How Do We Pray?

Rev. Karl Jones

July 27, 2025

Text: Luke 11:1-13

This morning I thought I would do something a bit out of the ordinary for me. Plymouth has been my home church and nurtured me for decades. These days it’s not unusual for me to preach, but it’s been years since I have preached in this church. I thought sharing my story might serve as an introduction for those who don’t know me or for those of you who are surprised to see me preaching. I was asked to speak today as a Covenant Partner—one of the ministers who consider this church their home but are not employed by it. This church has a solid focus on fostering the arts and a persistent call for social justice, but this church offers more. So, since I’m here, I also wanted to give you a glimpse of how I came to do the work I do as a chaplain and this church’s part in shaping that work. I thought that doing so could serve as a sort of mirror for this congregation.

Briefly, I came from a very religious upbringing. My family lived on the east coast and went to a downtown Episcopal church. We went to church every Sunday and usually on Wednesdays too. As a teen, I became involved with church in all kinds of ways. Then an incident happened involving clergy doing what they shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t handled well, and shortly after that, after I left for college and—off and on for years after—I didn’t go to church with any regularity.

At one point I had finished college, had moved to Minneapolis, and was living with a family who asked if I wanted to go to church with them. I said yes, and though I assumed we would be heading for the closest church, they led me to Plymouth. Plymouth physically looked like the churches I had known best growing up. I was drawn to the music—again, it was familiar, similar to what I had known and come to love. The prayers printed in the bulletin spoke to me. I still have some of them. I often found the sermons inspiring. One of those sermons led me to volunteer in the community on a regular basis. The family I lived with—the Slossers, for those of you who remember them—would attend the main service. But I occasionally tried out the early service, which was even more of a contrast to the main service then than the first service is from the second now, if you can imagine that. At this point, I have attended Plymouth long enough to see a series of ministers and configurations of ministers.

While as a teen I had wrestled with my experience of clergy behaving badly, gradually I came to accept that the church is always made up of people—fallible people—doing their best to seek out God’s presence and do God’s will and to pray together. With time, I got involved. I came to know other people here from being on boards, committees, retreats, and choir. I have come to know and love some extraordinary people.

I got married in 1990, and my wife, Mary Kay, was quickly diagnosed with an illness which could not be cured. Illness can prompt many changes. And, in the midst of it all, Mary Kay’s illness led her—or really both of us—to explore other religious options, especially if they seemed to hold a promise of physical healing. I could share an interesting list, but in the end, we each found ourselves drawn back to the spiritual tradition we knew best. For Mary Kay, that was Catholicism. Through knowing her, I had experienced enough of Catholicism to see how deeply it mattered to her and her family and to respect that but to realize it was not my home. As time went on, I planted myself more firmly at Plymouth.

Eventually, after years of medical treatment in various places, Mary Kay died not long after she turned 40. I was 36. It was painful then, and it’s still somewhat painful now. But some good came from it.

Among other things, in the course of my wife’s illness and death, I discovered another side of Plymouth which I didn’t know anything about before—or hadn’t paid much attention to. I learned some of how this place cares for its people. I was cared for by a volunteer Stephen Minister. Jim Gertmenian, our lead minister at the time, came by the hospital. People just checked in with me, informally. And I found out about a Grief Support group, which was run at the time and continues to be run by some of the downtown churches. Interactions leading up to and in the aftermath of her death changed my life.

I discovered some things not only about Plymouth but about myself. There was an urgency and a sort of beauty to that time that has never fully left me. Love became front-and-center. That journey showed me things about myself that led me to seminary, then to chaplaincy, first in hospitals and now mostly in hospice. In the middle of all that, I was ordained as a UCC minister here at Plymouth.

In working as a chaplain, I discovered or was reminded of many things, but I want to highlight a few. If you are a minister and you lead worship in a church, you are seeing folks who have chosen to come to that church for whatever reason—unless they are kids who may get dragged along, I suppose. In most chaplaincy settings, people don’t want to be in the situation they are in and often can’t return to the place which may feel most like home—either home itself where family are or their spiritual home. When it comes to spiritual care, usually, in settings where chaplains are working, if you request or are offered spiritual support, you get whoever walks through the door.

In the world of hospice, as you can likely imagine, things are raw and things are hard. At some point in conversation, oftentimes, a patient or family member will turn to me and ask for prayer. And honestly, when that much is at stake, I pray—often times including the Lord’s Prayer—but if I’m really present to some of the challenges these people are up against at the moment, I almost always find myself thinking afterward, “Did that prayer provide what was needed? How do you pray in the face of this?”

It’s an open question. In my line of work, you meet all types. There are some who will tell you they don’t pray at all, but even fervently religious people don’t necessarily pray the way I might. And then, of course, there are those who pray or meditate but are from a faith outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Though family may suggest that prayer would be welcome, not everyone can talk to you to tell you what they want. Actually, for virtually every visit I have ever had, if there has been prayer, it has taken up only a small portion of our time. Or I should say, spoken prayer.

On those occasions when I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer with folks, I quickly noticed that not everyone prays in the way I am used to. Even as iconic as the Lord’s Prayer is, there is no one version of it that everyone uses. When I was growing up, we said a version based on the King James translation of the Bible. Here at Plymouth, we continue to use “thy” and “thou” but not everyone does. Today’s passage that I read from Luke is missing a portion which most of us expect: “thy will be done.” That is captured in the version Matthew wrote down but not in Luke. Luke refers to both “sins” and “debts” in the same statement. Other versions use “trespasses.” And how does that prayer end? Some folks seem to end the prayer where it ends in Matthew – “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” period. We at Plymouth do what comes most naturally to me: We end with “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” Actually, I always want to say “forever and ever” as they do in the Episcopal church, but you get the idea. In recent years, some folks have opted for using “kindom” rather than “kingdom.” Here at Plymouth we have recently altered the opening to be more inclusive by referring to “Tender, loving God” rather than “Our Father.”

From the perspective of studying scripture, there is enough variation between manuscripts to suggest that there was likely a variety of ways in which folks prayed almost as soon as Jesus said whatever he said. So, observing a variety of traditions started early.

There’s all of that nuance for less than a minute of our time together saying this prayer. It can be hard to say the Lord’s Prayer together with folks you don’t know, with that much variation. As I see it, it’s not a question of which way of saying it is right, but which feels most like home for the people you’re with, especially if they’re facing a difficult time.

So, when I say the Lord’s Prayer with a patient or a family, I wonder “Did that feel like home to them?” Or, even more so, if I pray without the Lord’s Prayer—some Christian traditions don’t naturally turn to it—I have a similar question. I look at them and think “How do you pray?” Apart from praying aloud together, I wonder about the rest of our time and how that landed for them. People have many ways of considering a place or a tradition or a worldview their spiritual home.

A church is sometimes called a house of prayer, but I don’t know of any group that doesn’t add, embellish, improvise. There is much more to engaging together as a beloved community than saying that simple prayer—even along with other prayers.

Each of those things I mentioned that drew me to Plymouth is something I would consider one of the ways we pray. I would say we pray when we gather and connect or reconnect with others, when the choir or the organ or jazz trio gives musical voice to psalms or other sacred texts or spirituals. Working on the finances or remodeling a house or heading home for a nap. For me, pretty much anything we do here—or once we leave here—can fall under the umbrella of prayer if we choose to frame it that way. Paul in his writings urges his readers to “pray without ceasing.” I assume he wasn’t talking about mumbling incessantly but about living out our lives with attention and with intention—with persistent regard for the holy.

As an aside, I’m a little surprised that the disciples felt the need to ask Jesus how to pray. It seems like they’d been with him for a while, and they watched him conduct his life. I would say we can learn something about how to live a life of prayer from what Jesus did and said.

He routinely would get away from the crowds, presumably to pray. He advised that, when you pray, you should do it away from the attention of others—at least at times—and you should never do it for the sake of impressing others. He seemed to value solitude and silence. He also said prayers shouldn’t go on too long.

In my experience in my work, in spite of wondering whether my work is a fit for the need, holy moments are much more common than I might acknowledge. Periodically, I’ve had people come up to me and say how meaningful time we’ve spent together was for them, sometimes referring to a conversation which I had long since forgotten. I think that may be the case for us as a congregation as well.

As I have met with folks from other traditions and seen what matters most to them, I have learned and grown. But, in the end, the more I experience whatever it is that others feel is home for them, the more I claim Plymouth as my spiritual home—not because it’s better but because it’s mine.

One of the requirements for being an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ is having a home church and not just a home church but a church that has been your home for a length of time. As time goes by, I have started to see the wisdom of that. To have a home church for a period of time suggests that you may know something of what it is to fall in love with the church community, experience its challenges, see something of its changes, and stay. I think it’s also a requirement because no one can do hard work for long without taking care of themselves and sometimes—at least for ministers—that means going to church.

Since this is my chosen home church, you might think that I love everything about this place. I don’t. There have been missteps and tension. That doesn’t say much about the worthiness of the call we’re responding to. I know that relationships are messy and yet I choose to stay and love, nonetheless. I have been proud at times and appalled at others. I have squirmed at times, and at other times, I have settled in, having found a place like no other, a place of peace where I would be nowhere else.

There are times when the prayer of Plymouth seems a perfect match for the moment and other times not. How do you pray? Jesus urges his followers to persist.

You are here, virtually or in person. Whether you have claimed it or not, it may be that you are here because you have found your spiritual home, flaws and all.

One detail of my life that I have not yet touched on is this: About the same time I began to consider seminary, I fell in love again and got remarried—in this church—in Guild Hall, if you must know—to Rebecca Miller, who some of you know. She has her own persistent involvement with this church.

From time to time, Rebecca reminds me of one fact about life. When you have a house, especially if you view it as a home of sorts, it takes some maintenance. It can be a place to relax, but it also needs some upkeep. It’s also helpful to remind myself that it won’t look the same in twenty years as it does right now… and neither will we.

We will have grown, hopefully more loving and more appreciative of all we have. Time is not all bad.

Unfortunately, sustaining a home is not cut and dried—particularly a spiritual home. There’s a time to clean. And there’s a time to remodel. And there’s a time to simply chill. Each of us needs to honestly look within to know which of those times we are in at any given moment. We also need to share the house with other people who may be in a different space at any given moment.

As you come and go from this place, may you too feel at home and treat it as such.

May you persist in and deepen your prayer life—both that which is spoken and that which is lived.

Amen.