Not Me (Luke 11:1-13)

“Anyone Want Anything?”

God is not a cosmic vending machine. We all know this. And yet…

Who among us has not begged God for what we wanted? “Please just let me pass this class, God!” “Please get me this job, God!”  Even an atheist may find himself praying in a real pinch. “If you’re really there and you just let me survive this, God, I’ll change my ways, I promise.”

For many people, this is what prayer is. A request for something we want. As comedian Flip Wilson once put it: “I’m gonna pray now; anyone want anything?”

When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, I think they already have an inkling that prayer is something different. Because by now, they have seen the effects of prayer on Jesus. They’ve seen Jesus repeatedly steal away to pray. But has it brought him riches? No. In fact, he’s what we might call homeless; “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (9:58). Has prayer brought him prestige? Not quite. He has met with rejection repeatedly, including in his own hometown where they tried to throw him off the cliff. Has prayer brought him power? No, at least not in a worldly sense. The religious authorities have set their face against him. And he keeps talking about a cross and great suffering.

All of this to say, Jesus’ prayer life does not reap the rewards that many people seek in prayer. His prayers do not result in riches, prestige, or power, or even comfort or convenience. They have not made his life any easier by worldly standards. If anything, his life seems pointed in the direction of hardship and adversity. So why would the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray? Why would they desire a prayer life like Jesus’ if there was no benefit to them?

The Presence of God

My guess is that they saw something in Jesus that they did not see in people who had great riches, great prestige, or great power. They saw in him a certain ease with the world, a deep joy, a steady serenity, a real peace. They saw in him not struggle or striving, but acceptance and trust. In a word, they saw God in him. In today’s lectionary passage from Colossians, Paul writes, “In [Christ Jesus] the whole fullness of [God] dwells [in a body]” (Col 2:9).

So they ask Jesus, “How did you get this way? Teach us how you pray.”

In response, Jesus gives them a prayer that is remarkably different from the popular version of prayer. It is completely empty of “I” or “me” language. Perhaps this is part of the reason for what the disciples see in Jesus. There is no “I” or “me” getting in the way of God. The fullness of God can dwell in Jesus. Instead of praying for himself, Jesus prays for something larger than himself. He prays for God’s glory to become tangibly real in the world, for God’s kingdom to appear. He prays for the material and spiritual needs of his community, for bread as well as for forgiveness. And Jesus envisions that his community will become partners in God’s response. They will forgive one another as God has forgiven them. Presumably, he envisions that they will provide bread to one another as well, as God has provided it for them. For he follows up his model prayer with a story in which one friend begs another for bread—not for himself, but for someone else, a guest.

In Jesus’ model prayer, the self is not the center of the universe. Rather, God is the center, and God’s goodness radiates into all the community. The last few verses, however, throw a bit of a curve ball. They seem to present prayer according to the popular view, as a request that will be granted. “Ask…search…knock…,” Jesus says, and you will receive (11:9-10). But notice what is received. “If you then…know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (11:13). Jesus assumes that we will be praying desperately not for any old thing, but for the Holy Spirit, which is to say, the presence of God within us. At the heart of Jesus’ prayer is the desire for the presence of God.

“My Best Thinking Got Me Here”

Old-timers in the twelve-step program will often confess, “My best thinking got me here.” Whether their struggle is with alcohol, drugs, food, relationships, gambling, is irrelevant; the struggle itself begins with their will. It’s not that their will is too weak. It’s that their will is too strong. They think they know best. They think they can manage their own life. But as their grip on things gets tighter and tighter, their life spins further and further out of control.

You don’t have to be in a twelve-step program to identify with this feeling. “Addiction” is just a special modern word for an ancient human problem: attachment. We all get attached to things. It could be a substance, or a person, or a political party, or a certain way of thinking. Whatever it is, we think it is the answer. The ultimate reality. We think it will satisfy us, solve all our problems. We think it will give us certainty and happiness. The real problem, of course, is not the object of attachment, but our single-minded, willful pursuit of it. We think we know best. We think we can manage our own lives. All the while, our own thinking detaches us further and further from God and the world.

Growing up, I understood prayer as thinking to God. Talking to God inside my mind. I have no doubt now that God hears these prayers—just as a parent hears their child’s endless rationalizations for getting what they want. I would not want to dismiss those honest, heartfelt prayers filled with emotion; many of the psalms follow just such a pattern. What I would like to suggest, however, is that, by itself, simply praying whatever we’re thinking leaves little room for God. Praying what we’re thinking directs God more than it allows God to direct us. Praying what we’re thinking may well keep us mired in our own mess, in denial, self-deception, and judgment of others. If it’s true what many addicts have said—“my best thinking got me here”—then praying what we’re thinking may be little else than a monologue to accompany our long descent to “rock bottom.”

Breaking the Toxic Trance

The gospel texts for the last two Sundays featured characters who justified themselves before Jesus. First there is the lawyer, who engages Jesus in debate about who qualifies as a neighbor (10:25-37). Then there is Martha, who points out that Mary is doing none of the work (10:38-42). Both characters are stuck in their own thinking, and it seems to be dragging them down with self-importance and resentment. The Lord’s Prayer presents a stark counterpoint to these stories. Rather than double-down on his own thoughts, Jesus opens up to God. He practically begs God to be present with him, in him, all around him.

One of my favorite names for God comes from the Twelve-Step Program: “Not me.” Whatever else God is—and there’s plenty of room for debate here—God is “not me.” Prayer, then, is first and foremost about opening up to something other than me. It’s not about getting the words right. It’s not about having the right request. It’s not about my worthiness or not. It is about welcoming something other than me. In the words of Anne Lamott, it is about “break[ing] the toxic trance” of my own thinking. Prayer is not me changing the world, it’s God changing me.

This past Wednesday, I was gardening and apparently got too close to some plants that waged war with my allergies. As a result, I’m afraid I look a little bit like a zombie if you get close enough to see my face. Now, I’m a self-conscious person. The last thing I wanted was to stand up in front of a congregation with a zombie-face. When I read Jesus’ instruction on prayer, however, this trivial, self-centered fear began to evaporate. I was changed. In prayer, I found peace. Not the peace of getting what I wanted, of my allergies magically lifting…but the peace of not being the center of the universe, the peace of knowing God did not care about my zombie-face nearly as much as I did, and the peace of knowing that God would be with me and help me to be with others.

The irony of authentic prayer is that we receive so much more than we ever receive in the “gimme, gimme, gimme” popular version of prayer. And maybe one of the reasons for this is that God is actually for us more than we are for ourselves. Our own thoughts tend to disconnect us from the world, but when we pray for God’s presence and God dwells within us, we are reconnected to the world and our own life becomes fuller and richer. We become even more ourselves, as we begin to share our gifts with others and as the needs of others draw us out of our shell. When we open up to the great “Not Me” of our world, we find our authentic “me,” who is in relationship with God and all the world around.

In today’s lectionary passage from Colossians, right after Paul says that the “whole fullness of [God] dwells” in Christ, he says that we “have come to fullness in him” (Col 2:9). I have to believe that prayer is an essential part of this transformation. Just as Jesus emptied himself and was filled with the fullness of God’s love, so we too may relinquish our own best thinking and welcome the fullness of God into our lives, wherever we are—right here, right now. All it takes is saying “yes” to something other than ourselves, to the great “Not me.”

Prayer

Faithful God,
Who is for us
More than we are for ourselves—
Our own best thinking
Is like a trance,
Desensitizing us to the world,
Disconnecting us from others and from you
…
Open us up to your presence,
Where we discover our true selves.
Not our will, but your will, be done.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.