Teach Us To Pray

Rev. Clevis O. Laverty

The supreme privilege accorded to any minister in his priestly function is that of leading his people to the throne of grace in Christian worship. A preacher may stand or fall on his worship service and can be held entirely responsible for it. If he regards the worship portion of a public service lightly, or fails to prepare hi mind and heart for it properly, or conducts divine service carelessly, he fails God, his people and is guilty of sacrilege.

This morning I would like to believe that my words may help in realizing a fuller enjoyment of that worship.

Teach us to pray. The disciples never asked Jesus to teach them to preach or to heal, just teach us to pray. But to pray we need a creed. Do you have a creed?

We all need a creed, one that is short, definite, believable and personal for daily living. It should include the main points of Christian truth and clear enough so that anyone could understand it without a professor of theology to interpret it. It should be one that is old enough to have stood the test of time, that has given comfort to many people down through the years. To be general it would have to be one that would include all Christians regardless of denomination.

That's a large order, but we have such a creed. In its longest form, it's only sixty six words long and you all know it by heart. I am referring to the Lord's prayer. The Lord's prayer as a creed? Certainly, for within it is an implied faith. There are certain things you must believe as you pray the Lord's prayer with sincerity.

Let's take it step by step. The first portion are the interests of God.

We begin "Our Father who art in heaven." We put ourselves and our own interests away as we seek to enter His presence. Perhaps, you want to remind me here that heaven is an unreal word bringing to mind streets paved with gold and pearly gates as described in Revelation. When Jesus gave us this prayer, he had never read Revelation. It hadn't been written. I am told that according to the Greek texts what Jesus really said was "Our Father who art in the heavens." Doesn't that bring to mind a little different picture or maybe we can think of it as a certain student once did who was leading a chapel service and substituted the word universe for the word heave. Let's try it: "Our Father who art in the universe, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as it is in the universe." Doesn't that give you a picture of a God at work in the universe, guiding the planets in their course, bringing the green to the grass in the spring, and keeping that tide coming in twice a day?

We too have come into His scheme of things. He is our Father, He created us. His love is around us and His plan is before us.

I remember reading once about a distinguished scholar telling about how his little boy once pushed open his study door and slipped very quietly into a chair. The father turned to him and said: "What do you want, my son?" and the boy replied: "I don't want anything. I just want to be with you." As a creed, we are saying: I believe that the God who by His power and wisdom created and controls the universe is my Father, and as a prayer, it says, Father, I want to be with you.

"Hallowed be thy name." The average person who takes the Lord's name in vain is usually just too lazy to increase his vocabulary to the point where he can find words to express himself. I don't think that he is actually trying to antagonize god, but by the same token, if someone was to take this man's name and bandy it about, he would be very quick about getting his back up and objecting to such usage. I wonder if he ever stops to think how the Lord feels about having his name misused. In the prayer, we are telling Him that we hold His name in reverence. But it means more than don't swear or use profanity. It recognizes the deep need of the human soul to come into harmony with God through worship and communion. Most churches nowadays are built so that the cross and the communion table are at the center of attention rather than a forest of organ pipes. People, I believe, want a service that will say to them that God is here, this is His house. Be still and know that I am God. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. The Eternal God is thy refuge and thy strength. Hallowed be thy name.

To commit oneself unreservedly to Jesus, to have faith in the strength of God's character and purpose in the world, to be able to lie down each night in peace through the humble acceptance of the Christian spirit would spell freedom for many a troubled soul. Hallowed be thy name: as a creed, it says I believe in prayer and worship and in the sacred experiences of life through which I come into harmony with God.

"Thy Kingdom come." This is quite a petition, a lot of petition. Perhaps if Jesus were preaching in our streets today he might speak of the social order of God or thy republic come. But we know what he meant. It is that all peoples shall continue to grow Christian until this whole society shall live in his spirit. God's social order does not end with Cape Porpoise or the United States, but extends around the world. I wonder if we are all on trial to see if we are able to grow out of a local into a universal consciousness?

Can you say I believe in a world-wide social order in harmony with the teaching of Christ? If not, why pray "Thy Kingdom come?"

"The will be done." Sometimes when tragedy has struck rather close to us we say this. Unable to understand or explain them, we simply have to trust to the greater wisdom and will of God. The waste of life in war, the way people treat one another, the pain and the tragedies are bound to raise questions for which there are no easy answers or glib explanations. We can only remember that the Lord suffered too. But in His prayer, Jesus did not just mean a negative acceptance of trouble. He was not a defeatist. He meant that ultimately the will of god would not be denied, that His will is creative and is on the side of goodness and truth. In fact, we are saying that we believe in the holy and creative will of God, and dedicate ourselves to seek and obey it. No one need fear to pray this prayer as though it involved accepting something dreadful. We are expressing our desire that God's will be done here as it is in heaven: happily and triumphantly.

Now we come to the second part in which we petition for our interests.

"Give us our daily bread." Now we can be sure that Jesus meant more than just a loaf of bread. He meant the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, decent schools and a job at which to earn these things. And note the very important plural, give us our daily bread. As we pray, we cannot be selfish about it. We have to consider the other fellow too. If we are apt to think of the pursuit of these economic necessities as a thing apart from religion, remember Jesus put this petition right in the middle of his prayer. If people somehow fail to have daily bread, it is not because God has failed them. He hasn't, he is still providing the soil, the rain, the sunshine, summer and winter, day and night and all the natural resources. It can be traced to the shortsightedness, carelessness, or greed on the part of someone or some group. I think we can safely say as a creed: I believe God wants a decent living for everyone of every race everywhere.

"Forgive us...as we forgive." What God says in this prayer is forgive others and God will forgive us. During the last war, there was propaganda on both sides seeking to produce hatred in every land. There were atrocity stories and racial prejudices multiplied and built up into real hatreds. They got us to referring to races and peoples with horrible epithets, failing to see that hatred, even if it might help win the military war, would surely lose the peace. And if the peace is lost, is the war won? As we pray for forgiveness, we can adopt this as an article of our creed: "I believe in a love that suffers long and is kind and forgives."

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." The prayer closes with the though of life as a moral battlefield. The supreme peril is not physical or material, it is moral. Lead us not into temptation. Then you ask what kind of a God would lead us into temptation. Dr. Benjamin Robinson has this to say: "We must remember that our gospels are in Greek, but Jesus spoke in Aramaic. If we could go back to the language Jesus actually used we would find the word means, Lead us away from temptation, deliver us from evil." We are praying that God will prevent us from being brought into temptation too great for us to handle. There is a social implication here, also. Can we set material prizes for life and not fall into temptation in the effort to achieve them? As a final part of our creed we can say: "I believe in the supreme importance of personal integrity. I must be straight and clean and true."

Where does Jesus come into this prayer which we can use for a creed? It was His creed. He spoke these words, lived them, taught them and went to the cross for the truths that they represent.