Proper 12C                     Laurie Gudim                              7/29/07

Genesis 18:20-33   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=52823373

Colossians 2:6-15   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=52823412

Luke 11:1-13   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=52823450

Once as I was driving the freeway in rush hour traffic I saw a woman pulled to the side of the road, a motorcycle cop parked behind her, lights flashing.  He was keying his radio with one hand, ticket book clutched in the other.  She had her door open, and she was sitting sideways, feet on the pavement.  She had her hands clasped at her chest, her eyes closed.  She was praying.  She was praying so hard the air was practically burning with the intensity of it.  The whole weight of her will went into it.  And I thought, if the fervency of a prayer was what made prayer work, that cop would be standing in Kansas wondering what the heck he’d just been doing.

John’s disciples had a way of praying that distinguished them from other groups.  Jesus’ followers wanted the same.  They went to their rabbi and asked him: teach us to pray.  He told them, “Pray like this.”  What follows is a version of what has become known as The Lord’s Prayer.

I first learned the Lord’s Prayer when I was three years old.  My mother prayed it with me at bedtime.   It was a confusing, serious prayer, spooky in places.  My father’s father was named Art.  Mom would pray:  Our Father, who Art in Heaven, and I thought she meant my Grandpa Gudim, even though he didn’t live in heaven, he lived in Oregon.  And “Hallowed be” sounded a lot like “Halloween” to me, and conjured up images of ghosts and jack-o-lanterns in the darkness.  I knew trespassing had to do with going on other people’s property without permission.  The Fuller Brush man, a door-to-door salesman, did that at our house, and I THOUGHT my father had forgiven him.  But that didn’t keep my mother from saying, “we’re going to get shot!” when my father would hurry us across some rancher’s fence line on a shortcut to the river to go fishing on the weekend.

As I grew I began to understand the Lord’s Prayer better.  Now I have read a few of the dozens of commentaries written on this prayer, and I’ve used in worship several of the many, many translations and rewordings of it.  One could make its study a life work.

It is one of the few things that most Christians pretty much agree upon.  It can be prayed safely at ecumenical Christian worship services and ministerial association gatherings.  We all use it, and for most of us raised Christian, we can remember, while praying it, hundreds of times, publicly and privately, when we’ve prayed it before.  I know that for myself, because I learned it at such a young age, when I ever reach a point through injury or illness when my brain is only firing one synapse, The Lord’s Prayer will probably be what I remember.

But Jesus didn’t just hand his disciples the words to say when addressing God.  He told them what prayer IS.  He gave them a parable of a man who goes to his neighbor’s house at midnight and asks, no, IMPLORES him to get up and give him some bread to feed a friend who has come into town at a very late hour.  He says God is way more attentive than a parent is of her children.  God is way more responsive than any one of us at our very best.

The central most incredible, shocking, unbelievable thing about prayer is that it is an expression of a relationship.  At the center of it stand, not one, but two entities – a small and limited human ego-consciousness, us, – and the creator of star nebulae, of mysteries beyond our imagining, God.  In prayer, we are partners with God.  Partners with God.  Wow.  Ask, and God will answer.  Search and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened.

Our lives are a dance with God.  Each of us is in a dance with God.  No matter how little we think we are, no matter of what small significance we believe our lives to be, God has chosen us to dance with.  We spin and step and kick to the best of our ability.  There are moments of glory and moments of stumbling and missing the rhythm  There are full stops, even moments when we don’t even know what a dance floor is, let alone that we are on it.

Our lives are a dance with God.  And prayer is that moment when the realization strikes us, when we become aware we are in the dance.  I think of it as that moment when the dancers come together again after a time of dancing apart, and there is that touch of hand on hand as they meet.  Can you picture it?  Think of ice dancing in Olympic competitions.  The dancers twirl by themselves on the ice, and then they skate toward one another again.  There is the meeting of hand and hand, and then they are skating together.

That touch of hand on hand.  Ask and you will receive.  That touch.  Seek and you will find.  That touch.  Knock and the door will be opened.

When I was little, I prayed The Lord’s Prayer as a magical incantation, like a Harry Potter spell.  I didn’t understand the words.  I thought that I just had to say them right and with enough force or concentration –  “wingardium leviosa” – and what I asked for would be mine.  When I didn’t get what I wanted, I thought it was my fault for not getting the incantation right.  Meanwhile God stood on the dance floor, hand reaching toward mine, and I didn’t even see it.

Paul says, in his letter to the Colossians, “don’t let yourself be taken captive by the philosophy of the day.”  The philosophy of today is very much like that way of praying I had when I was little.  “Ask the Universe for what you want,” we are told.  “Envision what you desire.”  “Don’t use the word ‘need’, because that sets up the idea of need, and then your intension will not be manifest.”

If you don’t do it right, you won’t get what you want.  If you push all the right buttons in the right sequence, you WILL get what you want.  It all depends on you.  They say.

Meanwhile God stands on the dance floor, hand reaching out, and we don’t even see it.

Paul says, ““In Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” And  ”as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him.”    Be in the dance, in other words.  Be present to God.  Be aware of the dance.  Dance arm in arm with God.  Be in prayer.

There comes a moment when God holds out God’s arms, asking us to leap into them and be lifted overhead, soaring while God supports us.  If we are not too afraid, we can do this.  God lifts us in those moments when we listen to God’s inspiration – creating a beautiful quilt, crafting a compassionate company policy, discovering some facet of the world that has not yet been revealed.  Another moment comes, and God seeks to leap into OUR arms and be held over OUR heads.  And if we are not too afraid, God is lifted and supported by US.  We lift God in those moments of transparency to God’s love – holding hands with a dying friend, telling our child just the right thing at just the right moment, sitting on a bench with a homeless man while he eats the half a sandwich we gave him.

Knowing that we are each in a dance with God means that we cannot duck our God-given responsibility.  God has chosen us to dance with.  Each of us is important beyond measure.  We are responsible even to talk back to God.  After Abraham is visited by the three strangers, messengers of God, he finds out that God is sending them on to Sodom and Gomorrah where they will report on whether those cities are as sinful as they have been reported to be.  If they are that sinful, God means to destroy them, lock, stock, and barrel.  Abraham takes it upon himself to argue with God about this.  “You are the God of justice,” he says.  “Surely you will not destroy these cities if there are even 50 righteous men in them?”  “Excuse my presumptiveness, but come on!”  He persists in arguing with God until God agrees to preserve the cities if there are only ten righteous men in them.”

Everything that we do matters.  Our unique perspective is the only one of its kind in the universe.  Our unique voice needs to be heard.  It is our duty to make sure that happens.  We must speak up, even if it means being the minority voice in a crowd.  Maybe especially when we are the minority voice in a crowd.   Even if it means being the ONLY one to speak out for what we think is right, it is our responsibility to say it.  As the bumper sticker says, “Speak up, even if your voice shakes.”

The fervency of prayer makes no difference whatsoever.  Prayer can be a passing mutter as we head out the door and down the freeway.  It can be a silent action, as St. Francis implies when he says, “Help me to pray continuously and where necessary to use words.”  It can be a scream or a song.  The important thing is that we remember that prayer is the constant awareness that we are in a dance with God.

Prayer in relationship.  The Lord’s Prayer, it has been said, has everything in it that we need to say in addressing God.  There’s an invocation, supplications, and a thanksgiving.  It’s like a miniature worship service.  But it is meaningless if we do not pray it with understanding.  It is meaningless if we do not understand that we are in relationship with God as we pray it.  Understanding that, we can pray it wisely.  We can pray anything wisely.  We are in the dance.