Moving Beyond the Formulas Luke 1:1-13 July 25, 2004, Year C, 8 Pentecost, Proper 12 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Lee, our youngest son, began playing tennis at age 8, and took it serious enough that before we moved to Texas, he was number one in the state in his age bracket and ranked among the top players in the southeastern United States. Such level of play comes both as blessing and curse. You see, tennis, a sport in which one wins or loses based on his or her individual performance, can generate a lot of stress - for the player and for the player's parents. We were blessed to find an ideal instructor for Lee. Not only did she help develop his tennis skills, she helped him, Diane and me, deal with the stress of tournament tennis. After each match, whether he had won or lost, whether he played his best or his worst, she always greeted him with a smile and the same two questions: "Did you have fun? What did you learn?" During one of his matches, I noticed although he was winning soundly, after he lost a few key points, Lee reverted to a style of play he no longer used. He had taken the lead in the match using his most recently acquired skills but now failed to use them. When I commented to his instructor on this, she responded, "When he's under stress, he's going to resort to the familiar." Without acknowledging it, I knew she was talking about more than just tennis. To read today's Gospel literally would be the same as hearing her comment as only about tennis. A literal reading tempts us to say that this Gospel gives us two things: the exact words of a prayer to say, and that if we pray hard and long enough, we can get God to give us what we want. Such literalism leads to frustration and heartbreak when we come up against the hard things in life. "I asked, but I didn't receive what I wanted. I knocked but that door wasn't opened." The Gospel is not about formulas. It is about not resorting to the familiar. Luke frequently describes Jesus praying before significant events. The disciples, his constant companions, notice him at prayer. Other religious leaders taught their disciples to pray. "Teach us to pray," they ask Jesus, "as John taught his disciples." If John taught his disciples to pray, then by all means, Jesus should do the same. However, the real problem for the disciples is not that did not know how to pray but their rigidity in the legalistic practice of prayer and lack of appreciation of prayer's value. Today's reading is not a "how-to" reading. It does not give us a recipe of sayings we can call on when we want or need something. We need to look deeper, to take a look at these few verses in the context of our Gospel readings for the last two Sundays, and then we'll see we're getting a whole lot more. Remember the last two Sunday's Gospels? First, the lawyer wanted a legalistic answer about finding the kingdom of God. Then, he wanted a similarly legalistic answer as to who was his neighbor. Instead, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, reminding the lawyer, reminding us that through our actions, our works, the way we treat others, we show whether we understand we're living in the kingdom of God: a kingdom in which neighbors are determined by need and helping others and not by physical location, race, or social class. Then, last week as we considered the story of Martha and Mary, Jesus does not put one sister above the other. He reminds us that we must support our actions by prayer. We must also constantly renew and strengthen ourselves to do God's will by listening to God's word and sharing together in prayer, just as we're doing right now. In today's Gospel Jesus answers his disciples' request, "Teach us to pray . . ." not "Teach us WHAT to pray." Jesus continues teaching on what it means to be his disciples. He offers them no magic words to say. Instead he teaches them about the nature of the one to whom they pray. While our English translation says, "When you pray, say . . .", the original Greek reads, "When you pray, you are saying . . ." Jesus speaks to his own people. The prayer we have named "the Lord's Prayer" is not an exclusively Christian prayer. Any devout Jew could pray these same words today, and many did pray exactly this way in Jesus' time. Jesus reminds his listeners they already knew how to pray; they'd done it all their lives. He makes them conscious again of the outline or the form of a prayer that may had become too familiar. He then assures them that if we humans will act to meet human need, how much more God will do so. Consider these verses we've turned into a contemporary hymn. "Ask and it will be given to you." Ask whom? "Knock and it will be opened." Knock where? Too often we say blithely, "God is the answer," and then we try to set things up as a "me-and-Jesus" vertical line. What would it be like if we lived the prayer we say each week? What would it be like if we lived our lives as if God's name was truly sovereign over the world and we recognized that God's kingdom has come and we are part of it? What would it be like if we prayed for our day by day human need as if there can be no separation between end of time visions and life here and now? What would it be like if we prayed recognizing that being forgiven and forgiving are inseparable? What would it be like if we all realized we have to be part of this prayer, and if we're part of this family, then we need to be the ones who are asked, and we are going to be the ones who are sought out by the needy, and we are the ones who must open our doors? What would it be like if we really opened our hearts and our doors not only to people in need outside the church, but to each other, inside the church, giving and receiving the same kind of love Jesus modeled for us? If we can say this really is who we are, then we're working out what this Gospel means for us as a people of God who happen to be Christians, who happen to be Episcopalians, living and working in this place. Two weeks ago we learned our neighbor is anyone in need and the one willing to help. Last week we learned that at times we need to be in Jesus' presence rather than about busyness and anxiety. Today, Jesus reminds us: yes, this is how we pray. We don't need to do anything outlandish or extraordinary. But, we do need to keep our prayer in front of our eyes. We need to remember God is the holy One. That means we need to remember while God does provide for us, we need to reach out to others and mirror God to them. We need to forgive to be forgiven. We need to remember, however good we are, we still fail; we are still sinners, all of us, but God still forgives us. If God forgives us, and we are God's people, then shouldn't we forgive each other? When we are open to the unconditional forgiveness of God, then we will come to be known as a people who welcome the stranger and the sinner. Understanding scripture requires seeing the potentiality of ourselves in the characters. Sometimes, we, as the lawyer seeking to justify himself or the disciples requesting a set prayer find it easier to have a formula or to resort to the familiar than to live the Gospel. We might see ourselves sometimes as Samaritans, sometimes as Marthas or Marys, or as priests and Levites stepping over the body on the Jericho Road, but above all we should see that we're a community of faith. We're people of prayer living in the kingdom of God. Jesus didn't teach an end of time kingdom, but constantly taught of the kingdom as here - now. By our baptism, we promised to live a different life - the type of life God would live, the kind of life God did live in Jesus: a life that looks to God through praying together and reading the Scriptures, through our Book of Common Prayer, and through our sharing in the Eucharist. It's not always an easy life, but it is life in which we are invited by a loving God to go beyond formulas, to go beyond the familiar, to enter each day in prayer. Then, at the end of each day, if we'll listen, whether we experienced pain or joy, whether we were righteous or wicked, that same loving God greets us asking, "Did you have fun? What did you learn?"