A few of us "theological types" were sitting around a dinner table one night at the Community Church Conference. Our esteemed President, Dr. Greg Smith was holding forth in typical rabbinical fashion, asking us questions intended to test the shallowness of our measly little lives. Let me see if I can remember any of the questions...oh yes...

Well, we "theological types" searched our little theological heads, but not one of us was able to come up with an answer to the question. So we searched the Scriptures, but nowhere within the Word of God could we come up with anything about snails and turtles. Finally we gave up. We turned to Greg and said, "Rabbi, we do not know. What DID the snail say when it hitched a ride on the turtle's back?"

And Greg threw his hands up in the air and said, "WHEEEEEEEE!"

Now, I don't know about you, but that's exactly how I feel every time I open the Bible to read one of the stories of Jesus. I find myself wanting to say something like "Wheee!" because of the excitement of it all. On the one hand, the stories of Jesus are simply thrilling for the sake of the new insight and challenge. And on the other, the stories are kind of scary because they call us out to the edge of life's envelope and confront us with unknown and sometimes uncomfortable things.

For instance, toward the end of today's Scripture lesson, Jesus teaches that God is sort of like my good friend Bud. Bud lives on the lake up in New Hampshire where we have our camp. For more than twenty-years now, Bud has been answering my desperate pleas for help. The pump breaks down. Call Bud. The boat motor won't start. Call Bud. Have to go to the hospital. Call Bud. And because Sandy and I have not had a telephone in our place for all these years, we've been able to tell parishioners who really need to get in touch with us to just...call Bud! And he brings the message.

Now I'm sure that Bud must groan every time he hears one of my pleas for help. But the truth is that Bud loves us. And even though it may be inconvenient, even though he may be sound asleep in bed, the light will come on, and the door will open, and Bud will respond with help.

And here Jesus gives us the thrilling news that God is like my neighbor Bud. Or your friend who you can turn to for any thing at any time. God's love is that immense! Even when we have worn out our welcome, even when we cause huge inconvenience, even when God would be perfectly justified to tell us to go away and leave him alone - God still gets out of bed, and shuffles to the door, and opens it to welcome you - and me.

Wheee! What a fantastic thought!

But there's danger in this passage, too. After all, here is the Lord's Prayer in a version that you and I have seldom - if ever - prayed. It contains just five brief sentences.

This version of the Lord's Prayer makes me feel uneasy. One of the things I learned early in my ministry is that you don't go monkeying around with things like the Lord's Prayer.

I was serving on the staff of a large Methodist Church when the Senior Pastor decided to incorporate this version of the prayer into a communion service. When it was over, one of the pillars of the church went tearing out the door, weeping out loud, "What have they done to my Lord's prayer?" It caused quite a stir. I don't think she ever came back to church. And what got lost in the shuffle of all the emotion is that what they did to the Lord's Prayer was to use it in what scholars believe is its original form.

The version in Matthew, which we usually use, has added a lot of flowery language to serve the liturgical purposes of the early church. But it's not the original. The words, "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory..." were never an actual part of the prayer, but was a congregational response to the prayer first used a hundred or more years later. The Catholics use that response to the Lord's Prayer quite correctly.

So what we have here in the Gospel of Luke is a Lord's Prayer that is as close as we'll ever get to the actual words Jesus spoke to the disciples.

And as strange and as uncomfortable as the words may make us feel, they contain some powerful lessons for us.

So this morning, with a mix of excitement and danger, I invite you to come with me into The Lord's Prayer.

I find myself wanting to start by asking a question.

Why did the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray?

If you have ever been to the Holy Land, you've probably visited what remains of the great western wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. It's called The Wailing Wall because that is what people do there. Wearing prayer shawls about their shoulders and phylacteries on their foreheads, Orthodox Jews sway back and forth as they recite their prayers and hope for the rebuilding of the Temple.

Judaism is a prayerful religion. Young people bar mitzvah'd (or bat mitzvah'd in the case of a girl) are indoctrinated into the covenant community not only by learning about their heritage, but by fully participating in the prayers of the faith. Judaism is a prayerful religion.

So why did these Jewish disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray?

I believe they asked Jesus to teach them to pray because they saw the extraordinary practical power of prayer in Jesus' life. His prayers were not like the empty words so often recited in religious settings. His prayers resulted in blind people seeing, lepers being cleansed, sinners receiving forgiveness, and clear guidance being received on how to navigate through the difficulties of every day. At night, he went up into the mountains to pray. And when he came down in the morning, he was fully charged and ready to go!

And when the disciples saw the extraordinary power of prayer in Jesus' life, they asked him, "Lord, would you teach US to pray?"

Perhaps, like the disciples, you would like Jesus to teach you to pray, too. What a wonderful thing! But let me caution you. To learn to pray as Jesus prayed, you'll have to let go of a lot of your current understandings about prayer.

And one of the first things you'll have to give up is praying The Lord's Prayer backwards.

One of my favorite movies is a ridiculous Burt Reynolds film called "The End". At one point in the movie, the character played by Burt Reynolds decides to put an end to his life by swimming out into the bay, and when he can go no further, letting himself slip below the surface of the water to drown. Well, that's what he does. Under the water he goes. But about sixty seconds later, he comes bursting back up to the surface yelling, "God, help me, help me! I DON'T want to die!"

And then, as he desperately tries to swim to shore, he bargains with God. "Lord, if you'll get me out of this, I'll give EVERYTHING I own to you! Just let me live! PLEASE!"

He makes it a hundred yards closer to shore and gushes, "God, like I said, if you'll help me make it, I'll give 75% of everything I have to you!"

And a hundred yards closer, it becomes 50%...and then 20%...and...well you get the picture.

Now as silly a storyline as that is, many of us will have to admit that the prayer we most often pray is the prayer that cries, "God, get me out of this! God, I've got this problem! God, save me from my circumstances! God, HELP!"

There is nothing like a personal problem, or a tragedy, or a heartbreaking moment to send us running to God for help.

And there's nothing wrong with that! By all means, the Lord wants us to seek God's help in times of trouble!

But notice if you will, that when Jesus taught the disciples to pray, the request to "deliver us from evil" or to "not bring us to the time of trial", is the last petition of all.

My second favorite prayer, I must admit to you, is "God, forgive me! I'm sorry for what I did. I know it was wrong." As a child, there was another component to this prayer in my life that went something like, "Please don't send me to hell...or even worse, don't let my parents find out! "

Praying for forgiveness is one of our favorite prayers. And it's a very important prayer. By all means, to be healthy people, we need to confess our sins to God and learn to turn away from them. And yet, when Jesus taught the disciples to pray, the prayer for forgiveness was the next to last petition.

We also love to pray for stuff. I once heard a sermon on the Lord's Prayer in which it was contended that daily bread is anything we need. You're driving along through the mall parking lot and its raining out, so you ask God to get you a parking space. Daily bread. Your kid's in line for a big promotion at work and calls you on the phone and says, Please pray that I'll get that job!" Daily bread. Tony Campolo tells of a night at home when his young son Bart came into the living room and said, "Mom and Dad, I'm going upstairs now to say my prayers. Anybody WANT anything?"

We all pray for stuff. And Jesus told us to. But when he taught his disciples to pray, asking for our daily needs was a little further down on the list.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Most of us pray the Lord's Prayer backwards. Help me, forgive me, give me! And when you look at how we've reversed the prayer, it soon becomes evident that one result of praying the Lord's Prayer backwards is that it shifts the focus of the prayer to ME! And that is not so much prayer anymore as it is magic.

Bronislav Malinowski, the great British anthropologist who studied various forms of prayer crossculturally, differentiated prayer from magic in this way. Magic, he contended, is an attempt to control supernatural powers so people get what they want. Prayer, on the other hand, is a process wherein people spiritually surrender so they can become instruments through whom the supernatural powers can do their work.

And that's precisely where Jesus is trying to lead us as he teaches us to pray the Lord's Prayer FORWARD!

The word hallowed means consecrated or set apart. Prayer is a moment when we place a claim on our own lives that we belong to someone greater than ourselves. He is different than anyone we know, far greater than anything we can imagine, higher and more beautiful than anything else in all creation. He is hallowed. And he is our Father. That means that we come from him! If we could trace our lineage all the way back across time, we would learn that the very root of our family tree is God Himself! We are his descendents! We are his heirs! We bear his likeness and his image!

And so the very first thing Jesus teaches us about prayer is take hold of our IDENTITY! We are not some schleps walking along the yellow brick road for no apparent purpose other than to one day go and visit a make-believe wizard! We are children of the living God, created for a high and majestic purpose! And until you and I take hold of that identity, our lives will never rise up to the power and the glory of who and what we were created to be.

Prayer begins by reminding ourselves who we really are! That's what Jesus did when he went up into the mountains at night. He meditated on the thought that he was the son of God.

Most of us have never learned to do that - to use prayer as a means of claiming our identity. For reflecting upon what it will mean tomorrow to go and live as a son or daughter of the living God. For thinking through our godly responsibilities as parents, spouses, children, neighbors, and friends. For peering through our problems and the confusion of every day life to catch sight of the higher purposes, and goals, and values that lay behind them.

Recently, I visited with a family in our church that's facing a difficult time. An innocent trip to the doctor eventually turned into diagnostic words of the sort that we all dread hearing. The word cancer was in there. The words six months to two years were there too.

As I listened to these beautiful people the other day, I was deeply moved by their use of the term Christian. Yes, I have a serious illness, but I'm going to face it as a Christian. As a Christian I know there some things in my life - especially in my relationships - that need to be taken care of. As a Christian I'm praying that God will cure me, but if a cure doesn't come, I'm not afraid because I AM a Christian.

You see, dear friends, life comes to us as it darn well pleases. And none of us can control how it does. But the promise Jesus gives us is that, while we cannot control life, we can find power to control how we face life. There is power in knowing who we are and whose we are!

And then Jesus taught what I believe is the key prayer of every Christian.

What is the kingdom of God? Why, it is people reconciled to God and to each other. It is the poor lifted, and the hungry fed. The kingdom is the lion and the lamb laying down together. It is the last getting to be first, and the lame leaping for joy.

Do you know, most Christians I know do not pray for the kingdom to come. They do not cry out in their prayers at night that God will lead them tomorrow to a poor person to whom they can bring the kingdom near by helping them in Jesus' name! They do not bring into their prayers the hope that tomorrow they'll find an opportunity to put their arm around the shoulder of a brokenhearted person and love them in Jesus' name! They do not ask that God will lead them to someone they can pray for, or to someone they can encourage, or to someone they can befriend, or to someone they can lead to Christ.

But what a beautiful and powerful thing it is when people pray for opportunities to bring the kingdom near to others.

A friend of mine prayed one night to have some role in helping the kingdom come. The very next day, he was standing in line at the grocery store while a little boy at the front of the line was pulling out his pockets in a desperate search for money. He was trying to buy a birthday gift for his mom, and didn't have as much money as he thought he had. My friend watched all this wondering if maybe it was an answer to his prayer. When the little boy started crying, he knew it was. So he stepped forward and asked the clerk how much was needed. He reached into his pocket and made up the difference. The little boy, of course was grateful and asked him his name so he could pay him back. My friend said, "Oh, I'm just a friend of God, and you can pay HIM back by being kind to others."

It is the most powerful prayer of all when you let it become your personal plea to get you involved in bringing the kingdom to others.

And when you shape your prayers in these ways - around who you are, and what you can personally do to advance the kingdom - all the other petitions take on new meaning. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins. Help us in difficult times!

In just a few moments, we're going to be breaking ground for the construction of our new Christian Life Center. As we do, we will stepping onto the brink of new opportunities and challenges for our ministry as a church.

Dear friends, it is surely time for us to learn to pray as Jesus taught us.