What is prayer?

Genesis 18:20-32

20 Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! 21 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.”

22 So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 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? 25 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?” 26 And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” 27 Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord, I who am but dust and ashes. 28 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.” 29 Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” 30 Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” 31 He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” 32 Then he said, “Oh, do not let my 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.” 33 And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.

Luke 11:1-13

1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 So he said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, may your name be revered as holy.    May your kingdom come.

3    Give us each day our daily bread.

4     And forgive us our sins,        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.    And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

5 And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7 And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? 13 If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

The passage from Genesis shows Abraham coming near to God and then speaking to God, which  seems pretty much to be the definition or prayer.  He comes to God presuming - for good reason - that God, having pronounced judgment on Sodom, intends to destroy the wicked city.  His brother-in-law, Lot, lives there with his family, and Abraham wants to prevent their destruction.  So he enters into a kind of negotiation with God, asking if God would spare the city if 50 righteousness people could be found there, and once God says yes, Abraham incrementally bargains the number down to 10 righteous people needed for God to not to destroy Sodom.  

Abraham comes to God to ask God not to something it seem that God really wants to do, and he extracts a concession from God - though soon Sodom is destroyed anyway, as Lot rushes to escape.  There are many disconcerting aspects of this story.  For one thing, the whole notion of collective guilt, that a city and not just its individual members deserve judgment, is foreign to us - and then there’s the issue of why God would destroy anyone for any reason.  God is portrayed as vindictive and it’s Abraham who pushes for a bit of mercy.  God has the power, but it’s hard not to conclude that Abraham is the morally superior actor in the story (unless you thing the moral thing is indeed for the people of Sodom to be destroyed).  

The thing is, strange as this passage seems, it resembles how we might, at least at times, imagine what its like to come to God in prayer.   We too might imagine ourselves coming to God asking for something that God doesn’t really want to do, desiring some good thing that God is reluctant to give, and the game becomes to ask sufficiently tactfully, deferentially, in order to win God’s consent.  We come to God because God has the power, but it’s we who are the moral actors.

Even if you don’t think about it in quite those terms, it’s certainly the case that, if you’ve ever prayed, you’ve had the experience of that prayer apparently going unanswered.  You come requesting something that seems pretty obviously good — the healing of this person, peace in this place, etc. - but nothing happens.   Which, if we assume that God is indeed all powerful, leads us to conclude either that there is some providential reason God either can’t grant our petition or that the continued suffering or conflict or whatever somehow is necessary in advancing God’s plans - or, worst of all, we conclude that we actually care about this stuff more than God does, and so prayer becomes about wearing God down or asking in a sufficiently clever or flattering way which compels God to act.   

I suspect that many of us live with this picture of God -  or at least that it’s in the mix - that we experience God as capricious, a cosmic caesar arbitrarily deciding whether we live or die in the colosseum of life.  

This kind of God would be worth fearing, but would not be worthy of our love.  And fortunately Jesus himself corrects this faulty picture.  The version of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke is remarkably short - shorter than one found in Matthew - but it’s the explanation that I want to focus on.  In the first illustration, Jesus calls us to imagine a man who, at midnight, has a friend arrives, but there’s no food to set before him.  In a culture where providing hospitality is essential, this is a desperate situation, so the man quickly goes to his neighbor’s house to ask for some bread.  The neighbor asleep and irritated that he’d be awoken, but you the man keeps on knocking and eventually the neighbor gets up to provide what you need.  

This illustration might seem to reinforce the picture from Genesis.  God doesn’t really want to help, but if you bother him enough he’ll give you want you want just so you’ll leave him alone.  (Jesus also tells the parable of the widow who comes seeking justice from the unjust judge, who eventually grants it, not because he cares, but just to get her off his back).  Jesus’ point is not that God is like this, but that even in the human realm, persistence pays off, that even the disinterested and unjust eventually come around, so how much more then will persistence pay off with a just and righteous God.  

In the second illustration, Jesus asks who among his audience would give their children a scorpion if they ask for a fish, or a stone if they ask for bread?  If even we know how to give good gifts, how much more, Jesus says, will God give to those who ask.  Jesus instructs us to address God as father, and he portrays God as like a father, but as the perfect father, one how gives us what we want - what we need - who hears and responds.  

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

This sounds a lot more like the God we want to believe in - a God who is worthy of our love.  God is not an absentee Father, not a self-interested, stingy father, not an abusive Father - but  a loving Father who desires nothing more than to give us what need.  

The thing is, the same problem of unanswered prayer remains.  Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread, but some people starve; he teaches us to pray that we escape the time of trial, but some people become overwhelmed and despair.  Presumably some of these people pray too.  He teaches us to pray for the kingdom to come, and yet it doesn’t appear to be any nearer.   It sure seems that we come asking for a fish and bread and that life instead gives us scorpions and stones.  

To be honest, I really can’t make much sense of prayer.  As a Father myself, I do enjoy (at times, at least) giving my boys what they ask for, but I’m a better Father when I provide before they have to ask.  I usually know their needs better than they do.  It’s perplexing why we need to ask our heavenly Father for anything, for shouldn’t he already know our needs and be inclined to provide them?  What is the point of asking?  

There’s nothing that makes my boys more upset than when I do not give one of them something that the other got.  They experience this as a personal diminishment, as a fundamental injustice.  We have learned that it’s better to give them both the same thing, or not to give anything at all.  When it comes to God, it doesn’t so much bother me that some people have more than I do, but I find that I do not even want to pray for myself because I don’t want a Father who grants my relatively small requests but does not do so for others, or who possesses omnipotence but uses it to scatter meager blessings rather than addressing the really big problems in our lives and in the world.  

I have come to believe that prayer makes sense less as a means of getting what we want from God and more as a means of transforming our desires so that we want the things that God wants.    In this passage, Jesus never says that God will give us whatever we ask - rather, he said that God will give the Holy Spirit to whomever asks.  Without attempting a thorough explanation of what it might mean to “receive” and “have” the Holy Spirit, the emphasis here seems on God’s generosity, not in granting our every desire, but in supplying God’s abiding presence even - perhaps especially when - life is rough.  Ultimately the only truly needful thing, the only thing worth desiring, is God, and God promises to provide.  

Still, we’re taught to pray that God give us our daily bread - and we will pray that in just a moment - so it’s inescapable that if the faith is going to make any sense that God, having taught us to make this prayer, is going to have answer it.  My boys, once something has been promised, do not like to having to wait.  It does not satisfy their longing when I counsel patience, when I describe the scene when they receive what they want.  Likewise, we are impatient people, and though it may not feel entirely satisfying, ultimately our hope is not just in the day when God grants this or that wish, but in that time when the kingdom comes on earth as it is heaven, not just in part, but in full.