Do you remember how you learned to pray? When you learned how to pray? Who taught you how to pray? How you first learned what prayer is?
All of our worship service is prayer. Structured, mostly, as a tool to shape the way we think about prayer through the rest of the week.
There’s the prayer of the day, connected to the readings and sometimes called the ‘collect’ because it is spoken by the pastor after a moment of silent prayer by the people gathered, and it is meant to collect together all of those petitions and thanksgivings silently offered by everyone gathered.
There are the hymns, offering with united breath the stories and promises which hold us together before God.
Every Psalm is an ancient prayer, tying us to a distant people and a faraway time.
We agree with one another’s prayers when the assisting minister says “Lord in your mercy” and we respond together “hear our prayer.”
We pray with our bodies and our livelihoods through offerings of gifts earned and given for the sake of the world.
Lengthier thanksgivings tend to be spoken by the pastor or assisting minister, but are still the prayers of the whole congregation, and we pray the prayer Jesus taught us just in case we missed anything.
The benediction at the end of the service is prayer, too.
We are a people well-practiced at prayer. But so often we stumble and give up because we don’t think we do it ‘right.’ Whatever we think it means to pray ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ gets in the way of praying at all. Publicly or privately, prayer is a gift and a blessing we are given, not to understand in one way only, but simply to communicate, to share, to love, to express to our God, and sometimes just to hear for ourselves, what it is we want and need and stake our joy on.
If ever you feel like you just can’t pray ‘right,’ or that somebody else can do it ‘better,’ you’ve got this Gospel reading today to fall back on. Jesus himself doesn’t always make sense when he prays. His words sometimes sound jumbled, complicated, confusing. If you ever feel like you can’t pray a proper-sounding prayer, here’s Jesus on the night when he hands himself over to death, and he’s blubbering and overcome with emotion. At least that’s how I read it. All of this talk of glory and yours and mine and yours again or yours really from the first, and on and on Jesus prays to the Father,
and whatever else the disciples make of it, there is so much love in these words they themselves might well be overcome in hearing it.
Because, well, because this is where we get the heart of who it is we pray to when we pray. Here is the heart of Jesus, laid bare before it is is pierced with a lance, laid bare before those who will forsake it, laid bare in love for these who have been given to him for the journey of the last three years, who he now gives back to God as he is leaving them.
And even as he is leaving them, Jesus is caring for them. He’s washed their feet, he’s given them an example and spoken his last lecture. Now the only thing left is to what we tend to call a ‘last resort’ - he prays for them. Even as he goes forth to be tortured, his primary concern is not to save himself but to ask God to watch over his disciples. To make them one in the closest, most intimate way he understands, as he and the Father are one.
And this is the desire of the one to whom we pray when we pray. This is the love with which we are received, by which our prayers are heard, in which we trust our hurts and joys are held.
Whether or not your prayers are made of coherent sentences. Whether or not you pray through dance or song or silence. Whether or not you actually believe you can pray,
keep in mind that the one to whom we pray has first prayed for us.
Keep in mind that the one who has suffered by our hands, by the sin of this messed-up world, once said to God “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.” He did not say this to be sarcastic or passive-aggressive, but honestly, prayerfully, heart-felt in love for us.
We belong to Christ, who belongs to God, and who has given us himself for us - to us!, who has sent us the Spirit to teach us how to pray, who longs to be in relationship with us - to be known as he already knows and rejoices in us.
the Lord be with you. and also with you. Let us pray...
Hymn of the day: “Beautiful Savior”
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