Archive for the ‘Prayer’ Category

Our Father

July 26, 2025

Pentecost 7 – 2025

Luke 11:1-13

Marian Free

In the name of God, Source of all Being, Eternal Word, Spirit of Life. Amen.

“Our Father in heaven”. I wonder how many times in a lifetime will we have said that prayer. If a church-going person who lives till eighty has been saying the prayer every Sunday from the time they were five, that would add up to 3,900 times. Of course, most church-going people would say the prayer on other occasions as well – maybe every day – which would bring the number of times it was said to 27375! Those who say the daily office would say the prayer twice a day and so the number of times continues to rise. In other words, most of us are so familiar and so comfortable with The Lord’s Prayer that the prayer rolls off our tongues without our giving them much thought. The prayer can become a bit like a mantra, something we say to connect us to God, but not something we say as a call to action. 

Who knows what the disciples were expecting when they asked Jesus to teach them to pray, but the prayer he gave them is profoundly challenging and confrontational. As THE prayer, the prayer given to us by Jesus, it contains within it all that is necessary to live in accordance with the life and teaching of Jesus and demands that we change our lives in response. 

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name:

  • The prayer acknowledges that God is relational, not remote, yet at the same time the prayer reminds that even the name of God is holy and that in God’s presence we are standing on holy ground. 

Your kingdom come, your will be done:

  • We utter a desire that God’s kingdom become a reality on earth – that peace, justice and equity should reign here – not only in heaven. Implicit in this petition is a recognition that for God’s kingdom to be the overarching rule on earth, those of us who make this prayer need to be willing to submit ourselves, our lives, our all, to the will of God. In other words, God’s kingdom will not be imposed on earth but will become a reality when enough of us are willing to make it so. 

Give us today our daily bread:

  • Jesus teaches us to ask for what we need each day, to trust in God to give us enough, not too much or too little. There is much wisdom behind this prayer and it maybe an echo of Prov 30:8b,9: “give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you, and say, “Who is the LORD? or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God.” 

Learning to live with only what we need helps us to be satisfied with what we have, means that we stop competing with others for more and ideally leads to a situation in which everyone has enough. Give us today our daily bread teaches us to rely on God, not ourselves, to meet both our spiritual and physical needs. Being content with what we have, trusting that God has our best interests at heart, enables us to be at peace with ourselves and with the world and ensures that there is enough to go around.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted to us.

  • In this, the most debated sentence of the prayer, we are apparently asking God to follow our example of forgiveness, but like so much of the New Testament, the forgiveness of debt has to be seen in context. Deuteronomy, especially Deut 15, imposes the forgiveness of debt as both a religious and social obligation. Every seven years, debts owed by Israelites by Israelites were to be forgiven (not paid). This practice ensured that no one among the Israelites was permanently impoverished or enslaved. Forgive us our sins as we forgive debts might read: do not hold our wrongdoings against us forever. Set us free from our sin so that we are no longer burdened by it. The subtext here, is that being set free, we might feel so liberated that our propensity to sin might be diminished!

Save us from the time of trial.

  • Jesus may have added this line as an aspirational statement, not a possibility to be realised.  More than anyone else, Jesus knew that no matter how obedient, how trusting, how holy a person is, God cannot protect them from the cruelty of other human beings, or from the erratic operation of mother nature.

The Lord’s Prayer is not intended to provide reassurance or to lull us into a false sense of security. Certainly, it is a prayer that relieves us of worry and that asks that we  be freed from sin, but it is also a call to action. It is a prayer that must not only be said but lived – not only every day, but every minute of every day. Every time we prayer these words we are recognising the awesomeness of the one in whose presence we stand at the same time as acknowledging that the one who is beyond imagination is one with whom we can be in relationship. We are committing ourselves to daily submission to the rule of God to ensure that God’s kingdom will come. We are recognising that what we have, over and above what we need, we have at the expense of someone else and trusting God to give us what is necessary – not what we want. We are hoping that God will set us free from all that binds us and that God will be with us in our darkest moments.

The Lord’s Prayer is a dangerous prayer. It envisages a time when the earth will mirror heaven. It demands our complete and total trust in God, and a willingness to temper our desires for more than we need. It is not to be said lightly, but only with a willingness to be conformed more and more into the image of Christ and a belief that giving ourselves totally to God will satisfy us more than anything on earth can ever do.

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Prayer changes us

June 17, 2023

Pentecost 3 – 2023
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Marian Free

In the name of God whose faith in us is beyond our imagining. Amen.

How and for what do you pray? What do you expect from your prayers? Are you sometimes completely overwhelmed by the needs of the world? Do you sometimes feel that you are inadequate for the task – that even if you did pray hard enough there would not be enough people who cared enough to alleviate suffering? Do you worry that no matter how much you pray some situations simply remain the same? Do you wonder why God does not appear to act?

At the moment many of our prayers are focussed on the peoples of the Ukraine and Sudan, but there are conflicts all over the world that equally deserve our attention and our prayers. When I wonder did you or your church community last pray for the Khmer, the people of Syria or of the Congo or the countless other places still at war? We are rightly focussed on refugees who have fled recent conflicts and especially those who risk drowning at sea, but that means we tend to forget that there are thousands who have lived in refugee camps their entire lives or that in Palestine there are generations of families who have lived in camps. It is the same situation with victims of natural disasters – we simply cannot pray for everyone impacted by fire, flood, cyclone, and our memories tend to focus on more recent events. In 2020, COVID took our attention away from those who had lost everything in the bush fires of January that year and the floods in Northern NSW and elsewhere are, to many of us a distant memory – and yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of people (in this nation alone) who are still trying to rebuild homes and lives.

At the moment those who are impacted by the increased cost of living, rising interest rates and the rental crisis are front and centre in the minds of many of us and yet we are limited in what we can actually do. Our contribution to a Parish Pantry or other charities will not alleviate the pain for one family even for one day, and few of us can afford to purchase accommodation that could be made available for the homeless.

In the face of such mind-numbing issues, it is tempting to wish that God would wave a magic wand, end wars and alleviate poverty and suffering in the world. Yet if that were how God solved problems there would be no need to pray. God would already have responded. Why, in the face of so much anguish does God appear to stand idly by? The answer of course is complex, but God’s apparent inaction reflects God’s faith in us and God’s longing for us to be a part of the solution.

That this is how God responds is reflected in this morning’s gospel, especially in verses 36-38: ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”’

First century Palestine had been under Roman occupation for decades. Land that once fed generations of families had been taken by the occupiers and given as a reward to Caesar’s soldiers. Everything was taxed – the roads, the crops, the right to fish. The church authorities were either Roman appointments or were people who had cow towed to the Romans. As a consequence, the vast majority of the population felt harassed, oppressed and utterly powerless to effect change.

Faced with the suffering and helplessness of the people, Jesus seems to be overwhelmed. You can almost hear him sigh with despair as he observes that they are like sheep without a shepherd. He is filled with compassion. The Greek word “splagnizothai” (compassion) refers to an emotion felt deep within one’s belly, with one’s whole self. In other words, Jesus’ inner being was overwhelmed with concern – but, like God, Jesus doesn’t wave a magic wand. Indeed, he doesn’t even enlist God’s assistance. Instead, what Jesus does is to pray that there might be enough will in enough people to bring about change.

The need is clear, the solution is not to miraculously make it go away but to send people to fill the need – people of compassion – to heal, to console, to challenge unjust structures, to work for peace.

Seen another way, Jesus prays not for the world to change, but for us to change. As long as there are greedy, selfish, power-hungry people in the world there will be wars, injustice, and inequity. As long as people put themselves first we will continue to rape the planet, change the weather patterns, and induce climate change. As long we continue to believe that it is someone else’s (God’s) problem nothing will change.

Mother Teresa said: “I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.

In the end, prayer should change us. It should open us to the ways in which we contribute to the ills of the world; reveal to us our selfishness and lack of action; and open us to the Spirit of God working within us.

We are called to be God’s co-conspirators in changing the world for the better.
We are the labourers for whom Jesus prays. Only when we change can we begin to change the world.

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Ask and you will receive?

July 27, 2019

Pentecost 7 – 2019
    Luke 11:1-13
Marian Free

In the name of God Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Amen.

Some time ago I met a very angry woman. She had prayed and prayed that her mother would recover from cancer and still her mother had died. She felt utterly betrayed by a God whom she had been led to believe would answer her prayers. Her anger and hatred were all-consuming – in part, because despite her deep disappointment, she still believed that there was a God. It was just that God had turned out to be very different from the picture of God that she had in her head and God had let her down at the very time when she needed God most. The death of her mother convinced her that God was indifferent to human suffering, and that God had no personal interest in the affairs of individual people. This woman could not give up her faith, but the faith in which she had trusted had failed to give her comfort when comfort was required, and she could not forgive God for that betrayal.

She is not alone in feeling let down by a God who does not seem to answer prayers. There are many good people who feel disappointed and abandoned when their prayers go unanswered.

What is it about our teaching on prayer that leads believers to have such high expectations of results and which as a consequence lets them down so badly?

There are, no doubt, a variety of answers, depending on one’s background and experience of Sunday School and church, but a great deal of the problem stems, I believe, from today’s gospel which implies first of all, that if we pray with enough persistence God will give in to our request and secondly, and perhaps more dangerously that God will give us whatever we ask for in prayer. After all Luke 11:9 says clearly and unequivocally: “Ask and you will receive.” Can we then ask for anything no matter how selfish or punitive?  I suspect not.

To understand Jesus’ teaching on prayer, we must look at Luke 11:1-13 as a whole and not take one or two phrases out of context.

In the first instance is important to note that Jesus is speaking to the community as a whole and not to individuals. Jesus is responding to the disciples’ request: “Teach us how to pray as John taught his disciples.” In other words, how do we pray together?

Jesus begins his response with the words of a prayer – the only prayer that Jesus teaches. [We could, of course spend an entire sermon on the Lord’s prayer alone, but my intention is to show that the parable of the neighbour at midnight and the command to ask are framed in such a way that it is clear what it is that we are to ask for and what it is that God will give.]

The prayer starts by asking that God’s name be sanctified by the behaviour of the community – “hallowed be your name” and continues with a desire that God’s kingdom come, that the reign of God may become a reality for the whole world. In other words, Jesus’ suggests that prayer is about giving priority to God and to the kingdom of God. When we use this prayer, we are called to recognise that how we behave reflects on God – in other words if we behave badly, we bring God into disrepute and God’s name is cheapened, not sanctified. “Your kingdom come.” Together we express a desire that the world as a whole might come under the rule of God and that therefore that all the peoples of the world might live as God intended. These are not sentiments that relate to the wants and needs of ourselves as individuals, they are words that have a universal application.

Jesus’ teaching on prayer concludes by telling us what it is that we are to ask for. “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spiritto those who ask him!” We ask and receive, we seek and we find, we knock and the door is opened to us. It is clear that it is the Holy Spirit that we are to seek and for which we are to ask and who will open the door. God will unstintingly give the Holy Spirit to all who ask for it and in turn, empowered by the Holy Spirit, our prayers will, in effect be the longings of God uttered by ourselves.

Like all things spiritual though, most of us grow into prayer. We begin with “prayers of request (what we want) and move to prayers of gratitude (thanksgiving and praise) and graduate to prayers of empowerment (participation and collaboration with God)[1]”.

As our relationship with God deepens and matures, we become less focussed on ourselves and on our own needs, and more concerned with the kingdom’s becoming a reality. As we learn to listen to and to lean on God, we become attuned to what it is that God wants and what it is that God wants to us to pray for. The more practiced we are in prayer the more likely it is that our prayers will be aligned with the will of God and the more closely our prayers are aligned with the will of God, the more likely it is that they are to be answered.  When, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are able to sincerely pray: “Your kingdom come”, our prayers will be God’s prayers and we will ask for what is truly best for ourselves, for our neighbours and for the world.

 

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June 24, 2012

Pentecost 4

Mark 4:35-41

http://bible.oremus.org/ 

A Reflection

Marian Free

In the name of God who is present with us in all life’s circumstances. Amen.

 A soldier was captured by his enemies and tossed into a prison cell. He knew that in the morning he would be tortured, even killed. As he tossed and turned, he remembered the words: “Do not be anxious for the morrow.” With those words ringing in his ears he fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.

In today’s gospel, the disciples are in a boat with Jesus. As is common on the Lake of Galilee, a violent storm suddenly arises, tossing the boat on the waves, filling it with water and terrifying the disciples. Despite the fact that Jesus was in the boat with the disciples, they were unable to relax and to trust that everything would be OK. They cried out in anguish and accused Jesus of not caring about what might happen to them.

Jesus’ response to the storm is quite different. Even though the boat was being hurled around on the waves, and the storm raged about him Jesus was able to sleep unperturbed (that is, until he was woken!). Throughout his life and especially towards its end, Jesus demonstrated a trust in God that was unshakeable – even in the most awful of circumstances. In the face of extreme temptation in the desert, Jesus’ trust in God was steadfast. In the face of severe criticism from the leaders of the establishment, Jesus held firm. Confronted with the most terrible form of torture and death, Jesus never wavered in his resolve. Throughout it all, Jesus remained confident that God was with him and that God would never abandon him.

In comparison, the disciples seem to have learned nothing from their time with Jesus. As Jesus rests, oblivious to the storm and to the concerns of his friends, they fret and worry about their future, crying out in fear and terrified that they would perish.

How like the disciples many of us are. Despite our claims of faith our comfortable recitation of scripture like the 23rd Psalm, many of us waste time and energy worrying about things which may or may not happen. Too many of us are so focussed on the future that we fail to enjoy the present. Instead of placing our trust solely in God, we toss and turn in the face of life’s difficulties. We rely on our own abilities instead of having confidence that God will see us through.

For a few minutes, think of life as a boat in which God is holding you safely. When the storms rage around you, do you like Jesus place all your trust in God? Are you able to place your life completely in God’s hands? Are there anxieties and worries that you can lay to rest today?

You might like to spend some time reflecting on the sentences of scripture below. I find the two prayers useful for when I wake in the morning and before I go to sleep. (At least at those two points in the day) I make myself aware that I have chosen to place my life in God’s hands.

Scripture and prayers to remind you to trust in God

A prayer of St Francis:

Lord help me to live this day quietly, easily,

to lean on your great strength trustfully, restfully,

to wait for the unfolding of your will patiently, serenely,

to greet others peacefully, joyfully

to face tomorrow confidently, courageously.

Psalm 4:8

I will both lie down and sleep in peace;

for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

Psalm 91

God will cover you with his pinions,

and under his wings you will find refuge;

Psalm 121

The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in

from this time on and forevermore.

Psalm 131

I have  calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother,

Isaiah 49:16

I will not forget you

See I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.

Jeremiah 28:11

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD,

plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

Matthew 6:34

Do not worry about tomorrow,

for tomorrow will have enough worries of its own.

From the New Zealand Prayer Book (Compline            It is night after along day.

What has been done is done;

what has not been done has not been done.

let it be.

Thank God for God’s presence with you in all the circumstances of your life.

Let us pray:

In this storm tossed life

   give us the courage to face the obstacles that lie before us

      the confidence to trust in your love for us

          and the faith to know that you will never abandon us. Amen.

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Dispassionate Prayer

May 12, 2012

Easter 6 – 2012

John 16:16-24

Marian Free

 In the name of God whom we are drawn to praise and to whom we offer our grateful thanksgiving. Amen.

I wonder how you pray. Do you set aside a particular time to pray each day or is prayer something that you do on the run? Do you pray regularly or only when you are frightened or troubled? Does your prayer consist of a list of requests for God to meet or does it take the form of thanksgiving and praise? Is your prayer dispassionate or emotive? Is it a duty or a joy? When you pray do you find it helpful to use words that others have written, or are you comfortable finding your own words? Have you tried sitting in silence before God – waiting to hear what God might have to say or do you pray some other way?

I imagine that most of us pray in a variety of different ways at different times of our lives. In fact, in the space of a single day we might pray in several different ways.

Prayer is an interesting subject and one which is at the heart of the practice of our faith, yet I wonder how often we re-visit the topic and how often we re-think how and why we pray. I was interested this week to listen to The Spirit of Things on Radio National this week. The presenter, Rachel Kohn, has asked a number of Australians of different faiths and of no particular faith to write a spiritual diary. This week we heard from the diary of Howard Goldenberg – a Melbourne doctor. Two things struck me about Goldenberg’s report. One was his description of prayer and the other was his disciplined/structured practice of Jewish daily prayer[1].

With regard to the nature of prayer he ponders:

“Will I pray for a speedy recovery of my sick relative who is suffering a deteriorating illness? Yes, I will, I do, I have done. Why? Do I pray to change God’s mind, or to point out to God that I have a better idea than his? Or to sway God by virtue of my piety or work?

I pray, I cry out for my loved one in distress. I give voice to my wish that healing occur, but there is no expectation or obligation upon the deity. I pray because I can, because I must, but the prayer isn’t futile, it serves my need but perhaps not my purpose.”

Goldenberg voices a common experience, that there are times when we pray out of our own need, when our prayer is a cry from the heart rather than an attempt to change God’s mind or to prove that we know better than God how to manage the universe.  In a later entry, Goldenberg speaks of the daily prayer which he has practiced since he was a young child – a prayer which is more structured and impersonal than the cry from the heart; daily routine that he finds both liberating and defining not a restriction. Prayer is so much a part of his life that to not to say the daily prayer would be as uncomfortable to him as if he had not brushed his teeth. Not only prayer a part of who he is, but the daily prayer tells him who he is and reminds him both of his past and present and locates him in the community of his faith.

Our own pattern of daily prayer emerges out of the Jewish tradition and serves similar functions – to provide structure to our prayer lives, to reinforce our Christian identity and to offer dispassionate praise to God.

The early Christians continued to practice their Jewish traditions until, after the Jewish war, they were excluded from the synagogues. A regular pattern of prayer was not abandoned. Our earliest liturgical record urges believers to say the Lord’s prayer three times a day and the Apostolic Constitutions of the fourth century encourage communities to gather in the morning and the evening for the singing of Psalms and for prayer. For some time, these acts of daily prayer took place in the central church or cathedral of a city. Over time, however, attendance decreased and for centuries the daily prayer or office was limited to the monasteries where set forms of prayer were said at least seven times each day.

At the time of the Reformation, Cranmer reduced the seven daily offices to two – Morning and Evening Prayer – and once more encouraged their practice in the Parish Church. “That the people profit from daily hearing of scripture and be inflamed with the love of true religion” This had some success. On Sundays in particular, Morning and Evening Prayer were to remain the preferred form of prayer for the next 400 years.

During the last century, liturgical revision tried once again to inspire practicing Christians to adopt for themselves a regular, disciplined practice of prayer and scripture reading. A Prayer Book for Australia provided services for the morning and evening of every day of the week in the hope that families would adopt these for their family prayers. This pattern was continued in An Australian Prayer Book.

If you look in your prayer books on page 383 you will find the forms of prayer that make up the daily office – a scripture verse, a canticle, an opening prayer, one or more Psalms, a Psalm prayer, readings from the Bible, another canticle, the Lord’s Prayer, intercessions and collects. Used on a regular basis, the daily office enables us to read the New Testament and most of the Old Testament each year and the Psalter over two months[2]. To say the office you need your prayer book and a copy of the lectionary which will tell you which readings to use.

These patterns of prayer provide a structure which dispenses with the need think up one’s own prayers or to choose one’s own Psalms. They provide a framework for the day at the same time as sanctifying the day and all that happens on that day. The daily office is a form prayer which can be offered to God with no thought of ourselves. It doesn’t rely on how we feel but can be said whether we are cast down with sorrow or filled to the brim with joy. What is more, because the daily office is used by Christians throughout the world, when we join in this prayer we are linked to a prayer that never ceases, but which continues day and night wherever Christ is worshipped. The office provides a balance between daily life and prayer, between public and private prayer and it combines prayer, praise and scripture in a regular pattern. It is a practical form of prayer because it is adaptable, simple, familiar, portable and brief.

Is prayer an essential part of your being, as much a part of your daily routine as washing your face or cleaning your teeth? Is there something you can do to change that?

[2] If you don’t have a prayer book at home you could look at these sites which include the service and the daily readings: http://daily.commonworship.com/daily-new.cgi  http://www.missionstclare.com/english/index.html

The Australian and New Zealand Prayer books are not available on line as yet.

 

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