July 27, 2025 – The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

“Teach Us to Pray” - Prayer as a Spiritual Practice

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

This is the earnest request from one of Jesus’ disciples, a simple sentence that opens our Gospel reading today from Luke. It is not a demand for a formula or an eloquent speech. It is a cry from the heart of someone who has seen prayer in the life of Jesus and longs to enter into that same intimacy, that same rhythm of divine relationship.

Prayer, then, is not simply a duty. It is not merely a spiritual discipline like taking your vitamins or flossing your teeth. It is a longing for connection, a spiritual practice that orients us toward God, shapes our inner life, and opens us to divine love. When we say, “Lord, teach us to pray,” we’re asking to learn how to live fully in the presence of God.

And Jesus does not disappoint. He offers what we now call the Lord’s Prayer—brief, beautiful, and radical in its simplicity. “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins… and do not bring us to the time of trial.” It’s a prayer of trust, dependence, and communion. It is a prayer that keeps us grounded.

But prayer, as our Gospel makes clear, is more than words. Jesus goes on to speak of persistence—of knocking at the door at midnight, of seeking and asking. He reminds us that God, who is more gracious than any earthly parent, will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

This is not a vending-machine model of prayer. This is not “say the right words, and you’ll get what you want.” Rather, this is a vision of prayer as relationship—a way of being with God, not just talking at God. It is through prayer that we are formed into the likeness of Christ. It is through prayer that we learn to abide.

For many of us, though, prayer can be hard. It can feel dry, repetitive, or even disappointing. And it is precisely here that the wisdom of the early Church, especially the Desert Mothers and Fathers, can help us.

These early Christian monastics—women and men who retreated into the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine beginning in the 3rd and 4th centuries—did so not to escape the world, but to find God more deeply within it. Their lives were saturated in prayer. But not glamorous prayer. Not the kind of prayer that earns accolades or feels constantly rewarding. They practiced real prayer—often hard, silent, enduring, sometimes even agonizing. But through it, they experienced transformation.

Abba Macarius once said, “If we remember the wrongs that men have done us, our prayers are not acceptable to God.” For the Desert Fathers and Mothers, prayer and holiness were inseparable. You couldn’t draw near to God in prayer and hold on to hate or pride. You had to let go. Prayer was a crucible—a place where self was stripped away and only love remained.

And Amma Syncletica, one of the Desert Mothers, wisely said, “There are many who live in the desert and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of their own thoughts.”

In other words, prayer is not about location. It’s about posture. You don’t have to flee to the wilderness. The wilderness may already be inside you—your distractions, your busyness, your worries. But you can bring all of that into prayer. You can meet God not only on your knees in church, but in traffic, at your desk, at your kitchen table, or in your grief and your longing.

So, what does it mean for us to pray in this way?

The Anglican way of prayer has always held together the liturgical and the personal, the formal and the spontaneous. We are people of the Daily Office—Morning and Evening Prayer—rhythms that echo the patterns of ancient monastics. We pray the Psalms, chant canticles, and lift up the concerns of the world. And yet within that structure, there is room for silence, for contemplation, for that heartfelt cry: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

This balance is at the heart of the Book of Common Prayer. We do not pray simply to get things. We pray to be with God. As Richard Foster puts it in his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, “Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.” Our tradition gives us beautiful words—but also calls us to stillness, to the deeper life beneath the words.

The Desert Mothers and Fathers often used what we might call contemplative prayer—brief prayers repeated over and over, like the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This simple prayer, said slowly and from the heart, can be a doorway into presence. And it pairs beautifully with the quiet reverence of our Anglican spirituality.

We may also rediscover prayer in silence. In stillness. In simply sitting before God without expectation. In trusting that even when we feel nothing, God is still present. One desert elder put it this way: “As a fish cannot swim without water, so a Christian cannot thrive without prayer.”

And so, my dear siblings in Christ, what might it mean for us today to take up prayer as a spiritual practice—not as a chore, not as a wish list, but as a way of becoming more fully human and more deeply God’s?

It might mean setting aside ten minutes of silence each morning—just to be with God.

It might mean praying the Daily Office, with others or alone, letting the words carry you.

It might mean using breath prayers during the day—short phrases like “Come, Lord Jesus” or “Peace of Christ” as anchors for your mind.

It might mean being honest in your prayers—bringing your grief, your confusion, your hopes, your anger, and even your silence to God.

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened.” But prayer is not magic. It is relationship. It is a practice. And like any practice, it requires our presence and our perseverance.

The life of prayer is not for the faint of heart. It will stretch you. It will confront your ego. It will sometimes feel like nothing is happening. But if you stay with it—if you keep showing up—God will meet you.

Not always with answers. But always with presence.

Not always with what you want. But always with what you need.

Not always on your timeline. But always in love.

So may we, like that unnamed disciple, say again today: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

And may our lives become prayers—offered with open hands, in faith, in trust, and in love. Amen.