- Matthew 6:1-8 - read this passage online here »
Have you heard the story about a minister who dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates? Ahead of him is a fellow dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans.
Saint Peter says to this man: “Who are you, so I may know whether to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?”
He replies, “I'm Joe Cohen, taxi driver, of New York City.”
Saint Peter consults his list, smiles and says to the taxi driver, “Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter through the Gates.” The taxi driver goes into Heaven with his robe and staff.
The minister is next in line. He says, “I am Joseph Snow, pastor of Saint Mary's for the past 43 years.”
Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the minister, “Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Just a minute!” says the minister. “The man before me was a taxi driver. He gets a silken robe and a golden staff. How can this be?”
Saint Peter answered: “Up here, we work by results. While you preached, people slept. While he drove, people prayed.”
We may smile and even laugh. But the kernel of truth in the story is that we human beings want God to notice us. This is especially true when we pray. And as Jesus said to his early followers, let me say to you as well: God does notice us. In verse 6, Jesus said, “Your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.” God can’t reward someone he doesn’t notice! But God does notice us -- and rewards us, Jesus says -- when our good actions and deeds are done for the right reasons and not for the wrong reasons.
Most of us, I would think, want to know how to pray. That was true of Jesus’ first followers. In Luke’s Gospel 11:1, when Jesus had finished praying his private prayers, his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. In the beginning of 2011, this is my prayer as well: “Lord Jesus, teach me how to pray. And, Lord Jesus, teach these wonderful people at Oriole-York Mills how to pray as well.”
In Chapter 6 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus divides his teaching on prayer into two sections: “How Not to Pray” in verses 5-8 and then “How to Pray” in verses 9-15.” The how-to-pray section is what we call The Lord’s Prayer or the Jesus Prayer. When Jesus tells us how not to pray, he wants to free us from some widely held mistaken notions about prayer. Once we understand this, we will more fully grasp how Jesus wants us to pray by teaching his marvellous prayer to God the Father. So today, we will take time to consider Jesus’ teaching about how we are not to pray.
Jesus said: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.” Let me start with the negative. When we come before God, Jesus is clearly warning us not to make a spiritual production of praying. We are not to be theatrical show-offs, as someone said, before one another or before God.
The literal meaning of “hypocrite” is of a performer who is doing good actions in a dramatic way so as to be noticed. Jesus rejects this kind of performing in the lives of his followers. He sets us up for his teaching on prayer by teaching first about helping people in need. This is a significant theme in Jesus’ life and teachings. Listen to what he says in verses 2 to 4 of Matthew 6:
“So when you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. But when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.”
If we go back to verse 1 in Chapter 6, Jesus tells his followers not to do the right thing for the wrong reason. “Make certain you do not perform your religious duties in public so that people will see what you do,” he said. It is not that we are not to act in good ways, in right or righteous ways. Of course, we are to give our money to help those in need. Of course we are to pray, even in public. That’s what we do every Sunday morning in our worship. We have several times of prayer in our service, including what we call the Prayers of the People. But to those who are his followers, Jesus warns them about their motives. If the religious duties they do are done with an eye on the audience, they are not acceptable before God. Jesus said it this way: “If you do these things publicly, you will not have any reward from your Father in heaven.” Our reward will come from being noticed by our human audience instead of by God. And God’s reward isn’t merely any reward. As theologian Dale Bruner, in his The Christbook Commentary on Matthew [p. 288] reminds us: “Disciples make their life goal the hearing of their Father’s approval at the Last Judgment.”
But Jesus also told his followers how to do the right thing for the right reason. Here are his words in The Message Bible:
“When you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.” [6:3, 4]
The right reason has to do with how we relate to God. Jesus wants us to do whatever we do because we are eager to please God. This is meant to be so private we won’t even tell our closest friend. So Jesus instructs his followers on how they can do whatever they do – whether helping others or praying -- with integrity and focused solely on God.
When it comes to our own prayers, here’s how The Message Bible stated what Jesus said:
“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense [God’s] grace.”
We don’t pray for show because God wants to meet us mainly in private, by ourselves, where we can be real and honest before him.
Many people today talk as if their life -- the way they live -- is really a prayer. So they do not recognize the need to stop, find a private place and pray some words to God. In other words, they don’t think they need to take time to actually talk with God. But prayer for Jesus is far more than a general sense of God’s presence with us in life. Prayer is the attempt to say words to God in privacy – in an intimate and personal conversation. Theologian Dale Bruner [The Christbook Commentary on Matthew, p. 288] observed that, for Jesus and thus for his followers, “Prayer is to a living person – to the living God – and it is not ... a psychological mind game....”
There is a place for praying – for saying actual words to God – when we are on the go in the midst of our tasks and activities of the day. But it is difficult to have a good conversation with someone if we are multitasking – a 21st-century term we are familiar with. Just ask my wife. When she phones me at the office, she has this unerring sense of determining if I am on the computer or reading at the same time I am talking with her. She knows when she does not have my undivided attention. God knows it too. He knows when he does not have our undivided attention. That’s why Jesus wants us to pause and to “closet” ourselves at some time in our day away from things that distract us from giving God our undivided attention even for a few minutes. In that place by ourselves with God, we can strive to be as honest as we can be with God. If we do, we will discover that God will become the focus of our very existence. And we will become less self-centred and more God-centred.
Jesus said not to pray as a performance or a show before others because God wants us to talk with him, not to the people who might be listening. And God loves a one-on-one conversation.
Jesus also said: “When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the [Gentiles] do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.” When we pray, we do not have to go on and on and on, repeating our prayer over and over again, because God already knows what we need. Jesus says there doesn’t have to be a lot of words before God will hear us.
Jesus is contrasting the sort of praying that went on in much of the non-Jewish world of his day. For instance, there was the conviction that the gods were reluctant to hear prayers unless the prayers were long – long, repetitive and sometimes filled with complicated magic words meant to persuade the deities to be favourable toward those who prayed. The lengthy prayers were also meant to prove the sincerity of the petitioners. But Jesus taught that, because of the loving character of God the Father, we do not have to pray that way. That’s why Jesus told his followers how to pray (and not merely how not to pray) and he began his prayer by saying “Our Father.” But that’s next week’s message.
It has been a while since I saw the film Bruce Almighty [Universal, 2003, directed and produced by Tom Shadyac, written by Steve Kornen and Mark O'Keef]. But when I came across the write-up of the following scene, I was drawn to it because of how prayer was treated.
Bruce Nolan (played by Jim Carrey) is a mediocre news reporter in mid-life crisis. He complains to his girlfriend that God does a poor job of running the world. He could do far better. To his surprise, God (played by Morgan Freeman) gives him the opportunity.
You guessed it: Bruce does not do a good job of playing God. After wrecking his relationship with his girlfriend, Grace, he begins to ask God for help. The turning point comes when God helps Bruce cut through the pomp and pretence and teaches him to pray about the real issues in his life.
“What do you want me to do?” Bruce asks.
“I want you to pray, son. Go ahead.”
Bruce squints his eyes and attempts a prayer: “Um … Lord, feed the hungry and bring peace to … um … all of mankind. How's that?”
“Great … if you want to be Miss America,” God responds. “Now come on. What do you really care about?”
“Grace,” Bruce says, thinking of his girlfriend.
“Grace. You want her back?”
Bruce seems surprised by his own response. “No. I want her to be happy, no matter what that means.” Bruce closes his eyes. “I want her to find someone who will treat her with all the love she deserved from me. I want her to meet someone who will see her always as I do now -- through your eyes.”
“Now that's a prayer,” God says. “I'm going to get right on it.”
Jesus wants us to be real with God -- not play games. We can’t expect any response from God by trying to impress him with fine-sounding spiritual talk because God wants to meet with us privately for a real and personal conversation. And remember, God loves us. God is not a reluctant listener.
Jesus knows intimately that God is a lover of people. That’s why, later in his ministry [Matthew 11:28], Jesus would graciously call to people and say: “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads and I will give you rest.” Jesus wants his followers to understand that God knows all about them – their sorrows and joys, their burdens and comforts -- and what they need in their lives. And he wants his followers to bring their various needs to God as a child would, with trust in his father.
As a church, we have many questions about where we are going in 2011. I do believe Jesus would love to hear us say: “Lord Jesus, teach us how to pray – for our sakes, for your sake and for the sake of the world.”
May this be so for you and for me. Amen.
Rev. Chris Miller
January 9, 2011
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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