In truth, the Christian is called to all three.  The great challenge is to nurture all three when we tend to be good at one and perhaps lagging in the other two. 

Prayer of course isn't what we do once a day in our devotional time.  Prayer is the language of relationship.  God calls us into relationship with himself through his Son Jesus.  The very nature of following is that we are with Jesus all day long.  Through the gift of the Holy Spirit we are in the presence of God the Father and Jesus the Son continually.  That spiritual reality infuses our life.  We are immersed in God, "God intoxicated," as one said.  So in our thinking we need to be talking and listening to the ever present Father.  In our doing we need to be following the ever present Son.  In our meditating on Scripture and saying our prayers we need to be humble before the ever present Spirit who "guides us into all truth," and who "helps us in our weakness for we do not know what we ought to pray for..."

Prayer is at the heart of Christian thinking, doing and devotion.  Jesus put it there both by example and by teaching.  We have much to learn.  "Lord, teach us to pray..."