ABOUT PRAYER

The gospel reading offers us a chance to reflect on the best known of all Christian forms of prayer - the one that Jesus taught his followers in response to their request. They had seen him pray, they had witnessed his life and his ministry and they wanted to know what underpinned that - what fired and motivated his understanding of God, so they asked to pray like him.

His response was to give us the prayer that every Christian knows. We take it for granted, yet it is the most subversive prayer we can pray - it sets us apart from the rest of the world: we are pledging allegiance to God - greater than our allegiance to our nation, our family, our boss, our friends, our peers, the influences around us. We are submitting ourselves to the Creator of the Universe.

We are taught to pray to a loving Father who knows our needs before we ask - so perhaps prayer is not about asking God for what he already knows we need - perhaps prayer is much more about lining up our desires wills and future with what God wants: not the other way round...

We are taught to pray communally. Our Father... we never pray alone or in “private”. We may have personal prayer, but we never have private prayers. We are part of a community, living, worshipping, serving, exploring together. “Lord teach us to pray... give us... forgive us... do not bring us to the time of trial...”

We are taught to pray with simplicity, with directness and with persistence, knowing that God longs to do us good even while we wait for an answer.

We are taught to prayer in order to seek God’s will, not tell God what to do. Note the order of the prayer - before we are taught to ask for anything we are taught to acknowledge God’s glory and majesty and greatness - we do well to note that order: only when we acknowledge and give God his proper place will our concerns and issues come into focus.

We are taught to look to the past - with forgiveness for our failures; we are taught to look to the future and pray for God’s help and strength in future trials.

We are shown that discipleship is about the coming of God’s kingdom; it’s about us seeing what God is doing and rolling up our sleeves and joining in, so that God’s glory is made known.

Fr Andrew Perry
St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea