Good morning everybody. My name is Karen and I’m the Youth worker at St Hugh’s up by the L&D. Some out there may know me from a few years ago when I was a volunteer with the Youth team… I’ve come a long way since then.
What things do you wish you were better at? Feel free to shout at me - I’m used to it.
I could come up with a whole list of things. I wish I was better at going to bed on time, I wish I was better at keeping my room tidy, I wish I was better at switching off the TV. When we think about our spiritual lives we often have one thing that we all wish we could be better at. Prayer…
I don’t know about you, but I regularly think ‘if only I could pray better’ or ‘if only I didn’t sound so silly when I prayed’. Well actually this passage gives us the basis for prayer. It means that we will never sound silly or not know what to pray. I’d like to think that if I only ever prayed one prayer the ‘Lord’s prayer’, as it has become known, would be a good prayer to pray.
I’ve known this prayer for as long as I can remember. I was going to say that everyone who comes to church regularly should know this prayer, but maybe that’s a wrong assumption. We shut our eyes tight to pray, but recently I’ve taken up keeping my eyes open and actually spending a moment to read the words that Jesus taught us.
There are many different translations of the bible, but one that really helps is Rob Lacey’s word on the street, he writes it this way:
Is that easier to understand? So often we say the words that we don’t mean, or that we don’t understand, but because everyone around us is saying them we join in. We say them because it’s the ‘right’ thing to say? I’ve known this prayer for as long as I can remember, but my earliest memory is racing my sister to see who could say it fastest! Possibly quite irreverent, but at least I was saying it!
I don’t want to teach you how to pray, Jesus has already done that. But I do want to encourage you this morning. Don’t worry about the things that you say, God loves to hear your voice. Let me just point a few things out. Jesus knew it was important to recognise God for who He is, “Father”. Jesus wants us to have respect for God - that’s what hallowed means. God can provide for all we need - our “daily bread”. But this is different to what we want. And we do need to be lead away from the greatest temptation, doing things in our own power. We are nothing without God and what Jesus has done for us on the cross. I’m going to stop there and leave you with that thought, and children I want you to keep your eyes open for a game we will play very soon.
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Not so long ago I was in Chelmsford cathedral watching my Dad be licensed as a reader in the church. Sitting with my brother and sister, we were joining in at all the right parts, when it came to saying the Lord’s prayer I took the opportunity to let my eyes wonder around the Cathedral. As soon as the prayer had finished Michael said “a chocolate bar for you both because you said the prayer without looking” It came to light that my dad had rewarded my brother for being able to recite the prayer with a chocolate bar! I went and asked him if he’d done this for all of us. It turns out that he had and that Michael had really persevered with learning the prayer, he really wanted the chocolate!
Obviously the reward for saying the prayer meant a lot to him! I’d like to think that this isn’t the way God deals with prayer. When we pray and ask sincerely, God will answer. But it won’t necessarily be with something to reward us in such a trivial way. I don’t dispute that it is a good thing to using prayer to ask of God but I do want us not to look at God as a sweet shop keeper.
God is available to everybody, through the death and rising of Jesus. Now some where in church I have hidden some chocolate. It might be high it might be low, but children, are you paying attention. Go and find the chocolate. (at which point I pulled out a big tub of chocolate and sat on the steps at the front of the church - one child said "this is the easiest hide and seek ever!")
God is not there to give out treats and all the things we want, just because we ask. In this passage, the friend knows WHERE to go to get a response. We do too, the cross! But he has to get the host to rise form the dead of night, disturbing his entire family, just for a few loaves of bread. Are we beginning to see the connection between the parable and the story of the cross?
One possible interpretation of this parable comes from a book called “Parables of Grace” . God is the host, he is our last and only hope, but we have to recognise this first. God is not hidden from us, he is there plain for all to see, but we have to acknowledge the fact that we are dead before we can even consider asking Jesus to rise from the dead to answer the knock at the door.
This isn’t something that is for a later date. What Jesus says is for now.
So I no longer want us to be worried about the prayers that we pray. I don’t want us to wish that we were better at praying, because by default we are good, we are God’s children. We can boldly approach the throne, because it is a throne of grace, not of judgement.
While I was thinking about this I was reminded of a song that I used to sing when I was little. You may know it, it’s called “Prayer is like a telephone”. The lyrics are self explanatory, but the great thing about God is you never have to talk to the answer machine and you never have to speak to someone who doesn’t understand you, there is no queue and it always works in an emergency!
Over the next week I want you to have a go at writing your own version of the Lord’s Prayer. I had a go and here’s what it sounds like:
Daddy in heaven,
Your name is fantastic, and holy beyond anything else.
May all that is good in heaven, take place here on earth.
All the things that I want, be the things that you want.
Help me today and give me things I need to make through.
Forgive me when I do things wrong and help me to treat others the same way you treat me.
Guide me to you always.
May it be this way forever.
I love you
Karen
So the challenge is this, write your own lord's prayer. Use this prayer, just because we use it as a corporate prayer, shouldn't and doesn't take away from its awesomeness as a prayer. And as I said before if you only ever pray one prayer, this would be a good one to pray.
