Lent Midweek 3: “When You Pray . . .”

I suppose if there is one spiritual question that is most common among us, one religious issue that we struggle with most often throughout our lives, it has to do with prayer. I have never heard anyone say to me, “Pastor, my prayer life is just really great. It is as good as it can possibly be!” But all the time I hear frustrations and concerns and complaints. We don’t seem to be able to pray as we would like, or as we think we’d like. And since this is such an important part of our life of faith, it is not surprising that Jesus, in his teachings we call “the Sermon on the Mount,” would touch on the question of prayer. The question is: will his words about prayer be as upsetting as some of the rest of this sermon? Last week we heard about loving our enemies—strong medicine, and not very tasty! What will he say about prayer?

The text itself is familiar; in fact some of the words are spoken in church virtually every time we worship. And the introductory verses are not strange to us, either. Let’s grapple with the text by making some observations about his words—some obvious, perhaps, but others less so. Perhaps we could think about it under this heading: Jesus’ critique of our efforts at prayer.

He begins with the phrase, “When you pray . . .” We shouldn’t jump over those words too easily, for there’s more there than meets the eye. Helmut Thielicke points out that the wording here is conditional—that it might better be translated, “if and when you pray.” The point is that Jesus recognizes, right from the start, that with us, praying is an occasional thing. St. Paul may tell us to “pray without ceasing,” but Jesus is a realist. He knows that we tend to pray when we get around to it. That’s not to say this is good, or right—only that it is true for most of us. We pray when we feel the need of help, or when it seems to us to be expected, or when we think we need it, or perhaps just when we think about it.

Thielicke cites the autobiography of the German pastor Friederich von Bodelschwing, who wrote movingly about the death of all four of his children in the course of two weeks. What is so touching about his account is the way he commended each individual child to God. Later Bodelschwing would comment that until he went through this experience, he never knew how hard God could be. But Thielicke observes that what is so astonishing is that this grieving father, in the midst of death, is in continual conversation with God. He does not ask the question, “Why is God allowing this to happen?” You or I might well ask that question, we might shout it from the rooftops. Or we might retreat into sullen, shocked silence. But Bodelschwing never talks about God in this crisis; he talks to God.

And that is an important key to understanding Jesus’ concept of prayer. Jesus would rather talk to God. For him it is a continual dialogue, a constant being in the presence of God. Jesus in Gethsemane—in prayer! Jesus on the cross—in prayer! It is not always easy for him. It is not that he has no questions, no struggles. But his questions, he asks of God. We, so often, are just the opposite. We want our questions answered first and then, if we like the answers, we’ll think about praying. But the key for Jesus is that even the questions are asked, not about God, but of God. For him, there is no “if and when” about prayer. It is as ever-present as breathing.

“When you pray,” Jesus says, “go into your room and shut the door.” We usually make of this an admonition not to make a show of our praying before others, and certainly there’s something to that. But again, there is more here. The word here for “room” is unusual. It has been translated in many ways, from closet to chamber. None of the translations quite captures the Greek. The word here really means a kind of storeroom which is separate from the living quarters. About the closest modern parallel might be the garage. Go into the garage, shut the door, and that’s where you should pray. What on earth does he mean?

Well, I think part of the point may be that prayer should be so ordinary and so much a part of our daily life that even the most mundane of places is where we pray. Jesus criticizes those hypocrites who pray in the synagogues and on the street corners—but both of those are the “normal” places of prayer for a first century Jew. The synagogue was where you were supposed to pray, of course, but then at certain hours of the day one was supposed to recite a prayer—much as in Islam today—and one of those hours was at a time when one would normally be on the street corner, going about one’s daily business. So “praying on the street corner” may not mean at all a show that is necessarily hypocritical. It is possible Jesus here is saying that prayer is such a natural part of the Christian’s daily life that it is done, not just in the “religious” places, but in the garage, at the office, in the kitchen, the classroom—wherever and whenever we might choose to talk with the God we love.

But that is so unlike us! We feel there must be certain places and certain times. We have to pray in church, or on a mountaintop! Isn’t it amazing what we human beings can do—we can even turn Jesus’ words into an excuse not to pray. “I must go into my room and shut the door,” we say—“but I can’t do that now, so my praying will have to wait until later.” Or we can only pray in the morning, or only at night. What it boils down to is that we can only pray when we’re in the mood! Martin Luther used to pray three or four hours a day, and he wrote that his work could not have been done without those hours—and yet we would look at those hours as time we can ill afford to lose from the work we must do! I suspect it is we who are mixed up, not Luther.

One more observation from our Lord’s words: He concludes his comments by saying, “Pray then in this way . . .,” followed by the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Does this mean we should literally pray the words of the Lord’s Prayer, making those words our own? Or does he mean this is just an example, a pattern? Well, I have my opinion about that, but let’s look at a more basic issue. “Pray then in this way.” However you cut it or interpret it, those words are a commandment. Jesus commands us to pray. Perhaps that takes you a little aback. We think of him teaching us to pray, encouraging us to pray—but commanding us to pray? Yet that is what he does!

And that’s good! For what he does, in this commandment, is to cut through all the excuses, all the obstacles, all the reasons why we can’t right now but maybe later. Forget about all that, he says. Just do it. What a comfort and a liberation that is! It reminds us that prayer is something that is learned, not through lectures or sermons, or intellectual understanding, but through obedience. And this means, as Thielicke syas, that when “we are not in the mood or . . . . have other thoughts in our mind, and . . .—we know the old routine by heart—we have ‘no time,’ there comes to us the command, ‘Pray’ . . . And when we are in a state of doubt and dispute with God, tormented by the thought that prayer may have no meaning at all”—still we are told simply, “Pray, then.” “So prayer is not a matter of our mood and inclination, it is a matter of a command.”

And so we take him at his word. As Luther once said, we “throw the whole sack full of his promises at his feet.” That’s what he commands us to do, what he wants us to do. “Pray then.” Not when and if we please, but always. Not when we’re in the right time and place, but always and everywhere. Pray, and pray, and pray—in the garage, that mundane place; and on the cross, that place of inexplicable suffering and loss. Pray, believing that your Father knows what you need before you ask, and that what pleases him most is not the words you use but that you seek him.