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Sunday January 20, 2008 "The Disciples' Prayer" Matthew 6:9-13 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 1/22/2008 3:39 PM | Each week in worship we say a variation of today’s scripture. You may have heard it called “The Prayer of Jesus”, or as Jennifer’s beautiful solo indicates, “The Lord’s Prayer.” Both of those are right, I suppose, but 2000 years later, I think it is clear that it is OUR prayer, the Disciples’ prayer. Oh, I don’t mean big D Disciple as in Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but rather little d disciples, followers and students of Jesus. All across Atlanta, this country, all over the world, Christians everywhere, small d disciples, are reciting this prayer as a communal part of their morning worship. It doesn’t matter if it’s high church formal, low church informal, or somewhere in between, hard shell Baptist or Book of Common Prayer Episcopalians, if they consider themselves Christian, there is a good chance they are reciting it this morning.
So many questions rise up around this. Is it specifically a Christian prayer? Couldn’t a Jewish person say this prayer just as easily as we Christians can? Why do we use it in public worship the way we do, when it seems pretty clear that Jesus was giving instructions as to how to pray privately? What does it mean that God’s name should be “hallowed?” When we pray for God’s kingdom to come, does that mean we are looking for the end times to come quickly, or does it mean that we would like earth to be more like heaven? How about our daily bread? Does it mean that we would like to hurry up and take our seat at the heavenly banquet? Or are we simply asking God to help us at least get what we need to live, a subsistence level of existence? And if we are only asking for the bare minimum to survive, how can those of us who have more than we can possibly use look ourselves in the mirror? And as long as I’m raising questions, just what is the time of trial? Is it something the people of Jesus’ time were going through or is it something that all people must be on the lookout for?
Now wait a second: how can something that has so many questions surrounding it be used so frequently in Christian worship? Why do we pray this prayer if we don’t fully understand it?
Now, that’s a good question.
Maybe we should take a stab at some answers.
This prayer shows up twice in the Gospels. It appears in Luke and here in Matthew. In Luke, the context is much different than in Matthew. In the Luke account, Jesus is with a small group of his disciples, his closest followers. In my mind they are sitting around a campfire talking about things, trying to understand exactly what is happening. There have been other people around who have claimed to be the messiah, or like John the Baptist, claimed to be the one who prepares the way for the messiah. Scholars make an assumption that each of these different charismatic leaders had particular disciplines that they shared with their followers that set them apart, that assisted the followers in following the leader. But up to this point in the story, the disciples of Jesus had been given no special instructions in this way.
One of them timidly asks, “How come you don’t teach us to pray, like the followers of John?” And Jesus responds by teaching the disciples a way to pray that will be theirs to use to communicate with God.
The situation could not be any different in the Matthew context. In Matthew, Jesus presents his direction on how his disciples are to pray in the midst of much larger sermon to a much larger crowd.
Picture this, Jesus on the top of a hill, and laid out before him are hundreds of people in a natural ampitheatre, except in this ampitheatre, the focal point is at the top of the bowl and everyone looks up to see Jesus. As Jesus stands at the top of this natural bowl, he looks out toward the Sea of Galilee where boats have come ashore to follow him to this spot.
This is of course, the most important extended sermon on life issues that the Biblical record presents. It is the Sermon on the Mount.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes time to lay out his most systematic discussion of how to live. He speaks of the ideal characteristics of the members of the faith community in what we have come to know as the “Beatitudes”. He speaks of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and to be in the world: salt and light, flavor and illumination are the key elements of how they were to present themselves to the world. He speaks of the law and it’s goodness, but also speaks of a higher law, the law of love that must dictate how we live. He speaks of justice. He speaks of the importance of communing with God in private, for the purpose of hearing God’s voice and meditating on God’s word. He warns against the public display of piety that is designed to draw attention to the prayer rather than truly commune with God. And then he leads into his instruction on how to pray with this caveat: “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who is in secret will reward you...” and then, he is quickly into the instruction about the prayer itself: “Pray then, in this way…”
This is followed by more instruction to those gathered on that beautiful hillside by the blue waters of the Sea of Galillee. There are teachings on religious practice, other disciplines such as fasting, community order and practices, being aware of false prophets, and the importance of adhering to the path that Jesus laid out.
All of this is important, but only one part of it has ended up in our worship on weekly basis: the very middle part about how to pray in private.
Okay, here’s a question: how did we get from this instruction on how to pray in private to using that prayer as the most public prayer we ever use? I think that Jesus intended this as a teaching tool, and the early church would use it as such. After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the church began to take shape. It’s fine and good to gather together and worship, but these devout Jews knew, as we do today, that repetition and reinforcement help us to enter a time of worship and be fed.
The prayer that Jesus taught to the disciples was one that helped form the early Christian community. Along with the sharing of the holy meal, the use of this prayer was used to teach new converts the nature of God and the nature of the human relationship with God. It’s repetition made it a touchstone of their time together, and the words served as reminders of the connection to God.
In our own worship there are things that, if removed from our order of service, would throw us off kilter. The centerpiece of our worship, Holy Communion, the sharing of the Lord’s Supper in our service, is so important to who we are. In the sharing of communion, we are reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus, moved to ask forgiveness for the wrongs we have done. In this holy meal, we confront the very real fact that we are blessed by the unwavering love of God, unworthy though we are.
When I was a very young boy, I remember my mother or my father kneeling with me each night by the side of my bed as I prayed my nightly prayers. There was first, the “little” prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Then, my mother began to teach me, little by little, to recite what she called “the big prayer”, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
One night I remember saying, “Mama, what does this prayer mean?” And she replied, “That you are part of God’s family.”
When I had learned it completely, I was so happy to be able to say it right along with the adults and everyone when we worshipped together. Over time, the words began to take on new and important meaning in my faith walk. Likewise in the early church, the repetition of this private prayer served to bring people together, sharing in the realization that they were part of God’s family.
That, I can attest, is a most wonderful realization. But how does it serve us today to recite a prayer that we have heard maybe 10,000 times before? How does this instruction affect us today? Has it become simply an exercise in rote memorization? Does it speak to us today? I can’t answer that question for everyone, but I do know that when I recite something over and over again, I have a tendency not to really hear what I am saying. And this can be true of anything.
When was the last time you really thought about the words of the national anthem? It is sung before every sporting event in America, but it seems sometimes like it has simply become a ritual whose last two words are “Play ball!”
In this service we have places where things are repeated every week: the Gloria Patri, the doxology, the words of institution before communion. Do we listen to them? Do we truly pay attention to their meaning? Do they continue to speak to us? Two of them are still to come in this service. I would challenge you to take time this morning to really hear those words as they are spoken, think about them, pray about them this week. And next Sunday, see if they don’t speak to you just a little bit more.
This then is the primary question about the prayer that Jesus taught the disciples: how does it speak to us today?
At the start of this sermon, I laid out a whole bunch of questions concerning this prayer. I have attempted to answer at least a couple of them, but the fact is that volumes upon volumes have been written about these four simple verses. Karl Barth became so exercised over the idea that Christians thought that they could effect a change in God through praying this prayer, that he wrote an entire book basically to deal with one line of this prayer. Of course, Karl Barth was a bit extreme on these sorts of issues. His systematic theological work, “Church Dogmatics” took some 11 volumes and some 5000 pages. You start to wonder if the guy ever had an unexpressed thought.
I can get caught up in some of that sometimes. I like to put things into context; I like the idea that we can add some meat to the bones of ancient texts through our study. I could spend hours and hours poring over commentaries and reflections that deal with the sentence construction and Jesus’ use of certain words, and questions of authenticity. But in the end, while those exercises are worthwhile and I am glad there are people out there doing all of that, I am most interested in meaning of the texts: what does it mean to us, today?
As I was going through my notes this week, I had to laugh at myself. I had 2 or 3 pages of notes on a commentary that dealt with word usage and sentence structure of this prayer and was going over them when it struck me, the people on that hillside didn’t have access to any of this. The people on that hillside came to be touched by this holy man. The people on that hillside weren’t recording it so they could back later and analyze the inflection of Jesus’ voice. The people on that hillside weren’t taking copious notes to make sure they got the precise words in the precise order so they could study it later. The people on that hillside came to listen, to gather meaning, to find guidance, to come closer to God.
It was said once, and they listened.
When they returned home, they would tell their friends not the precise words that were said, but more likely, the way it made them feel, the impact it had on them. They would hit the high points, because those were the points that had moved them.
If you were asked this afternoon to give a succinct recap of how Jesus instructed his disciples to pray, how would you respond?
Listen.
“Pray then, in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.”
Can you recap the instructions of Jesus in one short phrase? Can you do it one word? What does it mean to you?
In the end, this is the most important question of the day. What does it mean to each of us. If we agree that it is important to pray, that Jesus wanted us to pray, all the scholarship in the world about grand theological statements of who God is as represented in this short instruction of Jesus is completely and utterly unimportant. What does it say to you? That’s the important question.
I firmly believe that Jesus presented this prayer, this disciples prayer, as one that his disciples would find useful. And we find the usefulness not in simply reciting the original words, someone else’s words, but in using the form that Jesus presented. This means going beyond the words that Jesus spoke so that they indeed speak to us today. We do that by hearing the words of Jesus and reframing them in words that are our own. Then, the prayer truly becomes the disciples prayer, a prayer that I believe will please Jesus mightily.
There is no way for me to explain this. There is no good way for me to lay out some sort of exercise to help you hear Jesus’ words and amplify those words with words from your own heart. So rather than do that, I would like to leave you with my reading of the Lord’s prayer and more importantly I would like to encourage you this week at home to take out your Bible, turn to this passage, and try to put this prayer in your own words. And then, next week, when we once again gather, this prayer will speak to each of us, uniquely, individually and collectively as we together share the disciples prayer.
Please listen as Jennifer helps me to pray this disciples prayer in my own words:
“Our Father in heaven,”
Creator God, present yet separate from us, author of all creation, parent of all life,
“hallowed be your name.”
May everyone who has breath know that you are the one who has made everything, every thing, possible and may they shout it to the world.
“Your kingdom come,”
How can I help more people know who you are?
“Your will be done,”
How can I make sure that what I do is what you would have me do?
“On earth as it is in heaven.”
How can this life be made sweet for everyone, as sweet as if we were sitting by your side?
“Give us this day our daily bread?”
Give me sustenance and strength in all things, help us to understand that with you we will never be alone and no matter what befalls us, I can persevere, to your glory and honor.
“Forgive us our debts”
I have done wrong too many times, I have hurt too many people, I treasure your grace in my life and seek to right the wrongs and heal the hurts.
“As we have also forgiven debtors.”
And may I be as graceful in dealing with others who have hurt me. Your forgiveness gives me a divine example that I seek to follow.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
“Please give me strength to follow the path you have made for me, because I know that when I stray, trouble is not far behind.
But rescue us from the evil one.
“If I stray, please do not give up on me. When I turn my back on you, I know that I must be saved from myself and where my human arrogance will lead.
“For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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