Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Please be seated.
What a blessing and a joy it is to be with you all again! A year away at seminary has felt like a lifetime – so much has happened in mine and Penny’s life there on the mountain and here, at St. Augustine’s, in your lives. When I was hurrying to finish my bachelor’s degree at Augusta University, already sensing God’s call and fervently praying seminary would be part of my future, I remember a discussion on culture shock in my Intercultural Communication class, more specifically the shock that comes upon reintegration into the home culture from which one left, either following a brief visit elsewhere or returning after a long time away. See, what tends to happen when sojourning is we overlook the fact that while we are having new, formative experiences in new places, folks back home are experiencing change as well. The culture of home constantly changes – it will not, cannot be the same home we left.
In our gospel today, Jesus and his disciples are making their return to Jerusalem, and for Jesus this will be his last journey there, at least in the flesh. On the way, a disciple asks Him, “Lord teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” Now, I do not believe that the disciple here is asking to be taught to pray as John taught his disciples, or to be instructed on how John would have prayed, but how Christ himself prayed. One might think that by this point in Jesus’ ministry the disciples had a pretty good idea what this looked like – the words used, the motions and positioning of his body. Even without Jesus’s example, they would have shared in the same understanding Jesus had about the practices and the repetition of prayers led by rabbis in synagogues and in the Temple. Jesus, though – as we find in this pericope and elsewhere in scripture – had a habit of retreating, removing himself to a certain place, often a secluded mountain, to be in the presence of God. And when disciples did accompany Jesus in his practice, as they did at the Transfiguration, for example, only a handful of witnesses were allowed. Maybe, just maybe, even after following Him in his active ministry, they did not actually know how Jesus prayed.
Jesus then gives them his reply: “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.” I know those of you who have heard my reflections during Morning Prayer noticed I sometimes wander off into the homiletical weeds, but the difference between what we recite every Sunday as The Lord’s Prayer and what we hear in today’s scripture, I feel, necessitates closer contemplation. John’s commission, as we know, was to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, a messiah who in his coming would promptly usher in the kingdom of God on earth, a realized kingdom; and despite not having any record of what he prayed, prayers of beckoning and beseeching would, conceivably, have been a key component to what he taught. Christ, however, when praying “Your kingdom come” can equally be interpreted as the Messiah acknowledging the present, realized kingdom while having knowledge of what is to come, an eschatological kingdom, though Jesus teaches that only God knows the day and the hour. By the time we reach the eleventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has already attempted to lend his disciples an opportunity to acknowledge his forthcoming death on the cross – a trial without which he cannot come again to raise the living and the dead.
Jesus knew what was coming, knew that though he had been to Jerusalem many times before, this time would be different. There the cultural tide of change was already shifting against him – it had to if prophecy was to be fulfilled. Christ knew that not only was his suffering imminent, but that too, of his disciples. If John’s prayers prepared believers for a life with the Messiah, Christ’s prayer prepared the disciples for a future they did not yet comprehend, a future without him. It was a prayer for his death and resurrection, as we hear about in our epistle, through which we are all able to share a new life in, not just with, Christ.
“Your kingdom come”: God’s kingdom is coming; it does not end with my death.
“Give us each day our daily bread”: You will have what you need, but not what you want. You will have me with you, though I will not be there in the flesh, I will be in the bread made flesh.
“And forgive us our sins”: You will be scared even if you are sure in the knowledge of your salvation. In the days to come you will distrust others though I have entrusted their souls to your care. You will hurt, deeply, and in that hurt may reject my teachings, putting distance between yourself and our God but remember …
“We ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us”: We pray this prayer, and in praying for others, even those who hate us and revile us, we cannot hate them. We cannot hate what God has made in God’s image, for God is hallowed – holy and sacred.
“And do not bring us to the time of trial”: This prayer is not just for a life with me, but a life in me. And in your death, as in mine, there will be resurrection, for I am the resurrection and the life.
Jesus knew when the disciples went forth into the world and into their ministry, that they would need this prayer. News of Jesus’ death would surely spread: the disciples would be leaving Jerusalem unsure of the welcome they would receive in their hometowns and places they had visited time and time again, not knowing if they could rely on what hospitality they experienced before when Christ was with them. They would be constantly questioning whether there would be an open door, a friendly dwelling place, a nourishing meal for them. Nothing in their world would be sure.
I ask myself and you all in the pews – what relevance does the Lord’s Prayer hold for us? Or rather, how does the interpretation offered from this pulpit this morning speak to us, disciples?
The world in which we live, move, and have our being is the same world of Christ’s first followers: it is not a world that is welcoming of the Gospel. We live in a world where the shootings in Uvalde, Highland Park, Buffalo and at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Alabama, are a regular occurrence. We live in a world, not unlike the world under the control of the Roman Empire, with an ever-widening divide between the ultra-wealthy and the destitute. We live in a world where, still, historically underserved groups continue to be made targets of oppression in and by our society. And I wonder how we can continue to fool ourselves into thinking that our collectively increasing greed and decreasing hospitality – hospitality which helps to meet the needs of others and bring them under our protection, our care – does not wound the heart of God for the whole of God’s creation. This, coincidentally, is the sin that our Old Testament lesson on Sodom and Gomorrah from today speaks to.
Ultimately, we live in a world where there is an abundance of suffering. Because of this, our world needs the Gospel. It is a message I know you have heard preached over and over, but it is a message that holds truth. I have learned a lot about the Bible this year. I have sat and studied through four courses, 12 academic hours, worth of Old and New Testament lectures calling our attention to the truth that the Bible holds instead of parsing it to determine its fact or fiction. I have learned a lot about our church this year. I have heard that evangelism is something that The Episcopal Church does not do well – this is also something you’ve likely heard again and again. But I want to disagree. If we struggle with evangelism, it is not because we are wary of it, it’s because it is wearying, hard work. It is the exhaustion felt by coming up against system after system that does not value God’s creation, God’s economy, God’s Word, and Christians have been doing this for 2000 years, generation after generation. Christ knew that we sitting here in these pews, this church, would need his prayer. Good thing someone thought to write it down for us, right?
If I was pressed to name only one takeaway from this past year in seminary to share with you all, it is the value of what I feel is the most beautiful aspect of our church: our liturgy. It’s that red book sitting in front of you in the pews (BCP). It’s having prayers available when we don’t know how to pray, when the circumstances of our life overwhelm us and we are unsure of where the world is headed, what the next unimaginable tragedy will be, and we cry out to God, “What do I do?” It is having the comforting words of the psalms and our canticles, our creeds and collects, when we think we can go no further, when we constantly witness the lack of God’s love in the world while trying to witness to that same love. It is us taking on the words of the Psalmist, struggling to recall God’s promises but then giving thanksgiving that “On the day I called you, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.” This is what Christ’s prayer in its essence promises to provide – the strength we need, dearest disciples, to keep going.
This is the Lord’s prayer, a prayer we can rely on as we move through a world that needs the Gospel and needs us to witness to Christ’s ability to reconcile humankind to God. It is a prayer that spans denominations, generations, intersections of identity – it is a prayer that when we pray it, we are asked to go beyond a surface level interpretation and feel Christ’s presence in the words. It is not a rote prayer – it is a continual and constant reminder of our reliance on God, on Christ and the surety of our salvation in this unsure, harsh world. So, in a few moments, let us boldly pray together the words our Savior gave. Let us pray and hear Christ’s promise to us through the words he taught to his disciples. Let us pray amid a broken yet beautiful world in which Christ is not existing alongside us, but within us, always calling to us through His prayer to continue forward in faith.