"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
One thing that made John compelling as a spiritual leader was the fact that he seemed closer to God than others. He seemed to hear from God and live in a way that was a response to what he heard. It was dynamic. And not only that, he was apparently able to show his disciples how to enter into the experience themselves.
If John the Baptist seemed close to God, and if his life of prayer seemed to nourish him, and to be something without which he could not live, how much more so Jesus himself? Jesus found time and space to pray when the circumstances of life would have made it seem impossible for most people. He marked pivotal decisions by first referring them to prayer. It was obvious to those who spent time near him that God was for him a living God. His followers had even at times seen a privileged view into his relationship with his Father. They heard the Father speaking of his Son during his baptism and transfiguration. And they had only just heard an instance of the Son speaking aloud of his participation in the divine life of the Father:
I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will (see Luke 10:21).
The disciples realized that there was more possible in the prayer life than they had heretofore experienced, more than the rote performance of a duty. They knew this because the life of Jesus made it obvious. They hoped from what they saw from the disciples of John that it need not necessarily be limited to Jesus himself. After all, he had said that the Father could be known to "anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (see Luke 10:22).
In response to the request of the disciples to pray Jesus did, perhaps surprisingly, offer them what appeared to be a formula. But it was a formula that would only avail for them if they were attentive to, not just the words, but the meaning they conveyed, and the hierarchy of priority they implied. Before anything else, above all things in terms of importance, was that God's name be kept holy. It was holy in itself and could not be otherwise. But that it be kept holy in the hearts of women and men was by no means a given. Only with that disposition could anything else worth having follow. One could not even desire the coming of the Kingdom properly or well without first establishing the primacy of the God whose Kingdom it was. Without the holiness of God in their hearts they might pursue the Kingdom as though it were merely one of many human kingdoms in competition with each other. Without the holiness of God they might forgive sometimes, as they felt like it, but could not practice the radical forgiveness to which they were called by the Gospel. Without the holiness of God they would not have the drive to remain concerned with the final test. Rather than persevering, in bearing suffering for the sake of the name (see Acts 5:41), other priorities would instead quickly usurp the place of faithfulness to the end. Having said all of that, the call is not to a generic holiness in general, something potentially inapproachable and alien. It is rather the holiness of one whom we call Father that we are called to remember above all else. Doesn't knowing this fact, and seeing how Jesus lived the reality, make us desire to share in it as he did? Let's learn this morning as he teaches us to do so.
Matt Maher - As It Is In Heaven
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