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"How do you pickle walnuts?"
We have a huge and beautiful walnut tree - it is my favourite tree in the garden.
Each year it bears hundreds of walnuts, and every year they are appreciated, and eaten eagerly - by the squirrels!
So this year we thought, "Let's pickle some!"
But how do you pickle walnuts?
Well, we found the answer on the internet.
And as with any form of cooking we needed to know two things:
1) the ingredients and 2) the recipe.
It was a bit like that for the disciples.
They watched Jesus praying, and it made them realise how pathetic their own prayers were.
So they asked, not "Lord, teach us to pickle walnuts" But "Lord, teach us to pray."
And Jesus gave them 2 things: 1) the ingredients and 2) the recipe.
1) The ingredients.
These we find in the Lord's prayer.
The version in Luke's Gospel is very short, very minimalist.
It gives us just the basic ingredients, and there were three:
a) Worship - God is addressed and His greatness recognized.
b) Intercession - prayer for others.
c) Prayer for ourselves.
a) Worship. God is addressed as "Father", "Abba", "Daddy"
When we lived in northern Kenya the local language was Borana - a Cushitic language, brought in to Africa from the north.
And the word for "Father" or "Daddy" was "Abbo".
Children begging would call out "Abbo! Abbo!", and it always reminded me of this passage.
"Abba!"
Jesus reminds us that God is our Father.
But that is not a reason for disrespect.
He is a holy Father.
"Father, hallowed be your name."
We are addressing a loving Father, yes!
But we are also addressing a God whose very name is holy.
In prayer we stand on holy ground.
We stand in God's holy presence.
It's a time to, as it were, take our shoes off, and bow down.
"Father (or, as Matthew's longer version says "Father in heaven")
hallowed (holy) be your name."
b) Intercession. We pray "Your kingdom come."
God's kingdom is a realm where God reigns supreme, and where people live as He would wish them to live.
Matthew's expanded version says:
"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
In this phrase we are praying for the world
- for Iraq, for our country, our town, our neighbours, friends, our loved ones.
"Abba, in Iraq your kingdom come."
"Abba, in Malvern your will be done."
"For my friend who is ill, your will be done."
"For my grandson who is off the rails, your kingdom come."
"In situations I know about and pray for, may your kingdom come, and your will be done, so that they may be transformed from earthly situations to heavenly ones."
Intercession - holding people and situations up to God in our hearts, and praying that He will change them for the better.
c) Thirdly we pray for ourselves.
Note prayer for our own interests comes after worship of God, and after prayer for others.
And we pray 3 things for ourselves:
i)Give. ii) Forgive iii) Deliver
i) "Give us each day our daily bread"
Note, "daily" - enough for today, not a stash for tomorrow.
We are not asking God to fill our supermarket trolleys against all eventualities - as some have been doing lately, in the floods.
And note, "bread" - not chocolate cake.
Living a simple life style is good for the health.
And living from day to day, trusting in God, is good for the faith.
After all, this is how 90% of Christians in the world live.
On daily bread; not on freezer-fuls of cake.
Their security is God.
There is no hint here of a "prosperity gospel".
God gives us, not what we want, but what we need.
"Give"
ii) "Forgive"
"Forgive our sins in the same way that we forgive others."
If we harbour grudges,
If we go through life nurturing resentments,
then how can we expect God to forgive us?
Every time we say the Lord's Prayer it is a reminder to review our relationships with others - to forgive so that we can be forgiven.
"Forgive as we forgive."
iii) "Deliver us from the evil one"
That is Matthew's longer version.
Luke just says, "Lead us not into temptation."
It's really saying:
"Lord, you know how feeble we are. Spare us any testing of the faith which we could not stand."
It's the sort of prayer echoed by Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, when He prayed: "If it be possible let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not my will but thine be done."
So, 3 requests for ourselves:
Give. Forgive. Deliver.
2 out of the 3 are concerned with our spiritual need.
Only one is asking for material help, and then it's just for bread.
Later versions of the Lord's prayer, embellished after the Gospels were written, add a doxology:
"For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, for ever and ever. Amen."
This takes us back to worship again.
It puts the requests of the Lord's Prayer into the context of the greatness of God. It makes the prayer, in the form that we use it, into a sort of sandwich, in which worship is the bread, and the requests are the filling.
Worship. Intercession. Prayer for ourselves. Worship.
These are the ingredients of prayer. Now we come to the recipe:
2) The recipe.
In the second part of this passage Jesus gives us the recipe.
From what to pray He turns to how to pray. What are do we to do with those ingredients and how should we apply them.
Jesus gives us two hypothetical situations :
First, the man who wakes his friend in the middle of the night to borrow some bread off him - disturbing the man, and disturbing his family who are in bed with him.
Second there is the son who asks his father for a fish and an egg.
So how do we pray? What do these 2 stories teach us?
- We pray as to a Friend and as to a Father. The man felt able to knock up his neighbour in the middle of the night and ask for bread. He felt he knew him well enough to do that.
Some years ago, when doctors were actually on call at night, I was rung by a man at 2 a.m., saying he had toothache, and asking me to take him some Paracetamol to his house. "Have you asked your neighbours for some?" I asked. "Oh no! I couldn't do that! They are asleep." "So was I until you rang", I felt like saying!
The man in Jesus' story had no such reservations about waking his neighbour and friend. And the son, likewise, had no hesitation about asking his father for his needs. We are praying to a Friend and a loving Father. To someone we know, and trust, and feel confident to approach. We pray with persistence. We hammer at the door, and we don't take "No" for an answer.
In His teaching on prayer Jesus is short on words - the Lord's prayer is minimalist -
but long on persistence - "Keep knocking!" He says. "Don't give up!"
So often our prayers are rather long on words, but short on persistence.
We give up.
It seems we pray for ever about the same thing - for Iraq, maybe, or for healing for someone or some situation. And nothing seems to happen.
So we get tired of praying for the same things, and it's tempting to give up.
Recently I came across, in my Bible, a Prayer for Terry Waite that was distributed in the Priory. 4 years we prayed for Terry, before that prayer was answered!
Jesus' recipe is, "Don't give up! Persevere! Keep hammering on the door! Make a nuisance of yourself!"
God honours that approach.
Pray with persistence.
- We pray knowing that God knows what is best for us.
If we ask for a fish, He's hardly likely to give us a snake!
If we ask for an egg, He's not going top give us a scorpion!
Like an earthly father, He will give us good things.
But He knows better than we do what those good things are.
If I ask Rosemary for a haggis and chips for my supper, I know that I am much more likely to be given a salad, because she knows that that is better for me!
God will give us "good things".
"Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened."
So we have them - the ingredients and the recipe.
"Lord, teach us to pray!"
David Webster
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