Before I went to seminary to become a priest, I was a preschool teacher. Now, there are many surprisingly transferable skills between the two, but I think my favorite way in which my past connects with my present is how it helps me understand that we are all learning and growing and changing. I remember the first time I taught a child to draw a butterfly on their own and realizing that every butterfly they would draw from then on would be based on some version of the first butterfly. I remember the ridiculous songs I would make up to help with spelling. And I remember the countless times a child would come up to me and say “Momma – I mean Ms. Becca.” Sometimes they would laugh at their mistake or move right on by, but it was an undeniable expression of the way in which there was a familiarity and comfort that was only known with their parent. And this is how Jesus begins when he lays down an example of what it means to pray to God in our gospel lesson this week.
“Father,” Jesus begins the prayer that we have come to know and recite as the Lord’s Prayer. This on its own is radical in its instructive nature because Jesus is not just beginning his own prayer this way but teaching the disciples how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is something that we pray collectively, privately, or maybe with our prayer beads. I’ve sat at death beds and had nearly unconscious people be able to pray along in last rites when the Lord’s Prayer comes because it is not just a set of words, it is a prayer that we have woven into our very being. But the danger of a repeated prayer such as the Lord’s Prayer is that we can become numb to the ways in which authentic prayer necessitates an intimate relationship with God, and the ways in which a true and engaged relationship with God will not leave us unchanged, even if we feel very comfortable and would like to stay right where we are, thank you, though.
Jesus follows up this prayerful example with a story about a man whose friend drops by unannounced with needs when he and his children are already in bed, but his friend is persistent and so he gets up to lend what he needs. And Jesus goes on to explain a quality of God’s nature that if a person has a child who asks for an egg wouldn’t give him a scorpion, it’s a cruelty that’s not in alignment with God’s nature. “Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be answered” Christ concludes. This line has made theologians and church folks come up with complex theories around why some prayers are answered in expected ways and others are not. One of the important things for me to name is that there is an impossible to answer question that arises from these years of good, bad, and questionable theology about why God does or does not answer our desperate cries for help. It happens at a global level when children are starving, and people are fleeing their homes in ways that most of us will never know. It happens at a regional level when we see flood waters rise, and tornados scrape across our counties. It happens at a local and personal level when things change and are out of our control and perhaps against our will. One thing I cannot do from this pulpit to explain away the pain of prayers that feel unheard, but I do hope you can hear me when I say that I know that that God is present in our prayers.
I know this in part because Jesus taught his disciples this, and in part because of my own winding journey with prayer. For most of my Christian life, I had a very narrow understanding of what prayer meant, a one-way, vending machine style communication: put in the good prayers with the right words and God would put out some things that would benefit my life or the lives of those I love. A falsehood that many of church folks share is that we must measure out our prayers, to get them just right: being burdened by finding the right words, a desire to not waste prayer requests on silly things and not feeling capable of offering prayers. I know I’ve used some version of these myself in the past, and maybe you have too, but the truth is these excuses only stand in the way of our connection to God.
Because when we pray as our Savior taught us that,
God’s kingdom come, and God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven–and we mean it, we must open our eyes and see the ways in which the world is distinctly and perversely opposed to the order of the kingdom of God, and we will start to move differently in this world.
And when we ask in prayer that God give us today our daily bread, we must face the truth that the prayer that Christ models is not one of abundance but one of enough. Which then might make us look around to see who doesn’t have enough and how might we share, should an abundance be had.
And when we ask in prayer that God forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us, we sit squarely at the cross-section of God’s mercy and our own capacity and willingness to forgive those who have sinned against us. Christ does not model this challenging aspect of our relationship to our fellow humans for us to dismiss it, but rather it’s important for us to remember that Christ links it to our own capacity to receive God’s forgiveness as well.
And lastly, Christ adds in this model prayer a request that God bring us not into a time a of trial. And this is where I would like to invite us all to settle in for the coming week.
I ask that we all enter some intentional prayer around what does it mean when Christ models that he asks that God not lead him into a time of trial, when he knew what lay ahead? I know for me, there have been so many times in my life that if I were the one to choose the path, I wouldn’t have been able to make it to this pulpit to stand before you. In a time of uncertainty and change, there is something divine about being able to come to God in true and honest prayer and wholeheartedly presenting what you need, want, and desire. This faith community will soon be in a time of transition as Father Izak soon moves, but I have faith that God is present with the good people of St. Mary’s when we pray, and I know it because Jesus taught us so.
A sermon delivered on July 27, 2025, to the people of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Middlesboro, Kentucky for Proper 12C.
Becca Kello 