So my dying Uncle requested that he wanted to talk to me. I just spoke with him while he was literally on his death bed. Being so close to death he wanted to talk about salvation. He claimed that he recently started praying, but that he wasn’t any good at it. He wanted to pray, but didn’t know what to say…

There’s a fascinating story in the Bible; during Jesus’ life his disciples ask him if he will teach them how to pray like John taught his disciples. It was not unusual for rabbi’s to teach specific prayers. Jesus tells them to pray like this,

“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
who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.” (Lk 11.2-4)

This is also why in some conservative sects of Christianity there is the repeating of certain archaic prayers such as reciting latin liturgy in the Catholic Church. In this environment there is a significant focus on keeping things orthodox.

On the other hand I have heard before that praying is nothing other than having a conversation with God. Which would make sense, accept how do you talk to God when you have to speak words that have already been provided for you? That’s like someone saying, “Hey I want to talk to you, but you have to say this… here are your lines.”

This is why some of my friends have joined things like the emergent church. Because here prayer can become something that everyone can relate to. Everything becomes completely unconventional.

Now my friends at the Cathedral would say that this is a disgrace to God and completely irreverent to YAWEH (God), while my friends who do church at Starbucks* would say that being glued to orthodoxy is crippling any chance of relevance and not meeting people where they are.

So which is it? Reverence or Relevance?

Maybe the answer is yes. When Jesus is telling the disciples how to pray I don’t think that he is concerned with them repeating him word for word. It seems this is less about a memorization test and maybe more about him making a point. Because its not what we pray, but how we pray.

The text treats prayer as a learned experience, not simply a release of feelings like when someone divulges to a psychiatrist. It is clear that discipline is present in prayer. If you look at the example of prayer, basically it all boils down to recognizing who God is… and recognizing who we are.

Jesus’ prayer for the believer is that of community (us, we), not of a private individual. Because once you’re born into the family… never again are you alone. And this is exactly what I told my Uncle. Once you are reborn into this family you will never be alone again. And so with one prayer his whole life has changed and he is reborn. For him there was no struggle of reverence vs. relevance. I guess because in the end you start to think about what really matters.