Genesis 18.20-32 ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I
will speak,’
Colossians 2.12-14 ‘God made you alive together with him,
having forgiven all trespasses.’
Luke 11.1-13 ‘Ask,
and it will be given to you.’
‘Lord, teach us to pray’
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The Lord’s Prayer, the
‘Our Father’, is the model and pattern of all Christian prayer, given to us by
Jesus Christ himself.
It is the starting
point, and the destination of all prayer.
To have this Gospel reading
given to us by the Church today is providential because we are baptising Esther,
a new member of the Body of Christ who becomes an adopted child of God, and who
can call God her Father, as much as he is mine and yours.
This prayer is the one
that Esther, and all Christians must know and use.
The early Christian
text known as the ‘Didache’, The Teaching
of the Twelve Apostles, says we should pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a
day – in the morning, at noon and at the close of day.
The Lord’s Prayer is a
great gift to teach the new Christian so as to learn to know God's holiness, his
will, provision, mercy, and protection: it’s all there.
Christian parents, godparents,
catechists and nurturers should all pray the Lord’s Prayer themselves and teach
it to the young in faith.
We must all be men and
women of prayer to encourage and teach others in prayer.
As the Gospel told us,
the disciples needed to be formed in prayer by Jesus.
It was after they had
seen Jesus praying and, remembering that John the Baptist’s disciples had seen
him pray and been taught how to pray, that they were ready to ask Jesus how to
do it: ‘Lord, teach us to pray’.
Now you might ask, how do I teach my child, grandchild,
niece, nephew, friend to pray?
Seeing you pray and
praying with you are the most effective ways.
That means embedding
prayer in your daily life.
In prayer give thanks
for the gift of a new day; for the food you eat and meals you share; ask for
guidance in how to live; bless God at the close of the day, for your ‘creation,
preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine
inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for
the means of grace, and for the hope of glory’ (Book of Common Prayer: A General Thanksgiving).
So, what is prayer?
Prayer is the way we
grow into closer union with our heavenly Father, with Christ in the power of the
Holy Spirit.
Prayer draws us into
the divine love and presence, which is the goal of the Christian life.
Prayer forms our dependency
on God who is the generator of our lives.
And from that deepening
communion you can ‘in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God.’ (Philippians 4.6)
That’s St Paul’s way of
saying that it is not just okay, it is fundamental, to ask things of God in
prayer.
Abraham repeatedly asks
things of God in our first reading, where he pleads on behalf of the righteous
people for all those left in a sinful city.
Yet Jesus warns that we
must be careful about what we ask for, as he did to the apostles James and John
who asked for prestige in the Kingdom of God: ‘you do not know what you are asking’
he says. (Matthew 20.22)
They want glory, but it
will be glory revealed in suffering.
We cannot know what God’s
answer will be to our prayer.
We can be sure, though,
that we will not be tricked – no scorpions or serpents - even if God gives what
we do not expect:
‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ (Luke 11.13)
It may not be what you want,
expect or hope for, but God’s answer will be good and beautiful and true.
‘Lord, teach us to pray.’
The disciples ask - and
they learn - that prayer is the ability to walk and talk with God in the way
that Moses did: ‘Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a
man speaks to his friend.’ (Exodus 33.11)
And we speak to God as
a loving, concerned, accepting parent: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’.
When you pray, pray
like this, says Jesus: he is my Father and yours, he is ‘Our Father, who art in
heaven’.
Humble
yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time
he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1
Peter 5.6,7)