Sermon, March 19, 2006

I have set myself the task of amplifying segments of the Eucharist when I preach at later services. This morning I want to look further into the implications of the Lord’s Prayer. As in my previous sermon, covering the beginning segments of the prayer, my general question for all of us is, “How often, I wonder, do we consider what we are saying when we pray the Lord’s Prayer together?” I have found that in my investigation of what the words of the prayer mean to me I have become aware of aspects of the prayer in relation to my life that have been both challenging and helpful.

Rather than summarize what I have already covered, I have made copies of the earlier sermon for those who might want the prelude to what I’ll cover today. We left off at the end of my first sermon on the Lord’s Prayer just before the phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

It follows that I should begin today with that phrase. Regardless of what some commentators have said about this sentence it is, for me, an acknowledgement that everything that sustains us comes from God. I therefore prefer to say, “Grant us all our daily sustenance.” Further it is about more than material sustenance, I strongly urge the consideration that this phrase covers a request for both material and spiritual needs. After all “ We do not live by bread alone.” In having considered this phrase as double sided it has led me to investigate the material and spiritual aspects of my life and that has led me to look at how Jesus fulfilled those areas. After all, he is the author of the prayer, so it’s natural to draw comparisons between him and myself. However, let me warn you if you also intend to approach this aspect of the Lord’s Prayer in this fashion; it’s not enormously encouraging to compare oneself with Jesus. I found myself falling far short of the mark, so to speak, in both areas. In the material area I have an abundance of things, most of them unnecessary to the sustenance of my life and health. In the spiritual area I found that I was led to consider not only prayer but also to consider those activities and people who help nurture the spiritual part of me. I have, learned from this investigation that I am responsible for taking advantage of those activities and the benefits of nurturing people. I may ask God to deliver my daily sustenance but that doesn’t mean that I have the right to expect God to do the work of utilizing them because then I would realize no gain nor learning since I haven’t invested myself any further than a request. Back to the material things I need to sustain my life versus what I have in the way of material things. This segment is then, a reminder to me that I need to ask for discernment and will power to seek out and live by and with those things necessary for my physical and spiritual well -being. I must shamefacedly admit that I have a lot more than I need and it is a big struggle to even think about letting go of some of these things. What that says to me as I make this prayer is that I am asking to become less reliant on my comparative opulence and more reliant on seeking what God would have me live on. Sadly, for me, progress in that direction is very slow and past habits keep biting me, well, you know where, when I even consider moving in that direction.

As to the spiritual sustenance, I am richer in this area than I would have at first realized, since my first thought involved only prayers and worship. People who care for and about me, chiefly my wife, and then many people of this parish surround me with an uplifting love that underlies my interactions with them. In just thinking about it I am confronted with how much of this nurturing attitude I take for granted and how abundant it is. Once again I am reminded that I must be aware, in an active sense, of the many blessings I receive, or I cannot utilize them to grow spiritually and therefore I receive less sustenance than is there to draw on. Boiled down to a phrase this segment shows me that what I get is less important than how I receive. It may be more blessed to give than to receive but it requires a good deal more of one’s active attention to realize the benefit of those gifts that come one’s way. Our grandson even gets excited about the wrapping oh his presents, he’s into receiving one-hundred percent, and interestingly he is an active giver, he even had a present for Santa Clause when he went to see him. So receiving my daily sustenance is a good deal more involved than I would have dreamed. It isn’t only material it’s also spiritual and both dimensions are many faceted requiring an intentionality of no mean degree. Again, Jesus is our exemplar and we are called to exemplify the pattern of his life in this area as well as all the others.

The next segment says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Again, a lot of commentators, all of them far more scholarly than I, have interpreted this passage in a way differently than it speaks to me. I see this passage as telling me, “Don’t hold a grudge,” and that is something that is another sticking point for me. I have all too often kept in my heart and mind wrongs that I believe have been done to me instead of acting on my objection to them or simply letting them go. I can claim progress here, although I feel like Sisyphus must have felt when he was condemned by the gods of his people to push a huge boulder up a hill only to have it roll back so that he must start all over again unceasingly. It can get pretty old pretty fast if one has to struggle to let go of a grudge. How come I know that? The answer is obvious. However, of late, especially after my cancer surgery, I have found much more freedom to let go of what I consider wrongs that I have had done to me. It’s foolish waste of time. And when I was faced with the threat of what cancer could do to foreshorten my life I decided to seek to enjoy life more fully. You may take it from me that you cannot enjoy life more fully if you harbor a grudge. So what this segment says to me is, “God help me to be inwardly peaceful so that my actions toward others are directed by that inner peace.” That may not be what you make of this passage but it has helped me immensely to understand it that way for my life.

Now follows a passage whose wording has always troubled me. “Lead us not into temptation.” I cannot imagine God, even in my most cynical moments, needing to be asked to not lead me into something that would tempt me to do wrong, for that’s what I understand a temptation to be. It would be like the story of the man who placed his young son on the mantle place and said, “Jump, I’ll catch you,” and then stepped away when the child jumped and said, “See, that will teach you not to trust anybody.” If I cannot trust God then Jesus is nothing more than a colossal joke. I much prefer what the gospels relate to us about what Jesus told his disciples, “Do not bring us to the time of trial.” I like to pray “Save us from the time of trial.” To me that is an admission that I can’t be complete apart from God and that, if left to my own devices, I would mess things up in any number of ways. As I proceed through these reflections it becomes more and more obvious to me that apart from God I can do nothing that will ennoble my life or that of others. The Collect for the sixth Sunday after Epiphany says it very well in its beginning portions:

“O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of your grace…” However you may understand “Lead us not into temptation,” I find that I much prefer “Save us from the time of trial,” as expressing my constant need for God’s helping grace to be the person God created me to be.

What follows next is a segment that I have no trouble praying, simply because of what I know about the world, and myself “but deliver us from evil.” I don’t know about you but I understand these words as a dual challenge, one part is asking for help against evil deeds and evil people, the other part is asking for the strength not to do evil things, even by accident.

With the advent of terrorism in our world and the animosity that is aimed at our country, sometimes rightly sometimes very wrongly, we all are more exposed to the nakedly destructive acts that this animosity has bred. Christians cannot point the finger and claim innocence, look at what the crusades and the inquisition did for example. It is hard to understand any follower of any of the world’s great religions not seeing in them the call to peace and unity with all humanity. Yet, every one of the world’s great religions has had leaders that have misused the power they have gained for destructive purposes. No one is innocent in this regard for we all tend to misuse power and for very partisan reasons direct it against those whom we deem unworthy of belonging to the human race. It is not a pretty picture to imagine. When I was supplying in Mena Nina and I would drive by a house in whose yard was a red, white and blue sign that said, “September 11th, never forget, never forgive!” I wondered if the occupants of that home in any way identified themselves as citizens of the country that brought into being the atomic bomb and its use. The rationale for its use was, in its time, understandable. Yet in the years succeeding that time we, the people of the world were in thrall to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Young people of today do not understand what that was like but they do understand what power is and how to misuse it and much of what commercial television puts forth only reinforces the negative use of power. That is not an influence that I feel comfortable in recommending to any one, let alone patronizing it by watching such shows as promote the idea of “It’s OK to do anything if you feel that someone has truly wronged you.” I don’t want to get too far afield of what we are considering from the Lord’s Prayer, yet I believe that this segment is directed in two ways as I have already mentioned. Deliver us from evil, please dear God deliver us, from doing it or being its victim, deliver us.

Now the concluding Gloria passage makes more sense to me for it is a straight forward recognition that only when we let the rule of heaven become the rule of our lives will we find the ability to live together as God intends for all of us to do. For that is the image of God’s Kingdom as I conceive it. Yes, it is idealistic yet it is also possible because God demonstrated what it could be like through Jesus of Nazareth and a lot of other noble humans. Then we know that what we say in the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer is what God calls us to bring into being and God is always ready to help us find and actualize the kingdom both without and within if we will but choose to actively seek it. And so we say, because we are called through Christ to trust it can be so, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.”