Thy Will

Luke 11:1-13

Teach us to pray, we ask, or do we ask at all. Most times people are afraid to pray. If someone came up to you and asked you to pray right now, what would you pray. Would you feel nervous, tongue-tied, upset to say out loud what you think in your mind? Do you think it has to be flowery, only done by someone who is ordained, or is it just speaking it out? Prayer for a group always makes us feel like a deer in the headlights. So here are the disciples asking Jesus to teach them how to pray.

It's like the church right now. Pastor, priest, Reverend teach us what to do next or not even teach us, please do what we are to do next. We have anxiety because the church is in unfamiliar territory. All the things we once expected: full churches, choirs, children, programs these won’t save us or propel us forward. We have to learn this territory on our own. Without a map.

I started reading the book Canoeing the Mountains it speaks of how like Lewis and Clark all the tricks the church used to do we thought would serve us well into the future. And yet, here we are just like them. See they had thought once they reached the head waters of the Missouri River that they would come to the top of the mountain and look out and see the Pacific Ocean. Because the topography of this should be just like the east coast, right? Wrong. They came to the top of the mountain and saw…mountains stretching out as far as the eye could see. Now they were map-less. They had to figure out a new way to get to the ocean or turn around and head back.

This is the church right now. Quite honestly all anyone wants to do is turn around and head back to what was familiar, mapped territory. We are not there anymore. Run a program and only a few people show up. The choir, children, families are gone and not coming in. So do we give up?

Lord, teach us to pray. The one line in here we should most concern ourselves with isn’t in the scripture this morning. It is in our prayer we make every week. Thy will be done. It is the hardest prayer we will ever pray. We can’t manipulate it, we can’t know the outcome of it, but it certainly helps us when we are in undefined new territory.

The first place I met this phrase being used was in Jan Karon’s Fr. Tim series about the little town of Mitford where the priest, Fr. Tim lives. He is always telling people to pray the prayer which never fails. Thy will be done. Not mine, not ours, not anyone’s but God’s.

Saying this prayer is simple, it also gives us a map. This is why I wanted to talk about being called on to pray in public. When we pray in public we have no map, no script, no way of knowing how it will be received. We are in unchartered territory. Yet somehow if we are called on, we make it up. We might take a deep breath, but we dive in and go.

This is the same with how we do things right now in this place we are standing in. We won’t know, we don’t have a map which will tell us what is right and wrong. We do still rely on God. Lord, teach us.

Lord, teach us how to become who we truly are. Lord, teach us to love the community we have now, not the one we used to be. Lord, teach us how to trust, even when we fail, especially when we fail, because we will learn more about ourselves and You. Lord, help us to follow your leading and not our own made-up wanderings which lead us to despair. Teach us.

In one of the Ignatian practices of the examen this is all we pray, over and over again, thy will be done. I have learned by doing this what I am holding onto that I think I’m in control of. I am only human. I do like to think I have an idea of what is happening in my life and the outcome. Thy will be done lifts all this into a new place where what I most obsess over, I can let go of.

Thy will be done. It seems like such a small thing and yet it is the most challenging. If we are to find our next steps, what do we need to let go of? It is a good question. Another good one is what am I holding onto too tightly?

Can you imagine what would have happened had Lewis and Clark not gone forward and had instead turned around? Can we imagine what the church would have been if Martin Luther had given up? You know he did want to. It was never his intention to split from the Catholic church. All he wanted was honest reform. Yet this was not what happened.

We all come to the crossroads where there isn’t a map. We all need to delve into the wild space of not knowing and dare, dare to let go. Thy will be done.