Last week, or actually the last time I preached; I guess I didn’t preach last week.  But the last time I preached, I preached out of Luke.  And that is our Lectionary text also for today.  Last week Bob chose out of Colossians; this week I go back to Luke.  It was on the Good Samaritan that I preached; it was out of Chapter 10.  This week it is out of Chapter 11 following Jesus’ discourse that many of you know with Mary and Martha.  The Disciples came to Jesus and asked for Him to teach them how to pray.  So let’s begin.  “He was praying in a certain place.  And after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.’  And 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 anyone indebted to us.  And do not bring us to the time of trial.’” 

            It’s one of those things that I suppose we could call it a “rock”.  In fact, I named the sermon “Faith Rocks”—not like in rock-in-roll but rocks in the sense that if you have a little bitty one in your shoe, it kind of aggravates you.  And if you have a great big one, you can build a house on it!  Sometimes the Lord’s Prayer is both of those.  It aggravates some folks because it is not said right.  There were no “thy’s” and “thou’s” in that version, were there?  Some people think that is the only way to pray it is in the King James Version of English and the contemporary way is a little disturbing.  Other folks say, “It aggravates me, they don’t know how to pray it right; they don’t say “debts”, they say “trespasses”.  And sometimes even in the contemporary churches, all at once instead of saying “your” they relapse into “thy” and “thou”.  Some folks don’t like it because it says “Father”; and yet here it is from Jesus’ lips these words.  Or is it?  Matthew and Luke have different versions of this prayer.  And it’s hard to put exact English phrases translating from the Greek; and probably the Arabic that Jesus spoke is not in there either. 

            So here we have this prayer that can be a little aggravating and irritating for some folks and yet foundationally today I want you to look at it and reflect with me upon it as something that has been and is from Jesus’ lips something that holds us together no matter Baptist, no matter Catholic, no matter German, no matter English.  We often hear and say this prayer collectively.  Today I want you to focus on at least three what I call “C’s”.  Not in as “I see you”, but as in A, B, C.  I find myself that it helps to kind of put that acronym around my systems of remembrance as I get older.  So “see” if you can find a “C” in what I’m saying today that you can hold on to. 

            Jesus is saying to his disciples not “how” but “when”, not “what” but “when”.  So he is assuming that they have already been praying like when our kids go to preschool or Sunday school or to the school systems.  They come in, even now at kindergarten and first grade, most of them have already started counting, I think.  1-2-3.  And most of them know their colors, at least a few starts.  And most of them have heard of the letter a, b, c.  So when the disciples come to Jesus, they’ve already got a way of praying.  The way they have of praying is Jewish.  This prayer we call “The Lord’s Prayer”, which he was teaching to his disciples, is not your typical Jewish prayer.  The prayer that they had been praying probably came out of it, at least a portion of it, came out of Deuteronomy and used the word “Yahweh”.  Because that prayer says, “Hear all Israel, the Lord your God, Yahweh, is One.”  And it goes on.  And yet Jesus is saying, when you pray now, pray like this.  Pray not a repetitive phraseology, but pray corporately in community like this.  Now it doesn’t say go form a focus group and look at your innermost being.  And he doesn’t say you had to form a circle, did he?  And he didn’t say get down on your knees or stand up or close your eyes.  All those things have been added.  What he did say is “when”.  When you, who follow me, pray, do this in this manner. 

            Our—the first thing that happens is Jesus said, “Our”.  It’s a call to community, isn’t it?  Our!  In fact, this is one prayer which no matter whether it is a wedding or a funeral, whether in the United States or in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, I’ve heard said because it is a connection of community.  He says no matter what our differences, our status, our relationship is children of God.  Our Father!  Not some distance deity that we have to put a message in a bottle and hope he gets.  But relationship not just with God but one another—our!  It goes across denominational lines—Our Father! 

            The next thing that I see here is that it calls us and says, as Jesus did, to community.  We might stand aside and say, “They are not my kind” or we may stumble on those little words within it.  But Jesus says, “As I called you,” he’s saying to his disciples, “I’m calling you to one another as well.  Overcome these barriers with this prayer, with these words, with this power of inclusion.”  He calls to us as well.  And it is a prayer of confirmation.  Look at this prayer.  Who is this prayer about?  What does this prayer say?  It is a prayer about Jesus and he loves who he is.  He has brought heaven, God’s will in Him, perfected.  He’s brought it to earth.  He confirms Jesus as the Son of God.  It confirms Jesus when it says, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” 

            Jesus begins the Kingdom here.  He’s already said when he got in to the Temple that day and unfolded the scroll of Isaiah and he read it.  He said, “The Lord has anointed me to preach, to heal.”  Unfolding that scroll he said, as he then finished, “Today it has been fulfilled.”  And he would often say, “The Kingdom of God is…” where?  “Among you”.  The Kingdom has come.  It’s not yet a fully redeemed world in which we live, but the Kingdom has begun.  The trumpet march has begun!  The risen king is coming again.  So it confirms.  It’s a prayer of confirmation of who we are, who Jesus is, who God is.   

And then it is also a prayer where we think of it “as daily bread”.  Daily bread—what could Jesus do with bread?  He multiplied it didn’t he?  He fed 5,000 and he fed 4,000.  And then in the Upper Room he used it and said, “This is my body broken for you.”  He identified with our need for physical provision and also with our bodies being broken, and his own body to be broken once more identifying.  And then the trespasses, the debts.  Who took away our sin?—Jesus!   And yet not only is there a sense of “he took my sins away”, when we get to the next phrase there is a “C” of commitment.  Not just a “C” of community calling us. It’s our, our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  It’s a call of confirmation of who Jesus is.  He took away our sins, he took away our trespasses.  We couldn’t go higher than he went or lower than he went to make sure that death was triumphant, to make sure that not just one individual sin or one type of sin or just “my” sin or just “your” sin was forgiven, but it is “our” isn’t it?  Our trespasses—the person beside you, in front of you, behind you—our trespasses.  That’s what Jesus did!  None of us is sinless.  In fact, the word “trespass” is an intentional going over the line.  He could have said “depths” to think about the load upon our shoulders; he could have said “iniquity”, the twistedness within us; he could have said “sin” where we fired the arrow and missed the mark.  All of that can be wrapped up in saying forgiveness for all. 

And then there is the “C” of commitment. Commitment, that next part!  Right in the heart of this prayer what happens?  “As we forgive those who trespass against us”.  I never liked that part of the prayer.  Do you like that part of the prayer?  That’s the hard part because that’s making a pledge of commitment to live like Jesus!  Forgive our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Well, sometimes I don’t want Jesus to forgive my sins like I’ve forgiven others because you see, I don’t forgive others. It’s not conditional.  It’s because I have been forgiven I can forgive. Because I know that Jesus has already forgiven that person as they confessed there sin.  It says that he is faithful and just.  And believe you me, you don’t know if they’ve confessed, do you?  Well, they don’t act like it.  And only the Lord can see in to that heart.  Not conditional on you or on me, it just says if you believe the first part, then do the second.  If you believe the first part that rock that kind of gets in your shoe, it’s starting to get there isn’t it?  In the heart of the prayer, the thing that you base your faith on, I’m forgiven.  Then because you are a little irritating, but remember, they had the first part too.   

And let us not just forgive individually.  I can forgive them, they are nice people, they are like me.  But forgive them, and those?  They don’t look like me, they don’t act like me, they are not my age.  I can forgive inexperience but experience?  They should know better.  Huh uh, it says we forgive, we, that collectiveness, that community, we forgive those who trespass against us.  Or at least we try, every day, again. 

What about the “lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil from times of trial”?  How many like trial?  I know a few lawyers in here.  You get paid for those.  How many like trial?  I don’t like suffering.  I don’t like that part.  Whatever it is, whether it is inside or outside.  Torture me not!  But Jesus was tortured.  He went through a time of trial.  Do you know when he went through that time of trial?  It was right after a time of hearing God say from the Heavens at his baptism, “This is my beloved Son.”  And who sent Jesus into the wilderness?   

The next verse says it was the spirit of God.  He knows what it is like to be tested.  He also knows that it’s not always the evil one that beckons us into temptation.  Testing and trial—and that’s a hard pill to swallow.  For me to see that Jesus was sent into the wilderness to be tested by the Spirit of God.  What happens when we are tested?  What happened to Jesus?  He was confronted with another power and yet that power had no power over him because he had the word of God in his heart.  That’s a lesson for us.  We can say to the Lord, “As you were tested and you chose not the power, you chose not to tempt the Lord, your God, by having angels rescue you, you chose not to give in that you could be “ruler” over the earth and have all the Kingdoms of the earth bow down.  And Jesus chose not to turn the rocks in to bread for temporary sustenance.  He chose not to do those things.  And he gave us focus and said, “I am delivered from these temptations by the word of God.  What I have placed in my heart that I might not sin against you.” 

I think the Scripture here, when it says “and lead us not in to temptation, but deliver us from evil”, I like that part—deliverance—because God has the power to deliver, deliver us from the evil one.  And I think God know, like it says, he knows the heart of us all.  He knows that we don’t like this part, we don’t like the trials.  And he says it’s alright to tell God these things and it is alright while you stand there needing courage to say, “I’m being challenged in ways that are too great for me.  Be though my deliverer.”   

So here we have it.  A prayer that Jesus says confirms who he is, offers us a chance of commitment to who we will be and a chance for community that realizes we are not in it alone that we pray and uphold one another.  And sometimes with the only prayer that we can say that will connect us is this one which Michelle sang, which we heard read, which might be placed upon your heart.  Not just a template, its access.  It’s not just something that a child can learn, but a child can learn it.  But it is more about who Jesus is, who he wants to be, the One who sets the example, One that knows you, One that calls to you to follow me in this way.  May it be so for our lives that we teach not just it as a routine but as a way of life to community, to challenge or to confirmation.  Thanks be to God, Amen.

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Nancy Blevins

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