Sermon for August 28

The reading

 
Luke 11:2-4  (NRSV)   
He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 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 message

We are now on week 3 of a 4 week series on the most familiar words of our faith, the Lord’s Prayer.  It might be week three but this is my first sermon on the Our Father.  I would like to start out by admitting this reading always challenged me. It would come up from time to time on Sundays and it was always hard for me to think of what to say. I would also like to start by reviewing what we have done so far.  On week 1, we did a skit, a dialogue between a sort of sarcastic but  loving God and a person doing their daily reciting of the Lord’s prayer.  It was not my idea. The original skit was created by a youth ministry group called body builders. I did work though,  I made some considerable edits to highlight the Lord’s prayer as the words that we turn to experience and celebrate God’s grace. The skit was meant to help us think about these very familiar words in a new way. Like many of us can be guilty of, the pray-er says this powerful and grace filled prayer without thinking too much about its power or its grace.  The skit was an invitation for us to say these words with awareness, trust, hope, excitement and joy.

Last week, we had some church switching and I was at Trinity, Middle Village while Deacon Florence Poeskhe was here. From talking to people who were at worship, I learned that she shared an in-depth, petition by petition sermon on the Lord’s prayer.    I do not want to repeat what she said last week (which can be tough, since I’m really not sure what she said).  This morning,  I am going to talk about “4 things you might not know about the Lord’s prayer”     

1: Jesus teaches two different versions. Many of you who heard our repeated reading from Luke over the past few weeks probably thought “that doesn’t exactly sound like the prayer we say” and you would be right, It’s not.  We are used to the longer version Jesus teaches the crowd during the sermon on the mount.  In Matthew 6:9-13.   Jesus taught them: 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 also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one).   The two versions were shared with different people and in different ways. In Luke, Jesus shares the Our father in private, in response to his disciples questions on how to pray.  In Matthew, Jesus publically shares the Our father with thousands during the sermon on the mount, a long conversation with the crowd on 

God’s love, way and instructions. 

As we hear both versions, people can struggle to figure out the difference between sins, debts or trespasses. Don’t do that.  They all mean the same thing, the times when we fail to love God and neighbor as ourselves.  Matthew has a tendency to highlight economic based parables and uses debt as a metaphor for sin.  Luke avoids using the word “debt”  and just says “sins”. Trespasses is used in the English speaking Roman Catholic world (which I grew up in) and is considered to mean the same thing as sin

The second thing you might know is that the Our Father is considered a model prayer.  As I thought of this, I thought of a TV show called Arrested Development. It’s about a family of inept or corrupt housing developers.  They end up living in a model home, which looks just like a real home except most of the things inside are fake or not working. No one was ever meant to live in it, it was simply to show people what the actual for sale properties looked like. Their use of the model as a home often results in funny or silly things (think putting ice cream in a non-working freezer made of cardboard or watering fake flowers). No one is meant to live in a model house. We add our own colors, furniture, art,  decorations and desired conveniences (a big tv, small tv, no tv or 11 tvs). When Jesus tells us to pray in this way, he is telling us that his words are a model to guide and direct us. Jesus teaches us to communicate with God with praise, trust and thanksgiving.  We are invited to make the prayer our own.  We can name specific sins when we say “forgive us our sins”, we can use another word for father that better captures a relationship of care and support, or we can ask for things other than our daily bread to express what we need to sustain us. 

The Lord’s prayer as a model is not a new idea.  In fact the actual ending may have been added on. That’s the third thing you might not know about the Lord’s Prayer.   As you just heard in the readings, “for yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever Amen” is not found in either Matthew or Luke, well at least not in our modern translations.   I am going to explain this with the short version of something really complicated. The ancient manuscripts that our bible translations come from can be divided into Byzantine and Alexandrian. The Byzantine group is newer (dating from 600 AD or later). This collection is relatively complete.  The Alexandrian group is considerably older but are mainly incomplete and found in fragments. Most of the times, these 2 sources are in agreement.  One time they are not is the long ending of the Our Father. It is in the more recent Byzantine manuscripts but not in the older Alexandrian ones.  In modern times, translators, inspired by humanist ideals (assuming older means closer to the original and more accurate) usually opt for the Alexandrian text when there are differences.   Since the Reformation 499 years ago, Protestant churches have included “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory” while Roman Catholics have not (for slightly different and even more complicated manuscript reasons).   This ending has been attached to the Lord’s prayer for a very long time. It is found in the didache, a very early Christian worship guide and book from around the year 90 ad.   

This ending is actually found in the Old Testament, in1 Chronicles 29  “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty” .  That takes us to the last thing you might not know about the Lord’s prayer.  While Jesus combination of petitions and praise was unique, he did not create it from scratch. There were lots of prayers just like it. A lot of people have looked at the Old Testament origins of many or all of the individual petitions in the Lord’s prayer. For example: Proverbs 30:8 "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread."  and Psalm 71:4 Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel  

The opening words of the Koran, written about 700 years after Jesus introduces the Our Father, share a similar prayer, which Muslims recite 5 times a day: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful: All Praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Universe. The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Owner of the Day of Judgement. You alone do we worship, and You alone we turn to for help. Guide us to the straight path;The path of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your anger, nor of those who went astray.

As people have tried to understand the revelation of God’s love to the world, the words and ideas of the Lord’s Prayer have transcended time and culture, offering God’s comfort and care to all people.  The actual petitions and praise in the prayer are found in other monotheistic faiths (Judaism and Islam). This news of love is ultimately revealed to us through Jesus whose words guide our prayer and lives.  Next week, I will complete our time with Lord’s prayer with some reflections on the role of Jesus’ words in my own faith and life and in our shared history and traditions.