Message 1 of 5 on the Lord's Prayer.
Luke 11.1-13
One day, Joe, Bob and Dave were hiking in a wilderness area when they came upon a large, raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea how to do it.
Joe prayed to God, saying, "Please God, give me the strength to cross this river."
Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours, although he almost drowned a couple of times.
Seeing this, Dave prayed to God, saying, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools to cross this river."
Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times.
Bob had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools, and the intelligence, to cross this river."
Poof! God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, then walked across the bridge.
Oh well … so it goes … men, remember to check the map! And listen to your wife. It’ll keep ya’ on the straight and narrow!
Prayer … what is it? How does it work? … what should we say?
A disciple ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, as John taught HIS disciples …
Maybe we can pray better …
All of my pastorate, people have wondered, Is there a better way to pray?
Why would anyone ask this?
I fear that some of this has to do with “getting results.”
If only we say it right …
Do it right ...
Have the right mindset … get on our knees, fold our hands, hold a cross, bow the head … use a Rosary … a prayer book, bury a statue of St. Joseph in our yard to help our home sell … cry a little … look humble … say holy words like “thee” and “thou” … pray in tongues like Pentecostals do … or like some preachers I knew in my childhood, take on the “preacher tone,” an affected way of speaking, as if prayer required a special way of pronouncing words and pacing the sentences.
It’s human nature to hope for some leverage on the divine.
Our needs are real ...
We need help in getting through life … we need money to pay the bills … we need healing when we’re sick … we pray for friends who are in trouble … we pray for our children to succeed in school and career …
Things in our lives that we want God to change … we pray for friends in trouble … and we pray for those who trouble us with their troubles.
It’s not entirely selfish on our part to want some leverage on God.
Jesus, teach us how to pray.
Jesus says to the disciples, when you pray, pray like this … always begin with God as our Father … because we’re all in this together … we’re a family.
Brothers and sisters are we all … spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers … uncles and aunts and cousins who make this journey with us … we are family!
Because God is our Father! Your Father … my Father … and all together, our Father.
And where is God?
God is in heaven … our Father, who art in heaven!
Now here is where we have much to learn … heaven is God’s realm of love and mercy; God’s way of doing things.
John the Baptist says: The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Paul says: We are citizens of heaven …
In the Medieval Church, heaven became a destination, a location somewhere out there, far away, on the other side of death …
The Church taught us that if we’re really good, really do what we’re taught to do - say our prayers, go to church, read our Bibles … and all the little rules and regulations the church invented over the centuries … if we do as we’re told, then we’ll go to heaven when we die.
The promise of heaven and the threat of hell became powerful tools for popes and bishops, kings and queens, to keep everyone else in line … your life here on earth may be miserable and mean, but when ya’ get to heaven, if you do as we tell ya’, you’ll walk on streets of gold and live in heavenly mansions.
Don’t object to the fact that bishops and priests rule your life with an iron fist and live in the lap of luxury while you wonder where your next meal comes from.
Don’t be offended that your kings and queens take your best land and your wheat and apples and your children for war … don’t protest the fact that you’re cheated on wages, that you’re humiliated by the employer, that your mistreated and abused.
Don’t rock the boat here; stay the course; be obedient and do as you’re told, and you’ll get to heaven when you die.
Truth be told, when Jesus speaks of heaven, he speaks of God: what God values - what God loves … what God does.
Heaven is the gold standard of faith … heaven is the measuring stick by which we measure reality … heaven is what God loves and what God does … and where the love of God is practice and celebrated and fulfilled, that’s where heaven is.
And in Jesus, the love of God is especially fulfilled … and revealed.
To know something about heaven … know everything we can about Jesus.
Read the Beatitudes … walk with him and watch him heal the sick … watch Jesus welcome those who are rejected by the proud and pompous, condemned by the religious and the self-righteous … the woman at the well, blind Bartimaeus beside the road, Zacchaeus up a tree, and the woman dragged before Jesus whom the crowd had sentenced to death.
There is welcome in his heart … forgiveness in his words … a love pure and good …
Heaven in our midst … all around us and within us … the ways of God … what God loves and what God does … the presence of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Here’s where it’s helpful to know something about the world in which Jesus lived … a world dominated by the Roman Empire and its military might … and Jerusalem the Golden - religion dominated by temple and priest.
When Jesus says of God, who art in heaven, Jesus makes it clear ...
God is not like the Roman Empire that governs with fear and violence … God is not like Jerusalem and its big buildings, God is not like the priests and the scribes who stroll around in fancy robes, say long prayers, expect special treatment, and hurry on by when they see a victim laying in the ditch beside the road …
When Jesus says, Our Father, who art in heaven, Jesus tells us that God’s eye is on the sparrow … God clothes the lilies of the field … God loves little children … and of all the things we could ever say about God, GOD is the Good Samaritan … God stops to pick us up, dresses our wounds, takes us to a safe place, and covers the cost.
If White Europeans had truly prayed like this, there would have never been slavery … never been an American Civil War … nor ever the hideous Jim Crow laws with their “colored only” drinking fountains and theater seats in the balcony … there never would have been a need for President Eisenhower to send Federal Troops to Arkansas in 1957 so that a group of nine black students could attend Little Rock High School … nor the need for a Voting Rights Act of 1965 … if Christians had truly prayed, Our Father, who art in heaven.
If Christians in Germany and France and England had prayed like this, there wouldn’t have been the Crimean War, nor the War to End All Wars, nor World War 2 and all the self-righteous killing that threatens the soul of the United States in this very moment of time, and threatens to undo the whole world, as our killing machines grow evermore sophisticated and powerful … … if Christians had truly prayed, Our Father, who art in heaven.
If Priest and Bishop had prayed like this, there would never have been the ghastly cover-up of predator priests whose reputation was more important than the suffering of their little victims … if Christians had truly prayed, Our Father, who art in heaven.
If you and I truly pray as Jesus teaches us to pray, the power of sin in our lives is diminished … we remain sinners for sure, to the day we die … but a life soaked in prayer as Jesus teaches us to pray is life where the darkness cannot prevail, where hatred is reduced … a life where mountains are brought low and valleys filled in … a life of welcome to one and to all … a life forgetful of the past, eager to welcome the future … a life that doesn’t give up on others … a life devoted to grace, mercy and peace!
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
Jesus goes on: hallowed be thy name … holy is your name … and holy means reliable! Trustworthy! Solid and Good!
God says to Israel, I am a holy God ... You can trust me!
I do what I say, and I say what I do … I am reliable, trustworthy … I stand with you … I see you through … I guide you and I guard you … all the way … no matter what, no matter where … I am the LORD your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage … I parted the sea before you and gave you a way through to the other side … I fed you with manna in the wilderness and I gave you water from a rock …
Because God is holy, we pray with confidence!
God hears our prayers … God welcomes our prayers, just as they are - prayers sometimes poorly framed … said with haste … filled with anger and fear … sometimes overflowing with tears and broken hearts … sometimes rich in love and hope and gratitude … sometimes full of self and sometimes selfless … God welcomes every prayer, just as it is, as God welcomes us, just as we are.
God hears every prayer … the prayer of the saint and the prayer of the sinner … the prayer of the lonely and the prayer of the stricken … the prayer of a troubled mind and the prayer of a broken heart … even the prayer of the self-righteous man who stands in the temple thanking God that he’s not like “that other guy over there” …
Every prayer is heard - every faith, every religion, every status in life … and the voice of every creature, great and small … every prayer is heard by God, and every prayer is faithfully answered:
Sometimes the answer is Yes!
Sometimes the answer is No!
Sometimes the answer - Not yet!
Whatever the answer, we trust, because God is our Father.
Whatever the answer, we abide, because God is in heaven.
Whatever the answer, we believe, because God’s name is holy.
Jesus said: When you pray, pray like this: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Amen and Amen!
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