10th
Sunday after Pentecost; Yr. C, July 28, 2013
Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke
11:1-13
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
One of Jesus’ disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive
us our sins, for we forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the
time of trial. Anyone recognize
this? When I go visit Dorothy Adle at
the Episcopal Church Home we end with this prayer. No matter what I pray for at the beginning, I
always end with the Lord’s Prayer.
Anyone know why? It’s hardwired
in her brain. No matter what else she
may forget … what she had for breakfast … who visited her in the last week …
even her own name, when I start to say the Lord’s Prayer, her lips begin to
move. We say it together, at least most
of it. That prayer is a staple of our
Christian faith. No matter what Christian denomination you may belong to, if you call yourself a Christian you’ve heard
it, and most of us know it. We know it
so well, we may not think about what we’re saying anymore, or let alone wonder what it might
have meant to the people Jesus was speaking to.
Notice first that instead of saying
“Father” as Jesus taught, we say, “Our Father, in heaven”. My guess is that the word Jesus used for
Father in the Aramaic was likely the word abba,
a familiar term that might best be translated Daddy, or Papa. Jesus was addressing his prayer to a God who
was familiar, personal and beloved. “Our
Father” claims a collective paternity. It’s not “my” father, or “your” father, it’s
“our” father, a father that belongs
to us as a community.
We also add “in heaven” to the
prayer. We’ve kept the familial
reference to Father, but in some ways lost the familiarity and personal tone of
the Aramaic word. We’ve placed that
Father in heaven, instead of in the house sitting with us at the dinner table. If we say God is in heaven, we kind of have
to say something about where that heaven is; or how will we know where to find “our
Father”?
While we were in Maine, we visited
Nancy’s mother’s grave and planted flowers there. As we were digging and planting, Hannah and
her cousin were chatting together about their grandmother and their memories of
her. Out of the blue one of them said
something about her now being in heaven,
up there. One of them pointed to the
sky. I looked into the sky and said,
“You’re kidding right?” These kids are
eleven and twelve years old. “You know
what’s ‘up there”. There are clouds, and
stars and planets and the atmosphere.
Grandmom isn’t ‘up there’.
Grandmom is with God and God is everywhere, including right here.” And I pointed to my heart. “Heaven isn’t in the sky, girls. Heaven is living fully with God; heaven is in
our hearts.” My hunch is that heaven is
wherever we are loved and accepted completely for who we are. Something incredibly difficult to put a
finger on here on earth, but which I believe we finally receive as a gift after
our death. We’re offered an eternal
abode within God. That's heaven.
Jesus tells the disciples to pray, hallowed be your name. According to the Social –Science Commentary,
“The English word ‘hallow’ means to
sanctify, make holy, make sacred, or, in social terms, to make exclusive. Thus to ‘hallow’ means to set something or
someone apart as exclusive. Socially,
people learn to draw lines around persons and things and treat them as
exclusively their own, i.e., as ; ‘sacred.’
For instance, most persons would consider their children, their parents,
or their property as exclusively their own.
They react to events affecting such persons and property quite differently
than they would to people in general, or property not their own. With the command here in the passive voice,
God is commanded to ‘hallow’ his person, his status as God, i.e., to act and
thus reveal himself to be the God he is, to make known his exclusive
personage.”[1]
In essence, Jesus was telling his
first century followers to command God to reveal God’s self to them, to reveal
God’s presence in their lives. Jesus
often spoke that he and the Father were one, that if we knew Jesus, we would
know God. Jesus knew that people needed
to experience God, to have a deep sense of God’s presence with them in order to
nurture their faith. God needed to be
revealed. That’s not something that we
can do for ourselves. That revelation is
a gift, something Jesus seemed to experience in its totality. It makes sense then, for us to be on the
lookout … to expect to see God’s revealing mark in the world. Have you seen it?
God is love. Anywhere we see love, we are seeing God being
revealed in the world. Anywhere we see
people connecting across boundaries, or offering forgiveness … God is at
work. Anywhere we see suffering and
people responding in compassion, that’s God being revealed as well. God is love.
Jesus was a human being who fully embodied that love. Jesus knew the power that a love like that
brings into the world.
Jesus then tells his followers to
ask God … “to give us our daily bread”.
For peasants, the present was all they could think about. They couldn’t worry about tomorrow, because
today posed enough of a challenge. They
focused on getting what they needed for that
day, and so a God that could provide a daily ration of bread was a God they
could depend on, like a good patron. That
was a God that relieved them of the daily anxiety of whether or not they would
have any food to put on the table. This
was a God that promised that there was enough, not just enough for the wealthy,
but enough for everyone, including peasants.
This was a God that changed anxiety and fear into peace and hope. The same is true for us. There is enough.
Imagine what that would mean if we
believed it. No more need to “stock
up”. No more need to catch other people
taking more than their share. No more
worrying that someone is abusing the system and getting more than they
needed. No more starvation. No more children dying from malnutrition. There is enough. But is enough, enough for us? Is it?
Are we willing to be satisfied with just our daily bread, or will we
that become as dull to us as the manna was for the Israelites in the
desert?
When I made less money, I remember
feeling angry that I had to spend it all on food and necessities. I had enough, but barely. As I’ve my salary has increased over the
years, I find that I can pay my bills with less anxiety, but I also want more
things. I find myself still feeling
frustrated when I can’t buy something I want.
The iPad Mini is just such a thing!
I can barely resist charging it on my credit card, but I don’t need
it. I have enough. It’s almost as if the more I have, the more I
want. Enough isn’t enough anymore. What about you?
Then comes the whole part about sins
and debts and trespasses. What kind of
forgiveness do I offer other people?
Jesus expects that we are forgiving the debts of others. Because we forgive them, God forgives us. It’s a mutually enriching arrangement. Forgiveness is the norm. Jesus doesn’t say that we won’t hurt one
another, or that we won’t sin. Jesus
says only that we will forgive, and because we do … we can expect God to forgive
as well. And lest we forget the
responsibility placed on us as Christians, Jesus reminds us to pray that we
will not be brought to the time of trial.
Help us to avoid the test he describes in the parable that follows.
A friend goes to another friend’s
house and asks for some bread. It’s
late, and his friend refuses to get out of bed to give it to him, even though
it will mean that the one asking will be prevented from offering hospitality to
someone in his home. The one needing the
bread needs the bread, and to get it,
he is willing to let the whole town know how shamelessly his friend has been by
refusing to help him. “If you won’t get
up”, the man at the door says, “I will tell everyone in the village what a jerk
you are, how you let me down when I came to you for help, how you languished in
bed while I suffered without food for a guest.
We are friends. I have given you
what you needed in the past, and now it is your turn to give to me. Get with the program. This is your time of trial. Get up, will you?” What would you do? Would you get up? Must we shame one another to do the right
things? Jesus says, pray that you are
saved from the time of trial. Give for
one another.
That’s the Lord’s prayer. If I were to rewrite it for our time, it
might go something like this.
Dad.
Let me have eyes to see
you revealed.
Help me
not to be afraid.
Help me to
be satisfied with enough.
Forgive me
and help me forgive others,
Save me
from shamelessly neglecting the needs of others.
It’s not
as pretty, or as memorable, as our traditional Lord’s Prayer … but for me, it’s
a little closer to what it might be saying to our world today. As we pray that prayer later in our service,
listen to your own voice, and think about what it means to you. What we say matters. What we pray matters, especially when others
take the time to ask us what it means to us.
We have a rich tradition, may it continue to inform and deepen our faith.
Amen.
[1]
Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels. Ed. by Malina, Bruce J. &
Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2003, p. 272.
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