“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Our Gospel reading this morning begins with Jesus praying in a certain place. When he finishes, one of his disciples makes a request: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

At these words our ears should prick up for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we may be aware that there is no comprehensive account of the spiritual practices of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel accounts. We are sometimes given hints as to how he cultivated his relationship with God – not least his frequent withdrawals to the so-called wilderness or deserted place – but there is no ten-step guide, no celebration of the disciplines of Christ that we may follow exactly. So passages like this are as close as we will ever get to a how-to guide from Jesus.

Secondly, we may have some intuition of the notion that prayer is what we so desperately need as human beings. “God’s breath in man returning to his birth,” in the words of George Herbert, “Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss”. It is only the arid desert of late modern western secularism that we have lost all sense of prayer and of its centrality to human existence. Prayer has become an esoteric, even weird, practice that certain “religious” people enjoy but which most people see as an irrelevance to daily life and something to be called upon only at times of extremity and, even then, perhaps not.

But what if we are wrong about all of this? What if prayer is really the doorway not only to a relationship with God but to an entirely new vision of reality? As William Blake said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” And how, but by prayer and the cultivation of a spiritual sensibility, can the doors of perception be cleansed? How can we obtain a higher vision of reality but by prayer? I have no doubt in my mind that this, and nothing less, is what is offered to us by Christ.

Let us also recognise Christ is not only teaching his disciples how to begin at prayer but how to continue in it. He is not only teaching the ABC but the A to Z of prayer. Prayer is the ultimate democratic exercise, because it is given to each one of us, not only to the spiritual elite or to the ordained. It is a calling from our Father to cultivate our relationship, so often neglected, with him.

Perhaps you are new to prayer? Perhaps you did it once but do it no longer? Friends, I encourage you to listen now, not to me, but to Jesus. For he will teach you – very practically – how to begin and to begin again. And not only to begin and to begin again but also to continue on.

The Lord’s Prayer

Let’s think then about this most exalted prayer of all, the so-called Lord’s Prayer. In Luke, we have a simplified version to that which we find in Matthew. To my mind, this makes it all the better.

To begin, let’s see to whom this prayer is addressed: a single word, “Father” – not even “Our Father” as it is in Matthew. This speaks of God’s personal relationship to us as his children. And the point here is not that God is as one of our earthly fathers in all of their flaws and weaknesses. But that the very best earthly fathers, with all of their love and compassion, are as nothing compared with our Heavenly Father.

Consider this if you doubt God’s love for you. Remember the words of Psalm 103: As a Father shows compassion for his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Remember the story of the Prodigal Son and of the loving Father, whose eyes scanned the horizon as he awaited with a longing heart only for his child to return. Your heavenly Father waits for you also to come to him in prayer. This is the God you approach.

Secondly, the content of the prayer. It is quite simple: there are five requests.

The first request asks quite simply that God’s name be hallowed: that is, that in our own lives and in the lives of the people out there in the world, that God’s name would be honoured, respected and loved.

The second request is like it: that God’s Kingdom would come. It is perhaps helpful here to refer to the more familiar form of the prayer found in Matthew: that the Kingdom would come and God’s will would be done in earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, God’s perfect reign is established in life, joy, love and infinite bliss. We are praying, then, that would happen here in this world now.

To speak personally, this is where I often pause because it seems the apex of the prayer. It must be applied first to my soul: may thy kingdom come here, now, in love and joy and peace and goodness and all the fruit of the Holy Spirit, in me. May thy Kingdom come in my family, my acquaintances, in the church, in the nations of the earth.

And let’s notice also before we come to the other requests that this is the most exalted request of all: that we experience the presence of God’s Kingdom – that foretaste of the bliss of heaven of which I spoke last week – now. This level of contemplation is the highest point of prayer because it is a direct communion with God himself, not for what he can give us but only for his presence.

And yet this is more. We move to specific requests for ourselves and for this life: Give us this day our daily bread. In other words, give us that which is necessary, what is needed for us, for each day.

Do not try to conceal from God your needs and your worries: he knows them already. Elsewhere in the New Testament we are told: ‘Let your requests be made known to God’ and ‘Cast your cares upon him for he cares for you’. Let him know of your needs. Christ commands us to ask.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. This speaks for itself really and it reminds us that for us to be forgiven by God we must extend the same love, mercy and goodwill towards those who have wronged us. That is easier said than done and that is why we must pray for God’s help.

And, lastly, having commended ourselves to God and asked him for everything that we need: Protect us, deliver us from evil. May we not be complacent about the fact that we face a powerful enemy who stalks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We must recognise that in our own strength we are vulnerable and so we need God’s protection.

But how do we pray?

Christ has taught us what to say – to ask for his Kingdom to Come and to ask for what we need from him – his presence, our daily bread, forgiveness and protection. But how should we pray this prayer? What does it mean?

I have some suggestions, and I am here speaking in the context not of liturgical prayer – that is, the kind of prayer that we all pray together – but in your own personal moments of prayer. Again, observe just how simple this tool is that Christ gives us. Any one of us today, if we do not currently pray, can take this tool and put it to use right away.

Firstly, you could simply find a quiet place, focus your mind by closing your eyes and observing a couple of moments of silence. And then you can pray the prayer straight through. It will only take a few seconds. That’s one way, and maybe that is a good place to start. If that is what you feel you can manage then do it. And maybe you might want to do it two or three times a day.

And secondly, you could pause after each phrase or couple of phrases and elaborate either in words or in the silence of your heart. As an example, take the request for daily bread. Ask yourself what you need – material, physical, spiritual, emotional – and then ask God for those things. Perhaps you are struggling to offer forgiveness to someone. Name that person in the presence of God at the right moment. Perhaps you are beset by temptation or even an evil habit. Ask God to deliver you. Don’t worry if you don’t have something to say after every phrase. Rather use them as a prompt to pray about what is on your mind and your heart.

However you do it I hope that it seems clear to you how to start. Jesus really does want you to begin to pray. So don’t delay.

Persistence

I have almost run out of time to talk about the story that Jesus tells following on from the prayer, but just to say a couple of brief things about it. It concerns a man who is sleeping and is rudely woken up by his friend at midnight, telling him that he needs some bread to set before a guest. The sleeping man will not get up at once but, we are told, because of his friend’s impudence he will get up and give him what he needs.

Now the point here is not that God is like that man who was asleep but that God is infinitely more inclined to answer our requests than he. If that man, who quite reasonably wanted to stay asleep in his home with his children, would get up when entreated, then how much more will God answer us when we come to him?

The great climax of this story is when we are told of the friend’s “impudence”. The Greek word here could also be translated “persistence” or “shamelessness”. That last translation is my favourite.

Christ goes on to speak of children, who ask their parents for food. Here it is eggs and fish. But in my experience it is any type of food my children like and which they think might be in the kitchen – apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, cereal, chocolate – the list is endless. They are not embarrassed about it. They feel no shame. And they know that, if they keep asking, they might get what they want eventually.

Again, if they get what they want when their parents’ will and resources are limited, how much more will God with his limitless resources and love answer us?

But you may ask why this is all necessary: why this shameless, impudent persistence that Christ calls us to in prayer? Why must we not only ask, seek and knock but go on asking, seeking and knocking all the days of our lives?

The answer to this is simple: God is not a genie in a lamp or a slot machine that pays out. Rather, he is a Father, and he wants to have an ongoing relationship of spiritual communion with us. It is quite clear that God answers our prayer in amazing, unexpected and wonderful ways. But, when he doesn’t, or when he delays, it is probably the case that he is trying to do something more amazing, more incredible still.

And I am reminded here, as I finish, of the words of the contemplative teacher Thomas Keating, who wrote this: ‘Some people complain that God never answers their prayers. Why should He? By not answering our prayers, God is answering our greatest prayer, which is to be transformed’ (Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.