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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
This prayer is not about a devil that I'm asking to be rescued from. As if there was some evil phantom floating in the background in my life pulling me in unseen directions. Some amorphous evil I can blame my own mistakes on. No. This prayer is about what is wrong all around me right now.
Jeremy Duncan:Evil that I can be very aware of if I want to be. Today though, we wrap up our journey through the Lord's prayer. However, before we jump into the final line together, I think it's good and appropriate that we gather up everything that we've talked about in this series so far. So to recap, five weeks ago, we started by talking about how not to pray. Even though this was not part of the Lord's prayer, I think it's important for us to see how Jesus teaches us not to pray.
Jeremy Duncan:Because just before beginning his prayer, Jesus outlines some of the ways we can distort prayer. Take it a bit sideways. And I think the key there was talking about the ways we sometimes use prayer for our own agenda. To imagine that our performance can sway God or that the very act of prayer could change our reputation with God. To even think that we could manipulate God toward our side in a conflict by maybe gossiping about someone in prayer.
Jeremy Duncan:All of these shift prayer from something that should be good for our soul towards something we imagine is good for our standing. And not only is that misguided, I think in the end it's shortsighted. I think what Jesus is trying to tell us even before we begin to pray is that prayer isn't meant to change anything about God. It's designed to change something about us. And if that is the posture that we can bring with us into prayer, then I think prayer can open up for us in all kinds of new directions.
Jeremy Duncan:For example, we can learn to pray to our father. Understanding that Jesus is not trying to root the divine in some kind of masculine identity, but instead in this often unrealized shared family that we have all been invited into. As I said, God is not your stepfather demanding to be called dad. God is the experience of family and the welcome of household now extended to all of us, which is why I think prayer is inherently optimistic. Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Jeremy Duncan:Everything that is good, everything we dream about in our wildest imaginations of heaven, all of that is possible if we can slowly align our actions with God's intent for us. And so because of that, we learn to ask for daily bread, everything that we need but not more than we need. Not so much that we would ever need not to trust anymore, but not so much that our neighbor might go without. I think this is why daily bread is good news for us, but also for our neighbor, which is perhaps why we then begin to think differently about them. It's not just our daily bread that's connected.
Jeremy Duncan:It's all of our relationships, our forgiveness as well. And so we pray to forgive our debts, our responsibilities, our obligations we didn't quite live up to. All the ways we dropped the ball and maybe didn't even notice. Along with importantly, even our trespasses. The times we crossed the lines or stepped on each other's toes.
Jeremy Duncan:Now last week, we talked about forgiveness, and forgiveness is an incredibly delicate topic. It deserves careful conversation, not quick recaps. So if it's something you're struggling with, then please go back, listen to last week's message. If this idea of forgiveness has ever been weaponized against you, used to try to manipulate you into forgetting or condoning something that happened to you, understand that's not what Jesus is talking about here. There are consequences for bad behavior, and sometimes you will need to hold the line on that.
Jeremy Duncan:But at the same time, there also comes a time when hurt has taught us everything that it can and it becomes time to let it go. Now, that doesn't mean your boundaries fall, but it does mean that we get to a point where we move past defining ourself by what has happened to us. So there might be utility in boundaries, but it's only once we realize the futility in unforgiveness that we can really internalize the fact that God is holding nothing against us. And knowing that you are as perfectly loved as every other molecule of creation, this is the only way you can begin to point not just your forgiveness, but even your desires in the best possible directions for you. And so today we pray, lead us not into temptations, but deliver us from that evil one.
Jeremy Duncan:And that's where we'll finish today, but first let's pray together. Our Father who welcomes us. Our Mother who holds us. Our God who creates and sustains and redeems all of us. As we learn to pray and in that as we learn to live, might we slowly gain some insight into your full imagination for us.
Jeremy Duncan:Embraced and fed and forgiven and offered new possibilities to pursue and realize in our lives. Might this prayer slowly become our prayer. Become more than words that we repeat, but instead a model that we use to pursue wholeness. In that long slow stumbling process, might we then begin to shine new light in unexpected ways across unforeseen relationships in unanticipated spaces. Trusting that good news is hidden all throughout this world around us.
Jeremy Duncan:Just waiting to be noticed In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Today, we have the final stanza of the Lord's Prayer, but also we're gonna talk a bit about the liturgical benediction that is often read when we pray the Lord's Prayer together publicly. And to do that, we have a lot of ground to cover today. I got no stories, no jokes.
Jeremy Duncan:We're gonna get straight into this because we got a lot of work to do today, and we're gonna cover benedictions, temptations, devils, and refusing to stay where we are. However, let's start at the ending and we'll work our way back. Because already over the last few weeks, a few people have asked me about the benediction that's tagged on to the end of the Lord's prayer. A lot of us probably just assumed it was part of Jesus' prayer, but in spending four weeks now looking at the text of Matthew, most of us have noticed that this line, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Just isn't there. So where did it come from? Well, this is kind of fascinating. At least if you're a big bible nerd and I am, so strap in. Cause you see this line or at least a variant of it first appears way back in something called the Didache.
Jeremy Duncan:Now that word Didache in Greek is a word that means teaching. And that's because the title of this text is the teaching of the 12 apostles or sometimes the teaching of the Lord through the 12 apostles. Now it doesn't appear that this text was written by one of the apostles. That's not what the text is claiming for itself. Instead, this text is almost like a church manual.
Jeremy Duncan:It was written by an anonymous author who gathered up the teachings of Jesus passed down through the apostles along with some guidelines and how to start a church. So it explains how to baptize someone, how to host the Eucharist meal together, and importantly for our conversation today how to pray together. After Easter, we are gonna start an Eastertide series called Strange New World, and we're gonna talk about some of the practices of the church in the light of resurrection. We're gonna talk about Eucharist, and we're gonna talk about baptism there. So maybe we'll find our way back to the Didache in short order.
Jeremy Duncan:But what's really fascinating is that this text was discovered in the late eighteen hundreds in the library of the holy sepulcher in Constantinople. A complete copy of a 2,000 year old text that had gone missing in about the fourth century, but had been just sitting in this library all that time. And this was a huge discovery because we had known about the Didache for a very long time, but we'd never been able to read it. And most scholars, upon reading it, put the Didache within the first century, possibly as early as seventy CE, which means it is contemporary with likely even earlier than some of the texts that are in our New Testament. But in the Didache, we have the Lord's prayer exactly as we find it in Matthew.
Jeremy Duncan:Followed by this line, for thine is the power and the glory. Pray this way three times a day. Now notice here, we don't quite have our final liturgical form. The didache still uses debts. It hasn't switched to trespasses yet, And it also ascribes to God the dunamis and the doxa.
Jeremy Duncan:That's the power and the glory. We don't have the kingdom in there yet. Interestingly, we also have this encouragement to pray this way three times a day, and that's not something that I've ever followed. I have been making it my practice to pray the Lord's prayer daily, particularly during these past five weeks. If you haven't tried that, I'd encourage you to consider it perhaps even just as we enter in and make our way through Holy Week.
Jeremy Duncan:But the question then is where did our final liturgical form show up? And that actually first appears in a collection of fifth century manuscripts of Matthew. Manuscripts that we call the Byzantine text, also sometimes called the majority text because they're the most common copies of Matthew that we have. They come though from about the fifth century period, and these were Greek texts that were used to translate the early English Bibles like the King James version. Today though, they are not however the earliest texts that we tend to translate modern Bibles from.
Jeremy Duncan:And so it seems like around the time that the Didache was lost, a form of the common benediction from the Didache that was being used in Christian communities just decades after Jesus had taught us was then taken and incorporated directly into the Gospel of Matthew. Now later biblical studies came along and later archaeological discoveries led us to removing that benediction from Matthew, but at the same time we have always held on to it in our liturgies. Just the same way that Christians have done since all the way back in the first century, all the way back in the teachings of the 12 apostles. So it's actually pretty cool to think that when we read the Lord's prayer together, we are reciting not only the words of Jesus, but also the words of the very first followers of Jesus who took that Jesus story to heart and passed it on to us. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.
Jeremy Duncan:Amen. Really just a beautiful way to sum of everything that Jesus invites us to orient our hearts around in his prayer. Alright, you're saying. Enough with the history lessons. Let's get on with the actual prayer.
Jeremy Duncan:So let's pick up where we left off last week. Matthew six thirteen, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Now, I don't know about you when you read this, but two things immediately jump out to me when I do. First, why are we worried about God leading us into temptation in the first place? The second, is Jesus really talking here about the devil?
Jeremy Duncan:Well, both of these deserve some of our attention, but let's start with the first question. Why would God be leading us into temptation? I mean, if God is always forgiving and desperately wants us to know ourselves as forgiven, everything we talked about last week, Why God are you now trying to trip us up? And this has actually been a point of debate for a very long time. However, let's start by noticing here that there is a somewhat logical progression in the prayer.
Jeremy Duncan:Last week was all about past sins, forgiveness and forgivenness. So it does make some sense that the next line would address future sins or at least the possibility of avoiding them. The question though is, why is God the one tempting us to go back to the sins we were just forgiven for? Because at least in the way it's constructed in English, the blame here seems to be on God. And that brings up a very thorny question called theodicy.
Jeremy Duncan:In a world created by a good God, where does bad even come from? Why are you and I tempted to do anything that's hurtful? And what's interesting is the scriptures give us a lot of conflicting answers here. James comes right out and tells us, when tempted no one should say God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil nor does God tempt anyone.
Jeremy Duncan:I mean that seems pretty definitive. God is not tempting you. And most of us think that James is probably referring here to a text that's called Sirach or sometimes Ecclesiasticus. Sometimes it's also known by the author, Yeshua Eliazar Ben Sirach. But this was a Jewish text written about two hundred years before Jesus, and you will find it in the Old Testament of Catholic and some Orthodox Bibles.
Jeremy Duncan:And in it Ben Sira writes, do not say it was the Lord's doing that I fell away for God does not do what God hates. Do not say it was the Lord that led me astray for God has no need of the sinful. It was God who created humans in the beginning, and God left them in the power of their own inclinations. If you choose, you can keep the commandments. To act faithfully is a matter of choice.
Jeremy Duncan:God has placed before you both fire and water. So stretch out your hand and choose whichever you want. So James and Ben Sira seem to be saying quite clearly here, God is not in the temptation game. Fire or water the choice is yours alone. Paul takes a slightly different approach.
Jeremy Duncan:He writes in first Corinthians 10 that no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind, and God is faithful. God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you're tempted, God will also provide a way out so you can endure it. So where James is more direct, God is not tempting you, end of story. Paul opens the door maybe just a crack by suggesting, well, God might not be tempting you technically, but God is the one who allows you to be tempted.
Jeremy Duncan:And this is consistent with the wisdom literature of the Hebrew scriptures, which go even farther than that. The most famous example being the book of Job. And there we find God essentially negotiating with the devil about the temptation of our boy. And importantly, the bottom line here though is there is no coherent definitive answer in the bible about where temptation comes from. You got James and Ben Sira saying, God's not nothing to do with it.
Jeremy Duncan:Don't blame God. You got Paul opening the door a crack. You got Job on the other side saying, God's negotiating with devils, opening the door to say, God, at the very least allows temptation in your life. I think it's fair to say that all of them tend to agree at least on this idea that God is not directly the one tempting anyone, which then still leaves us with some difficulty in how to understand this line, go ahead lead us not into temptation. Well, way back, born in the first century, Marcion of Sinope suggested we should read this line, do not allow us to be dragged into temptation.
Jeremy Duncan:And then Tertullian in the second century suggested we should read this line, do not leave us in temptation. Later, the French theologian Jean Carmagnac argued that the verb translated here lead is more accurately bring, which by the way is true. So maybe we should read this, do not let us be brought into temptation. And that actually became quite influential. So influential in fact that a few years ago, the official Catholic French translation of the bible was changed to read that way.
Jeremy Duncan:Pope Francis even put out a statement at the time approving the change of saying, the French have changed the text. And their translation now says, don't let me fall into temptation. This is because it's always me who falls, never God who pushes. A father doesn't do that. A father helps you get up.
Jeremy Duncan:What leads me away is evil. That's very much in line with historic Catholic teaching. Paragraph two eight four six of the catechism says, God cannot tempt us. On the contrary, God wants to set us free. And so we ask God not to stand by as we take the way that leads to sin.
Jeremy Duncan:But very fascinatingly here, this does bring us directly to our second question because Pope Francis ends his statement with this line. A father helps you to get up. What leads me astray is evil. And that is also very subtly, very much directly in line with the text of Matthew, which technically reads, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil. Period.
Jeremy Duncan:Evil one, which we find in some of our bibles, is an interpretation imposed on the text. Now, there is a definite article there, the evil, which could suggest it is being used as a title. That's why you'll see that translation, but it's still an interpretive leap. And all of this, all of a sudden, starts to put things together for me, make a little more sense for me. Because maybe this line isn't about a push and pull between heaven and hell as if God and devils are fighting over our souls.
Jeremy Duncan:On one side, God testing to see if we're worthy. On the other, Satan attempting to ensnare us in evil. What if instead this final line is simply a reflection on the prayer we've been reading? A prayer that, as I said last week, prepares us for a world that doesn't exist yet. A family that is unrealized, our father.
Jeremy Duncan:A kingdom that is coming on earth. Daily bread that is reliable for everyone. Forgiveness that is unrelenting in our debts and even in our trespasses. And now, even in desires that are slowly shaped by that good imagination. You see, I think all the way back in the second century, Tertullian had it right from the start.
Jeremy Duncan:Remember I told you that he thinks we should translate this line, do not leave us in temptation. Well, wasn't all he wrote. He goes on to explain why he thinks we should read it that way. It's because for Tertullian, this world is temptation. The kingdom has not yet come.
Jeremy Duncan:The earth is not yet like heaven. We read that in the prayer. So God can't lead us into temptation. Temptation is all that there is for us right now. Therefore, and I'll quote him here, the prayer's conclusion answers this question for us.
Jeremy Duncan:Interpreting what do not lead us into temptation really means, it means this, carry us away from all of this evil that is. You see, Tertullian's argument is that if we can learn to pray everything that precedes this line, our father whose kingdom is coming, who provides our daily bread, who forgives and enables us to forgive. If we can pray all of that and mean it, then the only meaningful conclusion is now to pray, well, God, don't let us stay in this world as it is. Help us fight like hell that it might become something new. And see, this is a couple things for me.
Jeremy Duncan:First, it helps me understand that this prayer is not about a devil that I'm asking to be rescued from. As if there was some evil phantom floating in the background of my life pulling me in unseen directions. Some amorphous evil I can blame my own mistakes on. No. This prayer is about what is wrong all around me right now.
Jeremy Duncan:Evil that I can be very aware of if I want to be. My neighbors without bread. Children under threat of war. All the ways that the kingdom of God is not yet here on earth or in me. That's what the prayer is about.
Jeremy Duncan:And yet, the prayer isn't passive about any of that because to be delivered from that evil is precisely to pray to our father so that we can learn to see each other as siblings. It's to believe in a future that's possible so that we can begin to get to work on it. It's to ask everything that we need and nothing more so that those around us can have what they need as well. It's to forgive with the conviction that my grace will slowly help me understand the incredible grace that has been directed toward me. Also that I can be delivered from this evil and resist the temptation to stay where I am.
Jeremy Duncan:See, this prayer isn't God playing the marshmallow game with you. You know that one where you leave your kids in a room with a marshmallow and you tell them not to eat it just to see how long they can hold out? Not very long by the way. That's not God. That's far too shallow an imagination of what Jesus is talking about here with temptation.
Jeremy Duncan:Temptation isn't God toying with you. Temptation is our tendency to stay where we are, to not see each other as siblings, to grow pessimistic about the world, to desire for more than we need, to believe that holding on to unforgiveness can somehow fix us. And so to ask to be led in different directions is not to avoid the games God is playing. It's about asking to be led right back to the very heart of God, everything we've been taught to pray for over the last four weeks. I love this prayer because it's almost like in 64 short words, Jesus is walking us from our very first trusting steps all the way to what could be a final form.
Jeremy Duncan:And maybe when I say that makes you think Pokemon, but for me what it makes me think of is Maslow's hierarchy. Now even if you're not familiar with Maslow, as human beings, we all have this recognition that we have physical needs. Right? Daily bread, food, water, shelter, anything it takes to survive. And all of that at some level has to be taken care of before we could even begin to think about or address our needs for safety or personal space or even really look after our own health.
Jeremy Duncan:So safety, as important as it is, comes second, but even those needs have to be met before we can properly think about love and relationships. We need acceptance and belonging before we can think about self respect and esteem. We need that kind of confidence before we can self actualize and begin to dream about what we want to accomplish or contribute to the world around us. All these things build on each other. They open us up to new needs, but also they make possible new growth, new imaginations for us.
Jeremy Duncan:Now it's entirely anachronistic to think that Jesus is playing by Maslow's rules. That's not what I'm talking about here. But it also appears to me that Jesus is moving us through some kind of progression, a hierarchy in some sense. And for Jesus, it all starts with our imagination of the divine. Who is God?
Jeremy Duncan:What is God like? Can I trust that God? And so we learn to pray to our father who loves all of us, whose kingdom is good and on its way toward us. And that allows us to shape and reorient our view of what we actually need in the world. There are very real needs.
Jeremy Duncan:For example, daily bread, but also shelter and safety and community and interdependence that grounds our existence as human beings. And so we learn to pray for everything we need and nothing more so that all of the siblings we met in our father might find what they need as well. Which then leads us to think about relationships. The spaces we've been hurt by those siblings. The things that we hold on to for too long.
Jeremy Duncan:The times maybe we've let each other down. How something is basic as daily bread requires our interdependence and therefore demands that we enter some kind of ongoing practice of forgiveness. And how that learning to let go, that fundamental resetting of our imagination of what is possible between us then invites us to reimagine what is possible for everything. Everything about how we're welcomed into this world. Everything about how we view this world around us that evil is not inevitable.
Jeremy Duncan:That our worst tendencies do not have to win the day. That we can be delivered from all of it because we can slowly learn to overcome the temptation to stay where we are and not grow and not become something more healthy and mature, which then beautifully leads us all the way back to praying in ways that remind us about God's goodness. Goodness expressed in family, goodness expressed in bread, goodness made real in forgiveness, goodness enacted in our desire to slowly be shifted toward what is true. Prayer is so much more than asking God to do something for us. It is every single time we pray inviting God to do something within us So that you and I might actually start to see things that we dream about for ourselves and for our neighbors slowly take shape in the world around us.
Jeremy Duncan:Everything that God thinks is possible for God's creation. Let's pray. God, we pray. And in that we know that we are learning how to pray. How to surrender ourselves and our lives, our choices to you.
Jeremy Duncan:But at the same time learning to take responsibility for those same choices. The ways they shape us and guide us, put us on paths that either lead us towards your goodness and grace or toward our own greed and self isolation. And so we do ask that you would be present to us in subtle but noticeable ways, in spirit and in truth, guiding us toward what is good for us, which is inherently good for those around us. Good for your creation and good for your kingdom come. Might we actually begin to believe that we can be shaped and we can be changed.
Jeremy Duncan:Our perceptions of the world can be molded, and that all of this can happen when we come to you regularly in prayer. To be reset and re centered, to have your words spoken by us, to us, for us, and into something deep in our heart. In that might you slowly invite us forward to your embrace. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Jeremy Duncan:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.