Jeremy Duncan: In all of this, the way that we might be tempted to use prayer as a means to an end or for image management or for divine manipulation, all of this is why I think Jesus' preamble, his bit before his prayer, is just as important maybe as the prayer that follows it. We are also starting a new series today that is going to take us through to Holy Week. And this series is called How to Pray. And that title is taken almost directly from the pages of the gospel of Matthew as Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray. So for this next series, in these next five weeks, we are going to make our way toward holy week and ground ourselves in the Lenten practice of reflection and preparation and prayer.
First, though, let's look back at the last series quickly. Because we've just come through the rise and fall of King David. And we spent six weeks looking at his life. Truthfully, could have been a lot more. A lot happened in that dude's life.
But rather than try to gather all the details, we chose instead what we felt were the pivotal moments in relationships in David's life. We looked at David's relationship with Samuel. We looked at David's encounter with Goliath. We examined his relationship to his predecessor Saul and to Saul's son Jonathan. We saw him rise to the throne.
And last week we saw his inevitable and sobering downfall. And I think what was so important about that final message in the series last week is that, yes, of course, it's true. There are all kinds of brilliant and insightful moments in David's life. So many points that we can look back on and celebrate from, learn from, and we should. And yet, if we don't also pay attention to how the story ends, then we risk missing out on one of the most important lessons from David's life, that the accumulation of winds can actually become our enemy if we're not careful about how we allow them to change us.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, particularly in our current political climate, how blessing and wealth can make us think that we're noble, how success in one area of our lives can convince us that we are wise in every other area, How humility and self awareness are skills that become exponentially important the higher we rise. And yet, as we watch with David, somehow the opposite often seems to happen. And so the wonderful, inspiring, legitimately surprising rise of David ends with sexual violence and a broken family with murdered sons and a nation that is fractured by civil war. In fact, the unified Kingdom Of Israel lasts for one generation past David as 10 of the 12 tribes then split off from David's lineage to to form their own dynasty. And so for us today, the challenge is to make sure that we learn from all of the story.
The beauty of the rise and the lament of the fall. So that we might chart a better course for ourselves and those that we love. And so now in that shadow, it's appropriate maybe that we turn our hearts towards prayer. So let's pray. Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden.
Gracious God, who knows us fully, who sees our truth, and invites us forward without hesitation, loving God who listens intently and speaks softly, who welcomes us to speak openly in your presence. Might we pray true words today, words of lament and grief, words of celebration and joy. Might we share our hearts with you unburdened by expectation or presumption. But instead, might we speak your truth and in return hear your love returned to us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Amen. Today we begin an exploration of the Lord's Prayer. And today we're going to talk about humor, hypocrites, publicists, and pagans. But to start, let's talk about the problems with prayer. Because if you are anything like me at all, you have probably found yourself at some point trying to pray and yet silently questioning, like, what is all of this about?
Now, maybe that's because you found the idea of speaking to the divine both beautifully profound and downright absurd all at the same time. Fair play. So do I. Perhaps it's because you tried to pray, and it was hard and you couldn't keep your focus or you didn't feel the way you expected. Maybe because you prayed and it didn't work.
You prayed and things still turned out badly. For all of these reasons and a lot more, prayer is a far more complex dance than we sometimes admit. I mean, what is prayer supposed to be exactly? Is it an expression of worship? Is it crossing our fingers and hoping for the best?
Are we snapping our fingers and demanding that God get to work on our behalf? Maybe all of the above. Is prayer reverent, or is it personal? Is it private or public? Is it something that we do on our own, or is it something we do together?
Again, maybe all of the above. And maybe that's why prayer has such an important and yet often ill defined practice in our lives because maybe it just needs to stay a little bit open ended. A few years ago, Tina Fey wrote a book. It's called Bossy Pants. It was good.
But in it, she wrote a prayer for her, at the time, newborn daughter. I offer here a slightly edited version for present company. But she prays. First lord, no tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie the Pooh holding a college logo stain her tender haunches.
And when the crystal meth has passed, may she remember her parents who cut her grapes in half and stick with beer. Guide her, protect her when crossing the street, when stepping onto boats, when swimming in oceans, when swimming in pools, or when walking near pools, when standing on the subway platform, or stepping off of boats using mall restrooms, or getting on and off escalators, when driving on country roads while arguing. Also, when leaning onto large windows, or walking in large parking lots, when riding on Ferris wheels, roller coasters, log flumes, or anything ever set up at a midway. Also, please protect her while standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from acting, but not all the way to finance.
Something where she can make her own hours, but still feel intellectually engaged and get outside sometimes and honestly not have to wear high heels. May she play the drums to the fiery rhythm of her own heart with the sinewy strength of her own arm so that she need not lie with drummers. Grant her a rough patch from 12 to maybe 17. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for far too long. For childhood is short, a tiger flower blooming magenta for one short day, and alter adulthood is long and dry.
And Lord, break the Internet that she may be spared the misspelled injective of her peers. And when she inevitably turns on me, give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into the car in front of her friends, for I will not have that, Lord. I will not have it at all. And should she choose to be a mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her lying on the floor at 04:50AM all at once exhausted, bored, and in love with that little creature. And when she thinks, my mother did this for me once, and the delayed gratitude washes over her as it does each generation, and she makes a mental note to call me and then forgets, I will know because I peeped it with your God eyes.
Amen. Now, I kind of love this prayer. First, because it's Tina Fey and I'm a fan, but also because there is something strangely disarming about blending humor with something as profoundly vulnerable as the prayer of a parent. Now, Tina may not think about prayer the way that I do. I don't know.
But between the laughs, there's an honest reckoning here with profound responsibility of parenting, and that feels sacred to me, like a prayer. And I think that is part of what I genuinely love about prayer, that it can be almost anything we want it to be, even funny, as long as it's honest. And that might seem like a strange place to start a series called How to Pray. I mean, after all, if prayer can be anything, what is there to learn? But then maybe that's the genius of Jesus.
Because as much as the Lord's Prayer has become a liturgical prayer, one that we recite together regularly here at Commons, and one that has been used by countless Christians for millennia now to guide their prayers. The original prayer offered by Jesus was not meant just as something to repeat, but instead as something to help shape our imagination of what prayer could become. And in fact, that prayer was offered as a corrective to some of what Jesus saw as broken attempts all around him. See, this is what we read in Matthew chapter six just before Jesus offers his prayer. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.
Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. Instead, when you pray, go into your room, close the door, pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, don't keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think they'll be heard because of their many words. Don't be like them.
Your father knows what you need even before you ask. This then is how to pray. Now we'll get to Jesus' prayer, I promise. In fact, we will spend the rest of the series all the way to Holy Week looking at the content of Jesus' prayer. But I want to start here today because I think it's important to understand what Jesus is trying to do with this prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is not just about what to say. It's a model for how to think about how to pray. And there's really sort of five movements in the prayer, five core ideas that Jesus addresses with his prayer, maybe even five questions we could ask ourselves when it comes to constructing our prayers. We'll get to all of that in the coming weeks. But first, let's look at what Jesus sets up as a contrast to his prayer.
And he talks about three things here. Hypocrites who use prayer as a means to an end, publicists who use prayer as an exercise in image management, and pagans who use prayer as an incantation to manage the divine. Let's talk about those categories. And we'll start here. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites.
Now that line in verse five is actually a callback to the previous paragraph where Jesus also tells us not to give to the needy the way that the hypocrites do. First off, just know this. Write this down. All the hypocrites in your life, all those people that you can't stand, they're out there doing a lot of praying, giving a lot of money away to the poor. Maybe don't be so hard on them after all.
Okay? I mean, good for you, hypocrites. Credit where credit is due. Am I right? Yes.
I know that is not Jesus' point. But at the same time, as I was reading it this week, I realized maybe it's not such a bad idea for me to remind myself from time to time that whether or not I like someone, that isn't the end of their story. There's more to them. That's it. Why is Jesus so choked here?
We should talk about that. Because I don't think that what Jesus wants is for us to fall into a paralysis of self analysis. Like, if I can't be sure that my motives are 100% pure, does that mean I should not pursue doing good in the world? Or if let's say I run a business and I make my living from that and I feed my family, does that mean that I can't consider the good that I accomplish at work part of my faithful stewardship in the world? Well, I would say no.
Although to be candid, I make a living in large part standing and reading prayer. So maybe I'm a little bit biased here. But I would say, particularly when we're changing course in our lives, trying to make changes for the better, oftentimes, most of the time, maybe even all of the time, our motives are a jumble of conflicting intentions. That in itself does not make you a hypocrite. That makes you human.
In fact, I would argue that the more aware and the more honest you are with yourself about all of the conflicting intentions and emotions that drive your movements in the world, the less chance there is for you to fall into that vacuum of hypocrisy. The goal here is not to immobilize ourselves with unrealistic purity tests. The goal is to not let our conflicts go unnamed within our own heart. So for an example here, if I'm honest with the fact that I really like my job, and I love public speaking, and I enjoy getting up in front of you every week to tell you what I've been thinking and I've been wrestling with, that's not hypocritical. Hypocritical would be me pretending that there's no relationship between my ego and my career.
There is. Jesus is not talking about some mythical reality where you get to live your life without conflicting intention. Jesus is talking about when you give yourself over to playing a role. And maybe you already know this, but the word that Jesus uses here, in Greek, is literally the word hypocrite. But it had a very different connotation at the time.
See, it actually wasn't until the December that this word entered into the English language, and it was largely because of this verse right here. Now when it did, it took on the common meaning of hypocrite, one who advocates for behaviors they do not practice. You could think of celebrities advocating for climate change sensitivity while sailing the world in their fossil fueled yachts. Sorry, Leo. That's just what came to mind.
Never mind. But obviously, that's not exactly what's happening here. I mean, these people aren't advocating for something they're not doing. They're doing the thing. I mean, what's the problem?
Well, the problem is that had a very specific meaning in Greek. It referred to an actor or someone who played a role on a stage. You know, you can see how over time that translates into the English hypocrite. But here Jesus is talking about doing good in exchange for the rule that comes with that act. So maybe a promotion or more authority, more privilege, maybe even respect.
I mean, he talks specifically about public image in the next line. But this term, hupokrites, is directly related to the transaction of turning your performance into favorable outcomes. That's important. Because if I pray and the driving motivation behind that prayer is, I want to be healed, or I want a new job, or I want a way out of this relationship, or I want someone to change because that would suit me better, and it doesn't actually really matter if anybody ever hears that prayer, I can still very easily slip over the line into thinking that the way I ask or the nuance, the beauty of my words, the performance that I put on when I pray can swing God over to my side. As if the universe is as susceptible to sweet talk as we are.
Now does that mean we can't pray about those things? No. But any time we find ourselves wondering if our prayer was good enough, That might be a sign that we slipped into this performative trap. It might be a sign that it's time to just sit back and remember, God already knows. So silence is golden, at least for this moment right now.
There's actually been something quite healing about the moments where I found myself here, realizing I'm putting on a show. Times I've been able to stop myself mid prayer and say, I get it. I see what's happening. I'm done. I'll just listen for the rest of this period.
Making peace with the fact that you can't impress God goes a long way to making prayer feel viable for the long haul. So drop the act. But what about then the public part? Obviously, that's a big part of Jesus' critique. Right?
He specifically brings up the image of stage actors. And if all of life is a stage, then where does prayer fit into that? I'll admit, I find this one kind of challenging. In the context of Jesus' world, offering public prayers probably did provide a level of social capital. People did think about you better.
It was a way to manage your public image. But if you were to do what Jesus suggests today, go down to the street corner to pray, I'm going to hazard an observation here. Your public image may, let's say, suffer. In fact, as of 02/2025, Gallup's latest professional trust survey lists nurses, grade school teachers, military officers, pharmacists, and doctors in the majority favorable category. At the other end, it lists TV reporters, members of Congress, and lobbyists in the majority negative.
Clergy sit just below auto mechanics in the meh category. Specifically, only 30% of respondents say they have a high trust value for clergy. That's why I don't lead with my career at dinner parties. But is a warning about public prayer even relevant anymore? I mean, nobody's excited to stand on the corner and pray.
Should we just move on? I mean, maybe. But then perhaps we could reframe this one a bit as well. I know this is weird, but honestly, I bet you've done this too. Don't lie.
I found myself praying because I think the fact that I'm praying is going to impress God. Like I've been lying in bed, knowing I'm going to lose an hour of sleep tonight. Tired, I just wanna go to sleep, but all of a sudden it pops into my head. I should probably bank some prayers. So I do, and then after that I fall asleep with a smirk on my face thinking, I bet the boss noticed.
As if God is hearing my barely coherent half asleep ramblings thinking that guy is a keeper. I mean, maybe we do get over the idea that prayer is a performance. We set that aside. We still sometimes feel like it's an obligation. And I know it's silly, but here's the thing.
We probably all do it because we probably all are conditioned to believe that God's love is transactional like everything else in our lives. It's not. I want to be clear. God could not love you more than God already does. God could not love any part of creation with anything less than perfect love.
That is the point of God. And we are so used to our human relationships where attention is finite and therefore resources need to be meted out, that it's incredibly hard for us to imagine an infinite love that is inexhaustibly directed at all of us all of the time. But that's the point of God. So hear this. Your prayers cannot make God love you more.
Your lack of prayer cannot make God love you less. You simply lack the necessary technology to change anything about God's love for you. But now we have this one last unhealthy prayer to reflect on before we dive into Jesus' prayer next week. There's the hypocrites that use prayer as a means to an end. There are the publicists who use prayer as an exercise in image management.
And finally, now the pagans who use prayer as an incantation to manage the divine. What is that all about? Well, it's about this line. Do not keep on babbling like pagans who think they'll be heard because of their many words. The important phrases here are and More directly, meaningless and populous words.
But there are actually two core ideas that I think best capture the intent here. The first is the concept of. The second is the idea of formula. Was a Greek concept that was related to this term, and it referred together to gossip. Literally means meaningless words.
Literally means nonsense. But in common's usage, they referred to malicious gossip. And so Ulrich Loews argues the admonition here is not about the wasted words that we use. It's actually about the specific content that we pray, specifically prayers that are intended to make someone else look bad or to make ourselves look good in comparison to them. More importantly here, words that are intended to manipulate God against someone.
And I mean, obviously that comes from a very limited imagination of God. The idea that we could change God's mind about someone by gossiping about them in our prayers is on its face kind of absurd. And yet, not sure I'm entirely above the dark arts. I may have prayed at some point this week, something along the lines of, God, thank you so much for Rachel. She's an incredible partner.
I'm just hoping that you can help her see why it's important that I spend a hundred bucks on an f one subscription for the new season that starts March 15. And by the way, I'm kidding. She watches way more f one than I do. God, we good. But that's really what the reference is about here.
Right? It's using gossip in our prayers to try to manipulate God. And don't tell me that you've never prayed about someone else's secret sins. Don't do that. But that is then related to the second word here, That one, John Nolan argues, points towards, and I'll quote him here, the formulaic repetition of elements in order to multiply effectiveness with the gods.
In other words, it's about using repetition of certain specific prayers or incantations, again, to force God's hand where we want it. And this was something that was very specific to a plurality of Greek superstitions. Say this prayer. Get this outcome. But that's also something that has very much found its way into Christian thinking at times.
Right? The idea that if you pray a certain way, if you use certain words, if you can find the right combination of utterance and ecstasy, you can bend God to your will. All of these are ways that we use prayer to try to manipulate God, either to make God think a certain way about a certain someone or to make God act in the way that we want. And of course, we don't think about it as manipulation, but when it becomes that, no longer our attempts to conform to God's love, but our attempts to shape and conform God to our will, well then we've lost the point even before we've begun to pray a word. In all of this, the way that we might be tempted to use prayer as a means to an end or for image management or for divine manipulation, all of this is why I think Jesus' preamble, his bit before his prayer, is just as important maybe as the prayer that follows it.
Because even before Jesus teaches us how to pray, he's setting the stage by reminding us that prayer isn't for God in the first place. In fact, your prayer can't change God or sway God. You can't impress God or manipulate God. I can't move God or control God, coerce God or entice God. That's just not what prayer is about.
Because prayer isn't for God, it's for us. Prayer is about aligning ourselves and our desires, our hopes, and our fears with the love that sits at the founding of the universe. Prayer is an invitation to glimpse the world, perhaps for the very first time, as it really is. It's an invitation to keep God at the center of our imagination of everything, our Father who art in heaven. It's an invitation to help close the gap between heaven and earth.
Your kingdom come, your will be done. It's an invitation to trust for what we need right now, today, our daily bread and nothing more. It's an invitation to reflect on what we've been holding on to too long, what we need to let go of, that we might be forgiven our debts as we learn to forgive. It is an invitation to teach ourselves where to say no, deliver us from temptation. It's an invitation that we might say yes to the glory and the honor and the power of God's love forever and ever.
Amen. That's where we'll pick up next week. Let's pray. God, for all those times that we have come before you to pray and we have missed the mark because we've tried to manipulate you or coerce you. We've tried to use prayer as a way to advance our agenda for what we want in the world.
We repent, and we ask that you would help us to reshape our imagination of what it means to come, to speak with you, to stand before you and open our heart. And in that, to be changed by you. To be conformed to your love and the likeness of your son, to leave that moment of prayer with more grace and more peace, pursuing the path of Jesus laid out in front of us in the world. Might we really begin to believe that our prayers are for us and the ways that we might be healed, reshaped, and transformed into everything you imagine us to be. Right?
We come with that humility and that expectation. And in that, might prayer become one of the most important things that we do. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey, Jeremy here and thanks for listening to our podcast.
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