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St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
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| A disillusioned war veteran, Rannulph Junah, reluctantly
agrees to play in an exhibition golf match. He finds the game futile until
his caddy, Bagger Vance, teaches him the secret of the authentic golf
stroke. In this scene late on a foggy night, Junah is frustrated with his
practice when Bagger steps from the shadows.
(BAGGER VANCE 32:40 – 35:38) Frequently, in the spring, there is fog in the morning. Looking out my window, I know that the mountains and the trees, the grasses and the sky, remain hidden in the fog. But I cannot see them with my eyes. Instead, I feel their presence in my body. I know the shapes that lie behind the fog, having seen them emerge again and again. It is a primitive kind of faith, based on repetition and proof, but a kind of faith that the fog will, indeed, lift. Slowly, as the sun warms the earth, the fog begins to clear. And as it does, outlines appear, colors, textures, and finally, the sky and sun are quietly revealed and I can see them all. This is prayer. This is deep, faithful listening, waiting for what is hidden to be revealed. Prayer is not words; prayer is what happens when you listen and wait, beneath the words, for God to emerge. Every day there are moments when I find myself drawn to pray. I pray because I must, because regardless of my good intentions, I lose my bearings. I make mistakes. I am stopped by the way the world confounds my plans. When a loved one is beset by illness or fear, I pray their healing may be deep and true. When I feel suddenly lonely, I pray for comfort. At other times, my prayer is simply, thank you! One of the prayers I turn to again and again is the Lord’s Prayer. I pray it daily, as a part of my morning ritual. I have prayed it in countless churches, in twelve-step meetings, and at bedsides. I have prayed it with Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, Native Americans, Muslims, and agnostics. Beneath the cadence of these familiar words, we are united in our yearning for the Divine. I pray this prayer when I am unsure about how to pray. Perhaps I feel awkward, not knowing the “right” way to pray. What should prayer feel like, and what is it supposed to accomplish? Should I pray to get what I want, or should I pray instead to accept what I have been given? Or does prayer offer something deeper, beyond measurable purpose or effect, serving instead as an invitation to simply rest in God’s company? A five-year-old girl is attending a formal wedding with her grandmother. The child has been in Sunday school but has never attended a church service. During the wedding, the minister says: “Let us pray.” Every person bows the head in prayer. The little girl looks around, sees all the heads bowed, eyes turned downward toward the floor and she whispers: “Grandma, what are they all lookin’ for?” How would you answer that question? Peter, Andrew, and the rest watch Jesus turn to prayer again and again. They wonder: “Who is he seeking? What does he find? Is this the source of his power?” So, they make a request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And Jesus responds with what we now call, “The Lord’s Prayer.” The prayer is short. Thirty-seven words in Luke. Only fifty-four words in Matthew’s version. Small details need not worry us. Like United Methodists, Episcopalians use “trespasses”. Presbyterians say “debts”. The ecumenical translation puts it “sins”, which is less antique. Any of you who have ever attended a Catholic church know that they don’t recite the doxology at the end of the prayer. The Protestants always blunder on, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” However, Catholics do include this statement of praise later in the Mass. We use the phrase in our version of the prayer, but it is not included in either Luke or Matthew. Jesus didn’t give us a ritual prayer, although millions of people across the centuries – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox – offer the Lord’s Prayer in worship. The prayer is more than a ritual; it is an outline of prayer, a way of praying. In other words, Jesus doesn’t give us a pat answer on how to pray. He offers a way to enter into the presence of God. Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father”. The Jews refer to God as “Father”. God is not “It”, but “Thou”. God is personal creator, who loves us and wants our well-being. Some persons in the church don’t like the world “father” because they say it’s sexist – that male imagery doesn’t carry the full weight. True, the word, father doesn’t connote the mothering, fathering, creating, loving fullness of God. One of the youth in my first Youth Group has a lapel button that helps us to see the language issues, “Trust in God, She’ll provide.” At the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, a motion is made saying that we should change the word “Father” to “Creator” in our version of the prayer. But the motion fails because “Creator” sounds so cold. “Creator” takes away the “thou-ness”, leaving a cosmic, impersonal vastness. Jesus, instead, blows the lid off our religious conversation when he uses the word, “Abba”. When you pray, say “Abba”, says Jesus. Jesus puts into service the intimate Aramaic word that a little child would use to call his daddy. Jesus calls the Almighty God, Daddy, and - what is more amazing – he urges us to do the same. The Gospel writer, Matthew, adds the typically Jewish phrase to the “Father” greeting. The “which art in heaven” does not appear in the Luke version. Luke is a gospel written for persons who are not of the Jewish faith. Jesus begins the prayer on a note of warmth: Father. He uses the intimate “Abba”. But, like any person raised as a good Jew, Jesus follows immediately with the awareness of authority. The intimacy of God is clothed with majesty. Hallowed, holy is your name…set-apart from any other Being. The Father who is so intimate, closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet, is also the Almighty God. The emphasis on the “holy” keeps us from falling into cheap sentimentality. Protestants have been particularly at fault in making God a buddy. Intimate, yes. The One who comes into our hearts, yes. But also the One who flings the stars in the sky, and who causes a baby to stir in the womb. “Thy Kingdom come”. When Jesus starts preaching, the first words he says are: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” The Jews are waiting for a king; but most of them are thinking of military muscle. Just as the first King David of Israel pushes back the Philistines, so the new king will overthrow the Roman Empire. But, Jesus does not come riding on a stallion, like Caesar entering Rome. Instead, he sits on a donkey. His only sword is the word that he speaks. Whenever Jesus comes with his kind of power, there is a sign of the kingdom, a breakthrough of God’s realm among us. The kingdom comes, here and now. So, we are a people standing on tiptoe, filled with a sense of expectancy. “Thy Kingdom come!” “Thy will be done.” An airliner crashes into a mountain. Some people are killed, others are critically injured. A few escape. Someone says, “It is the will of God.” An tsunami demolishes dozen of villages. Adobe walls give way and the heavy roofing tiles crush the life out of men, women, and children. A religious leader says, “It is the will of God”. No expression is more misused than expressions about the will of God. People who claim to know their Bible sometimes use it in tragically un-biblical ways. Great harm is caused by such careless theology. Not a single New Testament passage concerning the “will of God” refers to something that happens to us. In every case, when the phrase is used, it refers to something that we are to do. The will of God does not refer to accepting the inevitable; it speaks to actualizing the possible. It is not resignation; it is response. The picture is not of a person sitting resigned with hands folded. Rather the image is of a person with eyes open and hand on the plow. The prayer says, “I am open to your will through me. Let’s go, God!” “Give us each day our daily bread.” Jesus and his disciples are itinerant preachers. They walk from village to village sharing the gospel. Each day, they look to the hospitality of others. The petition simply speaks of the daily needs of the body. Everyone laughs when Jesus tells the story about forgiveness. Jesus says there is a man who owes the king five million dollars. The people who hear Jesus, smile, because the tax payment for all of Judah to the Roman Empire is only eight hundred thousand dollars a year. So five million dollars is outlandish, laughable. The king calls the man in to pay his debts. The man falls on his knees and says, “I can’t pay. Be merciful to me.” The king is ready to throw him in prison, but says, “Oh, well, get up. Your debt is cancelled, clean, forgotten, forgiven.” The man leaves the king’s palace, walks down the street, and sees a fellow who owes him twenty dollars. He runs up to him, grabs him by the collar, and says, “Pay me what you owe me.” The man says, “I’m sorry but I’m flat busted.” He falls on his knees, and says exactly the same words the first man says to the king: “Be merciful to me.” The first man drags him off to prison. “Put this man in jail until he pays every penny he owes me.” According to the story, the king hears what happens, calls his debtor back, and says, “I don’t understand you. I forgive you five million dollars, and you’re going to squeeze twenty dollars out of this poor fellow.” The king turns to his guards and says, “Take him off to jail and let him rot there until he pays every dime he has ever owed.” The story is hilarious until you start to think about it. Jesus says that God will not forgive us if we don’t forgive others. In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” “Lead us not into temptation,” says the prayer, “but deliver us from evil.” What does this mean? Would God lead us into temptation? In the sense that God would lead us into evil or would want us to fall, no. Not the Holy God of our Lord Jesus Christ. The writer of James says, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’” (James 1: 13). Evil is loose in the world. Something within us causes us to be sorely tried, to deny even our own best interests. But this is not the work of God. Paul writes to the church at Ephesus: “Our struggle is against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil (Ephesians 6:12). Yet we live in a world where temptations and tests come. The Greek work which we translate “temptation” can also mean testing. The image of God in the human heart is the spark of freedom. In giving us freedom in a world of choices, God permits us to face temptation. In other words, temptation beckons to us all. Even Jesus faces temptation. But the significant spiritual distinction is whether we resist or whether we yield. Our prayer to God is for the power to perceive temptation, and being aware of its destructive force, for the strength to escape from it. There it is…seven petitions of prayer. Three focused on the nature of God. Four focused on the needs of human beings. In moving beyond ritual to a prayer for disciples, we connect with the power of the prayer. Not by rote, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, do we pray. By coincidence, two grown up twins end up residing in the same town. One is a minister, the other a doctor. People are always getting the twins confused. One day a man stops the doctor on the street and says, “Sir, I want to compliment you on the sermon you preached last Sunday.’ “I’m afraid you have us mixed up, “ the doctor replies. “I’m not the brother who preaches; I’m the one who practices.” Christians both pray and practice the Lord’s Prayer. It is a working document, intending both direction and connection. When you pray, say, … Amen. |