Matthew 6:5 - 8

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.



Since we pretty much dealt with the stuff about being seen when we loked at the previous four verses I'm going to concentrate on the prayer practicalities bits. Praying is primarioly a realtionship between ourselves and God and the danger involved in other people being involved is that it becomes a means to gain status/plaudits from others. So we need to be prepared to create the conditions that make the relationship with God paramount. That's the point of the prayer closet idea. A lot of spiritual direction coaching can be spent on thinking through with people just how to make sure they can amke those conditions in the context that they are in. It's not always easy and sometimes we have to be creative. Sometimes too we have to take stock of the whole of life and try to notice where God is already making contact or where we are finding ourselves drawn into a sense of God's presence; quite often these are not the 'traditional' parts of life for Godwardness.



This isn't outlawing group prayer -clearly the early church prayed together at various points formally in informally: the point is making sure our attitude is about growing closer to God not impressing other people. It is all too easy for this to happen, so group prayer should be balanced by prayer where the attitudes and scrutiny of other people is not something that impinges on our consciousness or even impinges on us unconsciously. This gives us the chance to practice intimacy with God so that we know how that connection is when we are with others and the human-pleasing temptations come along with it.



Now to heaping up empty phrases .... well, it's interesting to note that Jesus's difficulty with gentiles is not idolatry or worshipping another God but that they try to impress God by rhetorical force. There's some pause for thought there on relationship to other faiths and mission which isn't friendly to strongly exclusivist approaches but does sit rather more comfortably with inclusivists. One swallow doesn't make a summer and a simple text aiming at some other purpose doesn't make the inclusivist case, but it is suggestive, nevertheless.



More to the point is the reason for not heaping up the phrases: not only do they not impress God, but they are unnecessary since God knows all about it already. Our praying is not meant to be about informing God. So what is it about? Asking God for things!? But God knows what we need before we ask, the implication being that our asking is not really going to be about letting God know that we feel we need something; that's also something God knows. It seems to me that the only thing it can really be is about relationship-building between us and God. We ask for things in prayer to help us identify where we're at and we do so before God. By doing so we open ourselves up to seeing things a little bit more from a divine perspective ['a little bit' because we can't stand too much reality] and to being invited to offer our concern and even distress and empathy as means somehow to be included in what God is doing. Praying, in this perspective, becomes more about keeping company with God and letting ourselves be changed and used than about informing God or even trying to change God by saying something 'new' Sometimes God draws us into dialogue [cf Abraham in Genesis 18] and makes room for our growing appreciation of Who God is and What God is about to be part of what God unfolds into the world.



Praying is relationship, praying is being caught up in God's stuff, praying is opening oursleves up to Godding.



Crosswalk.com - Matthew 6:5 - 8