Another sermon from my favorite online liberal preacher, with whom I am free to agree or disagree at some points (I disagree with his suppositions here about God). Rowland.

July 29, 2007

Ah, Prayer

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 11: 1-13

Why do some people some of the time kneel when they pray? Ask that question of an anthropologist and he or she will tell you that such a position of humility was encoded into the human creature in the process of evolution. The traditional postures of prayer, all the way from completely prone, to kneeling, to hands raised as if in supplication are learned forms of animal submission. If you hike in Glacier National Park you are told to assume a submissive position when a grizzly is encountered.

Interesting that in the reading from Luke, in which appears that evangelist’s version of what we call “the Lord’s prayer,” there is no posture mentioned. The set-up for the passage is a question Luke places in the mouth of one of Jesus’ company: Kyrios (meaning “powerful one”)

Teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. By the way, there is no clue anywhere as to how John (probably the Baptist) may have instructed his followers in prayer. But it is interesting to see that the text credits the Baptist with having a following like, perhaps, unto Jesus’ own.

Was the request to be taught in the same way John taught his disciples? Did the one who asked the question want to break away from the traditional forms of Jewish prayer? We don’t know.

But the answer given When you pray, say ‘Father, hallowed (or holy) be your name.’ That is a typical form of address common to people of the Middle East even to this day. It’s similar to In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. The word “father” here is the formal patayr, rather than the more intimate abba. It does suggest that among the First Century Jesus communities, the concept of deity had taken on a more personal nature.

The prayer is that the petitioner may be consonant with what the deity being addressed is believed to will, that those offering the prayer will somehow have the sustenance (bread) to cooperate in the fulfillment of that imagined will, that they will be able to clear the decks of grudges and resentments sufficiently to permit their full and unfettered participation in the coming order, and finally that in the process they will not be so severely tested that they become, as it were, drop-outs.

The text of the Our Father or Lord’s Prayer is among the best known in the English language and has become a verbal talisman. In crisis, the words come unbidden to the lips of people who would never think of going to church. What kind of exchange or transaction do such people think is occurring when they pray that or any prayer? Do they believe an unseen deity is listening to them and will respond accordingly?

All this brings up the issue of what prayer is, its efficacy and what it implies about those who engage in it. In our Anglican tradition there exists the phenomenon known as “common prayer,” that is ritual texts people hear or say or sing together. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that while Episcopal congregations will regularly say, hear and sing the same texts, individual members of those congregations will mean different things by saying, hearing and singing them – and will mean different things at different times.

When I say the words of the Our Father, I do not conceive of them being heard by any other ears than my own and those in whose presence I am saying them. That goes for any text of any prayer. Still, such texts are important to me because they are part of my heritage, are second nature to me and call to mind people and places and events (such as the funerals of my mother and my father) which were gathered up in those texts.

Any number of times a week, someone will ask me to “say a little prayer” for this or that, for him or her, for someone else. My defensive response is always, “I do not say ‘little’ prayers. I only say big ones.” That response is sufficiently arresting to get the subject changed just enough that I am not, on the spot, required to fold my hands, bow my head or drop to my knees and request of a deity of which I cannot conceive to do this or do that, to make something happen or not happen. I will respond with the words of an appropriate psalm or hymn text, making clear that they are quotations and that they seem to have stood the test of time by way of strengthening people in crises. – Usually, I am able to walk away from such an encounter still being thought of as a good pastor.

But when my hand is forced, I have to invoke that old Latin catch-phrase lex orandi, lex credendi – the law of prayer is the law of belief, by which is meant that the prayer in which one engages reveals what one believes. For example, if you say, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” you ordinarily mean that your concept of God is that of father and that your prayer is directed to his attention somewhere outside of this world. For the record, I say the Our Father, but in so doing I am not signing on to any such belief.

I will say the Our Father in the same way I will sing a familiar song or recite one of the thousand strophes of poetry I know by heart: because the words of such texts have been like strong magnets, gathering to them significant pieces of my life of going on 69 years.

Meanwhile, what do you think you are doing, if and when you pray? Does what you may say in a prayer reflect what you believe? If not, why not?

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.