Series on the Lord’s Prayer: Prayer in the Secret Chamber

This is the first in a September series on the Lord’s Prayer. My hope is that this series gives us all a chance to lay our heart before God in prayer. I’ll attach the Sermon Guide which has questions and a spiritual exercise for the week.

Matt 6:6-15; Luke 11:1-4

You may think my title sounds vaguely familiar. It might have something to do with all the Harry Potter I’ve been reading to Silas. Remember Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? But the “secret chamber” I will talk about contains not some horrible, frightening beast; it is an alternative translation of the place where Jesus teaches his disciples to pray: “Go into your room”—could be chamber, the Greek word is vague, and anyway just who back then had a private room all to himself?—“and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” or maybe, “in the secret place.”

So what does Jesus mean, praying in your secret chamber? Is what we are doing this very hour—praying in public, praying in front of each other—a mistake? Should we stay home and pray in our bedrooms? Is Jesus saying we should join the great throngs today who declare, “I’m spiritual but not religious?” Are we who pray together in church being like the hypocrites, who “love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others?”

I don’t think these are the conclusions we should draw. It’s true: a little hypocrisy inevitably comes along with any public, religious community. But I don’t know any really prideful and showy pray-ers among you all. (I hope you are not offended.) That was more of a problem in Jesus’ day, when a religious elite made a show of its piety to justify their authority and set themselves apart from the unlettered, impious masses. It was probably more of a problem in our past too, when anybody who was somebody in our town wanted to be seen in the Church of Christ. Those days are mostly past; and in this regard that’s a good thing.

Moreover, I’m pretty sure that Jesus did not mean we should be spiritual but not religious—that faith, in other words, is a purely private, personal, individual thing that must float free of any institution like a church. He preached the Kingdom of God, right? He gathered twelve disciples to symbolize the new Israel, with its twelve tribes. And most crucially, Jesus teaches them to pray: “Our Father in heaven.” Not “my father.” You can’t say “our” in a purely private prayer. Nor can you say, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts…” This prayer Jesus taught his disciples, who passed it down to us, was meant to be a liturgical prayer, a prayer said in shared, public worship. We can and should also pray this Lord’s Prayer in private, but whenever we do, we are still invoking the church, and by the prayer’s “ours” and “uses,” we are marking our sisterhood and brotherhood in the body of Christ. For even when you pray in the privacy of your own room, you are not just an I but a we.

So what then is Jesus’ point about praying in your chamber of secrets, your secret chamber? Well, prayer shouldn’t be merely public. It shouldn’t be just for show. Prayer definitely shouldn’t be just “going through the motions.” Like I said, there is a risk of that happening, whenever a religious community gathers. And sometimes, by the way, going through the motions is ok—not if you are using religion to look good and curry favor. That’s hypocrisy; it’s no good and is tantamount to using the Lord’s name in vain. But we are not always ready and able to say the prayers and sing the songs and listen to the sermon with heart-felt sincerity. Sometimes it will all seem like just words. It’s true for me too. (Even my own sermons—isn’ t that a trip? You never considered that I also have to listen to my own sermons.) But I believe, I have faith that these words or worship are good and true, even when my mood and frame of mind happen to not be in it today. I believe there is a truth that abides in the faith we share, even while my own fickle faith may come and go. You know, one of the things I love about corporate worship, what we are doing now, is that yes, I can participate and add my voice, but I can also listen to the words of the Lord’s prayer on your lips. It’s beautiful to hear. (And another good reason that you all shouldn’t sit way in the back, where we can’t hear each other, and I can’t hear you! Not to keep beating a dead horse.) You see, we can carry each other along, when we individually may not be feeling it. And often I start to feel it when I hear the words coming from your lips, and see the faith on your faces. That’s the good use of public prayer.

But just making a show of prayer is altogether different. Just think about how wrong that is. Jesus makes it clear that hypocritical prayer (which is different from going through the motions because you’re not feeling it) is wrong. Notice, though, he doesn’t say “and God’s going to throw them in hell for doing that.” Jesus says of the hypocrites: “They have received their reward.” If all you want out of religion and faith is admiration, status, recognition by others—that’s all you’re going to get. What you will miss is God, being united with God, and missing that seems to be punishment enough for the hypocrites, at least in this passage. In fact, if God is of infinite value, and someone by praying hypocritically deprives himself of God, that person is infinitely in the hole—without any talk of a literal “hell” hole. Because what is so wrong about using prayer just for show is that prayer, among all the religious acts, is the one that has to be absolutely honest. What could be more irrational, more nonsensical, than dishonest prayer? If you have any faith that there is a God, surely you must believe that you can’t fool God. (Like Jesus says, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” In other words, prayer isn’t telling something to God that God doesn’t know; it’s more for us to lay bare what is on our hearts before God.) Imagine saying to yourself, in your secret chamber, “Well, I’ll just fake a prayer, you know, to appease God, to keep God happy.” No. Prayer makes absolutely no sense unless it is completely, brutally honest, and that includes honesty about whatever lack of faith we may be feeling at the moment. One of the greatest prayers in the Bible is: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” So hypocritical prayer gets you nothing more than what you have right now. But sincere prayer, even just confessing of an empty heart, brings you into the very presence of God.

So while what we do here together in public, corporate worship is absolutely critical—indeed, way more important than you might realize—it can never become a substitute for sincere, heart-felt personal faith. Again, some of us don’t yet or don’t always feel that heartfelt faith, and that’s ok. But heartfelt faith is the goal. I’m not going to let you give up on that goal. And I’m going to spend this month on the Lord’s Prayer, trying to open it up as a vehicle for all of us to rediscover sincere, heartfelt faith.

I’ve long been sensing that we need a sermon series that would, on the personal level, open up our hearts to God and to each other. Not that our hearts are not already open, but in the journey of Christian faith there are always new avenues of growth to explore, and old, close-hearted habits to resist with the help of God. God’s touch opens us up to infinite possibilities of growth and transformation, and also makes us aware of the infinite importance of our faults, even when they look very small in the eyes of the world.

So this series will take the Lord’s Prayer one phrase at a time—at last I hit upon sermon series in which I won’t have too much Scripture to cover! (I am aware that Jesus’ warning about “heaping up empty phrases as the Gentiles do,” thinking that “they will be heard because of their many words” could be directed at us preachers just as well.) As we consider just one line or phrase of the Lord’s Prayer each week, I’ll keep asking: “What does it mean to pray this from the heart? What would help us do that?”

Your job will be, first, to open your mind to receive new insights and consider new questions about a prayer you’ve recited, maybe 1000s of times. The Lord’s prayer is without a doubt the most familiar passage in Scripture to just about all of us. What I want you to do is be willing to see the familiar as strange, as unknown—at least temporarily. Then it might appear that the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t say what you think it says. For example, look at our readings today: Luke’s version of the prayer is significantly different from Matthew’s; and neither of theme corresponds to the version we use in worship (they both lack “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, etc.”). We’ll see why. So be ready to see the familiar as strange, as new. And second, don’t just listen to me talk about the Lord’s prayer; pray it yourself. You understand a joke by laughing. Explaining a joke gets you nowhere (except maybe, “heh heh”). Understanding a prayer means praying it from the heart, and placing yourself in the presence of God thereby. Every week in the sermon guide I include a devotional, and this month those devotionals will involve praying the Lord’s Prayer. I know you love to recycle, amen! but take that guide home with you. And let this month be an opportunity for deepening your prayer life.

Now, why is this series about opening our hearts to God in prayer needed now? Well, for some churches and some ministers, maybe some evangelical Christians, that’s all there is to church. It’s all about opening your heart to God. Not so for me. I’m probably guilty of speaking too little about seeking God in your heart, just because some Christians talk too much about it. But no, church is about so much more than just having God in your heart, or your heart in God. Church is about being God’s people, God’s kingdom. God has always called not individuals, but a people—first Israel, and then the disciples and followers of Jesus as the new Israel alongside the old. I’ve been preaching for months now about everything we could be doing to become a mightier people of God. I talked after Easter about the ripples of the resurrection, and both in those sermons and with the Adult Confirmation class, I discussed all the many dimensions of who Jesus is for us—because I think we need a richer and more informed sense of why it is we worship this Jesus the Christ. I can provide that for you. But you won’t want it unless your heart is open and hungry for it. Yes, faith should give us hungry hearts, not hearts that are simply peaceful and contented, and happy. Being filled with God is not like feeling stuffed after a four-course meal. The funny thing about God is that the more God fills you the emptier you realize you are, and the stronger your desire grows. The more God loves you, the humbler you become. We need to turn our hearts individually to God so God can make us humble and hungry; and then we collectively, we the church, will be ready to learn together and find a common core of belief together. My July series on the decline of the mainline church pointed in much the same direction. One thing we’ll need to remain vibrant, while so many churches like ours are declining and dying, is a shared, intense sense of purpose that goes back to Jesus. We have to ease up on our own opinions—remember that?—and open ourselves to growing together into a shared faith.

But we will never become a mighty, faithful, vibrant church community unless we individually connect with the same divine source that alone makes us a church. If we aren’t each individually converted to God in our hearts, everything we try to do will be frustrated.

In order to accomplish these great purposes of the church, and before we wrap up our church year with another stewardship campaign and our pledges of financial fidelity and of time and service, let us set aside this month learning once again, anew, to find God in our hearts through prayer, the Lord’s prayer that binds us to God even as it binds us to each other and to every Christian who ever was.

Sermon guide