The Place of Prayer

The Place of Prayer

The Place of Prayer

Jubilee Preaching Aid for July 27, 2025

What is the place of prayer in Jubilee work?
As the burgeoning Jesus movement was beginning to take off, Jesus’ disciples wanted to know: what sets us apart? What makes us unique? What are we all about? And so, this week’s gospel reading from Luke 11:1-13 revolves around the disciples’ request for Jesus to teach them to pray. John had taught his disciples a prayer, and they wanted Jesus to as well.

But did the disciples really not know how to pray? Likely they did. Pious Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, the disciples would have been familiar with the traditional prayers of their religious communities. This request, then, was not about learning a basic spiritual practice. Rather, the disciples were seeking a new teaching that would encapsulate and express the spiritual power of their new community. They were seeking a prayer that would give them an identity – to identify them as followers of Jesus.

Identity markers such as prayers (and names, but that’s for another day) are important for building communities, and community is what we need if we are to achieve real change for deep, systemic justice. Even more, it is through human community that God has chosen to make the world anew. We can’t do this work as isolated individuals. To this end, the prayer that the disciples requested would have functioned to succinctly communicate the core commitments of this community to those who were curious about joining, as well as to help identify those who already belonged. This was a public prayer.

And so, what did Jesus give them?

The prayer in Luke is shorter than the one many of us recite in worship. It is simple and feels deeply personal – affectionate even. It addresses God simply as “Father” without the additional designation of “in heaven,” and it expresses a desire for God’s reign to come without mention of God’s will (either in heaven or on earth). There is also no concluding formula about the power and the glory of God – an expression which is traditional but not original.

Structurally, the prayer moves from the general to the specific. This is not a shopping list of discreet requests strung together: each line functions to further explain or clarify the line before it.

From its first words, the prayer expresses a desire for God’s name to be revered as holy. This would have been a foundational posture for Jesus and his contemporaries – a point of basic agreement. The holiness of God’s name was a central tenet of first century Judaism. This is the beginning of all prayer. But how was God’s name to be revered? The next line adds detail: God’s name is revered when God is recognized as the true ruler. And what does the reign of God entail? God gives each one enough bread for the day, God forgives all sins/debts, and so do the disciples! After this, the prayer then concludes with a request to be saved from the time of trial, and we might speculate that it is precisely by following this way of forgiveness that times of trial and trouble might be avoided.

Today, as we seek to follow Jesus, what is it that shapes our identity? How would we encapsulate, succinctly, the basic teachings of our movement? What is our guiding prayer?

Perhaps, we begin where Jesus did: with a statement that everyone can agree about. But Jesus didn’t stop there, and it wouldn’t have been a very effective identity marker if he had. Jesus gets specific, and so should we. To revere God’s name means to recognize God as the true political and economic authority. Now, this is not an appeal to institute a theocracy, return to a divinely ordained monarchy, or to enforce self-righteous morality through legal or militaristic coercion. The rest of Jesus’ life and teachings make that clear. Rather, the reign of God is realized when humanity adopts a posture of humility and gratitude in the face of our own contingency. More precisely still, the reign of God is realized when we forgive each other’s debts.

This is the heart of Jesus’ teaching and the symbol that he gave his disciples. This is the sign that explains Jesus’ movement to curious outsiders and that identifies Jesus’ followers to each other. We are a people and a movement who show our reverence for God by forgiving debts. In this community, the Creator has all authority, and all enjoy bread for the day.

The examples that follow the prayer itself give illustration to Jesus’ prayer. In each case, those who are in need receive what they are after. As we preach Jubilee, then, we also must give the people what they need. We offer a spiritual practice that shapes an identity, forms a community, builds a movement in service of the Creator, and that results in the flourishing of all life.

Kevin Guenther Trautwein is a member of KAIROS Prairies North who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, subject to the promises and commitments made in Treaty 6, by the grace of God, by the gifts of the land, and by the faithfulness of the First Peoples who have kept and cared for this land since time immemorial.