Prayer Shapes Us

Pentecost 7, Proper 12

Fr. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

We rejoin Jesus this morning just after he told Martha that her sister, Mary, had “chosen the better part” in listening to him. The very next line in Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus went to a certain place to pray, choosing “the better part” of time with his Father for himself.

His disciples then ask him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” On one level, that seems unnecessary. Prayer is simply talking to God, aiming our spoken or unspoken prayers to him. So, do that.

When people hear that I was a CPA for 12.5 years and changed careers soon after making partner in our firm, they tend to have one of two reactions. Either they think it sounds very noble, or they think I was crazy. I’m not sure about that, but it was very painful and became a critical time of prayer.

I won’t go into the details for time’s sake. In short, right after I made partner in our firm, I grew increasingly miserable at work and I wasn’t giving Meg and our children nearly the time and support that they needed, either. I felt like I was failing on all fronts and no one was happy with me.

One day it came to a head. I was overwhelmed by the stress. It happened that Meg’s mom was spending the night that night, so Meg could take her to a doctor’s appointment the next morning. She was in a medium stage of Alzheimer’s Disease and when she spent the night, she would sleep with Meg in our bed in case she woke up disoriented.

I stayed in the guest bedroom that night, but I didn’t sleep. I prayed, prayed out of sheer desperation because I didn’t know what to do. I laid on the bed. I hit my knees, I walked around, I wrestled with God all night. Then, in the early morning hours, I heard the word “priest.”

That seemed impossible. We had three kids at the time, soon to be pregnant with number four. Meg’s parents were relying on her. My name was on the firm’s letterhead. We lived in our dream home. Life was set.

With fear and trembling, I approached Meg the next morning and asked her, “What do you think about me becoming a priest?”  She said, “You’ve been dragging a ball and chain to work for years. This sounds right. As long as we’re together, we’ll be fine.”

And so, here I am. In hindsight there were a dozen other nudges that make it obvious, but in the moment, I needed that word and got it.

When Jesus instructs his disciples, he doesn’t tell them a prayer position. Everything is about orientation, to make sure we are aiming our prayers correctly. The Greek word for that is orthodox. “Ortho” means “right” – as in correct or direction. “Doxa” means glory. That word orthodox gets used as a synonym for traditional, but no matter how unorthodox we may be in other ways, we need to be very serious about right-praise. Praying wrongly would be idolatry.

Jesus said first, address God as Father. That tracks us with Jesus’s relationship with his Father.  His name is “hallowed” or holy, which means apart from and above all things. We ask for his kingdom to come. That includes the Day of the Lord, the consummation of his will being done. It also includes the ways his kingdom is unfolding in every one of us and, through us, into our families and friendships.

Once we’re oriented, “Our daily bread” lifts up our daily needs, as opposed to our never-ending wants. We need forgiveness for our sins and we need his grace to help us forgive others. And we ask God not to put us into tests or temptations. We are quite capable of finding those on our own!

Then Jesus teaches us about persistence in prayer. Why? Clearly the Lord knows what we need before we ask. It’s not as though he needs reminding. Clearly the Lord knows what he’s going to do or not do. We aren’t going to push him one way or another. When we seek him with the right heart and the right mind, persistent in our pursuit of him above and before what we think we want or need, we will find him. We knock on that door, and it always opens. Everyone who asks, receives. Receives what? What we ask for? Is God our vending machine? Sometimes. Not necessarily. Everyone who searches, finds. Finds what? I’ve used that prayer countless times to find my car keys and so forth, but it isn’t primarily about our current requests.

Look at what’s happening in us when we pray. We are acknowledging the Lord. We are seeking him. We are engaging him. We are yielding self, dying to self, to live in him. It’s about God’s wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit and the work the Holy Spirt is doing to shape us for the Kingdom.

Martin Luther put it this way:

This life, therefore, is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not
health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are
not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not
yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified. [1]

Prayer is not primarily about what we want from God. It’s about what God is doing in us.

What Meg said to me all those years ago is a wonderful prayer for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. “As long as we’re together, we’ll be fine.”

AMEN

[1] Martin Luther, *Defense of All the Articles*, Lazareth transl., as found in Grace Brame, *Receptive Prayer* (Chalice Press, 1985) p.119