Death Filled Prayer

Luke 11:1-13
{1}( Jesus) was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to
him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." {2} He said to them, "When you pray,
say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. {3} Give us each day our daily bread.
{4} And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."

Thanks be to God that prayer is much more than a shopping list of wants or even needs. Thanks be to God that Jesus is so painfully honest in his prayer instruction to his disciples and to us. Prayer is not a daily review or a status report of how God has fulfilled my needs. Prayer is about dying. I wish it were otherwise. I wish the televangelist was right. I wish that my strong persistence in prayer would get absolutely everything and anything I want or what, as your pastor, I see that you need. Prayer is not a daily ledger on God’s job performance.

Prayer is about realizing once again that I cannot do it. Jesus insists from the beginning that I pray “Father.” From the start I am reminded that a parental relationship is not earned or accomplished but simply exists. God is my parent and nothing changes that. God’s love is not conditional on my “good son” or “bad son” status but on a divine declaration that I am God’s child.

To insure that I understand this wonderful truth, Jesus insists in this shortened version of the Lord’s Prayer that just enough stuff for one day will suffice. Daily needs met should be enough for me. Jesus is not interested in stock piles of yearly, monthly, or even weekly security. One day is enough. All this daily needs and parental conversation leads me into a stark confrontation of what is at stake. “I forgive,” Jesus insists.

Bottom line truth is that real forgiveness always is about death. Dying to our idea that we should be reimbursed for wrongs brought against us is daily practice for real life. God does not invite me into a daily prayer cycle to tell me how well I have done but to welcome me into the reality that only in death is there life. Just when I have once again fooled myself into thinking I can accomplish it all, Jesus wants me to pray that I might be empowered to forgive. Real forgiveness always contains death. We know this truth as we stand in front of the cross. Christ went to that cross to insure that the old power of death is erased in the life giving ways of forgiveness. We also live in that mode. In death there is life.

When you and I are invited into prayer by Jesus, he brings us the ultimate good news. We are dead to the old ways and now alive in him. Luther was right when he called the Lord’s Prayer “a summary of the whole gospel.” When you pray be prepared to die to the old and be sent away renewed for real life in God’s plan.