"Lord, Teach Us to Pray"
Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 24, 2009
John 17.11-19
John the Baptist was a faithful teacher. He taught his disciples the
Word of God. He preached the Gospel to them. He guided them
spiritually, fed them spiritually. He taught them to pray. His
disciples were fed by the Word of God because John carried out his
calling to feed his followers with the Word of God.
Jesus taught His own disciples. On one occasion His disciples asked
Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. Jesus’
answer was the Lord’s Prayer. This is how you should pray. We learn
how to pray from the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we
not only pray, we learn how to pray. Jesus is our teacher.
You can well imagine that John the Baptist spent time in prayer for
his disciples. He was their teacher, their spiritual shepherd.
Spiritual shepherds not only teach their flock, they pray for them.
This is what Jesus did also. Today’s Gospel reading gives us one of
Jesus’ prayers for His disciples. He not only taught them to pray, He
prayed for them. But in praying for them, He didn’t simply pray for
them, He also taught them to pray. We learn from Jesus to pray. We
don’t just tell God stuff and then call it prayer. We pray in the way
Jesus has taught us to pray.
Jesus has given us His prayer, which we call the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus
Himself prays to His Heavenly Father. His praying isn’t any different.
What He has given us to pray for is what He Himself prays for. Jesus
said, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’” In the
same way, He prays to His holy Father. And whereas He teaches us to
hallow His name He prays that His Heavenly Father would keep His
disciples in His name. His teaching us to pray that our Heavenly
Father’s Kingdom come is coupled with His own prayer that His
disciples may be one even as He and His Heavenly Father are one.
All of that sounds wonderful and exactly the kinds of things we’d like
to be praying for. It’s when He begins teaching us to pray according
to the Heavenly Father’s will that we become uncomfortable with
prayer. We pray it all the time in the Lord’s Prayer: Thy will be
done. In Jesus’ prayer He Himself prays that His Heavenly Father’s
will be done. What is this will? He prays: “Now I am coming to You,
and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy
fulfilled in themselves.” We can live with this will of our Heavenly
Father, but Jesus goes on: “I have given them Your word, and the world
has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of
the world. I do not ask that You take them out of the world, but that
You keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I
am not of the world.”
This is usually where our prayers break down. It’s that constant
struggle between our will and God’s will. Our will often is to be
removed from trouble—our Lord’s will is that we stay right in the
midst of it. He has no illusions about this. He doesn’t tell us that
just because we’re Christians smooth sailing will come our way, that
everyone’s going to love us. There will be trials and there will be
those who hate us. His will is not to remove us from this but to keep
us in it. Why is this? We know His will for us is good, so why is it
so difficult to swallow?
Because His will is the way of the cross, not the way of glory. Adam
and Eve had grace and they threw it away for the sake of perceived
glory. We, too, have grace but often seek the way of glory. How? By
wishing that God’s will would conform to ours. By seeking His care for
us as removing us from difficulty rather than by preserving us in the
midst of difficulty. His will is the way of the cross because it’s the
only way we will see our need for His eternal care. The way of
glory—in other words, our way—would only cement us in our belief that
we’re better off without God.
So we constantly need to learn to pray. And not only this, but Jesus
Himself is constantly praying for us. His prayer here for His
disciples is shortly before His departure, which He alone fully
understood. It was His own cross. Bearing the cross for the sin of the
world. He would be departing from the disciples because He alone could
go to the cross for them and the world. But He would also depart after
it. He would rise from the grave and then He would ascend into heaven.
All of this He knew, but they didn’t, really. They knew the Scriptures
and Jesus had been teaching them, but they didn’t really understand
what the way of the cross was all about. Their prayer was that He
would remain with them, that everything would continue on as it was
going. But He had come for this purpose, to go to the cross. Those who
serve in the Armed Forces are prepared for the real possibility of
laying down their lives for their country. But you can’t fully
understand what that amounts to until you actually experience it. For
the many of us who haven’t served our country in this way and who will
never know what it is like to lose a brother in arms, we are grateful
for their sacrifice and honor them on Memorial Day. Those who serve
know that there may come a day where Memorial Day will be observed to
include them. But that doesn’t stop them from serving. They are
willing to lay down their lives in service to our country.
In a similar way, Jesus prayed on another occasion. Shortly after His
prayer for His disciples which we have in our Gospel reading, Jesus
found Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying again to His
Heavenly Father. His prayer is well known due to the intensity of it.
It might seem that this was a last ditch effort to get out of this
whole dying thing. But His words tell differently. He wasn’t praying,
Father, please get Me out of this. He was saying, rather, If there is
another way, let it be so. His prayer was consistent with what He
taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer and in what He prayed regarding
His disciples in our Gospel reading: Thy will be done. Jesus wanted
what His Heavenly Father wanted.
Our prayer is often, God, get me out of this. Our Lord teaches us to
pray the opposite: If there is another way, let it be so, but Thy will
be done. The God who went to the cross will bring you through yours.
The God who endured the cross will strengthen you to bear yours.
Through it all we have prayer. Not just our own prayer, but Jesus
praying for us. We have His words in the Scriptures, not just of Him
teaching us to pray, but of Him praying for us.
In the book The Hammer of God an elderly man is on his deathbed. He
was a faithful, godly Christian throughout his life but as his
daughter watches him dying he is in great distress and not in his
right mind. Episodes from his youth are coming to his thoughts and he
is spewing forth profanity and other inappropriate things. His
daughter is horrified and thinks that if he dies in this state he will
go to hell. In a moment where he is lucid she pleads with him to think
of Jesus. He is weary and responds to her that he cannot. But, he
says, “I know He is thinking of me.”
This is the basis of our prayers. The Scripture even says that we do
not know how to pray as we ought. But we have an intercessor. One who
prays on our behalf. One who has interceded on our behalf for our sins
and the sins of the world. One who sends the Holy Spirit to express
groans that words cannot express. One who constantly brings us back to
that eternal Word, the Word made flesh, who suffered, died, and rose
so that we may be in the eternal care of our Heavenly Father,
including the trials we experience now. Our Lord ascended on high and
yet continues to come to us in His Holy Supper.
Have you ever noticed what is said in the liturgy right before the
Words of Institution are spoken? The Lord’s Prayer. We pray the Lord’s
Prayer right before we hear our Lord’s Words. We pray His will be done
and then we are recipients of His will, receiving His very and Body
and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our
faith. We are not removed from the world, we’re not taken out of it.
We’re sent into it so that the joy we have in Christ may overflow to
others as well. Lord, teach us to pray that this will becomes our own.
Amen.
SDG
--
Pastor Paul L. Willweber
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS]
San Diego, California
princeofpeacesd.net
three-taverns.net
It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything
except where the marks of the Church are concerned.
[Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian]
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