rel summary paper

What the New Testament Teaches Us about Prayer.

The gospels tell us surprisingly little about Jesus’ routine or regular practice of prayer. In what seems to have been the earliest gospel, Mark notes that after Jesus’ initial successes in calling disciples, casting out a demon, and healing Peter’s mother-in-law and many other sick people, Jesus got up early in the morning and went to pray at a deserted place (1:35).

He prayed there until he was summoned by Simon Peter and his companions to resume his public ministry of proclaiming God’s kingdom. According to Mark 6:46, Jesus withdrew to a mountain to pray in between the miraculous feeding of the five thousand and his walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee. In the Old Testament, both the desert and the mountain sometimes serve as special places for encountering God. One gets the impression from Mark’s very few notices about Jesus’ prayer life that he had developed a rhythm between his communion with the Father and his teaching and other public activities.

In the teaching material in Mark 11:25, Jesus advises a willingness to forgive others if we wish to be forgiven by God: “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.” This echoes the words of the Lord’s Prayer (see Matthew 6:12 and Luke 11:4). And in Mark 13:18, Jesus describes the events preceding the coming of the Son of Man and warns his disciples to “pray that it may not be in winter,” when traveling would be especially difficult.

In his revised and expanded version of Mark’s Gospel, Matthew notes that Jesus went up the mountain by himself to pray (14:23) before walking on the water. To Mark’s warning to pray about not having to flee in winter, Matthew in 24:20 adds “or on a sabbath.” Thus, for his largely Jewish Christian community, he addresses what might have posed a crisis of conscience of having to violate the Sabbath in order to flee. To Mark’s account of Jesus blessing the children (Mark 10:13-15), Matthew in 19:13 specifies that Jesus was asked to “pray” over them.

In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5–7), Jesus challenges his followers to love their enemies and “pray for those who persecute you” (5:44). In the section (6:1-18) devoted to the three acts of piety expected of pious Jewish men (almsgiving, prayer, and fasting), Jesus insists that they be performed without ostentation or public display. He does not want them to be done only to get a reputation for holiness, but rather as genuine works of religious devotion to God. In discussing prayer in 6:5-6, Jesus first criticizes as “hypocrites” those who pray only at synagogues or in the streets to be seen by others, and warns that “they have received their reward.” By contrast, he tells his followers to pray in places where they cannot be seen (“go into your room and shut the door”) on the grounds that there will be no mixed motives in that kind of prayer. Acts of piety like prayer are intended to express one’s devotion to God and should be kept as pure and authentic as possible. In Matthew 6:7-8, Jesus goes on to warn against long and wordy prayers “as the Gentiles do.” He observes that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” These teachings set the stage for the text of the Lord’s Prayer, which as we have seen seems to be a compact version of the Eighteen Benedictions.

At one pivotal point in Matthew’s narrative (11:25-26), we have a prayer of thanksgiving recited by Jesus. Much of Matthew 11 and 12 is devoted to the mixed reception and even hostility that Jesus and his message of God’s kingdom were receiving from his Jewish contemporaries. In the midst of this generally gloomy account, there is a ray of light and hope when Jesus thanks God for those persons who had surprisingly received him and his message in a positive way.

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

(Matthew 11:25-26)

Here Jesus’ prayer takes the form of a thanksgiving. In the Old Testament and in other Jewish prayers, a thanksgiving was a public witness and affirmation that God had been at work in rescuing the speaker from great danger or in revealing some important truth. Many of the Old Testament thanksgiving psalms were very likely written to accompany the offering of material sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple. Among the Dead Sea scrolls, one of the most important documents is known as the Hodayot or Thanksgiving Hymns. In these texts the speaker often uses first-person singular language (“I”). He begins with the words “I thank you, O Lord” and proceeds to provide the reason why (“for you have …” ). Some scholars contend that in these first-person singular thanksgivings, we can hear the voice of this Jewish sect’s leader, spiritual guide, and hero, who was active in the second century b.c, who was known as the “Teacher of Righteousness.”

According to Matthew 11:25-26, Jesus began his thanksgiving in the customary Jewish way: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” His address to God balances the divine immanence (“Father”) and the divine transcendence (“Lord of heaven and earth”). The reason for his thanksgiving is the success that Jesus had among the “infants,” which is clearly a way of talking about the unlikely and even marginal persons—tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, and so on—from whom Jesus had received his most positive response (see Matthew 11:19). On the other hand, those who would seem to have been more likely to respond positively to Jesus (“the wise and the intelligent”) do not seem to “get” what Jesus was saying. In the context of Matthew’s Gospel—and very likely in the context of Jesus’ own ministry—it was the Pharisees and the Temple officials who seem especially to have failed to grasp the importance of what Jesus was saying and doing. In his thanksgiving prayer, Jesus attributes this curious situation to God’s “gracious will,” a term quite frequently used in the Qumran Thanksgiving Hymns and other Dead Sea scrolls.

Jesus’ thanksgiving prayer is accompanied by his declaration in Matthew 11:27 that as God’s Son, he is the revealer and revelation of God and of God’s wisdom. And it is accompanied by his invitation in 11:28-30 for those seeking genuine wisdom to come to his school of wisdom where one can find a gentle and humble teacher and rest for one’s soul. Compare the similar language used by the Jewish wisdom teacher Jesus ben Sira in describing his own wisdom school in Jerusalem in the early second century b.c. (see Sirach 6:18-31 and 51:23-30).

As we have seen already, prayer is a major theme in Luke’s Gospel. It contains not only a sample prayer from Jesus (11:1-4) but also his instructions about persistence in prayer (11:5-13 and 18:1-8) and humility in prayer (18:9-14). Luke’s Gospel also portrays Jesus as praying at the most decisive moments in his public ministry. According to Luke 3:21-22, Jesus was praying after his baptism when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and the heavenly voice identified him as God’s Son and servant. After his initial successes in healing the sick, Luke tells us that Jesus “would withdraw to deserted places and pray” (5:16). Before choosing the twelve apostles, Jesus is said in Luke 6:12 to have gone out to the mountain to pray and to have “spent the night in prayer to God.” In his Sermon on the Plain, he instructs his followers to “bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (6:28). Prior to Peter’s climactic confession of Jesus as “the Messiah of God,” Jesus “was praying alone” (9:18). According to Luke 9:29, the transfiguration of Jesus took place “while he was praying.” In the passion narrative, Jesus is arrested while he is at prayer on the Mount of Olives (22:39-46). And on the cross he prays for those who were responsible for executing him (23:34) and dies with a prayer (see Psalm 31:5) on his lips: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

The Prayer of God’s Son

In comparison with the three synoptic gospels, John’s Gospel tells us very little about Jesus’ practice of prayer. Only when we reach the farewell discourse in John 14–17 does the topic of prayer come to the fore. In John 14:14 Jesus assures his disciples that prayers in his name will surely be answered: “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” But in 16:26-27, Jesus explains that he has no need to ask the Father on their behalf, since the Father loves them and presumably knows what they need already. There are some echoes here of what has been said about the prayer of petition in the other gospels (see Luke 11:9-13).

What is unique to John’s Gospel is Jesus’ own very long prayer in John 17. This is the conclusion to his farewell discourse at the Last Supper in John 14–17 and the prelude to the passion narrative that begins in John 18. It is sometimes referred to as Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” because in it he performs a “priestly” function by interceding for himself, his disciples, and those who will become disciples through them. But it is better called “the prayer of God’s Son,” since Jesus prays especially to his heavenly Father in his unique role as the Son of God. Throughout the prayer, Jesus addresses God as “Father” (see 17:1, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25).

Modern scholars often call the farewell discourse in John 14–17 the “testament” of Jesus and associate it with a literary form common in Jewish literature in New Testament times. There are testaments attributed to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve sons of Jacob, Moses, Solomon, and Job. A testament contains the last words of the departing hero. In it the hero looks over the past and into the future, and gives advice for those whom he leaves behind on how to behave in the present. Testaments often conclude with the hero’s prayer for his children or friends. In his concluding prayer in John 17, Jesus prays in turn for himself (17:1-5), for his disciples (17:6-19), and for those who will come to believe through his disciples (17:20-26).

Jesus’ prayer for himself in John 17:1-5 concerns the relationship between his glory and his Father’s glory.

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”

(John 17:1-5)

By looking up to heaven and addressing God as “Father,” Jesus creates the atmosphere of prayer. He announces that his “hour”—his passion, death, resurrection, and exaltation—has finally come (see John 12:23; 12:27; 13:1; 16:32), and prays that it will be seen for what it really is: a manifestation of God’s glory. Just as in carrying out his work of revealing the Father Jesus glorified God, now on the eve of the passion Jesus prays that he may again glorify God and that God may glorify him. He also prays that through his “hour,” he may give eternal life to all those whom God has given him. In the “hour” of Jesus, it will become apparent to the eyes of faith that the Father and the Son possess the same divine glory. Thus the readers of John’s Gospel are instructed to view what follows in John 18–19 not as a defeat or tragedy but rather as a triumph and an exaltation.

In praying for his disciples in John 17:6-19, Jesus asks that his heavenly Father might protect them, make them holy, and empower them to carry on his mission.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

(John 17:6-19)

Before making his prayer in John 17:9, Jesus describes his disciples as the ones to whom he has revealed God and manifested God’s glory. They in turn have accepted Jesus’ words and recognized that he has come from God. In his prayer, Jesus distinguishes them from “the world,” taken in its negative Johannine sense as the forces of evil arrayed against God and his Son. The disciples have been taken into the relationship that exists between the Father and the Son. The departing Jesus prays that they may continue in this relationship and that God will protect them from “the evil one.” But that relationship is not purely defensive or protective. Rather, Jesus also prays that they will carry on his mission for which he had been sent into the world (17:18) and that they will be swept up into the holiness and truth of God (17:17, 19). The fragility of the disciples’ situation is underscored by the repeated references to the opposition that they will face from “the world” (17:9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18).

Finally, in John 17:20-26 Jesus prays for those who will come to believe in him through his disciples.

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

(John 17:20-26)

The same points are made in both John 17:21 and 17:22-23. Jesus prays that all these persons may be one as he and the Father are one so that they may share in the divine unity and that they may come to believe that God sent the Son. The parallelism is broken at the end of 17:23 with the notice that the Father loves them “even as you [the Father] have loved me,” which prepares for Jesus’ wish at the end of the prayer that the Father’s love “may be in them, and I in them” (17:26). The object of the church’s mission is “the world,” now understood more positively or at least neutrally. Caught up in the mystery of love between the Father and the Son that existed before the creation of the world (17:24), these believers will share in the divine glory, divine unity, and divine mission. The Son of God prays that his disciples and those who come to believe through them may enjoy the same relationship with the Father that he himself experiences. The Son of God prays that they too may be children of God.

Bringing the Contexts Together

There is a profound theology of prayer in Judaism that has become part of the Christian tradition of prayer through Jesus and the early Christians. It is the framework within which we ourselves can and should pray today. As “our Father in heaven,” the God to whom we pray is both immanent (“our Father”) and transcendent (“in heaven”). This God can be addressed directly as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not only hears our prayers but also wants to respond positively to them. At the same time, this God is the Lord of all creation, the one who creates and sustains us and yet remains infinitely superior to us.

As mediated through Jesus and the early Christians, the Jewish prayer tradition has given us the language and the literary forms of prayer that most of us use in our prayer today. Moreover, the words and forms of our formal liturgies have been shaped by the psalms and other biblical and early Jewish conventions. From this tradition we can also learn the value of pious flexibility even in our formal prayers, and we can come to appreciate better the creative relationship between personal prayer and communal prayer.

In the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus has taught us to pray, the central theme is the kingdom of God. This was also the central theme of Jesus’ parables and other teachings about prayer and other topics. Even his miracles were not so much spectacular displays of his personal power as they were signs pointing to the presence and future fullness of God’s reign. His insistence on boldness and persistence in prayer should inspire us to be less passive and guarded in our prayers. His example of praying at the decisive moments in his life is surely worthy of imitation on our part. And finally, as his farewell prayer in John 17 suggests, we now have the risen Jesus praying and interceding for us with his heavenly Father.

Think, Pray, and Act

Consider how the prayers of Jesus and his teachings on prayer in the gospels might enrich your appreciation of Jesus and your own way of praying.

Think

How strongly do you believe in the prayer of petition? Are you just covering your bets? Or is there some experience that has confirmed your belief in the power of prayer?

For what have you asked God recently? Did you get what you asked for?

Pray

Place yourself in God’s presence, and ask God for the three things you want most.

Act

Is there anyone whom you need to forgive before seeking forgiveness from God? How might you go about doing so?

An excerpt from Jesus and Prayer by Daniel J. Harrington, SJ.

http://wau.org/resources/article/re_jesus_practice_of_and_teachings_about_prayer/