"Lord, teach us to pray": A sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Gloria, Lord's Prayer, and Creed (plus alphabet!),
'Shaftesbury Psalter' (12th c., England)

Preached at St. Andrew's Anglican Church, Moscow, Russia, on 28 July 2013.  (In preparing this sermon, I was surprised to learn that the readings—Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13—were the same as those for one of the first sermons I preached as a seminarian [here]; the three year lectionary cycle has gone by quickly!)

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“Lord, teach us to pray.” — Luke 11:1

When the Lord Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, he gives us a prayer that contains and patterns all other prayers.  It has been called “an epitome of the whole Gospel,”[1] a summary of the teaching of Jesus.  As “an epitome of the whole Gospel” the Lord’s Prayer shows us how to order our desires toward the love of God and neighbor.  In it our Lord teaches us what to ask for and what to desire.  To pray his prayer is to ask for what he wants us to ask, to seek what he wants us to seek.  Put differently, in the language of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, learning to pray the Lord’s Prayer is one of the ways in which we who have “received Christ Jesus as Lord” continue “to live in him” (Col. 2:6), because in praying this prayer we are drawn close to the heart of Jesus, close to the heart of God.  As we learn from the Lord Jesus how to pray, he makes us more like himself.  So this morning, I want to look with you at how our Lord teaches us to pray, in order to see what he would have us desire, what he would have us love.

To begin, Jesus teaches us to address God as “Father.”  He teaches us to become what we are in him by grace.  That is, by the grace of adoption in Christ, we are made worthy to name our Creator as Father.  As St. Paul says, “God sent his Son….so that we might receive adoption as children.  And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:4–6)  So when we say, “Our Father,” we remember the great love the Father has given us in adopting us as children, the love from which absolutely nothing can separate us.  So to pray, “Our Father,” is the greatest of gifts.

And it is also a great responsibility, for we show by our actions that we are God’s children.  “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return,” Jesus teaches, “...and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Lk. 6:35).  To pray “Our Father,” then, is to ask to become like God.  St. Maximus the Confessor put it this way: to pray “Our Father” is to be “eager to set on our life the features of the one who gave us life.”[2] “To set on our life the features of the one who gave us life.” We most truly pray “Our Father” to the extent that our lives are conformed to the life of Jesus the Son, the perfect image of God.  Jesus teaches us to seek to become a people whose entire lives say, “Our Father.”

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The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Seventh Word

"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Luke 23:46

Bas-relief, Church of the Ascension of Christ in Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street,
"Church of the Small Ascension" (Moscow)

Christ Jesus, you had done nothing wrong (Lk. 23:41) and there was no deceit in your mouth, but you were condemned to death “by a perversion of justice” (Isa. 53:9, 8).  Righteous one, you suffered for us, the unrighteous (1 Pt. 3:18).  In you, the dawn from on high broke upon the shadow of death (Lk. 1:79), laying bare the dark recesses of human hearts, so you became a sign opposed by a generation under “the power of darkness” (2:34; 11:29; 22:53).  When “darkness came over the whole land...and the sun’s light failed” (Lk. 23:44–45), your righteous suffering threw the world's injustice into stark relief; even your executioner saw your innocence (23:47). 

Righteous one, when you were abused, you did not return abuse; when you suffered, you did not threaten; but you entrusted yourself to the one who judges justly (1 Pt. 2:23).  When you were “betrayed into human hands” (Lk. 9:49), you freely placed yourself into the hands of your Father.  When you—who were conceived by, lit upon and filled by, the Holy Spirit (Lk. 1:35; 3:22; 4:1)—commended your spirit to the Father, you were returning all that you are and have to the One who says to you, “‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’.”*  

Child of the Lord’s handmaiden (Ps. 86:16; Lk. 1:38, 48), in the boundless depth of your self-offering, you perfectly express the prayer you gave your mother, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38).  Son of Adam, Son of God (Lk. 3:38), when you presented yourself, “with loud cries and tears,” to the One who was able to save you from death (Heb. 5:7), you were the perfect prayer.  “All the troubles, for all time, of humanity enslaved by sin and death, all...petitions and intercessions,” are gathered in your cry.†  In your last words on the Cross, your prayer is the gift of your self.

* Lk. 3:22.  Cf. Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2:1068.

† Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2606.

The Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross

"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." 

John 12:32

Volto di Christo (Face of Christ), Bose

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week, which "leads us behind Jesus 'the Righteous' in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection" (Monastero di Bose).  Especially this week, Christians seek to lift up our hearts to the Lord.  Beginning today, I will be sharing a series of meditations on the "Seven Last Words" of Jesus from the cross.  I share them with you in hopes that through them, he who was lifted up might draw you to himself.

The First Word

The Second Word

The Third Word

The Fourth Word

The Fifth Word

The Sixth Word

The Seventh Word

Sermon: "Knocking on Heaven's Door?"

This week I returned to Durham from ten weeks in Dallas as a seminarian at Church of the Incarnation as part of my degree requirements at Duke Divinity School.  While there, I was given the opportunity to preach a sermon during the three traditional services one Sunday.  I preached on Jesus' teaching on prayer in Luke 11:1-13 (the other readings were Genesis 18:20-33; Psalm 138; Col. 2:6-15).  The experience has, among other things, showed me the weight of responsibility involved in faithfully proclaiming the Gospel.  I've posted the manuscript below.  (You can listen to me preach it here.)

“Knocking on heaven’s door?” (Luke 11:1-13)
July 25, 2010 | Year C, Proper 12

Beginning in the third century of our era, many earnest Christian men and women set out into the deserts of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in pursuit of a life totally dedicated to God.  The sayings of these ‘desert fathers’, as these simple hermits came to be known, have been handed down to us in a collection conveniently known as The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.  One of them goes like this:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and, as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame' [From The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, ed. Benedicta Ward (New York: Penguin, 2003).]

“If you will, you can become all flame.”  Now, I don’t know if one can become all flame, or even whether Abba Joseph’s fingers really did become like ten lamps of fire.  But I share this story with you because Abba Joseph’s response shows the power of a transformed imagination.  Abba Lot could not imagine what else he could do to grow in love and devotion to God, but Abba Joseph’s uplifted, flaming fingers showed him that something else was possible.  Abba Lot had suffered from an inadequate perception of the possible, until Abba Joseph showed him that he could become all flame.

If we are honest with ourselves, I think that we often suffer from a similar lack of imagination, a similarly limited worldview.  And I want to suggest that Abba Joseph’s horizon-expanding response is similar in effect to the parables of Jesus.  That is, Jesus challenges our perceptions of what God is like and what it means to be in relation with him.  Take today’s Gospel lesson for instance.  How might Jesus’ teaching on prayer effect a transformation in the way we view God and our relation with him?  Consider for a moment what you imagine God to be like.  Is he like a man sleeping at midnight, oblivious to our needs unless we bang on his door, and only then reluctantly answering us?  Or do you believe God will graciously give you what you ask? that you will find what you seek? that God will open the door at your knock?  What do you imagine God is like?

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"Vain Repetitions"?

"For we cannot but all find by our own experience how difficult it is to fasten anything that is truly good, either upon ourselves or others; and that it is rarely, if ever, effected without frequent repetitions of it. Whatsoever good things we hear only once, or now and then, though, perhaps, upon the hearing of them, they may swim for awhile in our brains, yet they seldom sink down into our hearts, so as to move and sway the affections, as it is necessary they should do, in order to our being edified by them."  
-- William Beveridge, from A Sermon on the Excellency and Usefulness of the Common Prayer (1681)


As a neophyte Anglican whose formation was thoroughly Anabaptist and Evangelical, I have found myself wrestling with the fact that my recitation of the morning office (and other services from the Prayer Book) is sometimes just that--a recitation of words in which neither my mind nor my heart are engaged.  I do not want to become the sort of person who deceives himself into thinking that external piety is equivalent to a vital relationship with the risen and present Christ.  So when I recite the Benedictus or the Lord's Prayer with scarcely a thought attached to the words, I fear that I am becoming precisely that sort of person.  At the same time, I have decided to set down roots in the Anglican tradition, with which Prayer Book spirituality is intimately connected.  This commitment and this fear raises the question of the value of set forms of prayer.

Happily others have faced this same question before.  The Rev. William Beveridge is one such person, who along with other seventeenth century Anglican divines thought through this precise question in response to criticisms raised by Puritans.  The quote from a sermon he gave at St. Peter's, Cornhill (where he was vicar), with which I began this post is perhaps the best answer I have found.  Beveridge's answer is valuable because he recognizes the necessity that prayer affect the state of the heart, and maintains the value of set prayer precisely in contributing to the change of affections it has the potential to render.  Set prayers are valuable because through repetition of "good things," they are able to "move and sway the affections."  That the prayers in the Prayer Book are almost entirely composed of strings of scriptural references and allusions provides assurance that they are "good things', that is, that they are edifying to my faith and the faith of the Church (cf. 1 Cor 14:26, the text on which Beveridge's sermon was based).  Thus, the value of praying set forms is like that of regularly performing the same physical exercises; the latter forming muscles through repetition, the former serving "to raise up my desires to those good things which are prayed for, to fix my mind wholly upon God."

Of course, Beveridge and others understood set forms of prayer as properly belonging to what they called "public devotions."  They did not think of set forms of prayer as a panacea for a robust life of prayer, but also emphasized the necessity of private, extemporaneous prayer.  In speaking of this they emphasize strongly mastery of one's desires.  For example, Richard Baxter wrote in 1647,

"Keep [thy heart] close to the business [of prayer] until thou have obtained thine end...Call in assistance also from God; mix ejaculations with thy cogitations and soliloquies, till having seriously pleaded the case with thy heart, and reverently pleaded the case with God, thou hast pleaded thyself from a clod to a flame, from a forgetful sinner to a mindful lover; from a lover of the world to a thirster after God, from a fearful coward to a resolved Christian, from an unfruitful sadness to a joyful life."

 And Joseph Hall in 1643 exhorted us to take the smallest occasion as a "holy hint of raising our hearts up to our God."  For example, he suggests praying "Wash Thou me, O Lord, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7b) when washing one's hands.  Through such exercises, he hopes to encourage "a continual acknowledgment" of God

These Anglican divines understood that we humans are literally creatures of habit, and that formation of the habits of loving God and neighbor with our whole self requires diligent training.

[NB: Rt. Rev. Anthony Burton, the rector at Church of the Incarnation, where I am an intern this summer through Duke Divinity School's Field Education program, gave me the book from which the quotations are taken:  Anglicanism: The Thought and Practice of the Church of England, Illustrated from the religious literature of the seventeenth century, eds. Paul Elmer More and Frank Leslie Cross (London: S.P.C.K., 1962).]