As far as the post-prayer discussion, it relates to the only part of the prayer that is conditional. Perhaps Jesus is explaining the conditional nature of the request.

As far as vain repetitions, I think we have far too much of that in the church. Fast and testimony meeting in particular seems to bring out the worst in the “look at me pray!” tendencies of members.

Kaimi: I am with you on the fast and testimony meeting. There was something the first presidency released about the purpose a couple years ago. I wish it was read every month before the meeting started.

Re: #6

My favorite “pray in secret” apocrypha is that if we pray in secret (i.e., not aloud), Satan can’t know our thoughts and try to tempt us during prayer. Probably not the thrust of your lesson.

Aren’t public prayers justified by virtue of being a communal experience, a shared moment of the Spirit? Public prayers certainly aren’t the right forum for much wrangling with sins, etc., but they are useful for expressing shared grief, history, etc. in a way that binds the prayer-ors together. My favorite examples are temple dedicatory prayers which serve a specific purpose but also speak to shared concerns and experiences.

Perhaps Christ realized that true repentance and closeness to God depends on a personal relationship, and that personal prayer can help establish that relationship. I don’t think that Christ was trying to demonstrate that public prayers were unnecessary or harmful. After all, the only recorded prayers we have for Christ are the public ones (Gethsemane being the exception — but how do we know what he said in the garden if no one was there??).

Kaimi: Good point, but why does the conditional part of the prayer need elaboration?

Kaimi & Renee: I certainly understand what I think you are talking about, and I have found myself responding in a similar way sometimes. Nevertheless, I wonder whether the things we sometimes criticize in our meetings are vain repetitions. The Greek word here, battalogeo, seems to be related to the word for stuttering, battarizo. “Babbling” or “vain repetitions” seems to be a good translation. Many of the things we say in our meetings are repetitious, to be sure, but Jesus condemns only vain repetitions, not all of them. In other words, he isn’t demanding eloquence, but meaningfulness. But I suspect that my complaints are more often complaints about eloquence than about meaningfulness.

I first noticed the difference—and what difference that difference made—once when I was listening to my son, then a child, give one of his first talks in church. We had helped him write the talk and had worked with him on delivering it. Of course, it didn’t say anything new and it probably didn’t say it in a particularly new way, nor was it something eloquent. I doubt that it was objectively significantly different than the talks given by a thousand children before him. In many senses it was a repetition of what has been said before. But when he gave it I listened as if he were the president of the Church. When I asked myself why I could listen so intently (and wakefully) to him but sometimes find talks by other children or adults tiresome, I realized that the difference was that I love my son and I did not really love those others (at least not at that particular time and context). When I do love the person who is speaking, I rarely hear that person babble. Instead, I usually hear them speak meaningfully of Gospel truths.

But if the kinds of inarticulate repetitions of Mormon-speak that we often say in our meetings aren’t the kind of thing that Jesus had in mind when he condemned vain repetition in prayer, what are? In context, it seems to me that he may be condemning the self-righteous, paralleling his condemnation of self-righteous Jews with a condemnation of self-righteous pagans. But another possibility comes from seeing the last half of the verse, with verse eight, as an interpretive key: the babblings in question are babblings about things we need. On that reading, we could paraphrase verses seven and eight like this: “When you pray, don’t babble on about what you need like the heathen do, thinking that their demands will be heard if they pray for a long time; don’t be like them because your Father in Heaven already knows what you need.”

Gordon: Were keys given on the Mount of Transfiguration that had never been given before? Perhaps. I don’t know. If so, then your answer is a good one. However, if not, why was that event the coming of the Kingdom?

Steve: Hello! And hello also to Somer. I agree that verse seven doesn’t imply that we ought not to have public prayers, and I agree that they are important occasions of spiritual experience. D&C 19:28 commands us to have public prayer. But that doesn’t explain the strong emphasis on private prayer when Christ teaches the disciples how to pray. Perhaps private prayer, and the personal or individual relation that it implies, is the model for all prayer. (However, the fact that the prayer begins with “our Father suggests that even in private, I pray as part of the community.)