Last Sunday I mentioned a scene in Marilynne Robinson’s book, Home — the scene involving Robert Boughton, and old patriarch and a main character in the novel.  One day his children ruined a neighbor’s alfalfa field by playing baseball in it.  When Robert Boughton heard of the damage he immediately told his kids, “Of course you will have to apologize…well, you’d had better get it over with.”  And he sent them off to apologize.

The beautiful of thing about Robert Boughton’s character is that he’s really complex, not always so wise and winsome.  For instance, Robert has the annoying habit — he’s a retired minister, by the way — now in his old age, of asking other people to pray before meals at his house.

Don’t get me wrong — on the surface, that’s fantastic.  I’m all for praying before meals, and especially when it’s not the pastor who does it.  Always having a pastor pray communicates that prayer is something set apart for only some people to do; prayer is for everyone, young or old, ordained or not, gifted with words or tongue-tied.

But the annoying habit of Robert Boughton is not that he asks others to pray before supper, but that after the prayer, he always has to say something about it.After his son prays, he’ll say a terse, “That was fine.”  Or, “Well that prayer was a little brief, but I guess that’ll do.”  And, sometimes, he’s not even that nice, and actually takes a jab at the one who’s praying, or implies that the prayer wasn’t really good enough.

In fact, Robert Boughton is so critical of prayers, you almost wonder whether he’d complain if someone prayed the prayer Jesus teaches in today’s gospel lesson from Luke.  Luke writes that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, and Jesus answered pretty directly: “When you pray, say….” and then he goes on to teach a slightly shortened version of what we now know as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Of course, by chapter 11 Jesus has been teaching by example plenty already.  [Fun fact: Luke’s gospel probably has the most focus on Jesus at prayer as compared to the other gospels.]  So the disciples knew that careful prayer wasn’t something Jesus just did before meals.  But even so, the disciples asked him how to pray.  And Jesus answers in a uncharacteristically straightforward way in just five sentences.Of course, those five sentences — and the slightly different and longer version of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew — have kept the church occupied for a good two thousand years.  Like almost all Christians, we still pray that prayer today.  So, as we say down south, we “just might could” take a sermon to look at Jesus’ prayer more closely.

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

The prayer begins with an address, “Father.”  God is our parent, our creator, the one who, in the words of A Brief Statement of Faith is “like a mother will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home.”  God is caring like a benevolent parent, but also, as Jesus says, “hallowed be your name”– God is holy.

The beginning of the prayer is like a confession: God is God — creator of all, and entirely holy.  The coming kingdom is God’s — the present and the future too is in God’s hands.  So Jesus opens the prayer with a little snippet of what we believe.

Give us each day our daily bread.

Jesus’ prayer now moves from confession to petition.  He address three basic needs we have: food, forgiveness, and preservation.  The prayer is direct — it’s only five sentences after all — and it gets down to the necessities pretty fast.  Jesus doesn’t want prayers to pussyfoot around, but to get to the point: what are our needs.

When I was an assistant minister in the Church of Scotland, I was always amazed at the frilly words and fancy phrases in the formal prayers in church.  Sometimes I felt like I was transported back a few hundred years when people spoke in a different style and used old English words.  The prayers would go on and on, the words would be beautiful but big and, well let’s just say, Jesus uses another much more direct model in this case.

Give us each day our daily bread.  You could also translate the phrase, “Give us tomorrow’s bread” — the Greek indicates continued action, “over and over again give us bread.”  Jesus says the disciples should pray for sustenance.  And not just spiritual sustenance, but real life sustenance — bread and water, fruits and vegetables, he doesn’t quite say “beer and wine” but I think he’d be okay with that.  The point is Jesus was about real life.  He lived in a society that had access to hundreds fewer food options than us — it’s almost sad to think Jesus would have never eaten a bun (like we know it) or caramel roll — but Jesus told his disciples to pray for the daily sustaining food that is a gift from God.

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

Perhaps like some of you, I can be a forgetful person sometimes.  So I make lists to help me remember what I’ve got scheduled and what I need to get done.  Sometimes I wonder how people ever did this without sticky notes.  I’ve got stickies on my desk, virtual ones on my computer, and sometimes I set an alarm on my cell phone’s calendar that sends me reminder text message a few minutes before I have something

.Matt Skinner says Jesus’ sentence on forgiveness is sort of like those sticky notes and reminder messages.  Skinner writes, “God’s forgiveness serves as stimulus for us to recognize our need to forgive those indebted to us.”  Forgive us our sins, we pray.  And then we’re reminded of our call to forgive each other.Some churches act that out each Sunday after the confession of sins.  They confess the sins together in worship, and the leader declares the assurance of their forgiveness.  And then the leader says something like, “Since God has forgiven us, we are freed to forgive one another.”  And then they shake hands or hug each other.  It’s a mini acting out of Jesus’ prayer.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.

Jesus’ prayer ends with a simple petition.  In some versions of Matthew 6, the prayer includes the ending we often say, “for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours forever. Amen.”  But in Luke, it ends simply, do not bring us to the time of trial.Note Jesus doesn’t say, “do not bring us to death” but prays that death may come without any final trials, that the promise of the gospel be fulfilled — and death bring new life in God.  The prayer ends with death, but we know death is only a beginning.  As someone put it once: in death, we pass from one hand of God to the other.

Thomas Dorsey’s hymn which we’ll end the service with today, echoes this prayer at the time of death.

When my way grows drear,

Precious Lord, linger near;

When my life is almost gone,

Hear my cry, hear my call,

Hold my hand lest I fall;

Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

Do not bring us to the time of trial, Jesus says.  Lead us home.

After Jesus explains his prayer in Luke 11, Luke writes of a parable Jesus also told about prayer.  Jesus then says to pray earnestly, directly, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be open for you.”These are beautiful verses, but really tough ones too.  For sometimes it feels like the door doesn’t open — at least not how we expected.  Nor does the search always end finding what we initially sought.There’s no easy answers here, but what ties these difficult words together with the Lord’s prayer earlier, is the attitude of prayer.

Jesus doesn’t call for long fancy prayers, but for prayers from the heart — persistent prayers.  As one commentator calls them, “shameless” prayers.”  Prayers that don’t carry about what the world thinks, but that come from your heart.  Shameless prayers for food, for forgiveness, for preservation.  Shameless prayers to our God who bore the ultimate shame, death on a cross.Today’s gospel lesson invites us to join the church of the ages in the shameless prayer Jesus taught.

As we continue to pray the words given to us by Jesus, we continue to live out the gospel promise.  And we hope, shamelessly, prayerfully, that “The Lord’s Prayer,” becomes “our own prayer” as well.