Pentecost 9 Year C

Pentecost 9 (Luke 11:1-13)
Father, hallowed be thy name.

God’s name is holy. God’s name is holy because God is holy. Holiness is not just an attribute or an aspect of God. Holiness is the essential nature of God.
God is love. That love is holy.

When the disciples observed Jesus praying they asked him to teach them to pray. They were probably asking for a specific prayer. Rabbis and other religious leaders some times gave a special prayer to their students. It was a unique prayer that expressed the teaching and helped build the group identity.

The prayer Jesus taught, in its original form. Is more of a prayer outline. It reflects the outline but not necessarily the exact words Jesus used in his prayer life

Prayer is a conversation with our heavenly Father. While God never changes we do. The prayer of a seven year old is very different from the prayer of a seventeen year old and even more different than that of a twenty seven year old and a seventy year old.

Our needs, desires and concerns change over time and circumstance. Our maturity level evolves, hopefully.

As our conversation with our own children changes and evolves over time, so it is with our conversation with God. This is the purpose of prayer. It is an ongoing conversation with someone who cares for us and seeks a personal relationship with us.
Prayer does not change God. Prayer changes us. So it is that Jesus’ prayer outline begins with the words: Father, hallowed be your name. The invitation to prayer is the invitation to personal holiness.

Jesus shared with his disciples his experience of prayer. It is the experience of a son speaking with his father. It is the personal experience of divine love. Jesus asks his students, if your son asks you for a fish will you give him a snake? If he asks for an egg will you give him a scorpion?

People have many misconceptions about God. Through his teaching on prayer, Jesus reminds us that God is real, God is personal, God is love. God is our heavenly Father who delights to hear from us.

Many people perceive God as an impersonal force. For these people, prayer is a form of magic. If you say the right words at the right time in the right way you can access and use divine power for your benefit.

Many people perceive God as a blind judge. If you ask for something in the right way God will reward you by giving you what you want. If you ask the wrong way, God will with hold what you want and may even give you something you don’t want.

Many people perceive God simply as an extension of their own needs and desires. They reason, if God is real then God will give me what I need and what I want. If I do not receive what I need and want it can only mean God is not real.

When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them a prayer Jesus first wants to clarify who it is they think they are praying to. Is it the impersonal God, the blind judge, the indulgent God? Jesus clarifies who God is by describing how he prays. When Jesus prays he addresses God as Father.

Father is not only personal it is intimate. It is a recognition that God has a deep and abiding love for us. It is a recognition that prayer is not about manipulating divine power to get God to give us what we need or want. Prayer is personal conversation with a Father who cares for us.

Such prayer is open, evolving and transforming. God is always our Father. We are always God’s children. As we grow and develop in life so God invites us to grow and develop in our relationship with him. Prayer facilitates this growth.

The first petition in the outline of prayer Jesus gives us is about God. Jesus teaches us to pray according to the principle of personal holiness. “Hallowed be your name. May your name, God, be holy.” God is holy. We are not asking God to be anything other than he is. In that request we yield our inclination to define God.
The great challenge humanity faces in its relationship with God is our demand to define God. Humans have even invented a right to define God however we choose. God is God. He cannot be defined. He can only be experienced.

We experience God in prayer as we enter into the personal relationship God himself offers us. We grow into that relationship as we declare our intent to accept God for who God is.

The great obstacle to human relationships is our tendency to define people according to our needs and desires. It is the tendency to see in another person only that which appeals to us and brings us pleasure. This is the experience of infatuation.
None of us has that power. As the illusion of who we want the other person to be for us wears thin and begins to evaporate so the infatuation vanishes. More often than not, we feel betrayed that the other person is not who we thought he was.

Our relationship with God takes the same form. We create God in our own image and then feel betrayed when that God fails us. In his teaching on prayer, Jesus instructs us that we need to pray in spirit and in truth. We need to enter into a conversation with some one who has gone on record in the Bible over the course of a thousand years of history to reveal himself, his personality, his nature, and his name.

Jesus sets the example by naming God “Father”. Jesus sets the intent by forming the first petition with the words” Father, may your name be holy.”
May you name be holy in the heavens. May you name be holy in the creation. May your name be holy amongst the nations. May you name be holy in my life.
Holiness is personal as love is personal.

Personal Holiness is God’s goal for our lives. As we pray that God’s Name, God’s nature, would be universally recognized as holy, so we ask God to release us from our rebellious tendency to redefine God.

The first four of the ten commandments offer a practical guide how we can fulfill this petition. I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods except me. Keep the Sabbath day holy. Do not make idols. Do not take the name of God in vain.
There is a lot there in those four statements. The secular demand to remove the ten commandments from public life has less to do with the six moral commandments than the absolute nature of the first four commandments about God. Human beings in general resist and rebel against the Lord God who declares himself in the words: I am.

Be sure you understand what you pray and to whom you pray if you choose to use the outline of prayer Jesus taught. The outline sets the definition of terms in the first few words.

God is real. God is personal. God is our loving heavenly Father. God is holy. The remaining categories in the outline all derive from this introduction. The additional petitions only make sense and become real as we begin to appreciate and live into the first words.

Jesus reveals to us that it is the personal relationship with our Heavenly Father that rescues prayer from the realm of magic, manipulation or empty ritual. As the relationship is open ended, evolving, and transforming so is the conversation, the prayer.

We grow in prayer as we spend time in prayer. Our lives change and transform as we immerse our thoughts, words, desires and will in the holiness of God’s Name, God’s nature.

God spoke to Moses and through Moses to all Israel and through Israel to all people everywhere: you shall be holy for the Lord you God is holy. Do not pray the Lord’s prayer, the Our Father, if you do not believe God is personal steadfast holy love.
Do not pray the Lord’s payer if you do not wish for God to recreate you in every aspect of your life according to the plan and the pattern and the purpose of holiness. Moses observes that every aspect of human nature is distorted by sin. The prophets teach that every aspect of human nature needs to be reclaimed and recreated. Jesus not only shows us the way to the recreation of fallen and distorted human nature, Jesus is the Way. If you want to know what personal holiness looks like in terms of thoughts, words and deeds- study the life of Jesus Christ as it is recorded in the four apostolic biographies of Jesus. Receive the fullness of that life in the real presence of Jesus in the sacraments.

Jesus taught his students an outline of prayer to help us enter into the process of prayer. The words of the Lord’s Prayer are a starting place for the conversation to begin. The conversation develops and deepens and becomes more meaningful as we ponder the words and seek God’s help to live into the words.

The first step in prayer is always the same. The first step is for us to surrender our self will to the divine Love of God in Jesus Christ. The disciples took this first step when they asked Jesus to teach them.

The second step is to declare with Moses and the Prophets that there is only one God. He is who he is. We take this next step when we accept Jesus’ revelation that God is our heavenly Father and we pray the words Jesus taught us: Our Father.
The third step is to follow Jesus into the plan and pattern and purpose of God. We take that step when we pray: Father, hallowed be your name. May your name be holy. May your name be holy in your world, in your people, and in my life.

That third step is the journey through life that is formed and transformed by our personal conversation with God in prayer. As we take the next step into that journey, how much more will our heavenly Father give us the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us to become more fully who he has created us to be and redeemed us to become.