Are you a sinner or a trespasser? This is how one of the pastors I know would half-jokingly, half-seriously end visits with people in order to determine which version of the Lord’s Prayer they were accustomed to using. Because whether it was called Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer the traditional or contemporary version, we have all learned similar versions. Yet, there are enough differences that it can sometimes be difficult to remember which one to be using. I think back to during Seminary Chapel when we had specific phrases to que us into which version we would be using that day…which was helpful as long as we remembered which phrase went with which version.
When we studied this Scripture on Thursday at Foss, I told them that if it ever looks like I am standing up here reading the Lord’s Prayer, chances are that I need to remind myself which version we are using because I almost always accidentally switch versions halfway through. Regardless of which version we are using though, I think that one of the most beautiful things about the Lord’s Prayer is that is joins us together with other Christians across time and space. It joins us in prayer the way that using the Revised Common Lectionary joins us through Scripture. Even when people couldn’t be together, I think about how it was always described as a joyous cacophony, when my classmates and I would unmute during Zoom chapel, and all say the Lord’s Prayer together.
While we have optional portions of our liturgy, despite what one of my best friends in Seminary misread during our Eucharist practice, the Lord’s Prayer is not an optional part of our gathering together. And, I think that is for several reasons. One, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are literally shaped and oriented by it. I think about all the people that I have visited over the past few years who have various degrees of memory difficulties that are able to recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory because they prayed it over and over again throughout their lifetime. Two, I think about how praying together orients us to God and to the needs of the world around us, especially as we focus not just on what we would like, but when we recenter ourselves on God’s will. This is particularly helpful when I was thinking about the latter portion of today’s Gospel reading.
Throughout my life, I have had a mixed relationship with prayer, as I have experienced and have watched other people struggle with what it means when their prayers are not answered. When they feel like they are on the verge of a faith crisis or that God cannot be trusted. Remembering those experiences does not feel helpful when we hear: ‘That’s why I tell you, keep asking and you’ll receive; keep looking and you’ll find; keep knocking and the door will be opened to you’ (Luke 11: 9). Yet, despite all the promises in this verse, it does not promise that everything is going to go exactly the way that we want it to all the time. Instead, the Gospel story focuses on persistence… keep doing these things.
I think that perhaps we make God too small if we try to make God into this being that does everything that we wish all the time. God is trustworthy and, as one of my Seminary professors reminded us quite frequently, God hears our cries before they have even left our lips. God knows the things that lie heavy on our hearts and minds, so turning to God in prayer isn’t this time-wasting activity, but it a deepening of our relationship with God and with one another as we risk vulnerability with one another to share those things that weigh heavy on us or the things that we are joyful for in our lives. In prayer, we reorient to not just focus on ourselves.
‘That’s why I tell you, keep asking and you’ll receive; keep looking and you’ll find; keep knocking and the door will be opened to you’ (Luke 11: 9). This has less to do with the specific things that we bring to God. While those are important too, I think the persistence piece of this is more focused on always keeping God at the center, not matter what we are going through or how we are feeling. Our relationship to God continues to grow when we turn to God with the things that lie heavy on our hearts and minds, as individuals and as a community. It is one of the reasons why I love the Prayers of the People that are included in worship, as we join our hearts and minds together in prayer, to pray for the needs of the church and the world. It is about the full scope of God’s creation and it unites us together in prayer with and for one another. It is a return to our foundation in Christ, our shared identity.
Yet, I think that part of being in relationship with God is being angry with God too as we try to understand the way that God works in our world. I think back to Abraham in today’s Genesis story who keeps asking God over and over about how many people from Sodom and Gomorrah will be saved, but I also think about the people in my life who have asked repeatedly why God does the things that God does. I hate to break it to you today that I do not have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is often called, although if I ever figure it out that could be a really good topic for my doctoral thesis, but I do think that we can turn to lament too as a form of prayer.
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, a Roman Catholic theologian, wrote in her book, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life about lament, especially how lament is a form of praise because we are asking God to be the God that was promised to us in Scripture. Some people have tried to dismiss lament as “holy complaining” of sorts, but it is so much deeper than that. It is yet another way that we can express our concerns to God, especially in the midst of unspeakable tragedy and hardship. Prayer time with God doesn’t always have to be full of joy and thankfulness. Sometimes it is, but sometimes we just need to express our authentic feelings as we try to wrestle with the ways of the world. Because, as I mentioned last week, God knows us and sees us, all of us, including the questions and the anger and the fear.
Like any relationship, our relationship with God is going to have its ups and downs, its joys and its more difficult moments. Yet, we trust that God suffers with us and is big enough to handle the full spectrum of human emotion that we bring before God. To bring less does little to honor the complex human beings that God Godself created us to be. So whether we are praying the Lord’s Prayer together, you feel like questioning God about all the tragedies happening in our world, you want to thank God for the beautiful aspects of life too, or anything in between, we trust that we will receive a deeper relationship with God when we keep asking and keep knocking. We may not always get the answer that we want, and we may not always feel like we know the “right” words to say, but God invites us to bring our whole selves anyway, including our spoken and unspoken petitions. To keep knocking, and asking, and seeking.