Our Father - praying with Jesus

 Homily for Trinity 6 - Year C – Eucharist – 27.vii.2025

(Genesis 18.20-32; Colossians 2.6-19; Luke 11.1-13)

Today’s Gospel reading addresses that most basic of questions: “How should I pray?” And Jesus gives two answers. The first is simply a prayer you can use… and it’s the Lord’s Prayer. The second answer is an encouragement to go on praying, be persistent just as you’d go on asking for something you really need. 

We find Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer in two different places in the Gospels. It’s St. Luke’s Gospel that we hear today, and we’re told that on this occasion “Jesus was praying in a certain place.” We don’t know just where, but he’s with the disciples, and it seems they recognise something special in what he is doing. The fact that Jesus is praying and the example of that prayer is what prompts them to ask, “teach us to pray.” 

The other occurrence is in St. Matthew’s Gospel where it’s part of the three chapters which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Actually, it falls right in the middle of what Jesus says. Jesus has been saying that we shouldn’t make a show of our religion. Don’t make a big thing of how you pray; don’t stand out in practising piety or advertising what you give or do because of your religion; don’t think that long prayers and petitions in public are what God wants. God already knows what you need. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask him. But it will affect the way you pray. And then Jesus goes on, “Pray in this way…” And what follows is the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father…” 

The way the prayer starts tells us something important. Our Father… We’re not praying alone. It’s not just me on my own. Prayer is not just about me. And it’s prayer with Jesus – prayer to our Father, and his.

‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ That’s the request that the disciples of Jesus make in today’s Gospel reading. It’s not just that they have seen other people praying and been impressed. They see Jesus pray. The disciple who asks, “Teach us to pray,” does so when he’s with Jesus – when he’s seen how Jesus has taken the trouble and time to go to that “certain place” with the definite intention of praying. It’s when Jesus has finished praying that the disciple makes his request. That’s a reminder to us that to pray is to learn what it is to be Christ-like. Jesus prays, and we can pray and grow with him. By prayer we can grow to be like him. How we address God tells us that prayer is a shared calling with Jesus: “Father…” When we address God, we address him as Jesus addressed him. God is our Father, and Jesus is our brother in prayer. 

 “Our Father…” We speak to God as a member of our own family - or rather we come each as a member of his family, and we come to him as the one we expect to listen to us. There’s a familiarity in the way we address God which distinguishes Christian prayer from that of other religions. Jesus uses the prayer, calls God his Father, and we are let in on the same terms. But then there’s that second phrase, “hallowed be thy name.” We’re invited to recognise the holiness of God. Prayer is not a matter to be taken for granted, and God is not to be taken for granted. If there’s one quality above all that is deficient in the life of the Church today, it’s a sense of holiness. Religion is not just to cheer us up. It’s not about showing other people that our faith is better than theirs. It’s not about having faith in the face of adversity. It’s not about feeling “spiritual.” It is about a sense of the sacred. Unless we recognise a holiness which comes from God, a holiness to which we may aspire, we remain earth-bound and dragged down by the very issues which we need to address in our prayer.

Turning to prayer is not about being an escapist. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” is to be our prayer. Prayer for the coming of the Kingdom is prayer that God’s will and purpose be revealed. His will and purpose are to be made real in the world which we inhabit here and now. We need to want what God wants, and prayer can show us the way. Prayer is not about God keeping us safe. Prayer entails confronting those issues which might seem to deny the reality of God’s power. Natural disaster, war, poverty, injustice. Widespread fear, violence, the millions of refugees fleeing their own countries – or stuck and starving in Gaza. None of this is God’s will. When we address these things in prayer, then we know that we are beginning to look at the world with his eyes. 

And that’s only to make a start. We want to pray that we may see as God sees, but we need to start somewhere. Abraham’s prayer for the people of Sodom might seem to be fruitless, but perhaps he needs to do all that arguing with God so that he can understand the situation for the first time. And Jesus tells those who will listen that prayer at its most simple is about asking. “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Anyone who has had a cat knows something about this. The most frequently made request in any household with a cat is miaow. Invariably your cat will turn up on the wrong side of a door or window. And her miaow is a sort of prayer: let me in; let me out; feed me; brush me; stroke me. Jesus says that our prayers are answered in the way that you give in to the friend who bangs on your door in the middle of the night asking for help - even if you don’t want to, you’ll get up because of your friend’s sheer persistence. Cat owners know about that - don’t let them in the room they want to enter and they’ll tear up your carpet; don’t let them in or out at unearthly hours and they’ll keep you awake with their aptly named caterwauling. But while they demand your attention they might just have to learn that they can’t always get what they want. And so it is for us. The outcome of prayer may not be what you expected - but to find out you need to begin by asking, seeking and knocking at the door.

Very few of us manage to get our lives of prayer worked out as well as we might hope. That’s why some sort of structure helps. Pick a time when you can pray – and try to stick to it. As someone said to me, early mornings can work best before you find your good intentions being squeezed out by everything else that just happens. But other times can work. Whether you pray just once a day, or twice, three times or more, the important thing is Make sure you turn up and do it! Prayer depends not on our enthusiasms and whims but upon discipline, which involves the right use of time, a structure, content (Psalms, Bible readings, shared prayer), and - like Jesus in today’s Gospel - being “in a certain place.” 

And always prayer should be more than we expect. Start out on the discipline of prayer and new elements of prayer will emerge. Perhaps in our prayer as a congregation we need to recognise` that. We expect prayer for the sick and the departed - quite rightly, though there are certain issues about what qualifies you for the sick list and how you get taken off it! But what about other areas of life? What about those for whom we don’t regularly pray: those who’ve been baptised here, those preparing for marriage or trying to get through or over a bad one… issues which it doesn’t occur to us have a place in our prayers. 

There’s a lot there for any of us to address. But it all stems from the simple resolution to make a new start in prayer. And we can do that by taking seriously the invitation which Jesus makes to use that prayer he gives us, “Our Father”… and to ask, search and knock on the door.