“Teach Us to Pray: We Still Have Questions”

Matthew 6:9-13

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

September 5, 2021

All over the world, children and parents kneel beside beds every evening and recite a litany that might sound like this: “Bless mommy. Bless daddy. Bless Fido. Bless my teacher. Bless people who don’t have homes.”

It’s a lovely way to teach children to pray. The chorus of “bless, bless, bless” helps children feel connected not only to God but to a wider community of saints. Children learn to set aside time for prayer. They learn that posture and place can be an important part of prayer. They learn that God listens and cares about the same things that matter to them. And they do all of this with someone who loves them. 

By the time most of us enter our teenage years or early adulthood, though, we’re finding we need more. We often discover we have more questions than answers. And the simple litany of bless, bless, bless just isn’t cutting it anymore. Lucy Abbott Tucker, one of my teachers in the Souljourners program,  says that most of us have “skinny” definitions of God and “skinny” definitions of prayer. We need to fatten them up, expand them, blow them wide open to make space for the Spirit to live and move within us. 

I find it somewhat comforting that even Jesus’s best friends had to ask how to pray. Maybe they had skinny definitions, too. Jesus taught them one prayer - the one we’ve been studying together for the past month. But we know that prayer is not like a scouting badge. We don’t learn it one time and then check it off - done. Instead, we learn and relearn it throughout our lives. 

Last week, I asked for your questions about prayer and you delivered. Thank you. Before we start talking about some of the things you brought up, I want to say one important thing about prayer and that’s this: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You might hear me say some things today that don’t resonate with you. That’s just peachy. Take what might be helpful and leave the rest. 

Since we won’t have time to get to every single question today, I am going to focus on the questions that were asked by more than one person. Like this one:  why do we pray? 

Though I’m sure we each have our own answer for this, one of my favorite answers comes from my teacher Lucy Abbott Tucker again. Lucy says, “prayer is as natural to us as breathing.” Those of us who worry about doing it “right,” probably only do so because somewhere along the way, someone mistakenly taught us that there was one (or two or three) proper ways to pray. But there, again, we are with the skinny definitions of prayer that don’t serve us well. My ever-evolving definition of prayer is “orienting ourselves towards God” and we were MADE to do this as humans. Created in God’s image, loved beyond our wildest dreaming, made to be in deep relationship with the Divine - we were made to bask in God’s presence. 

Wise folks over the centuries have even observed that the very sound of our breath - inhale, exhale - sounds an awful lot like God’s given name in the First Testament. YAH-WEH. In this way, with every breath, God’s name is on our lips. It’s not something we have to learn to do or figure out how to do “right.” It’s simply who we are as humans.

I have a personal story about this because I was not taught to pray as a young child. My family didn’t start going to church until I was much older and we didn’t kneel down beside my bed at night to pray. But I still remember praying when I was maybe 3 or so years old. When I was worried or scared at night, I could feel myself being protected somehow - held in a warm, soft light that surrounded me and kept me in a safe bubble. I didn’t have language to call that light God, but looking back on it now, I can see that I was orienting myself towards God even without being taught. It was a need and response that came naturally.

This isn’t to say that prayer always FEELS natural to us. Quite a few of you had questions about the nitty-gritty of praying. Is it okay to not use so many words? How can I stay focused? How can I find the energy for prayer? (And, while you’re at it, can you also inspire me to exercise on a regular basis?) 

This, my friends, is why I really appreciate the definition of prayer as an orientation toward God. It’s not so much about what we do or how we do it...it’s a way of being in the world. In this way, anything can become prayer if we’re doing it “towards God.” My number one tip for HOW to pray is this: if what you’re doing isn’t working, try something else. If talking doesn’t work, try listening. If words aren’t your thing, try images. If silence feels dry, try music. If being still doesn’t inspire you, move your body. If your thoughts wander and won’t stay focused, just follow them where they lead and don’t beat yourself up. The possibilities are endless, truly. 

Another thing I’ve learned lately about HOW to pray that has been enormously helpful in my own prayer life is the idea that prayer is something we join. It’s something already happening in every corner of the universe - a song already being sung - and we are simply invited into it. We don’t have to create prayer  ourselves. We just have to join in the prayer already happening.

Accepting that invitation can recalibrate, reorient, recenter us by somehow drawing us deeper within ourselves AND pulling us beyond ourselves. 

Now….a LOT of questions, probably more than half of the questions you submitted, were about “praying for stuff.” More specifically “praying for stuff that doesn’t come to pass.” What do we make of this? Do we think God is up there making tick marks, granting wishes for the people with the most prayers? Do we think God is weak and can’t fix things the way we would like? Do we think God’s ways are not our own and so God answers prayer but maybe not the way we would have hoped and that’s okay? Or do we think “God never comes through so what’s the point in praying anyway,” and stop? Praying? Believing in God? 

Friends, anyone who gives you a pat answer to these questions is just blowing smoke. We all have to wrestle with these questions and find a path that makes sense for us. Some of us will choose not to ask God for things. Others of us will. 

One of you said, wisely, “I can’t figure out whether God really acts in our lives because some people have horrible things happen and others don’t. So does it make sense to ask God to save people from a catastrophe? Or do we ask for all to know that they are loved through everything that happens to them?”

And another wise person wrote, “I pray and I deeply want to believe in prayer. Yet we know so many things we pray for do not come to pass - people die, hunger persists, injustice continues. It’s hard, then, to maintain a belief in the efficacy of prayer. Yet I pray. And I ask others for prayers. Is it, in the end, community? I don’t know.”

And yet another, “Since God already has a plan for us and for everything in life, is it right for us to ask for anything to happen or not? Shouldn’t we just ask for the faith and serenity to accept whatever happens?”

I have, at various points in my life answered every single one of those quesetions with yes….and no. I believe in the power of prayer. And when I tell you I am praying for you, I am. I don’t personally believe God is up in heaven making tally marks. I don’t think of God as a fairy godmother these days, though I certainly have at other points in my life. 

Instead, I keep praying becuase of something the great Ted Lasso illustrated in a locker room talk at the end of Season One. In case you haven’t seen the show, it follows a football coach from Kansas who finds himself in London coaching European football. At the end of the first season, the team has lost a critically important match and they are in the lockerroom, just sitting there in shocked silence. They are just a sad, sad looking bunch. 

And Coach Lasso says this to them:

This is a sad moment right now for all of us. There’s nothing I can say or do, standing here in front of you right now to take that way. 

But, please, do me this favor, okay? Lift your heads up and look around this locker room. Yup. Look at everybody in here. And I want you to be grateful that you’re going through this sad moment with all these other folks. 

Because I promise you there is something worse out there than being sad. And that is being alone. And being sad. Ain’t nobody in this room alone.

That’s why I keep praying for other people. I don’t understand how it works but I know that when I do it, it feels right. I pray that people will know they are surrounded by God’s love and care and that they will know they are not alone. I pray they will find peace and joy in the midst of hardship. And on and on...and through those prayers, I feel drawn closer to them and I know that people going through difficulties have said again and again that they feel strengthened knowing they are held in prayer. 

Sometimes life is just sad. But it would be sadder if we were alone. 

When we orient ourselves towards God in prayer, we remember we are not alone. 

Thanks be to God.