praying ways

Jesus 'was praying' - this is the first thing in today's Gospel reading. If Jesus himself prayed, whatever makes us think that we can get along without praying?! Prayer is all about our relationship with God, and like any relationship it needs time and nurture. The question sometimes is ' what kind of nurture'?...

Jon and I have been thinking about this quite a bit this year, because we have created the next module of the Diocese's 360 series, that began with Bible 360, and put together the first part of what will be Faith 360, a unit called Praying In Anglican Ways, and it will be coming to a church near you very soon!  Here's a short clip from one of the videos Jonathan Sargeant has recorded to publicise the course- answering the question Why Pray?..

Now Jesus's disciples already knew that they needed to pray, but they felt they needed a bit of help. Also clearly John the Baptist had given his disciples some instruction, so they did not want to feel that they were missing out. I often wonder how satisfied they felt with the result! For on one level Jesus's response is disarmingly simple - a set of words that we still use in English translation today , that cover a few major areas; advice in the form of a parable to be persistent; assurance that if we ask we will receive - not necessarily what we asked for, but at any rate the gift of the Holy Spirit, to perceive what comes in the best possible way. And that's pretty much it. Use the pattern of the Lord's Prayer. Keep at it. Expect an answer in the form of the gift of the Spirit.

Let's think about each of these things in turn. As Anglicans we are very, very good at saying the Lord's Prayer. We say the words in every formal service we have, and in some of the offices twice. So we are pretty mindful of Jesus's instructions there. We are of course saying the words in translation. Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic, the Gospel version was written in Greek, many of us were brought up with a translation in Elizabethan English, where words like temptation for example do not have the same sense as they do today, and now we use a modern English version. I think I am now on my fourth English translation, so when I open my mouth to say the Lord's Prayer I am never entirely sure which version my brain will send to my lips! And it really does not matter, so long as we keep the basic shape and intention of the prayer, which is in effect a teaching aid to all the different kinds of prayer that should form part of our relationship with God. It is like a shorthand, a mnemonic for children to help us remember the different components.

Here's a different mnemonic that perhaps you came across in confirmation class - ACTS, standing for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication or asking. The Lord's Prayer includes all of these except perhaps thanksgiving, which possibly Jesus considered to elementary for his advanced disciples?! It begins in adoration, 'hallowed be your name', and proceeds to supplication, 'your kingdom come', ' give us this day our daily bread'. Confession follows, 'forgive us our sins' and the prayer ends in praise and adoration once more. Every time of prayer and worship should include these elements, even if sometimes we concentrate on one element more than another.

So in the Lord's Prayer Jesus gave us a working template. Then there is the need to be persistent in prayer. This really is difficult you know. We all know we should pray and meditate, but the reality is that unless we make it a deliberate practice too often we find something else to do, that at the time seems so very important - meals to cook, calls to make, people to help. Keep at it Jesus says. It is all about practice, and when you fall over, just pick yourself up and try again. It is of course much easier, especially to begin with, in a group, and that is why we have for example the contemplative prayer group on a Wednesday evening, and we are about to start the group at Evie's house, of Lectio Divina or divine reading, in which we read the scriptures prayerfully in the expectation that God will speak directly to us through them.
All of us pray differently, because we all have different personalities, and God works with that. This is why it can really help to discover the breadth of ways to pray that exist, so that we can play to our strengths in our journey of prayer, but also strengthen and deepen the relationship by trying some things that do not come naturally. I talk about this in another of the little introductory videos to Praying in Anglican Ways...

Therefore persist in prayer, across a variety of methods. And pray finally with the expectation of answer. Ask and you will receive. You may of course not receive at all what you expect. Figuratively,to use Jesus's example, you might ask for fish with a clear idea of a nice piece of barramundi in your mind, and be surprised, if not positively upset, when what actually turns up is a bucket load of anchovies! We have all had the experience I am sure of prayer not being answered at all to our liking, and yet reflecting, with the Holy Spirit, and sometimes after a long time, we see how God has answered our prayer.

There are many ways to pray. The important thing is to explore some of them every day, and with persistence and practice we find our relationship with God growing and deepening. Let's encourage one another to pray, and let's be sure that when we pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit that prayer will be answered in ways beyond our wildest dreams and expectations. Amen.

Penny Jones, for Pentecost 10 Year C, Sunday 24 July 2016