The upcoming Sunday Gospel lesson from Luke has me thinking about prayer.
The irony of that statement is not lost on me. Shouldn’t I be thinking about prayer all the time? Well, yes, of course. But what I mean is the assigned reading from Luke’s Gospel this Sunday (11:1-13) has me thinking more deeply about prayer in general, and, more specifically, what we call The Lord’s Prayer-the prayer Jesus taught the disciples.
I think it is safe to say that most people who identify as Christian know the Lord’s Prayer in one form or another. Whether one uses trespasses, debts, or sins the overall structure is the same and ends the same: Amen.
Just as Jesus taught it.
Except that Jesus didn’t include an ‘amen’ as if the prayer he was teaching was over. Instead, in Luke, he talked about seeking, and knocking on doors, and asking persistently. He talked about being constant in prayer and, as I hear his words, he taught the Disciples to be active in prayer.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches about prayer as part of the Sermon on the Mount. In this setting, the Lord’s Prayer is part of Jesus’ broader message about praying and seeking the Kingdom, serving as he served, loving as he loved—-including our enemies.
What if the Lord’s Prayer included seeking and serving the Kingdom? What if the prayer didn’t end with ‘amen’, but instead was an invitation to a life of persistent prayer as ministry?
