Welcome to the last of our series on discipleship, Following in the Footsteps of Jesus. We have been looking at ten areas that concern the Christian who wants to follow Christ. Before Advent we looked at:
· CARE FOR CREATION
· COMMUNITY ON THE PILGRIM ROAD
· RHYTHM OF PRAYER, WORK & RECREATION
· ABSORBING THE SCRIPTURES
· SIMPLE LIFESTYLE
· HEALING FRAGMENTED PEOPLE AND COMMUNITY
· OPENNESS TO GOD’S SPIRIT
· MISSION
Last week Robert preached on UNITY.
Which is ironic as I come to look at this passage on prayer. If you gather a representative group of Christians from different churches and say “Our Father”, you can never be quite sure of the result.
Is it Our Father, which art in heaven? Or Our Father, who art in heaven? Or since 1980, Our Father in heaven… ? And there are various permutations after that.
If you compare the version from today’s Gospel with the more familiar one in Matthew 6 (page 970), you will see at least two versions in scripture. The two gospel writers each have their own interests and ways of telling the story, of course, but it may be enough to imagine that Jesus will have given this teaching on many occasions, and perhaps did not feel the need to stick to a precise script.
In other words, the Lord’s Prayer was not originally a piece of liturgy to recited, but a pattern for engagement with the Father, for us to live in the same way that Jesus lived.
Boiling the concerns of Jesus down to the basics, they seem to have been: Father, Name, Kingdom, Bread, Forgive, Temptation. It would be good to devote a few moments to each one.
Jesus taught us to call God our Father. Everything springs from relationship. The serpent tempted Eve in the Garden: “Did God really say? God does not want the best for you…” But Jesus had no doubt that Father is absolutely for us, on our side, wants the best for us. The best of human fathers, Jesus says, will let their children down, but they do their best; if that is so, then how much more can we trust Our Father to less us? And if it is all about relationship, there will be ramifications which we will return to.
To hallow God’s name is to honour him, to worship him, and to seek to lead lives that do justice to his name. It is not just to refrain from cursing, but to positively live in ways that powerfully suggest that God is at work. We do not need to protect his name, but our desire is to see him praised.
And then Jesus tells us to pray for the kingdom to come. We struggle to understand scripture unless we come to terms with the ancients’ conception of two worlds, above and below. Everything here on earth has its counterpart above. Our army prevails if the battle is going well in the heavenlies. If there is peace and order in heaven, then it should be so here on earth.
But it is not.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, and there are holocausts today. The heart of faith is change; the world is not perfect as it is, and we cannot rest. An article in the Church Times tries to explain the continuing popularity of Songs of Praise on BBC on Sunday evenings. The Dean of Windsor suggests: “There is, deep down in each human being, some spiritual impulse and energy that is constantly yearning and aching for a fuller life and a better world.”
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Kaj Munk was a Danish priest martyred by the Gestapo in 1944. He wrote: “Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature… we lack a holy RAGE - the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to RAGE when justice lies prostrate on the streets and when the lie rages across the face of the earth… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To RAGE against the ravaging of God’s earth and the destruction of God’s world. To RAGE when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To RAGE at senseless killing of so many and against the madness of militaries. To RAGE at the lie that calls threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To RAGE against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will change and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. Remember the signs of the church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove and the Fish, but never the Chameleon.”
Ray Simpson is the Guardian of the Order of Aidan and Hilda, based on Holy Island. He writes: “The purpose is ‘to overcome evil with good’ (Romans 12:21). No initiative to change what is wrong can succeed unless it begins in a Godward movement of the heart – and that is intercession. Intercession is not just something we say, not even just what we do – it is an outpoured life. Christ ever lives to make intercession (Hebrews 7:25). Christ is the head of the body of which we are each a member; thus, as we unite ourselves with him, we too share in this outpouring of lived prayer.”
Give us our bread for today … We are commanded to ask God for what need. Food, shelter, health, every thing, comes from him and we seek him for it.
And I know there are problems with this.
There is a persistent suspicion that prayer does not “work”. It does not do what it says on the tin. We ask ourselves “Are we “making it up”? Talking to ourselves?” Does God answer prayer?
Yes, but God is not a slot machine. When we pray, God is moved; but he is not at our beck and call. We are not doing magic, so that if we get the words and actions just right, we can guarantee the required result. I have been helped by reading the book “God on Mute” by Pete Ward, which I have found humbling, instructive and above all encouraging.
I really believe that God can and does answer prayer. Not every prayer immediately, perhaps, and not always to our preferred timescale. But I trust him. At the heart of this is to desire what God desires. Prayer is not to be learnt and recited by rote, but to be lived.
Not every prayer that Jesus prayed was answered. Jesus prayed for unity, and we are still waiting to see an answer to that prayer.
Jesus prayed in the garden that the cup of suffering might be taken from him; but he went forward to the cross anyway, believing it to be God’s will.
Forgive, as we forgive … There is no escaping the call to relationship, to encounter God and grow in him. It is because we yearn for perfection, and are so aware of our shortcomings, that we hardly dare to believe that we can be accepted into the Father’s love. And only when we have been received and welcomed and forgiven so undeservedly do we find a space to accept and forgive ourselves, and to accept and forgive others. Our relationships on earth can begin to reflect something of the quality of the love and grace that are the reality of heaven.
Lead us not into temptation. Or do not lead us to the time of trial. We are to pray this because the Christian life is not a magic carpet ride to heaven. We hope and pray for the best, and often get it, but we know that this life is often a vale of tears. Jesus lived his life according to this pattern.
As an example, consider him in the Garden of Gethsemane. On this occasion he does not pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven”, but “Abba Father, everything is possible for you.”
He makes himself the answer to his prayer, replacing “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” with “not my will but thine be done”. Instead of “lead us not into temptation”, he has told the disciples to stay awake and pray so that they will not fall into sin.
He does not pray for bread, but perhaps he is aware that he is offering himself as the bread that will be broken for many. He does not pray “forgive us our trespasses”, but he is soon to say “Father, forgive them ...”. He does not pray “deliver us from evil”; he is about to deliver himself into hell.
There is much more I would like to say. Our readings over the next few weeks will use the Lord’s Prayer as a reference point, giving us time and space to pray the prayer, study the prayer, live the prayer.
The PCC is leading us in a project to renew St Michael’s. What sort of people does our Father God want us to be? What needs to be changed in us, so that we can bring in necessary change to his world? Wherever we find ourselves on our pilgrimage now, what are the next, small, tremulous steps that we can take, on the road to be more like Jesus?
Please join me as I seek to discover a deeper relationship with the Father, to align earth and heaven, to rely upon him to provide all that is necessary, and to avoid temptation. God does have power to change the world, and he does it in response to our prayers; he does it by changing us.
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