Abandoning Our Agenda--July 7, 2025
"[Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.' He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial'." (Luke 11:1-4)
I don't know for certain what question the disciples were really asking, but I know what question Jesus intends to answer. Jesus has it in mind to change our hearts by his model of praying, not to offer some magical technique to get what we want from God like a cosmic vending machine. That makes all the difference.
Now, like I say, I can't be sure what the disciples really have in mind when they ask, "Lord, teach us to pray." It is possible that they really want to know from Jesus what things they should pray for, or what words to use, or even the proper way to address God. Maybe they have intentionally left their question open-ended, so that Jesus can run with it however he chooses (that is at least what Jesus ends up doing anyway). But I also have this sneaking suspicion that some part of the question is about technique--that is, I think at some level all of us wish that there were some secret wording or formula to make God more likely to give us what we want in our prayer. I think some part of the disciple's question has the undertone of asking, "How do I get God to give me what I am asking for?" And to be sure, twenty centuries later, lots of Respectable Religious folks seem to approach prayer as a means to the end of getting God's endorsement for our agendas, when Jesus seems more interested in allowing prayer to reorient our agendas to align with God's.
You see it all the time in the public arena: from the football team huddling on the field praying for their team to win as though God has a stake in the outcome of the local homecoming game, to politicians huddling in front of cameras as they loudly invoke God's name over their agendas so they can claim a victory on a vote as proof of divine endorsement. But both of those make the mistake of starting with our own wish-lists and thinking that prayer is a means of getting God to do what we want. Jesus sees things very differently in his model for prayer. Instead, in these words which Christians around the world offer up at least every week in worship if not daily in our own live, Jesus teaches us to see prayer as a way of dethroning our own agendas or assumptions about what God's will "must mean," so that God's Reign can come more fully into our reality. For Jesus, prayer is not about getting to claim God's backing of your selfish scheme, no matter how loudly and publicly you invoke God's name on camera or on the field. For Jesus, prayer is about realigning our lives to learn to want what God wants, and to love like God loves. Being Jesus' disciples will mean acknowledging that God is not our genie, here to fulfill our desires so long as we get the formula right, but rather it is our desires that need to be brought in alignment with what matters to God.
That recognition, rather like Copernicus' discovery that the Earth is not the center of the universe, but rather goes around the sun, can be disorienting for us, and certainly make us uncomfortable. We want to believe that our wishes and will is already righteous and good, and therefore that God should pleasantly acquiesce and give us what we pray for. We tell ourselves that we already know what God should do in the world, and therefore we are happy to give God further direction for how to make the world as we want it. But if we actually pay attention at all to Jesus' way of praying, it pushes our agendas out of the center and puts God's goodness at the heart of everything.
And that's just it: when Jesus gets around to describing what God's kingdom actually looks like in this prayer, it is utterly good... for all. For God's kingdom to come, it will mean that everybody gets their daily bread. For God's Reign to happen, it will mean the forgiveness of debts all around. For God's will to be done will mean that our lives will be kept away from crookedness and steered toward justice and neighborliness. God's kingdom is good--and in fact, it is good for all, all around.
The real abuse of prayer comes when we try and invoke God's authority over some narrowly self-serving agenda that is only good for "Me and My Group First." The real blasphemy is when we try to attach God's name to any scheme that would make others go hungry while we claim blessing on our well-fed little enclaves. By contrast, to pray as Jesus teaches us will lead us to see that all are welcomed to the table, and none are sent away as "undeserving" within God's Reign. If we are ready to stop using prayer as a photo-op or empty show of public piety (which the prophets regularly warn against), then we might actually learn from Jesus how to let prayer reorient our hearts and open up our will to God's vision where all have enough and all receive mercy.
If you have caught yourself lately mouthing these words which we call the Lord's Prayer and not giving their meaning any real thought, maybe today is a day for us to allow Jesus to teach us again--not to teach us the same old words to memorize and recite without thinking, but to teach us the meaning of his kind of prayer. Maybe today is a day to allow our prayer to see God at the center, rather than our own wants, and to allow Jesus to reshape our hearts in the direction of God's will.
Maybe it will take a lifetime for us to do that well. But it's worth starting today.
Lord Jesus, let your ways of goodness and mercy shape our hearts so that come to seek what you seek, to want what you want, and to love as you love. Let your Reign and your will take shape among us.
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