Readings: Genesis 18:20–32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6–19; Luke 11:1–13

“We perish if we cease from prayer,” we will be reminded by the hymn of the day (Lutheran Book of Worship 438). And as young children must be taught even elementary skills, so Jesus’ disciples were trained in prayer by the one whose entire life “was one single prayer” (Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church 475).

To speak — to have access — to the living God, ruler of the universe, in prayer is no trivial privilege. To know how to pray and what to pray, then, is no empty formality. Worshippers at Prince of Peace, as in many other congregations, say the ancient “Lord’s Prayer” weekly. No harm there: it comes with the highest possible recommendation. But it was praying in that way, not merely with those words, that Jesus was after for his disciples.

Our hearing the word and remembering our baptism and sharing at the table together in worship, God’s many-sided gift to us his people, puts in our ears and exercises in our movements the story of God’s love, God’s kingdom, God’s salvation through the Lord Jesus. Thus we may learn to pray. Thus we may be formed as those who pray, as “the whole body, nourished and knit together,” which “grows with a growth that is from God.”