Matthew 6:5-15
“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us this day our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
I’m hoping by now that at least a good majority of you are using the Lenten cards that we put together for the season. Two things I want to mention: Don't forget Sundays don't matter. Actually, that's not true. Sundays totally matter--but they're not included in the 40 days. So, if you're a little ahead just hold off. But, I know that yesterday was a particularly difficult assignment and it reads, (if you haven't read it yet), “Pray the Lord's Prayer and then rewrite it in your own words.”
Now, when I wrote this card, I thought it was a really good idea. It's also really, really, really hard. So, I thought what I'd do today is try to help break down the Lord's Prayer, because if we've been praying this for a time, a long time, or even a lifetime, sometimes we just don't quite pay attention to the words. And we do that from time to time when we do things by rote.
The group that's been meeting on Lenten Wednesdays has had some really rich conversation about these cards and how challenging they are, even though they're so small. But one of the things that we've been talking about now for the last few weeks is: it's much easier to pray for everybody else than it is to pray for ourselves. And that's the very reason why I want to look at this text today.
Now here's the good news. In case you think that you have not been a faithful Christian until you have prayed on street corners, this text gets us off the hook. We do not have to do that. And I'm going to be very honest with you that there's a gathering of people every May who gather on the corner of Washington Street in front of Town Hall for National Day of Prayer. And I don't participate, because I don't believe in it. I don't think that sends a good message to the community which is “this is the one day we should all be praying.”
Other leaders have a different understanding of that and that's totally fine. I respect that. That's just not something that I want to participate in. At the same time, we also want to look at the babbling that Jesus is talking about in this text, because I don't think that we babble either to God, except when we're really anxious; we're really, really upset; or we're really, really nervous; or we're really, really scared. And then, as we've talked about, Marjorie Thompson says we have this anxious repetition, instead of a trusting perseverance.
I don't know if any of you had this experience last night or ever, especially if you live in a more rural area, but behind my condo is nothing but woods. And the woods go really, really deep. And so, as a result, I'm able to see all sorts of wonderful wildlife. I am joyful to often to see the deer out there enjoying themselves, as well as a couple of foxes that run in and out. There are plenty of birds that I thoroughly enjoy seeing, except when the woodpeckers drum on the side of the aluminum siding on my condo at 6:00 a.m.
But then, there are the turkeys. The turkeys are a challenge. First of all, they come in packs and they come right through the neighborhood with no fear whatsoever, because they're looking for bird feeders. They get themselves into all sorts of trouble. They fly into the tennis court, but then they don't know how to walk through the open door and get out. But I believe it's the turkeys who, in the middle of the night, scream. I mean scream! And last night there was one turkey, who screamed for the better part of four hours! And finally, I got up and closed the window and latched it, so that it was as airtight as possible. And I thought, this is probably part of the mating process. (That's a different sermon, by the way.) But I wonder if the turkey was actually in trouble. And I thought, “Is that the way we sound to God where we're constantly complaining and arguing and wondering and clenching?” I know for me, yeah, I'm a lot like that turkey. And what I want to do today is look a little bit further into the Lord's Prayer, because there's a lot of parts about this that we may not know or remember or have ever learned.
So, the first part of this (and again I'm fleshing out a lot that is certainly not original to me - it's from one of my favorite scholars, Eugene Boring, who is not a boring scholar at all, he's actually quite skilled) is that Jesus is teaching his new disciples how to pray in a different way; in a way that's meaningful.
And also, I don't think that we are known as hypocrites. Very few of you get up here and pray and are happy with yourselves and are puffing yourselves up. So, I don't see you trying to be “actors on a stage” (which is the literal translation of the word hypocrite. I don't see you wanting to preach and teach and pray on the corner in town. But sometimes we forget that prayer is not a one-way relationship. It's an expression of trust in a God, who already deeply and unconditionally loves us. And that's the place which we have to get back to. As the text says, “God already knows our needs before we ask.” So it's not a matter of “informing” God what's going on in our lives (i.e., “Hey God, I just thought you'd like to know…” or “God are you aware of that?…” It's actually realigning ourselves back into a relationship, trusting that God already knows what we need.
So, the pattern for the Lord's Prayer starts with an address, ‘Our Father.’ Jesus taught ‘Our Father’ as in Abba, because He is the Son of God, but it's also a term of endearment that is synonymous whether it's in the Old Testament or the New Testament. Jews and Christians can pray the Lord's Prayer together, because the theology is identical. Jews and Christians understand God to be Abba Father, the one we trust; the one we adore; the one we know is not going to let us down even when we're not our best selves.
The prayer then is followed by proclaiming God as holy and then - God's purposes and desiring everything to come to fruition. And it's funny, because someone recently just asked me again why this church uses ‘sins’ and ‘sins against’ us in the Lord's Prayer and I said, “I have no idea. I inherited it when I came here.” But I didn't learn until doing some research on this that ‘debts’ is actually in the Hebrew, so Jews understand ‘debts’ and ‘debtors’. But it's not in the Aramaic. Hebrew was the language used in the synagogues, but Aramaic is the language of the people. So ‘debts’ was used in the temple. ‘Sins’ is the word they understand in Aramaic and there is no equivalent in Hebrew. ‘Trespasses’ didn't come along, literally, until the year 1380 when the Bible was first put together as a canon. It's called the Wycliffe edition and then a few more--Tyndale and then King James. ‘Trespasses’ didn't exist until 1300!
But Abba Father is something that we want to continue to remember. We need to remember that God knows and loves us as a loving parent and also, that God loves us unconditionally. God loves us when we're not our best selves and we fall short, and when we act like a child. God still holds us like a loving parent and says, “I know…I know… we're going to try again tomorrow.”
The next part of this text that I think is important for us to look at is that God's name truly is holy. “Hallowed be thy name.” Most of us say that word; we don't even think about it. But to know that God's name is so holy that it’s the first thing we want to name, is crucial. Again, our Hebrew brothers and sisters, when they write out the word ‘God’, they think the name is so, so untouchably holy that when they write it, it is ‘G - D’. Because the word is so precious that it shouldn't ever be fully written out.
We're not that way, necessarily. So, God's name first and foremost is holy. And then we want God's kingdom to come. We want God's will to be done, but do we want to carry that out? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Saying/praying we want the kingdom to come and we want God's will to be done is really us saying: “we want that to happen, not only in the future, but we want to happen right now”.
Don't we want God's kingdom to come right now in the Ukraine? Don't we want God's kingdom to come for the people of Russia? Don't we want God's kingdom to come for the oppressed people of North Korea? Don't we want God's kingdom to come for those who are forgotten, those who are abused, those who are disabled, those who are orphaned? Yes!! not just in the future.
So, when we pray ‘God's kingdom come’, we're actually committing to being a part of that. That's a heavy responsibility in our role as disciples. And when we do that, we're also submitting to God's will and that ain't easy, either. Because it means we have to put our ego to the side, to put our will to the side, to put all the things that we desire to the side, so that the only thing that's in our mind's eye is God's will and God's kingdom. So again, when we pray this again, which we will in a few minutes, we are praying that we WANT God's will to be done.
Now let’s talk about “give us this day, our daily bread”. I need to honest...before I read the card, “Fast from bread all week”, I had just come back from eating the most fabulous pizza for Sandy’s birthday. (It's made with bread dough) Did I miss the mark? Yes. But more than missing the "fast from bread" which can be very meaningful, daily bread is the symbol that we are being blessed, by being fed by God. The second part of “give us our daily bread” is also so that we're in solidarity with the poor. Our readiness to break the loaf in half and give some to the neighbor who has less, or none. It's also to make sure that daily we are aware of how God is caring for us. It's really funny, the word ‘daily’ is nowhere else in Greek in the Bible. This is the only place where it's mentioned. And it means “an understanding that God is going to feed us today and have a little bit left over for tomorrow, and also trusting that God is going to provide bread for the weekend and, of course, as at the table.
“Forgive us our debts”. Whether we use the word, debts, trespasses or sins, these are the things that we are indebted to God, because of God. These are the things that God forgives us for; that which we truly cannot repay which is an important part of looking at the Cross, as we spend time in Lent together. But when we ask for God's forgiveness, it's because we know that we can't earn it. All we can do is receive it and continue to act out our baptism as beloved, broken and still loved. At the same time, we don't want to presume that God's grace is going to cover us before we even come before God, but we don't want to be an unforgiving person either; especially to all of those who have hurt us and for all the wounds that we still carry for people who wittingly or unwittingly hurt us; because that gets in our way of fully receiving grace.
Now the piece about ‘temptation and deliver us from evil’, obviously, the worry is in the future, that when the eschaton comes (or the end of time) comes, most scholars think that things are going to get much worse before they get better. But you know what? Evil is getting intensified now, even as we sit here. It's clearly getting intensified in the world. It's getting intensified as a result in our relationships, and perhaps even in our own faith journeys. But if we ask God to deliver us from these temptations, then we can live out of a more loving heart, a more trustful heart, a more faithful heart, a more gentle heart, a more tender heart. This gets us back to my original point which is we want to do all those things for others…but, friends, we need to be tender and gentle and kind and loving to ourselves as well.
I don't think that the people in the Lenten Wednesdays are the only people thinking it's easier to pray for others than it is for pray for ourselves, but that's what God most desires, when we pray the Lord's Prayer. It is for our own transformation. It is for our own deepening with God. It is for our own way to shed all of the shame and the blame and the ways in which we still persecute ourselves, because we're still not good enough… or faithful enough. Now sometimes, yes, we do need to be pulled back a little bit. But, friends, Jesus gave us this prayer so that we can be in communion, not so much with others first, but with God.
So, hopefully, I've given you some fodder to think through how you might rewrite at least even a portion of the Lord's Prayer. Because if we continue to just go through the motions, then nothing changes. And what God desires most in this time of Lent is that we allow ourselves to be changed by the mercy of God, by the gentleness of God, by the kindness of God, by the graciousness of God. Because if we change and we let God inside that place that's all locked up, then, and only then, can we impact others.
Recently, we had flowers that needed to be delivered and we were running a little low on Deacons so I asked someone from the congregation, “Hey, can you run these flowers to this person on your way home?” And that person said, “Sure.” And they did. And as they were backing out of the driveway after the flower delivery heading to their own home, they passed someone who was walking their dog. And as they drove by, they said, “Oh, I know that person! (but I really want to get home.)” Yet… they turned around the car and drove back to the person walking the dog. They hadn't seen each other since their children were in grammar school! The conversation and connection that they had was a such God-given moment where they were both richly and deeply blessed. Why? because that person was willing to be changed by God in that moment.
It doesn't take something big. All it takes is to say, “Our Father, hallowed be thy name.” May we all learn how to be more faithful and more loving because of this prayer for the next 24 days. Amen.