Lord, Teach us to Pray
The Rev. Dr. Karin J Ekholm, Sermon on Luke 11:1-13 at St. George’s on Sunday, July 27, 2025
The very thought of prayer fills many people of faith with uncertainty. We fret that we’re not saying the right things, we feel sheepish in bringing daily concerns to God, who surely has much bigger problems to deal with, and we’re ashamed when we find ourselves distracted or realize our hearts are not really in it. For many, being asked to pray aloud is unnerving, not least because we worry that our words and sentiments aren’t as eloquent as those of others. And most unsettling are the times when God feels distant—far away in a heavenly realm—and doubts creep in whether he pays us attention or really answers prayer.
And yet, our presence here this morning attests that something in us holds out hope that God is both available to us and that he is committed to sustaining and restoring creation in response to our petitions. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ followers have watched him retreat to quiet places to pray, and the request for instruction suggest that they, too, feel some uncertainty about how to speak to God.
In Judaism during Jesus’ time, both formal and spontaneous prayers were offered in the temple, synagogue, and home. Poetic prayers like the Psalms generally follow a formula that begins by invoking God, offers praise, lament, or petitions, and ends with the hope of divine response. In Hebrew Scripture and the Gospels, we also find examples of individuals speaking with God more conversationally, typically in a time of crisis. These, likewise, generally begin by affirming YHWH’s character, especially his sovereignty, mercy, and justice, and plea for aid.
Jesus carries on the legacy preserved in the Hebrew narratives of addressing God in life’s decisive situations. Luke’s Gospel portrays him praying at his baptism, choosing disciples, at the transfiguration, in Gethsemane, and at his crucifixion. In continuing the practice of lament and thanksgiving, Jesus was revered as one who modeled the essence of Hebraic prayer.
While the Lord’s Prayer combines praise and petitions—for sustenance, forgiveness, and deliverance—that are rooted in earlier Jewish prayers, Jesus also innovates by incorporating distinctive perspectives. The first word “Father”—marks Jesus’ biggest break from tradition. In Hebrew Scripture, God is very rarely called ‘father’, and only in poetic passages like the Song of Moses and Prayer of Isaiah in reference to God’s adoption of Israel as his people (Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 63:16). The metaphor was limited to this context.
Throughout the Gospels, however, we find Jesus identifying God as his father in a way that was shocking to contemporary listeners. From the time he is 12 years old and refers to the Temple in Jerusalem as his “Father’s house” (2:49) to prayers in Gethsemane and his dying words, Jesus affirms an unprecedented intimacy with the Creator as “Abba”—“Father”.
What is perhaps more surprising is that he identifies God as Father of all. Earlier in Luke, he charges his followers, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (6:36), and now, he teaches them to pray accordingly. This was an invitation to a bold shift in how people perceived God and their relation to him. Addressing God as father says as much about those praying as it does about the divine. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, observes that Jesus essentially instructs us, “to affirm that we stand where he stands, [with] ‘Our Father’. Everything that follows is bathed in the light of that relationship” (Being Christian, 63).
By definition a father is one who provides, loves, nourishes and wisely guides his dependents. Those whose human fathers failed them might resist the association with God, and for some, the gendered language poses an obstacle to affection. What’s important here is the intimacy Jesus claims for himself and extends to his followers. By introducing this prayer with the words “we are bold to pray” our Eucharistic liturgy recognizes the audacity of Christ’s invitation.
Williams observes that through this prayer we allow Jesus to pray in us, and as we come to understand Jesus better, what we want to say, “gradually shifts a bit more into alignment with what he is always saying to the Father” (62-63). In faithfully praying his words, our perspective and desires are gradually transformed.
However, the closeness of the father imagery is sometimes felt to be in tension with the distance of a heavenly kingdom. For many, the notion of a God who resides in another realm remains a real stumbling block to recognizing that he has any bearing on the world and continuously reaches out in love.
Where we believe God is has important implications for how we pray. A film about Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was martyred in 1980, offers a poignant observation on this question. The movie traces the progression of Romero from a socially conservative Roman Catholic who enjoyed the privileged life of a bishop to becoming a prophetic activist for the poor and critic of the military government of El Salvador in the late ‘70s, which cost him his life.
His transformation occurred largely through his friendship with the Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, for whom working for human rights and the dignity of the poor, marginalized, and exploited was essential to the Christian faith. In an early scene in the movie, Bishop Romero has accompanied his friend to observe a voter registration drive led by young people from Grande’s parish. Romero expresses concern when he overhears political views that strike him as radical, and he is so flustered he stammers, “Some are saying that you are a sub-subversive.”
Father Grande responds, “Remember who else they called such names.” And to make sure we don’t miss the point, he continues, “Jesus is not in heaven somewhere lying in a hammock. He is down here, among his people, building a kingdom.”
Christianity has always held in balance two seemingly opposing attributes of God: he is both other, independent of matter, time, and space, and intimately involved with the created world. What may appear a contradiction to us in fact illuminates something about God’s nature that is captured by Jesus’ prayer and Grande’s observation. God’s heavenly kingdom is not a location but a way of relating. “Your kingdom come” is a plea to be transformed that we might participate in God’s ongoing work: to provide daily bread to the hungry, forgive those who are indebted, and bring liberation from forces that corrupt and destroy. These petitions are spoken in first person plural. St. Gregory of Nyssa notes that I receive my daily bread when no one is made poor because I am rich. The resolve to work for justice along with reconciliation is essentially part of living out the Lord’s Prayer. Through praying the prayer of our Lord, may we allow Jesus to pray in us and become who God has made us to be: a people who live in right relationship with God, each other, and creation.