'The LORD said to Abraham, "How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know."
So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the LORD. Then Abraham came near and said, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" And the LORD said, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake." Abraham answered, "Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?" And he said, "I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there." Again he spoke to him, "Suppose forty are found there." He answered, "For the sake of forty I will not do it." Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there." He answered, "I will not do it, if I find thirty there." He said, "Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there." He answered, "For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it." Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there." He answered, "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it."'
What is the first prayer that you ever learned? I remember mine, which hung on the wall of my bedroom from the time of my birth until I left for seminary. “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake; I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.” My mother and my dog prayed that little prayer with me every night, it seemed, for the first 10 years or so of my life. How sound the theology was never entered my mind, it just made me feel a closeness to God. It gave me words to say at a time when I scarcely had any of my own.
As I got older my father introduced me to another form of prayer: Compline, which he had first learned in camp settings in the 1970s. He and I would pray that Office, which is on page 127 of our Prayer Book, during my tween and teenage years, until it got so deep in my bones that I had it memorized. In both of those cases, prayer was intentional, it was repetitive to the point of becoming firmly a part of my being, and, perhaps most importantly, it was modeled for me by the people who loved me.
Humans are memetic, like all of God’s creatures, we learn by observing and mimicking others, particularly our elders. If we want to learn a principle for just about anything, it helps to look for someone who lives it. Why should prayer be any different? When one of the disciples asks Jesus to pray, it is most likely because that person has noticed Jesus spending time alone, praying. While familiar with John the Baptist’s teaching about prayer – which, according to some scholars, Jesus knew well, because he may have been a disciple of John himself – this disciple of Jesus has not been able to make a beginning, to start praying on their own. They still stand in that dark and silent space of wanting to pray but being unable to do so, that wide gap between desiring and doing.
How relieved that disciple must have been – and perhaps how relieved we are – to hear Jesus say confidently, as though everyone within earshot will understand, “Here’s how you do it!” The outline he gives is simple: ask for God’s way of doing things to become our way; ask for everyone’s daily needs to be met; ask to be forgiven and to forgive others; and then ask for the strength to resist any of the temptations that tug us away from all of this. And to get us in a right mindset, Jesus has us not address God as some kind of “divine you up there,” far away and unknowable, but to address God as a child addresses a parent. Jesus used “Abba!” which means Father; you may have a different word. Whatever that may be, the rationale is pretty sound, that prayer begins with the hopeful, innocent, curious heart of a child reaching out to a loving parent.
This so-called Lord’s Prayer, which appears here and in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the Sermon on the Mount, gives us not just a handy dandy prayer to go to when all others escape us, but it also provides the model for every prayer that we make. It’s relational – addressing God in a direct and familial manner – it asks only for what is needed right now, nothing more, and it is rooted in God’s goodness and mercy. What it is not is a cosmic vending machine, whereby Jesus shows us the right combination of words to get the thing from God. Nor is it a magic potion – a dab of this and a pinch of that – which, when done in a precise manner, will accomplish exactly what we want or need. This prayer calls all who pray it away from individualistic notions of God’s provision and places us right in the midst of God’s self-giving love. This prayer, all prayer, Jesus shows us, is relationship. It’s also persistent.
Look at Abraham, who has a very persistent relationship with God. Due to their egregious sins – those being the lack of hospitality and the neglect of the poor, the widows, and the resident aliens in their land – the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are being marked for destruction. Abraham, though, knowing that God would never smite an entire people if there were any righteous and good-hearted folks in their midst, pleads on their behalf, pestering God. “What if there are 50 good people? Will you spare everyone?” God says yes. What about 40? 30? 20? 10? Yes, yes, yes, and yes, God will spare them. Abraham is persistent in his prayer for God’s mercy. The negotiating ends there, but we can infer that it went all the way down to Abraham making his plea for God to spare both cities, even if there was but one single good person there.
This gets paired with Jesus using two parables to illustrate the nature of prayer to his disciples: prayer is like a man who keeps knocking on the door of his friend’s house at midnight with a great need; he keeps knocking and knocking until finally the friend gets up to help. Furthermore, prayer for adults is no different than a child who asks for a fish or an egg from their parent. No one would willingly give their child a snake or a scorpion instead, so it is with God, who hears us and does not give us anything that is harmful. Prayer, as embodied by Abraham and illustrated by Jesus, is persistence, it’s pestering God at midnight; pestering God to forgive us, to provide for us, not necessarily what we want, but what we need. It makes me think of a scene from the movie the Apostle, in which Robert Duvall plays a disgraced preacher, who at one point in the middle of the night gets up and shouts so loud and persistently at God that it wakes the neighbors. We can, and even should, nag God to show up in our lives in ways that help us to show up too. We don’t have to stand at the brink of prayer and never make a beginning. We look to the source. To the very prayer Jesus taught us. What is the Lord’s Prayer if not a persistent plea that we make at every single liturgy? Maybe for some us, every single day?
I saw a church sign many years ago that said, “Prayer changes things.” I struggle with that concept because, surely, if prayer worked that way, Gaza would not be in rubble and children in Africa would not have had aid cut off from them by our government. Prayer alone, left there by itself, I’m not certain, changes things, but I do know that prayer changes people, and people – with God’s help – change things. That’s why I’m always quick to remind y’all to never underestimate how important prayer is, because it’s not just words we recite, it’s choices we make, grace we show, forgiveness we give, and bread we share. That’s how the kingdom comes!
It's those persistent prayers that we say again and again and again, which work their way through us like medicine that we didn’t even know we needed, getting into our bodies as well as our souls. Whether its’s Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, the Lord’s Prayer, the Jesus Prayer, the Magnificat, or the entire Office of Compline, those often repeated, persistent prayers change us. What, I wonder, are such prayers for you? Which ones are you modeling and passing on to others, especially our children? What ways are your prayers persistent? What do you learn about yourself, about God, and about that relationship when you pray? What are the needs for which you are willing to keep pestering God? After all, God is persistent and never stops pestering us. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds.
