Proper 12 C

"Teach us how to pray." One of the disciples wanted to know how to pray and in response we have the Lord's Prayer which outlines what to pray for and gives us guidance of what is important to Christ.

Proper 12 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

July 25, 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Jesus had been praying and one of his disciples asks him, “Teach us how to pray.” Teach us how to pray. I have an example of someone who knew how to pray. It is the founder of the organization that we are doing a fund raiser for on August 20^th. People describe her as being very saintly and running this organization on a shoe string. This is how she described how she prayed. Every morning she would get up and spend a half an hour on her knees telling God what she wanted. Then she spent the rest of the day making do with what God gave her. That is one way to pray.

Jesus responded to his disciples request with what we call the Lord’s Prayer. What we have here in Luke is a version that is a little bit shorter than the one most of us have memorized from our childhood and that we hear over and over again in church. St. Augustine describes the Lord’s prayer as being the perfect prayer because it tells us what we can pray for and the order of their priority. What it is we can ask of God and the priority of how important each one is.

The prayer begins with Father, Abba, parent, about as close and intimate a relationship as one could have. It describes a relationship with God that is close, immanent and real. And then it says hallowed be thy name, great is your name. So great was the name of God that the Jewish people didn’t even say it out loud. Your name is so magnificent, so hallowed, so sacred we don’t even speak it. There we have the transcendent God, the God that is so beyond human beings that we can’t even say the name. A God that is the source of all our being - the creator of the universe - beyond our imaginings, beyond the universe. So right at the beginning of the prayer we have this duel nature of God. God is intimate, close, close as a parent and yet so transcendent and so beyond that we can’t even say God’s name. You’ll find that most prayers begin with a description of God - Gracious God, loving God, God who created the universe. When you look at the prayers in the prayer book, when you listen to prayers that are said during the service, you will notice that they almost always start with some kind of description of God. So does the Lord’s prayer. That is the format. Father, immanent, present, transcendent one, hallowed be your name.

Then there are the requests. The first one, the first and most important request, is your kingdom come - your reign come. The first prayer for all of us should be God let your will be done one earth. Let your will be done in my life. Let your will be done in my heart. Be the king. Be in charge, have a world that goes by your will. That is the most important prayer we can have. Not my will, but your will. Your kingdom come.

The next thing is to ask for what we need. Give us today our daily bread. Give us what we need to survive, today. That request harkens back to the people of Israel while they were traveling with Moses in the wilderness. You may remember that they were there for forty years and when they were hungry and God provided manna. They would get up in the morning and there would be this crust on the ground that they could eat that tasted a little like honey. They would gather it for the day. But they were only to gather one day’s worth because if it was kept for another day it went bad. They had to trust that God would provide it the next day. So Jesus is saying we can pray for what we need for today. We can pray give us enough to eat today, but we are not supposed to be asking for an annuity fund that will provide us enough food for the rest of our lives. We are supposed to realize that if God can take care of today God can take care of tomorrow and the next day. That our security is not in our retirement funds, our security is knowing that God will be with us each day. So we are to ask, “Give us what we need today.” Enough food, enough shelter. Bread is also often interpreted as referring to spiritual food. Give me what I need. We know that God knows what we need. So that is the second thing we ask for.

The third thing we ask for, the third most important thing to ask for, is forgive us our sins. It is that important. Asking God’s forgiveness for our sins is that important. It is right up there with asking God to give us what we need to survive today. It is that important.

Now this particular version is a little intimidating because it says, “forgive us our sins as we have already forgive those who sin against us.” So if you haven’t already forgiven the ones who have sinned against you it is a little intimidating. It is a challenge. But the forgiveness is important. It’s central. It is the essence and central aspect of Christianity. It wouldn’t be Christianity without it.

Sometimes we find people who have put together different beliefs. I was talking to someone last week who is a confirmed Episcopalian - confirmed in their adulthood. She was talking about her spiritual journey and her journey had taken lots of twists and turns. She was raised in a Christian church and then she studied various eastern traditions and went to the Unity Church for a while as well as various different sort of New Age kind of things. Then she found herself in the Episcopal church and really liked it and became an Episcopalian. She wanted to know what my view of death was so I told her of my trust in God and that it was good and so forth. And she said to me, “Well I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I’ve decided there must be reincarnation.” I said, “Oh really, why?” She said because people have to pay for the tings they have done. If they’ve sinned and hurt people they have to pay for that and so they can pay for that by being reborn again.” And I said that that’s not the Christian message. The Christian message is we don’t have to pay for it. Thank God. The Christian message is that it is not fair. Thank God it is not fair. Because if it was fair we’d all have a lot of suffering to do to make up for the suffering that we have caused others, either intentionally or unintentionally. The whole point of Christ’s message is that God loves us and God forgives us so we don’t have to pay in hell, we don’t have to pay by being reborn, because we are forgiven. And her response was basically, “I can understand forgiving the small things people do, but what about people who do major things, who kill people?” It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of Christ was to tell us that we don’t have to pay for everything we have done. That God loves us and forgives us. And that is what Paul is saying in the second reading today. It is kind of a long complex reading so it is hard to pick out exactly what he is trying to get at but he is telling people that what you have been taught in Christianity is that you are loved and forgiven and you don’t have to follow a lot of rules. It is not about following rules. And don’t let somebody deceive you with lots of intellectual ideas, but know about grace and mercy and forgiveness.

I know what the idea of reincarnation can do to people. When I had my brain surgery years ago I was at that time involved in a Yoga community. After my brain surgery I was caring for three small children, and I was having seizures. It was horrible. Everything was horrible in my life. And my Yoga friends came to me and said, “You must have done something in a past lifetime to have brought this on.” That was not helpful. If you ever have a friend going through a really horrible time, don’t say to them “You must have done something in a past lifetime.” It is not helpful. What was helpful was remembering what I learned as a child, that Christ walks with us through the hard times. It wasn’t my fault that that happened to me. It wasn’t because I had done something in a past life or in this life. I must say that if I had to suffer for every time I have caused another person to suffer there would be a lot of reasons for me to be in pain. Thank God that is not what Christ taught. The Christian teaching is that God loves each one of us and if we will let him, if we will open our hearts and let God in, God will forgive us, wipe the slate clean and start all over. And that is important. It is so important for us to do it that Jesus has it right in the prayer that we are to say every day. Because every day we need to ask for forgiveness. I don’t get through a day being perfect. Maybe some of you do, but I don’t get through a day being perfect. I have to ask to be forgiven. And that is why it is right up there. That’s why it is such an important part of the Lord’s prayer. And like I said it is a little intimidating in this version that it says forgive us as we have forgiven those who have hurt us. Sometimes what I am asking forgiveness for is the fact that I haven’t forgiven somebody else. And then I also ask “help me learn to forgive that person.” But it’s right there. Central to our faith.

And the the forth thing we can ask for is keep us from the time of trial. Nobody is quite sure exactly what that means because there are lots of different interpretations for it. It has to do with keep us from having trails in our lives that are so severe that we can’t handle them, or give us the strength that we can handle whatever trials come along. That is the forth focus of prayer.

Then Jesus goes on to say that we can ask for anything. We can ask for anything, but it is within the context of the reign of God. If it is within the context of God’s will, then we will be like that person who started that organization who said, “I ask God for what I want and I make do with what God gives me.” And the greatest of those is that God gives us love and forgiveness.