Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
5 Questions from the Lord's Prayer
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Hi, everyone. Happy Sunday. Come on in, have a seat. I'm not usually up here speaking. So for those of you that don't know me, my name is Jess.
Speaker 1:I've been a member of of Kensington Commons for quite a while. And I'm just I'm really stoked to be here. I get to teach from time to time. So this is a really fun adventure for me. So we have just come out of after Easter, we start this season called Easter tithe.
Speaker 1:And we typically think that the Easter season is this weekend, this Good Friday to Resurrection Sunday kind of weekend. And if you're, you know, particularly into the Easter season, you might even count Palm Sunday into that whole Easter mix. But Eastertide is this fifty day celebration between Resurrection Sunday and Pentecost Sunday. And depending on which tradition you come from, Pentecost Sunday is also celebrated as an Easter Sunday. And every Sunday in between is celebrated as an Easter Sunday.
Speaker 1:So that you have first Easter Sunday, and then you have second Easter Sunday, and so on and so forth. So I think we're on third Easter Sunday. But what I really came to appreciate about about the sense of Easter still being with us, is that it's not just a one time event in our church calendar. This actually gives us a time to really, settle into, to really digest resurrection actually means. So, after resurrection Sunday, we talked a lot about vision.
Speaker 1:Our church's mission about becoming a community that looks like Jesus, and serving a God that looks like Jesus, preparing to participate in a kingdom that looks like Jesus. And I find it really fitting that now we've directed our attention towards the very liturgical and traditional prayer that is practiced throughout Christianity, the Lord's prayer or the Our Father. So, to start the series off, last week, Jeremy took us through a bit of the evolution of the text. We talked about the Kiddush, this model prayer that would have been used in Jewish tradition. And we noted the difference between the Matthew version of the of the Lord's prayer and the Luke version of the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1:And we really started to talk to talk about what prayer actually looks like. That there's this need to align our action and our intent. And in order to understand that, in order to do prayer well, it actually requires a fair bit of preparation. To, turn down the noise that's around us, to actually let prayer flow out of us as an expression because ultimately, that's what it's meant to be. And it wasn't uncommon in that day, for there to be somebody up at the front of a community of people as the representative of God to the people and the representative of the people to God.
Speaker 1:And Jesus actually started to flip that system, and he let everybody know that there was a new way to pray, a a way that could allow all of us to connect individually with God, a way that was accessible. And it became the prayer of the church instead of just fueling power for the front man. So this prayer takes us out the center takes us out of the center of prayer, and it centers us centers it around God by speaking words that maybe we didn't choose and thoughts that maybe aren't ours, but that illuminate the unknown desires of our hearts and say things that we might not have otherwise brought to the surface. And when we do it together, when we say our father, we recognize that we are each special in the most profound way, but profoundly special in the same way that all of us reflect the divine and are beloved by God. And at this point, I was really hoping for some hoping for some sort of fight club reference, some sort of special little snowflake bit that would have been Jeremy's token Brad Pitt reference, but alas, I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Speaker 1:Surprise. Yes. You guys have okay. Good. I was worried.
Speaker 1:I'm like, I don't know if people have anyways, it's a fairly it's a censored movie. So anyways, so today we're actually going a little bit further. We're looking at Matthew chapter six verse 10, how heaven and earth are brought to together. But before we do that, I wanna pray. And since we are committing as a group of people to pray the Lord's prayer each week, let's pray the Lord's Prayer together.
Speaker 1:Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.
Speaker 1:Amen. So, I first encountered the Lord's prayer in middle school. I grew up in a small town every morning singing, Oh Canada in both French and English, and then reciting the Lord's prayer with all of my classmates before announcements were actually made. And having grown up in a Christian home, I would really love to say that this prayer was very valuable to me, that it helped to focus my 12 year old heart on God and not on what Cody Edwards was wearing in front of me. But it didn't, actually.
Speaker 1:I can recite the Lord's prayer word for word by heart, but it has never been a significant part of my prayer life. And I think some of it was just my my kid brain getting stuck on the word hallowed and automatically thinking halloween, and how does that work with God. That's not an uncommon thing. And this prayer is actually really meaningful, and it's meant to be said in secret, and it was this public recitation of words. And we were expected to participate in a liturgical practice that had no meaning to me whatsoever.
Speaker 1:When we talked about this last week in Matthew chapter six verse six, Jesus says this, and when you pray, go into your room and close the door and pray to your father who is unseen. Now as much as we are focusing on the words of the prayer itself, as Jeremy mentioned last week, there is something about laying the groundwork and preparing ourselves that is foundational to praying. The Lord's Prayer is actually sandwiched between two very relevant teachings about doing right in the world. In chapter chapter six verse one, we talk about giving. And then in verse five, we talk about praying.
Speaker 1:And then in verse 16, we talk about fasting. And each time that Jesus is talking about doing one of these things, he tells us to do them in secret rather than in public like the hypocrites. Now, it's really interesting here that the Greek word for hypocrite is also used as a reference to somebody who is wearing a mask. Someone who is putting on an act act or who's playing a part, doing and saying the right things at the right times, but all for the sake of the show. And I'll admit that in my life, that's not too uncommon.
Speaker 1:There are times when I act a bit, and maybe maybe we need to from time to time. Maybe we genuinely don't feel like being a leader at work, or we don't really feel like leading worship, or we don't really feel like being affectionate towards our family. And I think there's a lot of us that can probably tell when other people are being inauthentic. When somebody in the foyer genuinely asks you asks you, how was your week? And you give an overly emphatic, it was wonderful.
Speaker 1:Tell me about yours. Because you don't wanna say how much you hate your job, or how far behind you are in your bills, or how Calgary drivers just irritate the life out of you. Because you have five minutes, and you want a coffee and you don't wanna bum anybody out. It doesn't feel awesome to be inauthentic. And despite what I said, I don't think that church is a place where you should have to fake it.
Speaker 1:That was just context. But it is hard to to find the line between performing to impress and doing what needs to be done. The pushback that Jesus gives here is that praying for the sake of performance forces our internal state to submit to an external presentation. Performing whether to be affirmed or to compare ourselves to one another isn't just missing a point, it's missing out entirely. Prayer is mysterious and it's very confusing, but it is visceral.
Speaker 1:Instruction to pray in secret means that words come second to our internal state. When there is no one to impress, we have to come to terms with our own motivation. And there's attention here, I think. And it seems like Jesus is quite aware of it. Yes.
Speaker 1:We've been given an illustration of what right living looks like, and it's easy to act out of obligation rather than relationship, and it tends to look the same. But the space of prayer that Jesus is talking about is a space where we can't hide and where we can't act because there is no audience. The only person capable of fooling is ourselves. Do it in secret. Go to the place where no one else is, but where you are also not alone.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't know about you, but when I go into that space, I like to keep the door propped open a little bit, just to have some sort of lifeline to make absolutely certain that if I need rescuing from my very self discipline solitude, I have it. So I keep my phone on or I keep my laptop open. This is just evidence that I would rather not be alone in a room with myself and God. And this is a little bit contrary to praying our father who art in heaven, not our father right beside me in my unsettling isolation. But heaven here is actually used to illustrate the space of the divine.
Speaker 1:If our descriptions of God are innumerable and yet keep falling short or consistently inadequate, then maybe we can understand him better by describing his home. It's the same way that you can enter into a person's house and get a good idea of their style and their values and their personality, but still encounter the fullness of who they are when you go for coffee. This passage reminds us that God is not from the earth, not that he isn't near us. There are brilliant and beautiful things in this world that are still at best just a reflection of him. We are always looking through a glass darkly.
Speaker 1:And when we close the door of that room that is our very own to inhabit for a time, and we are set apart from the noise, and from other eyes, and ears, and from all of the things that press on us, the distractions, and the obligations, and the things that make us feel fractured, and we pray to our father who is in our world and yet transcends it, there is an imagination of the divine that starts to take over, what we could call the kingdom of God. Last week, Jeremy talked about the Kadish, a Jewish liturgical prayer. And it goes like this, exalted and hallowed be his great name in the world which he created according to his will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime of the whole house of Israel speedily and at a near time and say, amen. Now, the essence of this prayer that looks a lot like the our father would have been very familiar to the people listening.
Speaker 1:It indicates that there is something much bigger than our imagination, and it's worth anticipating. The kingdom of God is the actualized intention for his creation. The redemption and the reparation of everything. The difference between this prayer and the prayer that Jesus teaches is that the kingdom of God is now established through Christ. Thy kingdom come and thy will be done is not asking for God's rule to happen because it already is.
Speaker 1:We are confirming that the kingdom is right here, and yet, we know that it's not complete. The plan has been executed, the plan has taken place, and the plan is in motion. Okay. So this is a really hard thought to actually rectify. We can do it sometimes with poetry, and it can make sense.
Speaker 1:But you think about a a reality that is both fully here that you are present in and that is still not here. A world that is redeemed and yet still being redeemed because we know that we can actually see the reflection of God, but we can't see him fully. Now depending on what translation you're reading, there's this weird little thing that happens, with punctuation. So in the NRSV, there's a full stop after thy kingdom come. Full stop.
Speaker 1:Which actually indicates to us, indicates to me that this is its own kind of idea, own entity. But in the NIV and in a few other translations, there's actually a comma which generates this sort of idea of of a list of petitions that center around the same idea. And there's no punctuation actually in Greek. You have to go by verb tenses. You have to go by sentence structure.
Speaker 1:You kinda You gotta wrestle with it a little bit. So this is not something that is even unanimously unanimously, understood across all of the different scholars and interpreters. The kingdom come and the kingdom yet still coming. If we keep going through the prayer, Jesus actually makes it really clear that there's a distinction between heaven and earth. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Speaker 1:So heaven and earth often show up together as a pair throughout the bible. They appear together in what is, sort of an idea that's meant to include everything. There's this literary device called a merism that occurs a lot in Hebrew, that's just a little fun party topic that you can put in your pocket. You're welcome. So heaven and earth in this form, in this literary form, includes heaven and earth and everything in between.
Speaker 1:All that is and has been seen and is still yet to be discovered. And now that we've covered that, that is not at all what's happening here remotely. Heaven and Earth are actually very distinct separate ideas. And this could be a reference to some platonic thought here, about about the forms. Two places, one that is perfect in form and the other that is imperfect as a translation of the form in the physical world.
Speaker 1:I don't really wanna go into that. Classical thought is not my thing. So I'm trying to say that I'm not trying to say that Jesus was a big supporter of Greek thought, but I do think that he's trying to illustrate the differences between what we idealize and what we actually encounter. They're separate, but they interact through our imagination. Heaven is God's natural habitat, and the earth is in motion.
Speaker 1:It is redeemed. And God is at work, but it is distinct from heaven. Our world still feels incomplete. There is something lacking. We witness pain and sorrow and suffering and loss, and we ache for love, and we ache for understanding.
Speaker 1:And there are day to day encounters in this world that do leave us longing. Battles that we keep losing, friends that we can't get in touch with, friends that disappear out of our lives, wounds that don't seem to heal, and injustices that leave us bitter, and sorrow that leads to despair. These are really, really hard things, and they happen on a daily basis. And sometimes it feels to me like it gets made so much worse by asking for God's kingdom to come and just not being able to see it yet. We have this desire to see things be better, to see things complete and whole, and to see God available and evidenced all the time, to reside entirely with him in the space of the the divine.
Speaker 1:Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven recognizes that our world is not everything that it's meant to be yet. But we don't stop at despair. We do know the end of the story. We know that good wins over evil and that the story of Christ is final and yet it is ongoing, and we're part of that. There's a disconnect between heaven and earth, and Jesus' prayer that he wants us to join in with him is one that says that God's desire for earth is already made clear to see love and goodness and grace win every time.
Speaker 1:There's a distinct recognition that righteousness is not just about doing right things. It's the ache to see things put right. And there's a wreck the recognition of that actually requires responsibility on our part to let go of what we want for the world and participate in what God wants. And so, what is our action? Well, as God as we just talked about, God directs as much of his attention towards our internal state, our motivation by calling us into quiet, into secret.
Speaker 1:He's as concerned with that posture as he is about the right actions themselves. And I think that's why he taught us to pray like this. Because our motivations start to change when we are we immerse ourselves in the space of the divine. And we have Easter fresh in our mind that all of history, all of creation, everything that part of the redemption story is possible because of Christ. There's life that comes from the shadows, life that comes from the impossible, and it's a story that we are drawn to participate in.
Speaker 1:It's the work of Christ that is sustained by his work in us and through us in our daily action, to be part of a redemptive imagination that belongs to our father. And we have the capacity to make impact in small decisions that are meaningful and mundane, to stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves, to share laughter, and good food, and family, and to ask questions, and ponder, speak life and encouragement and conversation, and to sit with one another in emotions that maybe we haven't experienced and don't fully understand. Redemption doesn't mean that despair won't happen. It doesn't mean that we're going be happy all the time. Redemption actually isn't about us, it's about everything.
Speaker 1:Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And here's where all starts to fall apart for me. I love the fact that I get to be part of this redemption. But the success of God's will and God's kingdom is actually independent from me. It's not dependent on me at all.
Speaker 1:I'm invited into it. My actions make an impact. Sure. But why ask God to do something that he is already doing, that has already been done? God makes up his own mind as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1:I highly doubt that any single action from me, right or wrong, is going to derail the plan of a sovereign genius. Thy kingdom come but is already come, but yet still to come, and your will is your own, and I just have to accept that it might be different than what I think it should be. But then, does that mean that I just accept everything without questioning or reacting because your will is gonna come on earth anyways? And if you don't need my action, then why do I bother at all to try and do things in secret? And why ask me to participate in redemption in the first place if you are just gonna do what you were gonna do anyways?
Speaker 1:And why in the midst of all this process, does there still have to be pain and hurt and despair at all? I got stuck, actually, this week thinking about this. And really wish that I had some brilliant answer for you, and I don't. I was still hoping at two in the morning last night that I was just gonna, like, I don't know, worm its way into my dream or something. I was gonna have this beautiful revelation, but I don't.
Speaker 1:I sleep like a rock. So when we do pray in this way, it actually affirms our hope. It's not so that we stand still and wait for hope to be fulfilled, but we are moved to align our actions with God's imagination. Affirms This posture, this hope is transformative, not just wishful because we do actually know how the story already ends. The end is never in question, actually.
Speaker 1:Praying the way Jesus teaches us is evidence that we are wanting to make the right choice because we're forced to look at our intentions, at our motivation to take stock of what it is that we're actually longing for, to let go of whatever gets in our way of participating with a sovereign God. We can't just sit back and wait for redemption to happen. And why would we want to? So in this sort of journey, I've been hanging on to a poem by Rainier Maria Rilke. I was gonna try and of shorten it down, but I can't because it seems like a girl's name, and I actually embarrassed myself horribly in front of my English class when I referred to he as a she.
Speaker 1:So this is a guy, if you were wondering. So this has actually been helping me to digest a little bit more of the Lord's Prayer, and it's a poem that goes like this. God speaks to us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out into the night. These are words that we dimly hear. You sent out beyond your recall.
Speaker 1:Go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like big flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going. No feeling is final.
Speaker 1:Don't let yourself lose me. Near by is the country they call life, and you will know it by its seriousness. Take my hand. If we allow despair to take over because redemption just doesn't look the way that we think it should, or we let apathy take over because God is gonna do what God is gonna do, then the Lord's prayer suddenly feels completely irrelevant. The prayer that is taught by Jesus is meant to be checked against our heart.
Speaker 1:Are we willing to see how God's imagination is at work in this moment and align our actions accordingly? Are we willing to take his hand? What I know is that this prayer is not for God's sake, but it's the means by which I check my intentions. The place where I have to go to let go of all of the measures distractions and clarify just what it is that I'm supposed to do with this mess. We want to see the world better than it is, and prayer forces us to remember what our actions are in this world, not how to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:The world is not redemption of the world is not dependent on my participation, and yet, I am still called to participate in it. And when I remind myself that God's imagination and his kingdom and his will and his desire, all I know is that I want it to be the same as mine. I want to align with what he wants. And Jesus is affirming tension of in the process of right living between our inward and our outward action. But he doesn't just ask us to then find a way to balance these tensions.
Speaker 1:He asks us to follow him and to hope for a future that is already here. This is the tangible evidence of the imagination and the vision and the desire of a loving God. Thy kingdom come. May the creative and the genius and the persistent love and subtle beauty of a transcendent God be apparent on earth. Thy will be done.
Speaker 1:May there be courage to reconcile and endurance to repair and selflessness and compassion and generosity and love and peace and vulnerability and good food and more wine and lots of laughter. And even as I'm trying to find all of these lovely things that are captured in my imagination and fill my heart to overflowing, I still sound like a hallmark card in my opinion. The will of God is obviously beyond nice things that make me happy. Yes, of course. But there is a deep echoing of something that sounds a lot like what I want, what I long for.
Speaker 1:I just can't quite name it. But he does, and he allows me to experience it. Experiences that are still fragmented by despair, but not devoid of the presence of God. Beholding the divine on earth is possible because of Christ. And in this Eastertide season, the story of the resurrection is not past but very much a part of today.
Speaker 1:To pray is not to be transported into another dimension or to summon God to our side because we are already with him. To pray then is to notice, to redirect our thoughts, to let time stand still and see God in the fabric of our world. It's practice for us to take stock of what choices we are making and whether or not we are aligning ourselves with the imagination of God. Prayer is a language of the heart. It's a poetic transmission of what words often fail to express because it's a posture.
Speaker 1:It's a posture that is reforming us at our very core. And I think that's part of the reason that we're to pray secret because our father sees what is secret. He sees the hidden chambers of our own hearts. Prayer is not so we can serve ourselves. It's the instrument of discourse and his gift to us.
Speaker 1:The simple prayer that I recited in junior high that many of us have heard throughout different catechisms and liturgies and practices, the most common and rehearsed Christian prayer gives us an opportunity to regularly concede our plans and purposes and align them with the imagination of God. And when Jesus is speaking to his disciples, he's reminding them that God's rule has now begun. And because of Christ's actions, the disciples are encouraged to pray and affirm what has begun so they can participate in it, and they can experience redemption in all of its fullness. We are affirming what god has already affirmed in us. The kingdom is not brought in by our efforts.
Speaker 1:God is a wild god, but his will for creation has already been established. The world is is redeemed, and yet redemption is still in motion, and you just gotta let that sit, and maybe some fruit will come over it. Thy kingdom come, and thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven is a communal affirmation of hope. Not for the hope for something that isn't now and will be someday, but the perpetual affirmation and belief that God is acting right now.
Speaker 1:So with that in mind, let's close by praying together. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.
Speaker 1:Amen. So we'll end here as we always do at Kensington Commons. Love God. Love people. Tell the story.
Speaker 1:Enjoy your week, and we hope to see you here next Sunday. Thanks, guys. This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life.
Speaker 1:Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.