Matthew 6:5-13

Jesus’ Guide to Pray - 1

Sermon preached April 25, 2021

Opening

I begin with an illustration from that comedy classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Chevy Chase, of course, plays the dad Clark Griswold. In one scene, Clark and his extended
family are gathered around the table for a holiday feast. Red and green Christmas decorations
adorn the dining table, and everyone is dressed in festive holiday attire. Clark stands at one end
of the table smiling and carving a golden brown turkey. Clark looks as if he is drinking in the joy
of family. He raps a knife against a crystal glass to call the family to attention.

Clark announces, "Since this is Aunt Bethany's 80th Christmas, I think she should lead us in the
saying of grace."

Aunt Bethany is hard of hearing. She leans next to her elderly husband and yells, "What?"

"He wants you to say grace."

"Grace? Grace has been dead for 30 years," says Aunt Bethany.

The old man replies, "He wants you to say the blessing!"

"Oh!" says Aunt Bethany. She bows her head and clasps her hands. One thing is clear. No one at
this table is comfortable or familiar with prayer. Each member of the family awkwardly prepares
for this sacred moment. Some close their eyes. Some put their hands together. Some look to each
other for guidance.

Clark is amazed as Aunt Bethany closes her eyes and begins, "I pledge allegiance to the flag..."
And then everyone else joins in, "of the United States of America..."

Lots of people, lots of church people, think they don’t know how to pray, but want to. So today
we begin a sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer and look to Jesus to teach us how to pray.

Passage context

What we have before us in the Word this morning is a reading from the Sermon on the Mount.
The longest single body of the Lord’s teaching. And you can think of the Sermon on the Mount
as the basic instructions for following Jesus. We human beings don’t want just theory we need it
spelled out for us - so Jesus, you walk along and call people and say, “Follow me” - well, what
does that look like in the everyday? Here, very early in the gospel of Matthew, the Lord spells it
our for us.

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And our reading is about prayer. Note that the Lord begins by saying, “And when you pray...”
Not, if you pray. Not, you should you pray. Not, I encourage you, command you to pray. No,
“when you pray.” This means that prayer is assumed to be part of the life of a follower of Christ.

But in my experience, it’s not. I’ve known lots of people who claim to know the Lord, but who
do not pray, maybe except a grace at meals, maybe a prayer of desperation when in trouble.

When I was serving my first church in South Carolina, I was invited to be part of a very
special conference. It was titled, “The Effective Pastor Conference.” There are five
Presbyteries in South Carolina, where I was at the time, and they collaborated on this
conference, and each Presbytery Executive was supposed to nominate the most effective
pastors in their Presbyteries to attend. And I got picked!

The conference was more of a retreat, and they brought in speakers to teach us how to
become even more effective in ministry. One speaker talked about the importance of
prayer. And he asked those gathered about their prayer lives. I was shocked that a
number of pastors admitted they don’t really pray. Usually the rationale was that I’m too
busy. Some of them were embarrassed; a few were dismissive of the need to pray - one
said that his prayer life consisted of watching nature shows on TV and being grateful to
God for the wonder of his creation.

We human beings are terribly conflicted - most all of us have the impulse to pray, but not enough
feel confident that they know how to pray. So in the basic operating instructions about how to be
a Jesus-follower, the Lord answers our excuses for why we don’t pray, and offers us a deeper
understanding of prayer. And this stuff, will change your life.

We can pray simply

First bit of grace - we can pray simply. The Lord frames this negatively - by telling us what NOT
to do. Don’t try to pray eloquent prayers in public for the purpose of impressing other people.
He has us imagine a religious leader who loves to get up and dazzle a congregation or audience
with beautiful prayers that at so lovely, so well-done, that you have two reactions: One, that man
or woman is incredibly gifted, aren’t they wonderful; and Two, if that’s how you’re supposed to
pray, there’s no way I can do it.

But Jesus says, “Don’t be like them.” Because God is not at all honored by people who crave
being praised for their lovely, eloquent prayers. In fact, the Lord calls them “hypocrites.”

What’s a hypocrite? It’s like this story.

Sitting at a table in the clubhouse after a game, Bob said to a fellow club member, "I'm
not about to play golf with Jim anymore. He cheats."

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 "Why do you say that?"

"Well, he found his lost ball two feet from the green."

"That's possible."

"Not when I had it in my pocket!"

A hypocrite is a phony, a poseur, a person who pretends to be something in order to get

something from other people. The public-praying man in Jesus’ teaching is a phony because he’s
praying not to honor God, but to bring honor to himself, not to praise God, but so other people
will praise him.

It’s like the Lord is saying - those people who pray in public oh-so-beautifully - don’t you for one
second let that stop you from praying - that is exactly the opposite of what the Lord wants from
us in prayer.

What the Lord wants, is for us to find a quiet place, shut the door and pray, just you and him,
nobody watching and judging your prayer.

Now, that takes some interpretation because back in that day, almost no one had their
own bedrooms. Everyone slept in one room. Privacy was rare, too. But many homes had
a supply room, kind of like a closet, where you’d keep tools or animal feed - stuff like
that. Typically had a door. Not a really comfortable place, but it was where you could go
to shut the door and be by yourself - and pray in private. That’s where Jesus is saying to
go and pray.

I read about a survey that asked people, “what’s your favorite room in the house?” What
do you think the top answer was? The kitchen. What do you think most married men
said? The bedroom. And how about mothers of young children? The bathroom! Why -
privacy! You can go in there and lock the door, maybe even take a bath and steal a few
minutes of alone time -and feel free and you can be yourself and not be someone’s mom
or wife.

Well, this is what Jesus is saying - go find a place like that and be alone and be yourself
with God in prayer. We’ve got a lot more privacy than people did then - our problem is
making the time - but if you do it consistently that place, that chair, that room will
become a holy place where you come into God’s presence ALONE and without anyone
judging you, evaluating how well you pray, you pour out your heart and feel his presence
and grow in strength and faith and confidence.

We can pray briefly

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Second bit of grace - we can pray briefly. To illustrate this, the Lord again gives a negative
example, this time of a person, translated “pagan” who uses a common kind of prayer from
Jesus’ time.

Background - the word “pagan” isn’t a slam, it’s just a descriptor of a person who’s not a Jew.
And Jesus probably has in mind people who believed and prayed to the Greek and Roman
pantheon of gods. Jupiter, Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Athena. A very colorful bunch. But not a
group of gods that was really concerned for human beings.

But they still had power. So people prayed, and they believed that the way to get the attention of
the gods was to pray with a river of words. The idea was to pray repetitively, the same phrases
over and over again for hours, the hope was to “wear out the gods” - so the gods would throw up
their hands in disgust and say, “oh, all right, I’ll do it, just please shut up!”

If you’ve raised children, you have been on the receiving end of this. They want to stop
at McDonalds because they want a Happy Meal. You despise McDonalds and you want
your children to eat actual food. So the children embark on the strategy of wearing you
down, asking you over and over again, pleading, please, please, please, I’ll never ask for
anything else again. Two things happen: you stay strong and probably get annoyed and
send them to their rooms and forbid them from uttering the word “McDonalds” again on
pain of punishment; or you throw up your hands and say, “Alright” and get in the car and
get them their Happy Meal.

There was a scene in the miniseries Rome of this kind of prayer. The mistress of Marc Anthony
had an enemy - a woman she had wronged and hurt - and that woman showed up at the front door
and began praying over and over the same phrase - a cursing prayer that the gods would punish
Marc Anthony’s mistress - prayed this for hours and hours and then concluded the prayer by
driving a dagger into her own heart. All so the gods would hear her.

Jesus says, don’t be like that. He frees us from the bogus idea that the value of a prayer is
determined by its length. And he points us to a model of prayer in the Lord’s Prayer that is
remarkable compact and powerfully - and says, “pray like that.”

Do you see the grace of this? Prayer doesn’t have to be eloquent, and it doesn’t have to be a long
session of pleading over and over again in a vain hope that God might hear you - we pray to a
God whom we know as “Father.” Will have a lot more to say about that next week - but because
of Jesus we have the same right to go before God and trust that he hears us, as when one of our
children comes to us, taps us on the leg and wants us to listen to them.

What the Lord is doing here is not laying a bunch of requirements on us that we must meet in
order for God to listen to our prayers - he’s doing the opposite - stripping away the barriers, the
excuses - I don’t have time, I don’t know how to pray with the right words - he’s reassuring us in
our feelings of unworthiness and saying, keep it simple and just pray to your heavenly Father

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who loves you. Not as a religious duty - though there are times of dryness we must persevere -
but as a privilege and a joy.

Conclusion

Last week, after the benediction, I sat down to listen to Helen play the postlude. Two-year-old
Abby Bietsch came running up to me and I sat her on my knee. She said, “Hi Pastor Scott!” I
said, “Hi Abby, how are you?” She said, “Good” and sat on my knee for about 15 seconds and
then ran back to her parents.

That made my day. A three-year-old coming up to say hello and sitting with me. I think that’s
how God feels when we quiet ourselves and pray. We just come into God’s presence, say hello,
check in and share our mind, our heart. And as we do that, we’ll learn to sense God’s presence
and grow to love prayer. It’s so simple. God is waiting - eager for you to come into his presence.
Amen.