Pentecost 7 Year C

Hosea 1.2-10; Colossians 2.6-19; Luke 11.1-13

‘Lord, teach us to pray.’

That simple request by the disciples of Jesus, a request at the heart of the Gospel reading that we just heard, is one that we, disciples of Jesus too, surely echo: ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’

Prayer is the purpose and meaning of this place: the regular rhythm of formal prayer and services provide the beating heart of a Cathedral’s life; but it is place of prayer outwith those times too. In the course of last year around 10,000 leaves were hung on our prayer tree, a visible expression of the longings, concerns and hopes of those entering this building. And that’s without mentioning the number of candles we get through. Prayer – the need to pray – lies deep. Lord, teach us to pray.

Maybe prayer comes easily and naturally to you; I have to admit that that’s not always been the case for me. When I was younger, I often wrestled with what prayer was about, wondered what the point of it was, what difference it could make. Was God’s activity in the world really effected by our prayer – would God only do something if we prayed for it? Those questions often got in the way of actually praying. And then I realised the disciples didn’t ask Jesus, why do we pray? They asked, teach us to pray. Teach us to pray.

But before we consider Jesus’ answer to that question, let’s turn to our first reading, the extraordinary and coruscating passage from the prophet Hosea. He despairs at the state of the world he finds himself part of. So much so that he moulds his own life to become a depiction of that which he critiques: he marries a prostitute, to mirror the desertion of their own God by his people. He names his children after the iniquities he perceives and God’s response to them – ‘no pity’, ‘not my people’ are the names he gives them. Hosea takes despair at the state of the world to its utmost limit. But given currents events that fill our news cycle, we can perhaps relate to that sense of a world devoid of pity and faith.

And then suddenly the tone changes: ‘Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’, it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God,’ Hosea declares.

It is a move typical of the OT prophets: in the midst of despair and railing and judgement, suddenly hope is offered. We know that despair; to pray is to seek for that gift of hope in the midst of it. Lord, teach us to pray.

In the second half of his answer to that question that we heard in our Gospel, Jesus offers a series of illustrations around the themes of asking and finding. We might hear those as statements about the power and efficacy of prayer – ‘ask and it will be given to you.’ That leaves us wondering why it is not that straightforward, or how in our heart-breaking world, prayer can be characterised so simply – for we know that we certainly don’t always get what we fervently ask for. But as I said earlier, the disciples are not asking, ‘why do we pray.’ But instead, teach us to pray. The series of illustrations Jesus offers is about the fact that prayer is the searching; at its heart is the desire for a different world; it is the gift that keeps hope alive, in the midst of the many reasons to despair. To pray, says Jesus, is to persist; you need the discipline of keeping on. And as the leaves left on our prayer tree illustrate, we persist in prayer because we need to. Prayer is fundamentally the expression of what we care about, what we long for, the desires of our hearts brought into the presence of God. And in that presence, as we persist, we find that longing shaped by the love of God. Christians are formed by the way in which we pray; we are taught who we are by prayer; we are formed by taking our despair, our fears, to the wellspring of prayer, and finding in that place of meeting with God, the gift of hope.

Lord, teach us to pray. And in words that have shaped Christian prayer ever since, Jesus offers a few simple direct words to pray; words that can shape us, and form us.

Abba, Father: Jesus begins with that most intimate expression of relationship. Jesus tells his disciples to address God in the most personal terms, with an intimacy that brings us into that place where we are honest, where we open ourselves to God as God reveals Godself to us. That experience of intimacy and closeness might come through using feminine imagery for God as much as masculine. Depending on our own life experience, to name and claim God as mother, for instance, might speak powerfully of the One closer than breathing, who gives us life, in whose arms we are held. It is that intimacy which is crucial, that intimacy into which are carried by our prayer, the intimacy where we can speak our deepest desires and longings and wait for God’s transforming and answering word. That intimacy, that openness, is before the One who is holy, however; the one who lies beyond, is transcendent to, all our images and perception of God: hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come: Jesus has again and again proclaimed in his ministry that the kingdom of God is among you. The reign of God is not just for some future day, when all wrongs shall be righted, but is present even now. The kingdom is here, proclaims Jesus: we can enter the possibility, the wholeness, the power, the strength, the glory, of the life of God. But to know that kingdom needs our longings to be re-shaped, we need to learn certain disciplines. And so, Give us each day our daily bread: give us what we truly need, and not simply what we have been taught to want, and the knowledge that that is enough.

Forgive us our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us: give us grace to live that new community of forgiveness. God’s forgiveness of us intimately bound up with our forgiveness of others.

Do not bring us to the time of trial: the prayer Jesus gives his disciples ends with that simple expression and admission of our vulnerability. We live in a world where we know how easily we fail to exhibit the courage, the strength, the wisdom, to live within God's kingdom. But give us the strength to persist, and do not ask more of us than we can manage.

In a short while we will sing together one of Charles Wesley’s lesser known hymns. It is based on the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. It describes Wesley’s own faith journey through that metaphor of wrestling with God; being formed by his coming into the presence of God in honest doubt and yearning desire. For Wesley, that journey of prayer leads to the fundamental insight and truth that it is love that forms and shapes him; it is love that he encounters at the heart of all things.

Lord, teach us to pray. So that in prayer we might be brought face to face with that love which made us, and shapes us, and is our heart’s desire. Amen.