How to Pray and Why

“Lord, teach us to pray….”

It sounds more like a plea than a polite request. When the disciples demand to learn the art of prayer, they’re not simply asking for a formula or technique. More significantly, they’re grasping at a relationship. “Lord, teach us to pray” is akin to “Lord, tell us what’s in your heart,” or “Show us what it’s like to be in communion with God.”[1] If the disciples perceive that Jesus is an authority on prayer, it isn’t because he has a way with words, but because he is distinctly qualified to make God known to them. Inherent in their request, in other words, is the question of both how to pray, and why.

Have you ever realized partway through the Lord’s Prayer that you’re speaking it from memory, and perhaps you’ve lost focus on the meaning of each individual petition? Take heart! When Jesus outlines his famous prayer in today’s Gospel, he gives us permission to pray in tried and true ways. Hear how priest and author Tish Harrison Warren defends the repetition of time-honored prayers:

[Excerpts from Prayer in the Night, pp.16-17]

The question of how to pray is settled when Jesus provides us with good and faithful words in the first half of today’s Gospel. And in the second half, he goes on to illuminate why we pray, comparing God to a friend who meets an urgent need at midnight, and a parent who gives good gifts to his children: “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

So, Jesus’ lesson in prayer turns out to be a lesson in theology; when we pray, we describe the God in whom we place our trust. If God is the Holy One; if God’s kingdom comes wherever light dawns on a weary world; if God knows and attends to our everyday needs; if God is merciful, and teaches us to be merciful; if God gets us through trying times; if God is a better friend, a better parent than any of us could hope to have, then God is certainly worthy of our sincere prayers. Tish Warren again:

[Excerpts from Prayer in the Night, pp.166-7]

Friends, God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray. The promise is that when we bring ourselves to pray, we become present to God who is already present to us. In the end, prayer is not a wish list– no matter how valid the wishes– but an entry into communion with the One by whose love the world is always being made new.

[1] Matt Skinner, “Who Taught You How to Pray?” www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5367.