The path of Christ is having God give you the humility of Christ – not a false humility, not self-abuse, but true joy in seeing all, and yourself, as the image of God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 22 C
Texts: Luke 14:1, 7-14; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Jeremiah 2:4-13

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Be careful, very careful, with this Gospel reading.

Once again, Jesus is speaking of life in the reign of God, something we’ve heard all summer. But today’s Gospel is as tricky as any we’ve had. There are side paths that are easy to stumble into, paths which lead away from the path of Christ, if you’re not paying attention.

Jesus doesn’t intentionally set a trap here. In fact, he’s very consistent with the flow we’ve heard from him for months.

The problem is human nature. The particular thing he’s talking about, humility, cuts really close to a nerve in how we live, and makes it hard to hear and follow. Judging by the common way people usually talk about these verses and live them out, most of us have gotten lost on these side paths.

So listen carefully. Keep an eye on Jesus’ lead as closely as you ever have.

Now, our problems with social order and class are a little different from this story.

We don’t have a strict social and class order that’s reflected in how people are seated at the table, but we do have deep problems with social order and class. We’re very familiar with judging and with jockeying for position.

But when Jesus says take the lowest seat, and let others go before you, or, those who humble themselves shall be exalted and those who exalt themselves shall be humbled, we seem to consistently miss the point and take the side paths.

The first is the path of false humility and expectation of reward, one of the main Christian responses to this. Let others go first and pretend you’re humble. But inwardly, we hope someone notices, hope to be invited forward, to be commended. We can even be ridiculously proud of how humble we are. This isn’t a path of humility, it’s a path of pride and deceit. Please hear this clearly: do not leave worship today believing humility means Jesus wants you to pretend to be lower than others, hoping to be commended, resenting when you’re not. Nothing is further from the truth.

The other side path of Christian response is the path of self-devaluing. To hear Jesus saying you have no value, your gifts are of no account, you’re worthless. Everyone is better than you, you deserve no attention. This response has been drilled into the faithful for centuries, particularly by the powerful onto the marginalized and the powerless. This isn’t a path of humility, it’s a path of self-hate, of self-abuse. Please hear this clearly: do not leave worship today believing Jesus says being humble means you have no value, you aren’t worthy of a seat at the table. Nothing is further from the truth.

To find truth, we need to overturn our understanding of the word “deserve.”

So, some believers think they deserve more praise, more attention, are more important, but act as if they’re not because they think it’s how the game is played. The truth is, it may look nice to let someone go ahead of you, but if inwardly you think you deserve more attention, you’ve missed the whole point.

Some believers feel they deserve no praise, they’re worth nothing, deserve being sent to the bottom. This also may look humble, but if inwardly you think you have no value, you’ve also missed the point.

Instead, Jesus is describing an entirely new upside-down world order. Everyone deserves love, everyone deserves praise. From chapter one of Genesis to now God has tried to tell you that all are created in God’s own image. Are worthy of the love of the Triune God who made all things.

Jockeying for position isn’t the problem. Believing there is such a thing as position, that there are people who rank higher, are more important, that’s the problem. Jesus calls for a complete transformation of the heart’s values. Seeing everyone as precious in God’s eyes, including yourself, including the ones who are outside your empathy, those you look down on. Having the mutual love for all Hebrews talks about today, and welcoming strangers not because they might be angels, but because they are the image of God.

Jesus told a parable to show this reversal. But they already had the only parable they needed.

The eternal Word of the Triune God, one with the Father and the Spirit from before creation itself, was at this dinner. The One whom all creation should honor and adore and kneel before watched other people scramble for the important seats.

Jesus is the parable. The One who created billions of galaxies, worthy of all honor and praise, did not, as Paul reminds you in Philippians 2, cling to divinity, but this Son, the Word, humbled himself and took on human flesh, and by this said, “You are beloved, and precious, and worthy.”

That’s Jesus’ vision of God’s reign. It removes any distinction between people. If the God of all time deigns to become a human being, then simply being a human being made in God’s image is glory and honor enough for anyone. For each and every one.

Why have social order and class when we can look at each other in equal joy, recognizing God’s face in each other’s faces?

But going from where we are to living this vision can’t be done in an instant.

That’s where we get lost. There’s no switch to flip that we suddenly know in our hearts we’re all equal, or instantly care for the people whom we don’t care for, or think better of the people we disdain. We can’t suddenly see as Jesus sees, love as Jesus loves, live as Jesus lived. It takes God time to shape us.

So today Jesus names just the first steps toward this reality. Think of what he’s saying this way:

When you were a child and you hurt someone, your parents likely told you to say you were sorry. But if you’re like most children, you might not have truly felt it. There might have been a touch of sullenness and reluctance to your “sorry.”

But one day, the goal is you’d become a person who genuinely felt sorry when you hurt someone, who said, “Can you please forgive me?” Not sullenly, not because you were told to, but because that’s how you viewed the world and all people. Because you loved this person.

Likewise, Jesus says humility’s first steps are: “take the lower seat. Be humble. Don’t put yourself above others.”

But this isn’t the end of the path, the goal of Christian life. These instructions aren’t full life in God’s reign. They’re just the first baby steps of following Christ’s path of humility, a path that leads to the cross.

Sadly, the Church is and has been full of adults of all ages who live frozen at these baby steps. Who never let the Spirit transform their heart and eyes to feel and see as Jesus does. Who are forever children when it comes to this truth of God’s reign. So they – we – toddle off on the side paths of immature humility that only lead to death and pain and sadness. Remaining at the basic level of Christ’s humility for one’s whole life is unhealthy, even deadly, because is shows a dry, empty heart. It’s rejecting God’s fountain of living water, Jeremiah says today, and building yourself a cracked cistern that holds no water.

It’s time to start growing up. To move to solid food, real nourishment, and a deeper understanding of the life in Christ.

Once you leave today’s baby steps and take full, grown strides down Christ’s path, you’ll find the true glory of God’s reign.

It’s a chaotic joy of a table that has enough seats for everyone, and everyone’s getting up and switching seats, sharing food and laughter, telling stories, embracing tears, rejoicing in good news. A reign of God with no hierarchies, no privilege, no rankings, where all look at each other with glad and shining faces, recognizing the image of God in the other because all see it in themselves, too.

That’s what Jesus was hoping to get started at that dinner party, a path that opens up to such chaos and delight and wonder.

To see this in your life, you’re going to want to pray today’s prayer of the day often: Give me, O God, the humility of your Son. Make this joyful reality, this new heart, these new eyes, mine always. Because God delights to give that to you.

And if this is what God models in Christ, and what God wants to make happen in you, and in all God’s children, why on earth or in heaven would you want anything less?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

All of us are bound tightly by whatever we call them – spirits, passions, vices – and God in Christ has come to set us free.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21 C
Text: Luke 13:10-17

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This poor woman suffered for 18 years, bent over double.

But she didn’t come to the synagogue for healing. That was Jesus’ idea, unlike many of his healings. He called her over and said she was set free from her ailment.

After 18 years, this woman probably didn’t ever expect or hope to be better. She just thought, “this is how I will always be, hurting, struggling to breathe, to move.” Today would be just like every other day.

But this day, she was set free. For the first time in two decades, her Sabbath was restful, peaceful, joy.

This physical healing was her great gift. But not for us.

In Jesus’ wonderful healings we don’t really know where we fit in the story. When we, or others we love, are ill, suffering, we pray for healing. We hope for healing. We even demand it at times.

But we also know it’s not as simple as that. Sometimes God has healed loved ones of physical and mental disease. Sometimes the healing given isn’t what we asked for. So centering our worship with these stories, as the Gospel of the Day, is a practical problem. How do they apply to us?

But this story is different. Because Jesus uses language in this episode that opens a door for us to enter this healing. Oddly enough, it’s language we sometimes are too sophisticated and modern to take seriously.

Ancient people often attributed illness to evil spirits, and Jesus’ day did, too.

This woman has painful scoliosis, caused by who knows what. But Luke says she had a “spirit of disease” for 18 years, that’s why she was bent over double. And Jesus goes with this. He doesn’t say, “Be healed.” He says, “you are set free.” The same word describing freeing a prisoner from a cell, or freeing someone from crushing debt.

When the synagogue leader protests this Sabbath healing, Jesus keeps the image. He defeats his fellow rabbi in a classic Jewish debate, declaring that if the lesser thing – untying an ox on the Sabbath for water (one who had only been tied up over night) – is permitted in Torah, then clearly the greater thing – setting free a woman kept in bondage by Satan (one who had been tied up for 18 years) – is also permitted. The rabbi lost, and he and his friends know it. They’re “put to shame,” Luke says. The crowd of common folk hoot and holler at Jesus’ Jewish wisdom and skill.

But here’s your open door: Jesus, God’s Son, has the compassion and power to set free God’s children who are bound. What Jesus did, even if it uses the language of evil spirits, that’s the hope. Because if you can be set free of something you’ve come to believe will always bind you, wouldn’t that be life?

What ties you up, holds your life, and has done for so long you really believe this is the way you will always be?

The ancient Christian desert fathers and mothers shared the same belief in the presence of evil spirits. But they also had a wisdom that could be a great blessing to us.

They developed an understanding of nine spirits of temptation that afflicted people. They believed these spirits could bind us, hold us in their grasp. A few centuries later, Pope Gregory I codified a list of seven of them, unfortunately mislabelling them deadly sins. But the wisdom isn’t about sin that needs punishing. The wisdom is recognizing forces that trap us and shape us.

The list varied, but mostly it was anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, fear, gluttony, lust, and disengagement (sometimes called sloth.) Any of us at any time can be bound up by these evils, our forebears taught. They can hold our hearts and minds, affect our behavior, cripple our spirits, break our will.

Now, some of us in this room, in our community, have physical and mental ailments they’d like to be freed from, but not all of us. But everyone in this room, in our community, has at least one of these spirits.

And today Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, can set you free.

If “evil spirits” sounds a bit superstitious, think of them as controlling passions.

Is anger always lurking behind your heart, resentment at hand, ready to burst out and make a mess of your life, or to hurt others?

Are you trapped by needing to think pridefully of yourself, ready to manipulate things so you come out on top?

Does your vanity bind you, so you lie not only to others but even to yourself, to make yourself look better?

Does the melancholy you feel about your life lead you to envy what others have and who they are?

Is your need for security such that you cling tightly to things, unable to share, greedy for more?

Are you so afraid of life, so anxious, that you live a life of doubt, sometimes unable to move?

Or is something of a good thing never enough, you never feel fulfilled, needing more and more and more?

Do you see others as objects, trying to control them and the world, finding yourself using others?

Or is the world so fractured, so complex, you see no point in acting, no point in engaging, but fall into the boredom of being and doing nothing?

These are the passions that can bind us all, and everyone finds themselves trapped somewhere in these. That’s the wisdom of our forebears.

But God has come in Christ to set you free. Whether you ever thought it possible or not. Whether you came here looking for it or not. Just because God loves you.

That’s your hope: you don’t have to be bound by these.

Naming what binds you, watching for it, so that you know how and what to pray, that’s a good beginning. Once you know your captor’s name, you can learn new ways of thinking and being that lead to wholeness and life, not the bondage of these afflictive passions.

But beginning, middle, and end of it all is asking your God to free you in Christ. Recognizing you have no more power over the passion that binds you than over physical disease, ask God to set you free. To lead you to serenity instead of anger, humility instead of pride, truthfulness instead of deceit, emotional health instead of envy, non-attachment instead of greed, courage instead of fear, sobriety instead of gluttony, vulnerability instead of dominance, and action instead of disengagement.

The Triune God has sent you the Holy Spirit to live in you and give you life, to break any chains that bind you, trap you, block you from the abundant life God intends you to know. Nothing can separate you from God’s love in Christ, not even that thing that has held you so long.

That’s the joy the leader missed seeing.

Keeping Sabbath pales in comparison to God freeing someone from what binds and holds them. Rather than being indignant, he could have rejoiced with this woman, with the crowds, that God had done such a glorious thing.

And so can you. You can not only ask God to set you free, every day. You can also be one who sets others free, rather than binding them. Give an ox a drink, or a cup of water to someone thirsty. Call an old woman over to love her in Christ. Look out for the ones who are bound and find a way to give them hope, or, if you can, untie them. You can bear God’s freeing grace in your actions, your words, your love, and your witness to what it’s like to be freed.

Unlike this woman, being set free from these things takes a lot of time. A lifetime. We’re all in the state of being freed, and all in the business of helping others find the freeing touch of God in Christ. Until all, oxen and humans, are set free: to live, and drink water, and stand up straight, and praise God’s goodness together.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Following Christ is painful and hard, but it’s the path to life, and Jesus and the saints surround and encourage you every step of the way, filling your life with abundance even in the challenge.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 20 C
Texts: Luke 12:49-56 (adding back in 39-48); Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“Are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?”

Peter has a hopeful thought. Maybe last week’s parable about alert servants doing their absent master’s work is meant for other people. Others might not be alertly doing God’s work, but surely not our faithful little inside group?

We read the verses between last week’s Gospel and today’s because Peter’s question and Jesus’ blistering reply help explain Jesus’ words today. Peter seems to want a free pass from being ready at all times, and because Jesus is nearing his death, and anxious the disciples aren’t understanding, Jesus blurts out a horrible story of drunken slaves beating others and being terribly punished.

Yes, Peter, it’s for you, Jesus says. You’re all the insiders. And to whom much is given, much is required.

Which gets us to today’s Gospel. We’ve heard a series of lessons and parables about God’s reign for some weeks. Now Jesus, the Prince of Peace, says division and family infighting among those who wish to follow him are inevitable results of living in God’s reign.

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Jesus says.

“No, I bring division! From now on even families will be divided.” We so wish we could skip these words.

But we can’t. We pretend he was this innocuous, easy-going person, but Jesus was killed for what he taught and lived. The reason he’s so anxious and even angry in this episode is that he’s under tremendous stress, knowing he’s heading toward his death, something that will be brutal and horrifying, something he wishes could be over and done with.

Don’t make fun of Peter. We also hope that maybe Jesus is talking about someone else, not you, not me. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

That’s because we’re called to follow Jesus, and we know where he went.

Jesus will be killed for what he embodied and taught. He asks us to follow him in the same vulnerable, self-giving love, embodying God’s love and grace for the world, risking whatever we need to to share that love in our own bodies and lives.

The letter to the Hebrews says the same. In this amazing laundry list of heroes of the faith, the hardships that the faithful endured for serving God are astonishing. They witness to the challenge of following Christ.

Gideon, on the Hebrews list, was a hero of mine as a child, but there’s a part of the story we often forget. Right after he’s called by God to lead the Israelites against the oppression of the Midianites, the first thing he’s asked to do is tear down his father’s public altar to Baal, and the sacred pole next to it, using his father’s second best ox. Then he’s to chop up the altar and the pole, and burn that second best ox on the wood as a purifying sacrifice to God.

The townspeople are predictably enraged, and though his father defended him, how do you think Gideon initially felt about that request? To follow God is to potentially stand against even your closest family.

So, what are we supposed to do?

First, realize Jesus didn’t come intending to cause division.

Jesus’ very presence, the Good News he proclaims and embodies, is what will split his followers apart from each other, and from those who don’t follow. Following the way of Christ is not only hard, individually and collectively, it can lead to divisions, pain, and suffering. The history of the Church, the history of our own lives, is riddled with divisions caused by people seeking faithfully to serve Christ, and suffering incurred by people following faithfully.

Today’s witnesses tell us if we’re making our decisions in hopes that no one is offended, or acting only when it doesn’t inconvenience us or hurt us, we’re not being faithful servants of Christ. Unity and comfort are not the goal of faithfulness.

Faithfulness is to follow where our discernment tells us God is leading, regardless of consequences.

We can’t let our fear of division or setback or even suffering keep us from doing what we believe our Lord and Master is calling us to do.

This means we need to learn how to faithfully discern the calling of the Triune God. Learn to understand when we are at a crossroads, where to look for guidance and advice, how to listen to other believers and to each other and to the Church, and to how Christ speaks to us.

But when we’ve done that to the best of our ability, and when we feel we know where the Spirit is leading, we’d best do what we know is our path, no matter how hard. Whether it’s speaking out on our nation’s abuse and destruction of families at the border, to risking your own well-being to help someone in poverty, or standing up to violence and hatred with resistant, persistent love, this path of Christ isn’t easy. But it’s also the path of God’s life.

That’s the gift Hebrews reveals today.

Division and pain aren’t the goal or the end, there’s something more. We are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” Hebrews writes, “let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”

These faithful ones of the last two millennia stand in the stadium around you, encouraging you in your fear and worry, cheering you on in your faithful discipleship. All the saints of old and those you knew are your models in discipleship. They witness that ordinary people like you can be faithful, even in the face of threats and suffering. They tell you, “all will be well.”

All will be well, because Jesus is ahead of you on the journey, even facing death to bring you life. Your cloud of witnesses surrounds you in joy, pointing your eyes to the One who has faced worse than you will, and who loves you beyond life itself.

And all will be well because the cross-shaped path is the one where true abundant life is found, true love, true grace, true wholeness. As Jesus modeled and taught, losing for the sake of unconditional love is actually winning, and the costs are nothing compared to the peace of a life centered in Christ.

Elsewhere, Jesus says to the disciples, “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

That is your word of hope, and ours together, as we seek to be faithful followers. We will need courage, and the one who overcame the world will give that. Courage to follow Christ’s call honestly and openly, without dodging or ignoring, without seeking an easy way around.

It won’t be easy. It never is. But you are always with Christ in all this cross-shaped journey of God’s abundant life, and you have these witnesses at your side. You are never alone.

Yes, it’s for you, Jesus says. It’s for me. It’s for all. Thank God for that.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

 

God invites you to a life of abundance and joy, living in God’s way for your life and for the life of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 19 C
Texts: Luke 12:32-40; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

A few weeks ago we heard the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

One thing he taught them: pray, “your kingdom come.” Today we hear this marvelous promise from Jesus: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Ask for God to rule in your life, Jesus says, and know God is delighted to make that happen.

So if we’re unaware of God’s kingdom in our lives, if we’re not following God, it’s not because we haven’t asked. We pray the Lord’s Prayer all the time. And it’s not because God doesn’t want to give this; this is God’s dream, God’s pleasure.

So, maybe our problem is that we don’t want to live under God’s rule right now. Martin Luther, teaching the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, said God’s kingdom, God’s reign, surely happens without our praying for it, but in this prayer we ask that it come to us.

Maybe we don’t have it because we just don’t want this gift.

God’s Word today is very helpful for this, because we hear exactly what God’s kingdom is.

Jesus can be confusing when he talks of God’s rule and reign. Sometimes he speaks as if it’s the life to come after we die. Sometimes he says it’s near, within us right now. Sometimes we can’t tell which he means.

Today we see the truth: God’s kingdom isn’t a geography, a place you go to. It’s simply everywhere God’s will is done, everywhere God rules and reigns. Calling God’s kingdom the “reign” of God might be more helpful, because we see we’re not talking about either here or there, but a quality of life, a way of obedience, that exists now and of course in the life to come after death.

Remember Jesus’ prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.” God reigns wherever God’s will is done. Both now and forever. On earth and in heaven.

And today, God’s Word gives clear signs of what God’s reign looks like, when God rules as God wills.

Our first vision begins with Isaiah, who shares a message with a number of the Hebrew prophets.

God’s prophets, including Isaiah today, knew most certainly that God’s reign is anywhere justice prevails. God’s reign exists when those who are most vulnerable are protected and cared for. God’s reign exists when no one is poor or hungry or in need. This we also get from Jesus today. Jesus’ first command for living in God’s reign is to free yourself from the tyranny of your possessions, and share with those in need until no one is in need.

It would be nearly impossible to miss this vision in Scripture unless you deliberately wanted to avoid the truth. God’s longing for a world of justice and peace, abundance and life, safety and joy, fills both the Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of the New Testament. Again and again God raises up prophets like Isaiah to call God’s people to live in such a way that they look like God is truly in charge.

Today, Isaiah joins several prophets in condemning the worship life of Israel. But Isaiah and the others condemn people acting as if worshipping God is living in God’s reign. The prophets are clear: live in God’s reign first, care for those who are poor, do justice, be kind, share all you have. Then, in that life in God’s reign, your worship is worth doing, and blessed both to you and to God.

Another way to recognize God’s reign is that those who live in it live for others, not themselves.

This is what happens when you start living in justice, sharing all, loving as God loves, as Isaiah calls. Your life is focused on caring for others, looking out for others’ needs. This is God’s reign.

Jesus’ parable of the alert servants doing their jobs while their master is away is all about this. Jesus says that if you choose to live under God’s reign, you willingly put yourself under God’s service. You choose God’s work above all. And God’s work is always serving others.

Again, it would be impossible to miss Jesus’ modeling of this, or his call to his followers to be servants to each other, unless you were trying to avoid seeing it. It’s one of the deepest taproots to Jesus’ understanding of discipleship, and a clear sign of God’s reign.

The last view we see today is this gift from Hebrews: living in God’s reign doesn’t always mean seeing it in full.

This beautiful meditation on faith reminds us that faith isn’t believing in specific teachings, it’s trusting God, living in relationship with God, and following.

But living in God’s reign means trusting in God’s goodness and promise, even if you don’t see it bearing fruit all the time. The long list of faithful followers Hebrews begins today with Abraham, continues in next week’s reading, and it has one thing in common: these all relied on God and followed in trust, even though none lived to see God’s promise in Christ fulfilled.

This is the real treasure in heaven Jesus talks about. You might not see everything healed, everything restored, God’s way of justice and peace in all things, as you faithfully live into God’s reign. The fulfilling of God’s dream of a world of blessing, justice, abundance, and peace, might not happen in your lifetime. But your treasure is that God is good, and Christ will bring about this reign that God dreams for.

And as Hebrews says, it doesn’t matter what you actually see fulfilled. Just be faithful and rely on God. Or, as Jesus says, just always be about God’s work. Or as Isaiah says, learn to do good. That’s enough.

Don’t be afraid. God’s pleasure is to bring you into this reign of God, welcome you into this way of being that brings life.

The Triune God dreams of a day when this will be true in all this world, with all creatures. But God’s reign and rule are very different from earthly rule. God has no police force to keep you in line or punish you when you live otherwise. God has no army to defend God’s way of life.

God rules by invitation, and by empowering. By sending people to you to call you to this way, in hopes that you’ll see it’s the only way to find abundance and joy, even in this painful world. By going to a cross, not using power and might even to stop the death of God’s Son, so that you and the universe could see that such vulnerable love destroys evil’s power and brings unstoppable life. By sending you the Holy Spirit to empower your servant life under God.

The invitation is yours: Come, live in the joy of God’s reign, for your sake, and the sake of the world. What will you do with it?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Just pray as Jesus teaches you, instead of talking about it, and you will know the life and love of God’s Holy Spirit in you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 17 C
Text: Luke 11:1-13

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Maybe we need a different word for what Jesus calls prayer.

Comparing what we mean by prayer and what Jesus means, we could be talking about completely different things.

When we hear the word “prayer” we nearly always think of specific moments where we speak or think specific things. Kneeling by a bed at night-time, saying thanks at a meal, praying pre-chosen words together. All situations where we think the point is to ask things of God.

At least that’s how we talk about prayer. Countless conversations about whether prayer “works,” that is, you get what you ask for. As if God were a great vending machine. Great platitudes about prayer. “God sometimes says no,”, or, “God knows better than you what you need,” we quickly repeat. And that’s our best effort. How often have people in pain been given the impression that if they’d had more faith, or if they’d prayed better, they would have gotten what they wanted?

We probably can’t find a better word to use than “prayer.” But at least the disciples had the right idea. They didn’t ask Jesus for a theory of prayer, or explanations why it does or doesn’t “work.” They didn’t want to talk about prayer, like it was some object of study.

They said, “please teach us to pray.”

That’s what we want, too.

Jesus has been praying by himself when the disciples asked. He did this a lot, went off to quiet places to be in prayer. And rabbis generally would teach their disciples to pray.

But here’s why Jesus is the one we want to teach us: he prayed, but he was the Son of God. One with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity. If prayer is only asking God for things, why would the Son need to pray? How can God ask God for things? Unless prayer is something deeper.

When Jesus the Son prayed, he re-entered the inner dance of the Trinity. We can’t know what it’s like to be both human and part of the Triune God, but clearly Jesus regularly needed to reconnect, to commune with the Father and the Spirit within God’s life as he had done since before creation.

So there’s Jesus’ first lesson: open yourself to being in the presence of God. That’s prayer. No rules, no platitudes about outcomes. Just get away and be open to God. And the second lesson is that Jesus says the answer to every prayer, the outcome of every connection we have with God, is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, the Holy Spirit is always within us.

But prayer is opening our hearts and our minds to that truth. Being aware of it. Living in it.

This is why Paul tells the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, and the Ephesians to pray in the Spirit at all times. If prayer is limited to you or I saying particular words in a particular posture at a particular time, and only asking for things, there is no way to pray all the time.

But if prayer is being open to the gracious, loving Spirit of God that is within you, literally every second you could be in prayer.

Teach us to pray, we ask Jesus. And he shows you: open your heart and mind to the Holy Spirit of God in you. Know that no matter what, God is with you and loves you. Live with God, talk, be silent, dream, complain, laugh, cry, or delight to live in awareness that God is in you and will never leave you.

Now you’re praying, Jesus says.

And Jesus shows three paths to enter this openness to God’s Spirit within: ask, search, and knock.

“Ask” easily traps us, of course, in our limited view of prayer. It’s what we mostly think prayer is. And Jesus says asking is good, he encourages it. But Jesus instantly refocuses us by saying the answer to every ask is the Holy Spirit. Whether you pray for the health of others, the pain of the world, your own struggles, God’s answer every time is “I am with you.” Does God intervene, bring healing, ease people’s burdens? Certainly. But that’s God’s call, and on God’s time. So ask, Jesus says. But when you do, your answer is to know God loves you and is always with you.

“Search” is a wonderful grace note in this list. When was the last time you spoke of prayer as “searching”? But Jesus is clear: search for God and you will find God. Since the Spirit is always God’s answer, you will find God literally in your heart. And if your search is for meaning, purpose, guidance, hope, direction, all the better. You’re on that journey, that search, with the loving Spirit of God at your side, encouraging, strengthening, giving wisdom, comforting, laughing, crying. You will find when you search, Jesus says. But the journey with the Spirit will also be wondrous grace.

And please “knock” on God’s door, Jesus says. It will always be opened to you, and you’ll rediscover that God is living inside you in love and grace. God’s door you’re knocking on is the door into your own heart, where you connect to the life of the Triune God through the grace of the Spirit.

Whenever we talk about prayer, we miss the point. Just pray, Jesus says. You’ll get it.

Whether it’s formal time you set aside with carefully chosen words, or communal prayer such as we do here, or the profound prayer of our silence in worship, or the times you simply walk in your days in awareness of God with you, prayer is lived, not talked about.

And when you stop talking about prayer and step into the reality of the Holy Spirit in your life and heart, all the questions and anxieties we all want to put on prayer go away. You learn to trust in God’s goodness and love, and find God’s grace in all outcomes.

Because what more do you need than to live your life in the dance of God’s life, with the Holy Spirit in you, loving you and guiding you all the way?

Teach us this, O God, until we learn it in our bones and live it in our heart.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen