Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 11:1-15
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There’s an old saying: there’s no such thing as a stupid question. But did you know that this question has a corollary: there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but there are plenty of stupid answers. Last week I ended with a simple question, how should we pray? I have heard some pretty stupid answers to this question. And if pressed, I am sure that I have given my share of pretty stupid answers to it too.
This question, how should we pray, is as old as humanity. From the moment we sensed, from the moment we knew there was a presence more powerful than us prayer of one form or another has been a part of life. Sometimes the answer has involved blood sacrifice—both animal and human, sometimes a sacrifice of praise. Sometimes it has involved memorized prayer recited by rote, sometimes spontaneous prayer lifted in the moment. Sometimes it is in the language of the priests, sometimes in the language of the people, and sometimes in the language of the angels. This is such a good question, it was asked by Jesus’ disciples.
In ancient Judea, it was common for Rabbis to teach their disciples how to pray. Based on what the unnamed disciple requested, John must have taught his disciples to pray a certain way. So if John can teach his disciples to pray, surely Jesus could teach his disciples to pray too. Teaching his disciples to pray, Jesus gives us five simple petitions:
“Hallowed be,” or “make holy the name of the Father.”
“The Father’s Kingdom come.”
“Give us the bread we need for today”. Though this could also be translated “Give us the bread we need for tomorrow.”
“Forgive our sins, for we forgive all who are indebted to us.”
And “Do not bring us into sin’s temptation.” Another way to say this is “do not bring us to a time of trial or testing.”
That’s it, five little petitions. Two or three of them (depending on how you translate the petition for bread) deal with the future, the end times when God’s kingdom comes.
In this time God’s name will be sanctified throughout the cosmos. In a time when people of the earth prayed to a Parthenon of gods, we pray that the name of the Lord alone be made holy. In a time when people put so much before the praise and worship of the one true God, whether it be nationalism, or economics, or some other thing, we are called to pray for a time when God’s name alone stands before us holy and as pure as light.
We pray the Father’s kingdom come. This part is a little tough, not everyone has good fathers, shadowing the view of a heavenly Father. When appearing before the Presbytery of Arkansas’ Committee on Preparation for Ministry I called the first person of the Trinity “Father” much to the chagrin of some of the members. They asked me if I thought it was appropriate to use paternal images in a world where not all fathers are present, much less good.
I know people who do not have good fathers, so imagining God as a good father is difficult for some. This leaves two choices; one is to find another name for “God the Father.” Any of you who followed last year’s General Assembly in Birmingham know the donnybrook that followed the introduction and reception of the report on this very issue. The report wasn’t even accepted, it was just received, and the fallout hasn’t ended yet. So while other images of the first person of the Trinity have value and validity, it is dangerous ground to tread, the Presbyterian equivalent of theological quicksand.
The other choice, and to me a more productive choice, is to rehabilitate the image of fatherhood through God’s fatherly presence. We have to learn that in prayer “we must ask for a response and expect that God will respond in a way above and beyond our human experiences with one another.”[1] We have to learn that God is a father who is better than our fathers have been and could ever be. In this turn we are called to be the children of God, children who follow our heavenly father in ways we could never follow our earthly fathers.
In one part of Jesus’ explanation he notes that if we were parents of a child asking for a gift, we would give good gifts. We would never give a snake instead of a fish or a scorpion instead of an egg. Even though we are evil, we know better than that. This whole “evil” word takes a beating, we are bound to hope and pray something like “yeah, we have a sinful nature, but do you have to say evil?” There is some conjecture that Jesus was exaggerating to make a point—evil is a harsh word and he intended to make a sharp comparison. Then again, compared to the Good Father, our Father in Heaven, we cannot be “good.”
We should note that the neighbor did not respond to the friend in need out of the goodness of his heart, he responded to his neighbor’s shameless persistence and out of what he feared his other neighbors would think of him if he had denied hospitality to another. He acted out of obligation, not goodness, so imagine the action of the Lord our God who acts out of perfect loving goodness.
In God’s kingdom is all of the bread we will need for tomorrow, in God’s coming kingdom we will never be hungry again. Still we must remember that the bread Jesus refers to is not some frilly loaf from a specialty baker. It’s more like a flatbread pita or tortilla than a fancy foccacia. No sundried tomato basil dill herb concoction. But with this simple bread, we will never be hungry again.
The other three petitions (again, depending on how you translate the petition for bread) deal with our most basic daily needs, bread, forgiveness, and (in a word) protection.
Bread was the most basic food made by the ancient Israelites. Asking for daily bread harkens us back to the days of the exodus when God provided the daily bread of manna for the nation. Every day, the people were told to gather as much as they needed, and no more, because they were to depend upon the Lord for their daily bread. The only exception to this was the day before the Sabbath when they were to gather two days worth, bread both for today and for tomorrow, since no work was to be done on the Sabbath. Everything that’s old is new again when God again provides daily bread for the people.
Forgiveness is, in its own way, bread for the soul, without it we cannot live. What’s unusual about this petition is that we ask for forgiveness “for we forgive all being indebted to us.” This looks like we ask God to give us what we have all ready given others. This would be true if we assumed we could fully forgive another in the sinful world we live in, but we know this is impossible. This is only possible in God’s kingdom, where we share in God’s good grace and receive God’s good gifts, including forgiveness.
Finally we pray not to be lead into temptation. On the way to the kingdom, the ancient Jews faced many trials and temptations, many of them coming from the many gods (that with a lower case “g”) of the ancient world. Temptations on the road to the kingdom distract us from the true goal of our lives in the Lord, and so we pray not to be distracted.
We look to the future of God’s kingdom while we live in the world today. Really there is nothing terribly complicated about this prayer. It’s a prayer for today and a prayer for tomorrow. A prayer for now, and prayer for what is not yet.
This can be a difficult prayer though.
We are called to pray “Our Father in heaven,” but fail to embrace all people as his children.
We are called to pray, “Your kingdom come,” without working for the kingdom on earth.
We are called to pray for our daily bread but do not recognize it as God’s good gift to the world.
We are called to pray for forgiveness for ourselves, but we fail to offer pardon to others.
We plead not to be led by God into times of trial, but walk willingly into temptations we find on our own.
We tend to honor God with our lips, but fail to honor God with our lives.[2]
We pray as we are taught, but with this prayer we are called to a way of life we often do not live up to. This kingdom of heaven, far from the condition we live in on any kind of permanence, is one still that we can live in for moments at a time.
I was talking on the phone with Rev. Lieu Smith[3] on Thursday and he was taking about working at the Loaves and Fishes Food Bank the previous day. He told me that on Wednesday, a fifty-one families came into the food bank seeking assistance. Fifty-one families, somewhere in the neighborhood of two-hundred to two-hundred-and-fifty people were served that day. Lieu estimated they distributed 2,000 pounds of canned food and another 4,000 pounds of commodities. Three tons of food left the food bank that day.
Lieu also told me that about 100 backpacks, almost 30% of the inventory left the food bank in the hands of children that day. The head of the food bank told Lieu she wished “the Presbyterians had been on hand to see the smiles on the faces of the children as they received their backpacks and school supplies.”
When we pray for the kingdom to come, we pray with an eye to when Jesus comes again. In the meantime, we are called to act in a way as if the kingdom has come. Doing this, we walk in the footsteps of Jesus in the way that he walked the earth. This is like lightening striking. It doesn’t last long, it happens in the blink of an eye. But when it happens, it comes with a thunder that announces its arrival. And the place where the lightening strikes is never quite the same.
When through the grace and bounty of the Lord we supply three-hundred-and-forty back packs of school supplies, we participate in the coming of the kingdom. We donated over a quarter-ton of goods to the inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven. Every smile on every child’s face, every bit of learning helped along by this effort, every dollar left in the pocket of an impoverished parent not spent on school supplies is a bolt of lightening striking from the kingdom of God for the kingdom of God. And the rumble of its thunder will be heard here in Berryville and in the kingdom for ages to come.
In the end, Luke gives us reassurance of God’s faithful nature. We are told to ask and it will be given; we are told to seek and we will find; we are told to knock and it will be opened, but the prayer makes it clear that we must ask and seek and knock in obedience to the five petitions. This is what Jesus tells us to pray.
So here we are again, we are telling God what to do. Being faithful servants of the one true Lord requires we pray. We are to pray in reverence and in love to a Father who loves us first. We are called to pray for our daily needs and for the coming of the kingdom. So when we pray, when we pray in accord with the Lord’s Prayer are we really telling God what to do? In a way we are, but when we are in accord with the Lord, we are praying in obedience to what the Lord wants for us for today and forever. Let God tell us what to do, and let us pray that God may do it through us.
There are no stupid questions. And I pray, by the grace of God, this isn’t a stupid answer.
[1] Douglas Strome, Joy, “Living by the Word, Prayer power,” Christian Century. vol 124, no 14, July 10,2007, page 19.
[2] This section is based on a Prayer of Confession found in Homiletics Magazine, online version, http://homileticsonline.com/subscribe.printer_friendly_installment.asp?installment_id=93000008 accessed June 11, 2007
[3] Lieu is the Pastor of the Community of Christ church in Berryville, Arkansas and very active in the Berryville Ministerial Alliance and the Loaves and Fishes Food Bank of the Ozarks. This information was relayed in a phone conversation on Thursday July 26, 2007.
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