Words We No Longer Avoid: Prayer ~ Matthew 6:5-15; Ephesians 3:14-21

 

There are some words we have learned to avoid. Not because they’re hurtful, but because we secretly fear we don’t know how to do them—or we no longer can do them the same way, and we’re afraid to ask, to be vulnerable, to be seen as unsure. These words carry expectations and longing. They make us wonder whether we are doing Christianity correctly. Prayer is often one of those words.

Talking about prayer can sometimes feel a lot like talking about sex. Both are intimate and important, and often over-glamorized. We hear about people who pray for hours, who have extraordinary experiences of God, who seem to know exactly what to say and how to say it. And we begin to wonder, “What’s wrong with me?” Instead of prayer becoming a place where we encounter God, it becomes one more place where we feel like we’re failing or inadequate.

Maybe your prayer life doesn't look like much. Maybe you get distracted. Or you don't know what to say. Or you pray and nothing seems to happen. Maybe the word itself produces more guilt than desire. And yet something in you still longs for it. We ache to know and be known. We’re afraid but don’t want to avoid. We want to bring our whole selves and experience the presence of God rather than merely talk at God or think about God. So today is not one more manual about prayer. I don't want to tell you how to become a spiritual superstar. I want to suggest something much simpler and far more lovely:

Prayer is paying attention to the God who is already lovingly paying attention to us.

Mary Oliver once wrote, “I don't know exactly what prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention.” What if prayer doesn't begin with knowing exactly what it is or what to say? What if it begins with noticing, becoming aware and awake – to God, to ourselves, to one another, to all of creation—all in the presence of a God who is always awake to us?

That's important because we often think of prayer as a way of getting God to do something. We ask. God responds. We perform well enough, God rewards us. We pray with enough faith, God gives us what we want. We find the right words, God listens. And if nothing happens, we assume we failed.

But Jesus appears determined to dismantle that entire way of thinking. In Matthew 6, Jesus says, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” And then he says something remarkable: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask.” Before you ask. Prayer isn't informing God. Prayer isn't getting God's attention. Prayer isn't persuading God to care. Prayer is the recognition that God is already attentive. God already knows. God already sees. God already loves. God is already there. Prayer is waking up to a reality that is already God-filled. What if prayer is not a battle of wits we can fail at? What if it’s more like becoming aware of the sun shine on our face and responding? Isn’t that what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 5? He became awake to the beauty and warmth of the sun and recognized it as the love of God poured out on all of us -even our enemies, he said.

And that's why Jesus’s first teaching on prayer was: You don't have to inform or perform. You don't have to pretend you're a prayer giant. You don't have to sound spiritual. You don't have to beg God to shine on you. And you don't have to find the perfect words. Jesus says, “Don’t heap up empty phrases.” Stop trying to crack the code. You don't have to manipulate God to love you. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask.”

Imagine a toddler approaching a loving parent. We don’t ask, “What's the correct way for a three-year-old to approach?” What's the right posture? What's the proper vocabulary? What's the acceptable length of the request? No good parent worries about that. And no child should ever need to ask. A child simply comes. Sometimes the child is articulate. Sometimes the child cries. Sometimes the child doesn't know what they want. And the parent listens and loves any way.

So wake up! The person God wants to meet in prayer is simply you. Not the polished version. Not the spiritual version. Not the version who has figured everything out. You. As you are. Which means that if you simply come as yourself, even in pain, or distress, or worry, you’re already doing it right.

My wife once experienced a painful season when she couldn’t seem to pray. The words would get stuck in her throat. So she went to our priest and poured out everything that was happening. The priest listened and gently said, “When you are rocking your child, just turn your attention toward God. That will be prayer enough.” Not another assignment. Not another technique. Just: Turn your attention toward God. It’s enough.

Jesus' invitation to go into your room is, in part, an invitation away from performance and toward presence. Sometimes the hardest thing about prayer is that we're trying so hard to pray, to produce an experience, to say the right thing, to stop our anxieties. And Jesus says: Be quiet. Be yourself. Be present.

The lovely Catholic priest Henri Nouwen spent much of his life writing about prayer. He said that prayer is not primarily accomplishing something for God. It’s about entering the presence of the God who already calls us beloved. It’s learning to pay attention to our belovedness—and to the belovedness of our friends, our family, our neighbors, our enemies, even strangers. Paying attention to belovedness is the heart of prayer. Not control. Surrender. Not manipulation. Attention. Not performance. Presence.

Prayer might mean saying, “God, I don't know exactly what you're doing. I don't know what you're going to do. I don't even know exactly what I need. But I trust that you are here. And I make room for your love.” That's why Paul's prayer in Ephesians matters so much. God is the one lovingly at work. God strengthens. God roots. God grounds. God fills. God works. And all of this more than we can ask for or imagine. And our response? Our response is the end of vs. 21: “Amen.” Amen is a paying attention word. It means, “Yes.” “I trust you.” “I agree.” “May it be so.” All rolled into one word.

Paul's prayer is essentially one enormous invitation for us to “amen” the inescapable love of God. To awaken to the notion that God is strengthening us. Amen. God is rooting us in love. Amen. God is doing something deeper than we can understand. Amen. Perhaps that's our contribution to prayer. Not brilliance. Not eloquence. Not spiritual performance. Simply: Yes! Yes, God. I am here. I'm paying attention. I'm listening. I receive your love. Amen.

And if prayer is paying attention, then prayer isn't limited to what happens when we close our eyes. It’s also what happens when we open them, when we work, or walk, or play. Prayer is noticing with God the loneliness in someone's voice. Prayer awakening to the loveliness of a tree that God created. Prayer is noticing a person God loves who has been overlooked. Prayer is awareness of your own anger before it becomes cruelty or noticing your sadness before it becomes numbness. Prayer is receiving beauty without needing to possess it. Prayer is seeing the stranger. Seeing creation. Seeing yourself. And bringing that recognition and awareness into the presence of God.

This is why I don't want to suggest that there is one correct way to pray. Some of you may attentively discover God in silence. Some while walking. Some through breath prayers, music, Scripture, journaling, the Psalms, or the Lord's Prayer. Some may pray while gardening, cooking, driving, rocking a child, sitting beside someone in a hospital room, or walking through the woods.

Some of you may need words. Some of you won’t. Some may need to cry. Some may need to yell at God. Some may simply need to breathe a name. The practice isn't the point. Presence is. The point isn't finding the practice that makes you look most holy. The point is discovering what helps you become more attentive to the God who is already shining on you and always has been. And this is what Jesus is doing with the Lord's Prayer. He doesn't give us a complicated formula. He gives us a little prayer that gathers up our whole lives.  So quickly become awake to a couple of phrases:

“Our Father in heaven.” Before we ask for anything, Jesus gives us relationship to God and others. Our Father. Not simply “my” Father. Our. Prayer reminds us that we never pray alone and that God doesn’t know how to be absent. The person we love, the stranger we don't know, even the person we would rather avoid—all of them are included by “our Father.” Everyone is family.

“Hallowed be your name.” To hallow means to recognize something as holy. Prayer becomes attention again. It’s hallowing the world while we walk through it. This person belongs to God. This body belongs to God. This tree belongs to God. This stranger belongs to God. This difficult person belongs to God. This world belongs to God.

“Your kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Now prayer becomes attention to what is not yet as it should be. We notice what is broken. We awaken to injustice, suffering, loneliness, hunger, and the places where love seems absent. And we ask, “God, make this world look more like your intention. Make our lives look more like your love.”

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Notice how physical the prayer is. It invites us to become aware of spiritual things like bread. Bodies. Food. Need. Forgiveness. We are not escaping the world in prayer. We are becoming more attentive to the world.

And then: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Again, prayer changes the way we see one another. Jesus is teaching us a prayer that is less about controlling God and more about becoming attentive to others. Prayer gives us a way to acknowledge and bring our whole selves: our longing, our hunger, our guilt, our relationships, our fears, our desires, to God.

Bring it. Bring your whole self. Because God doesn't want the edited version of you. God wants you. The distracted you. The cynical you. The grieving you. The joyful you. The exhausted you. The skeptical you. The you who knows exactly what you believe and the you who isn't sure anymore. That is the person God is attentive to.

Prayer is the practice of refusing to avoid ourselves. We don't have to hide the parts of ourselves we find frightening. We don't have to clean ourselves up before we come to God. We don't have to make ourselves spiritually impressive. We come as we are. And we trust we are being “rooted and grounded in love.”

And eventually, almost without noticing, love begins to grow through us. The goal of prayer isn't simply that we would become people who pray. The goal is that we would become people who love attentively like God, who see wholly like God, who act responsively like God. People who pay attention. People who listen. People who notice. People who can sit with another person's pain without immediately trying to fix it. People who can receive beauty without possessing it. People who can encounter mystery without demanding an explanation. People who have become so rooted in love that they begin to become love. That's why prayer matters. Not because God needs our prayers. But because we need to become aware of and receive the love God is always giving so that we can offer the love God is always offering.

I think Mary Oliver is right. None of us knows exactly what prayer is or what it does. But we can learn to pay attention. And perhaps when we pay attention—really pay attention—we discover and experience that the fullness of God we have been trying so hard to find has been with us all along. And we whisper: Amen. I’m here. I see. I’m listening. I receive your love. I’ll give it away. I’m making room. Amen.

 

Words We No Longer Avoid: Doubt ~ John 20:24-29

 

There are some words we would rather not say out loud. Not because they are unimportant, but because we were led to believe that they were dangerous and made to feel afraid. “Doubt” is one of those words. Many of us were taught that good Christians believe. Really believe. Without hesitation. Without questions. Without uncertainty. We learned that faith meant being sure. And so when questions began to appear, we became frightened. “What if I don't know?” “What if I change my mind?” “What if something is harder to believe than I thought?” And perhaps most frightening of all: “What if my questions mean that I am no longer a Christian? No longer welcomed at church? No longer loved by my family. No longer accepted by my friends?”

The fear is real. Doubt can involve severe consequences about our identity and belonging. I’ve personally encountered that fearful response: “Why would you doubt that?” “How can you call yourself a Christian if you don't believe that?” “You just need more faith.” As though faith were the ability to turn off my questions. As though God’s love was threatened by my hesitation.

But Scripture tells a very different story. Abraham questioned. Moses questioned. Job questioned. The psalmists questioned. John the Baptist, sitting in prison, sent word to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And even Jesus, hanging on the cross, cried out the question of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Bible does not hide doubt. It gives it a face, a voice, and a central role in the drama of faith.

And perhaps its most famous lead actor is “Doubting Thomas.” Although I think we've remembered him unfairly. We don't call Peter “Peter the Denier.” We don't call Martha “Martha the Anxious.” But for about 1,400 years we've remembered this disciple by this one unfortunate nickname. John doesn't introduce him that way. That was never his name.

He appears in our passage as “Thomas, one of the twelve.” And even after he questions Easter morning, John still calls him “one of the disciples.” He still belongs. He’s still part of the community. He’s still welcome. He still shows up. Perhaps that’s the first thing John wants us to understand: doubts don’t place us outside the family of faith. Sometimes doubt happens right in the middle of it.

If you pay attention to Thomas throughout John's Gospel, doubt is hardly his defining characteristic. He’s courageous. When Jesus decides to return to Judea after Lazarus has died, the disciples are frightened because they know going back could mean death. Thomas is the one who says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (Jn. 11:16) That's not exactly the voice of a spiritual coward.

Later, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going away to prepare a place for them. He says, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas speaks up: “Lord, we don't know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5) Thomas is willing to say what everyone was thinking.

And now, after Jesus has been crucified, the other disciples tell Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” And Thomas says, in effect, “I can't simply take your word for it.” Maybe Thomas isn't the disciple who has less faith. Maybe he’s the disciple who is less willing to pretend. He won't manufacture certainty. He won't say something he doesn't believe just because everyone else believes it. And there’s something deeply courageous and faithful about that.

And the other disciples don't lecture him. They don't shame him. They don't tell him he isn't a real Christian. They don't ask him to leave. They simply keep him in the room. A week later, Thomas is still there. He hasn't resolved his questions. He hasn't had some dramatic spiritual breakthrough. And yet, he keeps showing up with everyone. Why? Because they loved each other. Because even in the midst of his doubt, he knew he belonged. That’s what faith does in the face of pain and doubt. Because faith is not certainty. Faith in the way of Jesus is simply loving people when clarity disappears. Sometimes faith is choosing to remain in relationship while mystery remains.

Sometimes staying in the room like Thomas is all faith looks like. You keep praying. You keep coming to worship. You keep asking questions. You keep talking to God, even when you're not sure God is listening. You keep the door open a crack.

And then Jesus comes. John says that Jesus stands among them and says, “Peace be with you.” And then he turns toward Thomas and doesn't give him an argument. He doesn't kick him out. He says, “Put your finger here.” The evidence Jesus offers Thomas is not a debate topic. It’s a wound. Perhaps that’s because Jesus understood Thomas’ wound. Jesus had prayed with anguish. He questioned the Father's seeming absence. His own personal encounter of faith did not require him to silence or cancel those wounded experiences.

And this matters enormously for how we think about faith. Christianity does not say suffering is an illusion. It does not say the wounds aren't real.  No, Jesus’ wounds are still there, and now, held inside resurrection, they are proof of unkillable love even in the face of denial and doubt. So when Thomas struggles. Jesus doesn't answer by becoming less wounded and more defensive. He moves closer and shows him his wounds.

And that should change how we think about doubt. Because maybe the answer to our deepest doubts is not always another intellectual explanation. Perhaps it’s an encounter with wounded love. Love that suffers with us. Love that shares wounds. Love that is willing to be touched. Love that refuses to abandon us in the places where we hurt. Love that enters locked rooms. Love that bears scars. Love that keeps loving us even when we still have questions and doubts.

I’ve shared with you before that when I was working on my Ph.D., I had an atheist friend named Greg who loved to debate religion. One afternoon he walked into my office and announced, “All right. Prove to me that God exists.” I surprised him by saying, “Okay, come to church with me. Not because church settles every intellectual question. It doesn't. Not because Christians have figured everything out. We haven't. But because if you want to know what Christianity looks like, come meet people whose lives still bear wounds yet somehow continue to radiate hope. Meet people who have experienced grief and still find a way to love. Meet people who have been betrayed and somehow learn forgiveness. Meet people who have been disappointed by the church and yet still come back because they haven't given up on Jesus. Meet people who doubt but keep showing up, whose lives are not evidence of perfection but evidence that love can survive things that should have destroyed it.” Friends, what if the wound of faithful love is the church's best testimony? Not certainty. Not perfection. Wounded people who keep leaning into one another. Doubters who still show up and always belong. I think that's why Jesus shows Thomas his scars. Because scars are love's best evidence.

Some of us have been taught that we need to hide our questions in order to be faithful. But what if our doubts could become part of our own wounded testimony? Where you could say, “I don't know.” “I struggle with this.” “I don't understand.” “I’m angry with God.” “I’m not sure God is there.” And instead of hearing, “What's wrong with you?” we heard, “Sit with us.” “Let's wonder together.” “Peace to you.” “This is my wound.”

But Jesus does more than show his wounds and share our doubts. In verse 27, he says, “Do not become apistos but pistos.” [Me ginou apistos alla pistos]. The Greek hinges on two key words: apistos and pistos. Pistos is a relational word meaning faithful, trustworthy, reliable. Apistos is formed with the little prefix a-, which negates it: unfaithful, untrustworthy, unreliable.  And then there is the verb ginou. It means, “become.” Jesus doesn't say, “Thomas, stop asking questions.” He says, “Do not become untrusting. Become trusting.” Because the contrast isn't exactly doubt versus faith. In fact, the three Greek words which literally mean “doubt” are not used here. The contrast is more personal and social. It’s about whether Thomas will remain closed off or lean in. Jesus isn't demanding that Thomas suddenly possess perfect intellectual certainty. Jesus is inviting him to become a person who trusts in him. Perhaps that's why the next thing Thomas says is not, “Now I have sufficient evidence.” He says, “My Lord and my God.”

Thomas doesn’t solve a problem. He trusts a person. He moves from uncertainty toward relationship. From demanding proof toward recognition. From “I need to know everything” to “I trust the One who comes.” That is the kind of faith Jesus seems to invite. Not the faith that eliminates every question. The faith that has learned where to bring its questions. Because some of us were raised to think doubt is the opposite of faith. But what if the opposite of faith isn’t doubt but indifference?

What if doubt means you care enough to ask? What if doubt means you love enough to keep searching? What if doubt means you’re honest enough to say, “This doesn't make sense to me.”? What if doubt is what happens when love refuses easy answers? Sometimes you don't lose faith. Sometimes you lose an inadequate version of it. And that can be frightening. But it can also be holy.

Thomas's experience of doubt allows him to encounter a Jesus who is larger than the Jesus he thought he understood. And perhaps that's true for us as well. Sometimes the God we lose in doubt is a God we needed to lose. A God who was too small. A God who always rewarded good behavior. A God who could be explained. A God who was never present in suffering. A God who was threatened by questions. A God who needed us to be certain in order to love us or save us.

Doubt can be both a painful and fruitful gift. Doubt can make us humble. Doubt can make us listen. Doubt can make us compassionate. Because once you've lived with your own wounded questions, you become less eager to condemn someone else's. You begin to understand that everyone is carrying questions you cannot see.

And maybe that's why we need the church. Not a church where everyone pretends to be certain. But a church where we can remain together while we touch each other’s wounds. A church where the person whose faith is strong today can sit beside the person whose faith is barely breathing. Because someday the roles may reverse. Today you may be Thomas. Tomorrow you may be the one who says, “We have seen the Lord.” And someday someone else may need you to say, “It's okay. Hang out with us. You still belong here. I’ve struggled too. Trust me.”

And I wonder if that's what some of us need to hear today. Maybe you've been afraid of your questions. Maybe you've been carrying a doubt you thought you weren't allowed to say. Maybe something happened to you that made the faith you once had impossible to hold in quite the same way. Maybe you prayed and God seemed silent. Maybe you suffered and the explanations you were given stopped making sense. Maybe you're not sure what you believe anymore and worry that you no longer belong.

Then hear this: You are not disqualified. Your questions do not frighten God. Your uncertainty does not make you unwelcome. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to manufacture certainty. You don't have to hide. Stay in the room. Keep showing up. Keep asking. Keep praying. Keep listening. Keep bringing your questions into the presence of Christ. Because the good news of Christianity is not that every question has been answered. It’s that Jesus comes with wounded love even while the questions are still there. He comes while the doors are locked. He comes while fear still lingers. He comes while grief still aches. He comes while Thomas is still uncertain. He comes with wounds in his hands. He comes with a scar in his side. He comes not first with an argument, but with presence. And he says, “Peace be with you. Look at my wounds. You can trust me.”

And perhaps the invitation of Jesus to Thomas is also his invitation to us: Don't become closed. Don't become cynical. Don't become hardened. Don't pretend. Become trusting. Become open. Come closer. And sometimes, after all the questions, after all the wrestling, after all the uncertainty, after all the things we still don't understand, faith won’t say, “I have figured it all out.” Faith simply stays in the room and says, “I believe that I belong. And though I do not know everything. I can trust my Lord and my God.” Amen.