Today we hear in our Gospel the words of what we call the “Lord’s prayer”, the “Our Father”, a prayer that of course most of us know very well. What is really striking to me is the simplicity of this prayer. It’s even more simple in this version of Luke – you may have notice that the prayer has a few less sentences than the one we say during our Eucharistic Prayer, the “Lord’s Prayer” of our Prayer books. We see a difference because at church we generally use Matthew’s version of the prayer (Matt 6: 9-13). As you can imagine, there are big debates among theologians about which version is the original prayer – most people assume that Matthew added a few lines. My guess though is that Jesus taught this prayer many times as he carried on his mission, so he probably had different ways to say it. Teachers don’t always teach the same way, based on who listen to them and in which context (and teachers often repeat!).
And this I think is already important to notice. Sometimes when we pray we get so stuck with the words we say, wondering if our prayer will work if we don’t say it the right way, wondering if God will listen to us if we leave something out. But Jesus shows us there are many ways to pray. The Lord’s Prayer, though perfect as it is, is more of an example of the way Jesus invites his disciples to pray rather than a magic formula. Again, it is very simple in itself. It invites us to trust, addressing God in an intimate way as a Father and, as we await for God’s full revelation (“your kingdom come”), asking God to provide for our simple needs (“bread”) and asking God to grant us forgiveness, restored relationships, help and protection throughout the challenges (“trials”) of life.
As we are considering this, we may have to acknowledge that Jesus’s response to his disciples request: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” may have been a bit surprising to them, and even a bit disappointing. Let me explain. You may not have noticed it, because we generally don’t read each Gospel in parallel with the others, but in Luke’s Gospel the theme of prayer is very important. Each time Luke writes about an important event in Jesus’s life (his baptism, the calling of the disciples, the Transfiguration but also in acts of healing and teaching), Luke always mentions that Jesus was praying. Whereas Matthew and Mark just describe the facts plainly, in Luke’s we always have a peek into Jesus’s inner life and we see how prayer and how his relationship with the Father fuel his ministry. This was of course something the disciples would have had observed. And so my guess is that when they make this request to Jesus to “teach them how to pray” they were probably expecting something big, they must have thought that Jesus’s prayers were something really special given the power and magnificence of his ministry. They asks Jesus to teach them to pray “like John taught his own disciples”, John the Baptist, the prophet wearing camel hair and fasting in the wilderness – They were expecting some kind of special treatment, some kind of initiation to the mystery of communicating with God.
And yet, Jesus will have none of that. Jesus teaches his disciples the most simple way to pray – simple does not mean easy or shallow, it means that it is for everybody. Jesus’s religion is not a religion for special people, initiated people, it’s not about taking a few people aside and teaching them mysterious ways, rather anyone can have access to God no matters who they are as individuals and on their faith journey. And we sort of know that, don’t we? Because how do we teach our children how to pray? We teach them the Lord’s Prayer. And we need to remember that at a time where we are surrounded by so many new forms of spirituality that promise us to gain understanding about the mysteries of our being and of the universe, we need to remember that Jesus taught us a religion that was for everybody, that was free, that was simple, a religion children could understand. Another important theme in Luke’s Gospel is that Jesus came for the poor, Jesus brought s a religion for the poor before God, those who trust God with their simple needs and daily struggles, and wait expectantly for God’s kingdom. Prayer is not about magic formulas, it’s about simplicity and humility.
Now I really like that, after Jesus teaches his disciples the words of his prayer, he tells them a little story – a parable – that invites them to think deeper about their experience of prayer. And, once again, I think the disciples must have been very surprised, and even quite disoriented, at hearing this story. Because basically this is what Jesus says: “Praying is like trying to wake up a sleepy friend who cannot be bothered to get out of bed to help you out”. Now take that in: “Praying is like trying to wake up a sleepy friend who cannot be bothered to get out of bed to help you out”. Well, I don’t know how you feel about it because it does not sound very pious, as the disciples could have expected from a holy man like Jesus. And yet in the meantime I can’t help thinking: isn’t it the way we experience prayer most of the time? And I am amazed at Jesus’s wit but mostly I am amazed at Jesus’s honesty and realism. Prayer is simple, yes, but prayer is hard, isn’t it? Jesus says in a very witty way something that is also very difficult: When we pray, as when we love, we take the risk of feeling rejected or ignored. And I guess it’s something we all deal with in our prayer life: God does not answer right away, or the way we want to, sometimes we feel that God does not respond at all. We feel like God is sleeping. At it’s not a new idea, we find that this idea in many psalms (44:23; 78:65; 121:4)
So how can we understand that? Well, if we pray for God’s kingdom to “come” and if we have to pray at all, it’s of course that there is a distance between God and this world, there is a distance between who we are and who God is. And sometimes all we can do in prayer is to experience this distance, if we try to come closer to God, we also realize how very little we are, how imperfect and needy, and we realize how much this world is in pain and not meant to be our final home. And it can be difficult and scary. You know there is a Saint who tells this story that he once asked God to feel like God, to feel what God was feeling. And he says: I was expecting to feel wonderfully, but all I could feel for a while was brokenhearted. And given the state of the world, we can imagine that God would feel like that most days, can’t we? I like it that in Jesus’s story the man keeps knocking on the door to ask something for one of his friends. He prays like Abraham asking for mercy for Sodom and Gomorrah. The perfect prayer isn’t praying the right formula, it’s the generous, unselfish request, seeking God for the sake of God and for the sake of others, but it does not come to us naturally. And so again, the prayer Jesus teaches may look simple, yet it’s not easy!
Now this is not the end of the story, of course. Jesus promises that, though we may feel that God is sleeping, God will “rise up” in the end and give those who request what they need: The door will be opened, we will receive, we will find. Jesus promises that God hears and will give good gifts, the best of all being the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God’s presence in the here and now, in the midst of our struggles and of our needs, but also in eternal life. And I think this is also what we experience in prayer, when we persevere as Jesus invites us to do: We grow in prayer, we become more compassionate, more aware, God “rises” inside of us as Jesus rose from the dead, God becomes alive in us.Yes, we will experience the distance, we will become more conscious of the absence of God in a broken world and self that have rejected God, yet we will also experience more of God’s reality (as did the Saint I’ve just mentioned), we will become closer to God and to God’s heart, loving as God loves, and we will know that though hidden, God is with us and will fulfill God’s promise. In the end, it is us of course who are “awaken”, awaken to God’s presence when the door of our hearts is unlocked. Prayer breaks our hearts open in many ways. This is this way of praying that is the source of Jesus’s ministry and of its great power, the power of compassion, humility and trust.