One of my favorite viral videos is of a violinist performing a solo piece in concert. The audience sits enraptured as the performance reaches its majestic crescendo, and then someone’s cell phone thoughtlessly breaks the spell.
But what this maestro does with the interruption is amazing.
So: the way this maestro graciously incorporates the harsh music of that cell-phone into his performance provides us with a helpful starting point, I think, for understanding Christian prayer.
Now: it’s a basic axiom of the Christian life, that Jesus Christ acts on our behalf as our Great High Priest in Heaven, interceding for us before the Father. Our prayers always come to God in, through and with the prayers of our Mediator, the God-man Jesus Christ.
We see this principle at work in some fascinating ways in the New Testament.
Take the well known “Lord’s Prayer,” for instance. The disciples see Jesus praying, and ask him to teach them to pray. And the prayer he taught them goes like this: “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Towards the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself is praying, in a garden called Gethsemane. It’s right before his crucifixion, and Matthew says Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to pass from me, then thy will be done.”
Right before his obedient death on the cross, Jesus himself prays perfectly the prayer he taught his disciples to pray—that the Father’s will be done.
In Mark’s Gospel, we see the same thing from a different angle. In Mark’s Gethsemane, Jesus prays these words: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you; take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.”
The word “Abba” is an Aramaic term for Father that expresses intimacy and familiarity—the word “Dad” maybe gets us close to it in English.
But in another place in the New Testament, it’s talking about our life with God, and it says this: “We are all children of God ... who have received a Spirit of Sonship, and by the Spirit we cry out ‘Abba, Father.’”
In other words: the Holy Spirit puts Christ’s prayer in us when we pray to the Father, and by the Holy Spirit, our prayers become part of the beautiful, trusting, ‘Abba Father’ prayer he prayed in Gethsemane.
What all this means in practical terms, is that when Christians pray, our prayers are united with Jesus’s own prayers to the Father. He gathers them all up into himself, perfects them in his own self-giving, and then offers them for us in his one glorious prayer: “Abba, Father, Thy will be done.”
But what does this actually look like? If Jesus prays for us, does the actual content of our individual prayers mean anything?
Well: imagine a violinist performing in the great concert hall that is heaven. His music is sweeping and rapturous, and as he performs , sometimes-well-meaning, sometimes-thoughtless, but never especially musical ringtones break the moment.
To the extent that we never know how to pray as we ought, and even when we try, our humanness always gets in the way—in that sense our prayers are those garish ringtones.
The difference, of course—and it’s the difference that makes all the difference— is that rather than seeing these ringtones as thoughtless interruptions, this maestro joyfully welcomes them.
Because he’s the consummate artist.
And he’s able not just to transform them into music, but to weave them seamlessly, effortlessly, and joyfully into his performance, so that they thrill the audience, and without ever losing their original quality, sound as if they always belonged.
This is what Jesus does with our prayers, as faltering and imperferfect as they always are, he gathers them up into his own liturgical self-giving to the Father in heaven, uniting them with his own perfect prayer and offering them with his, to the Father.
In this way our prayers become part of his glorious masterpiece: Yes, Abba Father, Thy will done, on earth as it is in Heaven!
