St. Nicholas Episcopal Church
Scarborough, Maine
July 28, 2013
Jesus was praying in a
certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to hem, “When
you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come...’” Luke 11:1-13
In the first chapter of his
book The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the
Lord’s Prayer, the historical Jesus scholar, John Dominic Crossan,
talks about his near weekly visits to airports as he wings his way all over the
United States and Canada, lecturing at different churches.
As he waits for his flights,
he is always in search of electrical outlets for his MacBook Pro; an incredibly
powerful computer, he says, but absolutely dependent on getting its battery
regularly charged.
And therein he has found his
metaphor for prayer. In that metaphor he says we are all laptops, and prayer is about empowerment by
participation in and collaboration with God.
This God-as-Electricity is
always there, whether discovered or not. Even when found, my human freedom
allows me to connect or not to connect. It never forces itself upon me...
Furthermore,
God-as-Electricity is equally available to all comers. You do not have to merit
it by your action or deserve it by your character. You can be rich or poor,
young or old, gay or straight, female or male, or anything else you can
imagine.
God-as-Electricity works
just as well for game and movie players, cell phones, and digital assistants;
it even works equally well for Apples and PC’s. All we laptops have to do is
find an outlet and plug ourselves in; empowerment is the free gift of God-as
electricity.[i]
Well, I might prefer a more
warm-blooded metaphor for prayer, but it works well enough.
Crossan then goes on to argue
that God-as-Electricity—that is, prayer as empowerment by participation in and
collaboration with God—is a biblical notion, found especially in the Hebrew
prophets, and later in Paul and the earliest strand of teachings in the New
Testament.
He says he sees an evolution
of what prayer is understood to be in the biblical literature, a kind of flow
from one way of praying to the other. The mysterious secret of prayer he writes is that—like all other human matters—it
must mature over time and through practice. And, of course, immaturity is as
possible in prayer as anywhere else in our lives. But there is a path
forward...
A path forward or, as I have
described it, a flow: from prayers
of request, to prayers of gratitude, to prayers of empowerment.
Request—Gratitude—Empowerment. Kind of like, but not quite, Anne Lamott’s three
essential prayers: Help, Thanks, Wow, which I preached about earlier this year.
There is nothing wrong
with prayers of request, writes
Crossan. There is everything right with taking our hopes and fears under the
shadow of transcendence. Neither is there anything wrong—but rather everything
right—with prayers of gratitude for the mystery of existence, the challenge of
life, and the glory of creation.
But it is an immature view
of prayer that addresses a Supreme Being radically apart from us who thinks and
wills, knows and hears, grants and refuses more or less as we do, but with
infinite broadband.[ii]
Crossan argues that at its
heart, the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of empowerment; and, if the metaphor works
for you, a God-as-Electricity prayer, a prayer that we plug ourselves into
every week.
So, in the Lord’s Prayer,
when Jesus prays Abba, Father! it
is the Spirit praying within and through him. It is a prayer of mutuality and
reciprocity, an interaction between the divine and the human or, in Matthew’s
version, as in heaven so on earth or
on earth as it is in heaven. And
so it is for us who pray this prayer week after week, throughout the year.
To call God Abba, Father is a mode of address that is undeniably rooted in a
male-oriented, patriarchal culture and is increasingly problematic for many of
us. And yet, Crossan argues, the term Father was used as a metaphor that had a particular meaning.
He notes: Despite its male-oriented prejudice, the biblical term “father” is
often simply a shorthand term for ‘father and mother.’
Which is to say, it’s an
inclusive term. And it indicates not just fathers and mothers of children,
but a householder in charge of a home and extended family—it contains brothers
and sisters, male and female slaves, animals, land, and tools.
As in biblical times, we all
know what a well-run household looks like, says Crossan. We know what a good
householder looks like. Walk in and look around, he says. Are the fields well prepared and the livestock
well provisioned? Do dependents have adequate food, clothing, and shelter. Does
a sick child [or elder] get special care? Does a pregnant or nursing mother get
special concern?...Does everyone have enough?[iii]
So to call God Father in
heaven is to call God Householder
of earth. By participation and
collaboration with God, we are householders of earth, caregivers of one another
and of the whole creation.
And so Crossan dares to call
the Lord’s Prayer the greatest prayer; a uniquely Christian prayer, yes, but a prayer for all the world and
for all the earth.
As Christians, we have a
particular responsibility to be God’s blessing and healing for all who suffer;
by our manner of life, we are a prayer for all the world and for all the earth.
We claim grace for one another.
Steve Charleston, the former
Bishop of Alaska, and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, addressed us
all in his morning Facebook
reflection. He wrote:
I am not so
proud that I think I know what you need, or that I could give it to you even if
I did. But I am so faithful that I know God is aware of your need, and so
certain of grace that I claim it for you.
I do not
know how many times I have needed a breakthrough, a turning point, a moment of
deep change. How lonely the vigil at that crossroads.
But each
time I was discovered by grace, helped by grace, given a path forward to
follow. I claim that for you too. I pray it with an assurance that only comes
from knowing the broken times.
AMEN
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