Expert Authority

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church on July 25, 2010, the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
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.

It was about ten years ago when “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” hit American Television. Suddenly, Regis Philbin, “phone-a-friend,” and “is that your final answer” were all over primetime and the national conscience. That summer, one of my co-workers even told me that if she was ever on “Millionaire,” I was going to be her phone-a-friend. The reason was pretty obvious; I have this store of worthless knowledge that goes in a million directions.

In high school I was on our school district’s version of quiz-bowl, the number two player on my team two years in a row. In college I was a trivial pursuit champion. In the workplace, I was Google before Google was Google. With that, came certain authority. I was sought out as an expert on movies, music, science, sports, humor, darts, pipe tobacco, business law, finance, insurance, student development theory as it relates to liberal arts education, the Education Department General Administrative Regulations and geography of the United States and Canada. (Yeah, I didn’t date much.)

In ancient Judea, it was common for Rabbis to teach their disciples how to pray. Where the scribes and the Pharisees were in charge at the Temple in Jerusalem, the Rabbis were the leaders of small bands of disciples. It is sort of like a pastor-congregation relationship. I’m not saying to heck with the temple leadership in Little Rock and Louisville, but I am saying as a matter of fact, as standard operating procedure, that when basic questions arise, folks usually go to the Pastor or Elder or Deacon or Sunday School teacher before seeking a ruling from the Permanent Judicial Council.

Evidently John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray a certain way. He was their Rabbi, he was their teacher, he was their local expert and had the authority to teach them. From Luke’s gospel, at least one of Jesus’ disciples at least knew John had teachings on prayer. He must have heard about ir or read the brochure or something. So if John can teach his disciples to pray, surely Jesus could teach his disciples to pray too.

So Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He gives us five simple petitions:

“Hallowed be,” or “make holy” the name of the Father.

“May 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. Depending on how you translate the petition for bread, one or two of them are for today and the rest are for the future. They are about how we are to live today and about the end times when God’s kingdom comes.

We pray God’s name will be sanctified throughout all creation. In a time when people of the earth prayed to a Parthenon of gods, we pray that the name of the Lord be made holy. In a time when people put so much before the praise and worship of the one true God; we are called to pray for a time when God’s name alone stands before us holy and as pure as light. Whether it be the gods of the Greeks or Romans; or some other philosophy or empty deceit sprouting from human tradition that Paul warns us about in Colossians; we are called to pray for a time when God’s name alone stands before us holy.

Bread was the most basic food of the ancient Israelites. Asking for daily bread harkens us back to the days of the Exodus when God provided manna as the daily bread for the nation. 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. Everything that’s old is new again when God provides daily bread for the people.

As for the future, 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. Our daily bread is no sundried tomato basil dill herb concoction, but with this simple bread we will never be hungry again.

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 because “we forgive all being indebted to us.” In this prayer, we ask God to give us what we have already given others. This is possible if 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 grace and receive God’s good gifts, including forgiveness. So today our duty is not just to forgive, it is to keep forgiving.

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 holy lives devoted to God, and so we pray not to be distracted.

Thank God that Jesus answers this question directly. The world is used to the Rabbi answering questions with other questions like the Lawyer’s questions and answers with the story of the Good Samaritan. So when Jesus answers this question directly, we should rejoice, a straight answer to a straight question.

Of course, being the disciples of Jesus, we know that nothing is as simple as we would like it to be, we should be alert for the other shoe to drop. We need to be ready to consider the deeper implications of what Jesus has said.

When we force the gospel to become law, and when law is applied to the practice of prayer; our confession, our praise, our supplications, our intercessions become formulas we use to reach God. When we use formulas, we end up creating prayers that are “right” and prayers that are “wrong.” The words of Christ are more than a roadmap to God; they are the very words of God. The Lord’s Prayer is an important prayer, but there is more to it than that. These are very good words, but they are not magic words.

Famed pastor and preacher William Sloane Coffin talks about advice he received from his preaching professor from seminary. One of this professor’s teachings that stuck with Coffin is “Does this preacher describe God or offer God?” Describing the ultimately mysterious absolutely different Lord our God is a vanity exercise. There is no way that we can truly answer the question “Who is God?” so it is up to the preacher to offer God’s presence, testifying to the truth in Jesus Christ.[1]

To explain “The Lord’s Prayer” like I have so far is to describe God, it may have a place, but in the end it is little more than mental gymnastics. I might have a point or two along the way that might be helpful for our walk with God, and in the end it comes up lacking. It’s all fact and no truth. It’s all godly formula without Godly presence. It’s what made me a trivia expert. It’s not what makes us good disciples.

We are called to pray in reverence and in love to God the Father who loves us first. We pray to the Lord who loves us more than we can love God, one another, and ourselves. This prayer reminds us of the faith and glory of the Lord our God. This prayer reminds us that our God is the loving father of us all.

This is especially true for those who did not have good fathers. The Lord that loves us more than we could ever hope or imagine is the good Father we have longed for all of our lives. The Lord is the Father we have needed all of our lives. This prayer introduces us to a new relationship with the Lord our God.

This prayer is an introduction to a loving relationship with our Holy Father. As Jesus reveals in the Lord’s Prayer, God is the father whose name alone is holy. God is the father whose kingdom is greater even than God’s own good creation. God is the father who feeds. God is the father who forgives. God is the father who encourages and empowers us forgive others. God is the father who helps us seek eternal life, not a life of temptation. This is the relationship with our God and with God’s good creation we are called to seek though prayer. It is only through a right relationship with God that we can seek a right relationship with others.

The story at the end of our reading helps us understand this. The neighbor didn’t 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 if he had denied hospitality to another. He acted out of obligation not grace. Through a right relationship with our Lord we can begin to imagine the God who acts out of perfect loving faithfulness.

We look to the future of God’s kingdom while we live in the world today. The Lord’s Prayer is for today and for tomorrow. It’s a prayer for now, and prayer for what is not yet; and it can be tough as nails to pray.

We are called to pray “Our Father in heaven,” but fail to embrace all people as God’s 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 we see it as our due for our daily work, not recognizing 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 don’t often live up to. This kingdom of God, far from the conditions we live in on any kind of permanence, is one that we can live in for moments at a time.

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 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 a lightening strike. 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.

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 has been a part of life. Sometimes prayer has involved blood sacrifice and others a sacrifice of praise. Sometimes it has involved memorized words recited by rote, sometimes it’s spontaneously lifted in the spirit of 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. The question of how to pray is so good that it was asked by Jesus’ disciples.

More important than the words of prayer; Jesus teaches us how to be disciples. Jesus teaches us about developing the relationship he wants us to have with our Lord through prayer. Through prayer Jesus teaches us about the relationship he wants us to have with one another, and just as much, Jesus teaches us about the relationship he wants us to have with ourselves. Luke gives us this reassurance of God’s faithful nature, and there is no better expert on God the Father than God the Son.

[1] Coffin, William Sloane, “The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years” Volume 2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. From Martin E. Marty’s introduction, pages xxvii-xxviii.
[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