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.