Why Do We Pray and How Does this Impact Our Lives?
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Beth Henricks
January 5, 2025
Scripture – Matthew 6:9-13 9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’
Friends, I am joining you for this worship service, our first worship of 2025 as Bob and his family are returning from a vacation in Texas to visit their oldest son. I’m grateful to be with you as we begin another year of our journey together.
I have been reading the latest John Caputo book (my favorite theologian, philosopher and writer) What to Believe, Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology, that challenges many ideas and concepts of religion from a Christian perspective. Caputo grew up in a devout Catholic family and planned on being a priest joining the De La Salle Christian Brothers for a few years. As he began to read and study various religious writings, he realized he had questions and doubts about the Christian religion that he embraced and memorized growing up and decided he would rather be a teacher, a student of religion and a writer. He draws on some of the great theologians and philosophers in Paul Tillich, Jacques Derrida, Frederick Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel in bringing into common English, the theological principals of deconstruction of beliefs, going beyond concepts of a Supreme Being in the sky pulling strings and moving chess pieces into an idea of a Being beyond all being within everyone and everything. He shares in the book his concept of being either a bridge builder or a ground digger. A bridge builder is trying to build a bridge to the sky to meet God and wants to preserve tradition with orthodoxy. Ground diggers go beneath, go deeper looking for the Spirit in all.
But as humans, we must have symbols and rituals to begin to describe this Being. We know that God has no gender, but we often use symbols to describe God as Mother, Father, Lover, Friend etc. all providing meaning to this Being in our human experience and understanding. The key is that we recognize these as symbols, and we don’t equate the symbol with the Being. The actor Bruce Lee in his iconic movie Enter the Dragon says as they are pointing and looking at the moon, “Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” The finger is only the way to direct our attention to the Being, the glory, mystery.
John Caputo states, “symbols are important, that they are to be taken seriously. They are not arbitrary contrivances that somebody made up. They have paid their own way, having been forged in the fires of history. They have earned respect, earned their place as concrete, sensuous, and inspiring ways we give words and images to matter, as Tillich says, are a “matter of ultimate concern”, a formula upon which it would be difficult to improve when it comes to saying what we mean by religion” Think how often we are spiritually moved by our observation and participation in art, music and poetry. Symbols are deep and artful ways of making contact with the ground of Being.
I was particularly drawn to Caputo’s chapter on prayer. given the reflection of bridge building vs ground digging. Often our prayer is to a God that we hope and believe can change an outcome, a Supreme Being above us that has all power in their hand. In my 65 years on this earth, I have had to move away from this idea of God as I can’t accept that God is the decider on who lives and who dies – who succeeds and who fails -who is “in charge” of all things. If I would accept this, I would be deeply disappointed in this image of God.
Yet prayer is very important in our spiritual lives. Classical theologians say that there is no religion without prayer, no theology without prayer, and indeed no idea of God without prayer.” Pg 49
For me, naming God in my prayers is important. Early in my life I had the image of a loving Father that I pray to, but my symbol has expanded beyond that, and I feel that the power of prayer is in the offering, the collective energy we bring, the mystical sense of movement that we don’t understand. I believe we make contact with this ground of Being and we converse with it in a very personal way when we pray.
As a person that has met with many people facing various crisis in their lives as a pastor, I do not have a visual concept of God in the sky deciding who will be healed and who will remain sick. Often when I pray for people now, I pray for a healing – it may be a physical healing or a healing of the heart or a relationship.
Prayer is not about trying to get something or achieve a certain outcome or goal. Praying is asking to let go of that thing we want that outcome or result that we hope for. Prayer is also a halleluiah of gratitude to all that we experience, all that is within us and outside of us and all around us. This kind of prayer is something to practice in our ordinary moments all day long. Prayer is the act of stopping our routine and taking time to pay attention and become aware of God’s presence, God’s voice in our heart.
I don’t understand how prayer works but I know with everything within in me that it is real. I remember when I was diagnosed with uterine cancer 20 years ago, Becki Heusel organized a prayer gathering for me in the parlor the Sunday before my surgery. I sat in a big king chair that we have in the Meeting and about 15 people surrounded me and laid hands on me and prayed silently and verbally for me. When all of these people put their hands on my body I felt a jolt of energy go through my being that I had never experienced in my life. I felt such love flowing through the touch of all of these people and felt an overwhelming sense of God’s presence.
I recently spent an afternoon with a 67-year-old woman that is in treatment for lung cancer. We talked about the role prayer has played in her cancer journey. She does not believe a Supreme Being is calling the shots of her recovery, rather she has some of the best cancer doctors in Chicago orchestrating her treatment. But she has received hundreds of expressions of love, care and prayer that means everything to her, and she began to cry as she expressed the importance of the prayers of others to her in her journey. She also prays to God every night over her recovery as this is a symbol and ritual that has always been important to her and continues to provide meaning to her. Scientific data shows an important corollary to the effect of prayer on an individual when they know that someone is praying for them. It is important to express our prayers to an individual. It is why our community appreciates our prayer chain – the idea that others are thinking about us and holding us in the Light (one of my favorite Quaker expressions) will make a difference in our outcome.
I asked Larry to read the example that Jesus gave his disciples in the ritual of prayer. In examining the prayer, I can see some of it fits into some of the ideas that Caputo presented to us particularly as we put this prayer in context and tradition of the time. And also, see how there might be language in this prayer that is challenging to understand.
A number of years ago Paul Buckley examined the Lord’s Prayer line by line in an article in Friends Journal. I was in a small prayer group that Ann Kendall led at the time, and we spent several of our gatherings considering Paul’s article. It resonated with me then and I share a few of his insights.
Our Father in heaven - Jesus begins the prayer with Our Father. This is the only time Jesus ever calls God Father. In the original/language the term is translated as papa, a term of endearment and person. Maybe Jesus is combining the personal and the transcendent in describing God. As both pappa and a Being beyond our own being. We also must read this in the context of the time and culture as both Christians and Jews used the masculine to describe God as the symbol of strength and power.
Hallowed be your name - In Jesus time a name was believed to reveal the essence of the thing and it was very important. Jesus is giving reverence to the name of God as hallowed, sacred and holy.
Your kingdom come - The hope of the Jews was that God’s kingdom was near – many have hoped God’s kingdom was near for 2,000 years during many oppressions, wars, famine, etc. Maybe what Jesus was really talking about was that God’s kingdom is near in our hearts and souls.
Your will be done - God has a desire for us and that desire is being our best selves.
On earth as well as heaven - Maybe Jesus is suggesting that we take our place in the ongoing creation of the universe. Heaven must be a spiritual world as a place of perfect harmony, where all freely receive God’s love and freely return to God at all times in all ways.
Give us today our daily bread - Daily bread is a reminder of the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years and God providing manna every day for their survival yet admonished the Israelites not to gather extra manna for the future. Our focus should not be on storing up treasures on this earth, rather we keep what we need for today.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors - The forgiveness that we receive is in measure to the forgiveness we give. If we seek forgiveness, we must not withhold our forgiveness even when it is difficult.
And lead us - The way forward is always visible. It can often seem clouded to us, and we may have no idea what direction to go. But the path forward is within us. Are my heart and my ears open to God’s voice as I seek a way forward?
Not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Oh God help me face my weaknesses. As parents sometimes we have to let our children fail and do things on their own for them to recognize their weakness, their lack of control over certain things and the consequences of their choices. Our parents don’t lead us into the temptation but sometimes must allow this to help as the only way for us to grow. The evil we sometimes have to face is within us.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory – This closing line is not in the text in Matthew, but we recognize this as part of the Lord’s Prayer that we recite. Maybe Jesus is talking about the power of God that empowers us. We recognize this ground of Being within us as we grow into our truest selves.
This morning, I do not offer queries for our consideration as we enter our waiting worship. May we reflect on this Lord’s prayer and pray for those things on our heart today.