You may have seen this headline. [Friday, July 23, The Oregonian] “We Are Not Safe.” It is The Oregonian editor’s synopsis of the 9/11 investigation report. Its message is intended to evoke fear and entice readers into the article. If fear is the basis for how we perceive and respond to the world, a particular set of behaviors results. On a national scale this means, more security at airports, tighter immigration controls, increased defense capability, more intelligence gathering. On a personal scale, this fear encourages stockpiling and hoarding supplies, arming “in the event of.”

You may also have seen this [Holy Bible]. No succinct editor has summarized its contents in headlines, enticing us into the story, but if its contents shape how we perceive and respond to the world, another set of behaviors results: day-by-day trusting God, responding to the needs of others, sharing resources instead of hoarding, inter-dependence with others. Whether we choose fear or trust to define our worldview, the choice shapes how we relate to the world. If our safety depends on our own wits and strength, our creative energy and resources will be spent in supporting ourselves. If we think we belong to God, who placed us in community, we are going to spend our creative energy and resources supporting one another and trying to find out God’s will for us.

Please do not misunderstand. I am not advocating risk-taking or dismantling our national defense. I am advocating Christians staking their lives on the notion that they belong to God, living with the implication that, since we trust God for our eternal salvation, surely God is trustworthy to provide day-by-day. For the sake of the world, Christians need to act as if they believe this book [Bible] more than this newspaper.

When we come together every week, we remind each other of those implications, encouraging and offering how-to helps. Today’s how-to is about prayer, since the way we pray shapes how we view the world. What we have is Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer is so universal that Christians of all denominations use Matthew’s version as the official everybody-memorize-this prayer, but from what I’ve read, Jesus’ teaching intent was for it to be used as a prayer model as well a memorized prayer. Let’s take it out of its oh-so-familiar language and use the interpretation found in The Message:

Father,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.

Taking the prayer out of church language might make it easier to use as a model. What we’re aiming for is “time waster” prayer. Not the practical food bless-ers or help-me-pass-this-test or find-me-a-parking-spot prayers. I mean the just-time-with-God prayers that aren’t intended to accomplish anything, but to just hang around together. As we say in Biblish, prayers to just “be in God’s presence.”

The obvious question is, what does this prayer model? Thanks to Jesus’ prayer, we’re used to hearing God referred to as “Father,” but Jesus got in a lot of trouble with the Jewish religious professionals for calling God “Father.” For one thing, he’s ascribing feminine characteristics—nurture, care, provision—and using the male parent’s name. That alone is radical, but to suggest that we are offspring of God takes God from the “out there” all powerful supreme ruler category and domesticates the deity with an intensely particular “love for me.” The prayer assumes God knows us individually and by name, but it holds this intimacy in tension with God’s holiness. It is a holiness so other-than-we-are, but a God so for us that we can safely have the audacity to ask for more self-revelation from God. What are you like, God? Who are you? Father! This is prayer about the characteristics of God, not what-God-can-do-for-us praying. Lately I’ve been using as a prayer help something written by St Francis that I call the “you are” prayer, because it is simply a list of God’s characteristics. “You are love, charity. You are wisdom; you are humility; you are patience. You are security. You are inner peace.” I’ve been finding plenty of room for God to reveal more to me.

What God reveals most of all is an undying desire to be in communion with us. As if we were created for the express purpose of being with our Creator. When we ask God to “set the world right,” we’re not just asking God to “fix things,” although there is an element of that. Since Old Testament times, humans have understood God to be the sole distributor of righteousness. There is no place on earth that is truly “right,” but things in heaven are absolutely right. What we are essentially asking God is, “what’s happening in heaven? Help us to get like that.” We’re asking for things on earth to be the way they are in heaven—which they will be, when humans are in complete communion with God. Jesus’ prayer goes on to ask for some things after asking to be together with God. “Keep us alive with three square meals” Message says. Provide for us today. Remember the Israelites wandering in the wilderness 40 years? They survived on manna, that “what is this?” bread-out-of-heaven that only kept one day. Just for today, give us something to eat. Enough for right now, let the future take care of itself. Help us trust you for that.

But then we fill in all the other things we think we ought to be managing and manipulating in order to take over God’s job of caring for us. For that and so many other things, we need to be forgiven. Jesus’ prayer reminds us that forgiveness is a two-sided coin. We remember we are forgiven by God, but that state of forgiven-ness should bring us to forgiving others. How will we forgive others if we don’t remember we must live in a state of forgiven-ness ourselves?

Jesus ends his prayer lesson with a story to show us how let-off-the-hook we are. This story about a neighbor wakened to supply his friend’s guest is not telling us we need to badger God. This is a story about persistence and patience. So many of you tell me that, what you’ve discovered in your prayer lives, is that when you stop telling God how to answer your prayers, you yourself change, and that is answer enough to your prayer. Persistence in prayer is itself the mark of success in prayer. Earlier I suggested that Jesus’ prayer is both for us to memorize and to use as a model for our own prayers. In the interest of practical how-to helps, I’ve prepared a few suggestions for prayer practice. You can pick up the suggestion sheet after worship. A little something to justify the audacious sermon title, “Prayer Education.” Spiritual guides say that repetition clears distractions from our minds. You might try some repetition—not as if God won’t hear you unless you say something over and over—but for your own sake. To help you forget shopping and chore lists and something someone said to you. You might try repeating a single phrase or line of prayer for 5 to 10 minutes. You might do it while you’re riding your exer-cycle or in time to your steps as you walk out to get the mail. You might try it rocking in a chair. Or knitting or hoeing or pitching practice. Try this in the spirit of the wise scholar who advised, “Don’t tie yourselves down regarding prayer.” Try new ways of praying, and perhaps you will find yourself delighting in the company of your Creator, who already delights in yours.

Suggestions for using the Lord’s Prayer as a prayer model:
Spend one day on each line. You may wish to use the interpretation from The Message, Luke 11:2-4:

• 1    Father,
• 2    Reveal who you are.
• 3    Set the world right
• 4    Keep us alive with three square meals.
• 5    Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
• 6    Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.

Line 1: consider how God’s care for you is like a parent; give thanks for those ways. How is God holy and beyond you?

Line 2: ask to be “in communion” with God. Does that mean to you “of one mind” or “of the same opinion” or something else? Think about “you are . . .” prayers, not asking God for anything or even thanking for anything, but simply praising God for who God is.

Line 3: one way to say this might be, “what’s going on in heaven?” Ask how you can reflect God’s intention for the world. How do your prayers invite God to work in the world?

Line 4: remembering the daily-ness of your life, ask just for today and be confident that tomorrow is in God’s care.

Line 5: wonder about how you accept forgiveness (from others, from God). Where do you need to offer forgiveness? Where is your heart hard, so that you need to accept God’s forgiveness of you?

Line 6: be willing to admit your weakness. Ask for help in letting go and letting God.