Today in our Gospel text, Jesus teaches his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. A prayer we are still, two thousand years later, praying every Sunday. While there are as many ways to pray as there are people, and any way that helps you have a conversation with God is good, there is, I think something uniquely special about these words. Not because of the words themselves, but because of how well we know them. The fact that the church has been praying these specific words for so many years has given them a solidity that helps us connect to God when we cannot on our own.
I realized the power of this sort of repetition while I was doing a chaplaincy internship at a retirement home the summer after my first year of seminary. I spent a lot of time that summer in the memory care unit, working with people with mid to late stage Alzheimer’s and dementia. Every Thursday, my supervisor, an Episcopal priest, would come to lead worship. We would sit around the living room on couches, sing old, beloved hymns, read scripture, and take communion. Before the priest would distribute communion, we would all hold hands and say the Lord’s Prayer together. And everyone could say the words of the prayer. Alzheimer’s and dementia had taken so much of the minds of the residents, that they often could not remember the names or faces of loved ones, or even their own names. But they could remember the Lord’s Prayer. The prayer was held not in their minds somehow, but in their souls. The constant repetition of the same words, day after day, year after year, for a lifetime, had moved this prayer from head knowledge to heart knowledge. Even as disease wreaked havoc on their memory, the promise that God’s name was hallowed, that God’s kingdom would come, was a promise that transcended intellectual ability. When our minds can no longer remember God’s promises, God has created us so that our bodies can hold this truth for us.
The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for us when we do not have words to pray. When we have forgotten how to pray, maybe from dementia or memory loss, but also when grief or hurt, depression or pain, doubt, or fear, or heartbreak has left us feeling so separate, so alone, so far from God’s grace and love, that we cannot on our own find words to say, we can say the words of the Lord’s Prayer and know that even if those words feel hollow in our mouths, they are words that Jesus promised would connect us to the Father.
This prayer connects us not just to God but to one another and to the whole church across time and space, because there is a communal nature to this prayer. We pray “Our Father,” not my Father, but “our.” “Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins.” We pray this prayer not just on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of the whole world. And similarly, the whole world prays this prayer on behalf of us. So when you are mouthing the words, not believing what you are saying, not trusting that God’s forgiveness is for you, you can do so with the promise that the person next to you is praying this prayer on your behalf. The person next to you is praying for you, praying you back into the kingdom of God. And when you are filled with the promise of God, when your heart is so full and your soul is so light with the hope of God’s grace, you can know that you are praying this prayer on behalf of someone else. That there is someone else in the room or in the world, someone who needs to know that God’s kingdom will come, and God’s will will be done, and you are praying that promise for them.
Another thing that’s great about the Lord’s Prayer is its completeness. Writer Ann Lamott says that all prayers can be simplified down to three words; help, thanks, and wow. The Lord’s Prayer, in a slightly different order, can be simplified to that. “Our Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,” is thanks. When we say these words, we are stating a promise we know to be true. That God’s name is holy, that God’s kingdom comes. It comes to us in Jesus, in the water and word, in the bread and the wine, and in a community that prays for us, and that we can pray for. The communal nature of this prayer is in fact the experience of God’s kingdom come to us. In affirming that this promise is true, we thank God for all that God has done for us.
Then we get to the help part. “Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” The Greek more closely translates, give us each day the bread that we need. This is a physical need, it reminds us of the Israelites in the wilderness, who every day could gather exactly enough manna for the one day. No more, no less, because on the next day there would be more. It is plea to have enough, not too little, but also not too much, enough to keep us satisfied, enough to remember our need for God.
“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” This is a really cool one in the Greek. Bear with me; I’m going to get a little grammar nerdy on you here. English teachers in the room, feel free to correct me if I get some of this wrong. My Greek grammar is decent, my English not as much. The first part of this line, “forgive us our sins,” is in the aorist tense. Now the aorist in Greek means a thing that happened once, that has ongoing effects. Like dropping a stone in a pond and watching the ripples spread out, there is one action that has on-going ramifications. So when we pray, “forgive us our sins,” the event that causes that to be true is the death and resurrection of Christ. Because of the Christ event, the experience of forgiveness flows on and on. We are forgiven, it’s already done, but we continue to receive the promise of that forgiveness on and on into eternity. The second part of this line, “for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us,” is a little different. That “forgive” is in the present, or my Greek professor called it the continuous tense. It means it is a thing that happens again and again. So again and again we forgive one another. God’s forgiveness is eternal, because of the death and resurrection of Christ. And because we have been forgiven, and continue to receive the experience of that forgiveness, we are then free to forgive one another again and again.
And finally, the wow. It’s not in the Luke reading, but it has come to be the way the church closes this prayer. “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Everything is God’s, all places, all power, all glory, is there anything more wow then that.
There are, as I said at the beginning of the sermon, a million ways to pray. Way more, actually, more ways to pray then there are people. And any of the ways that help you talk to God are great ways. But the Lord’s Prayer is God’s gift to us for the times when we do not know how to pray. It is a prayer to keep us grounded, to help us stay balanced in asking, seeking, and knocking, to open our eyes to God’s kingdom come among us. And because we pray this prayer so often, it becomes lodged in our souls, so that like Paul wrote to the Romans, when we do not know how to pray, the Spirit can intercede for us with sighs to deep for words. Thanks be to God, who taught us to pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed by your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours,
Now and forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment