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5 Questions from the Lord's Prayer
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
This is week four in our explanation of the Lord's Prayer. And one of the things that has been really great for me in this series, hopefully for you too, is just getting to hear some of the different voices in our community over the last couple weeks. I had the chance to open this series a few weeks ago when we talked about how prayer can help us live with God in the center of our world. But then I was able to sit back and just listen to Jess and Joel as they've taught us in the last couple about how we close the gap between heaven and earth. And then last week, how we trust for God and or trust God for bread daily.
Speaker 1:And so that leaves us with two more questions as we work our way through this prayer. Today, where do I need to let go? Expressed by Jesus as he encourages us to forgive those who trespass against us. And then next week, where do I need to say no, or how is it that we stay away from temptation? And so that's what's left on our agenda today and then next week before we close off this series.
Speaker 1:And so hopefully, you're finding this a somewhat practical conversation to engage. I know that before Easter, we spent a couple months in the book of Revelation. Beasts and bulls and dragons, oh my. And I know that we had a lot of fun in that series. It was great.
Speaker 1:We did a lot of work. But sometimes it's just figure, hard to figure out what to do with all that imagery even once you understand it. My hope is that as we explore the Lord's prayer, that tension just isn't really there. That every week, there can be something that's very practical and pastoral that you can add into your prayer life. Actually, if we're being perfectly honest here, in this church, so I hope we can be, maybe this series for you is just about engaging with a prayer life for the first time.
Speaker 1:Because if I'm going to be honest here, I often find myself at a loss for how to pray unless there is something to pray for. Even as a pastor, unless somebody is sick or I've got a big decision to make, sure, then I'm in in those moments. But what about that regular practice of talking to God? I admit that sometimes I find a struggle with that, and I let it slip. It's that kind of thing where you go to church, and somebody's talking about prayer, and they're passionate about prayer, and it's inspiring, and you're like, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm in this. I'm gonna do this new routine, full commitment. Here we go. Sixty minutes of prayer every day for the rest of my life. Go.
Speaker 1:And the first week, it's awesome. And then the second week, you're a little bit busy. In the third week, you have a cold. In the fourth week, you have a friend visiting from out of town. And all of a sudden, ten years go by, and you're like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Totally. I remember that week when I prayed. It was '97, and it was great. I'm not here to shame you for that because I recognize that deeply in my own life, but this is where having some guidelines and conversations and questions that we can pull directly from the words of Jesus can help us when it comes to having a regular routine of conversation and prayer with God. That we can bring these questions meaningfully before God directly from the words of Jesus.
Speaker 1:And so before we jump into question four tonight, I wanna look back just quickly on where we've been so far in this series. Because we started with the idea that prayer helps us live with God in the center. And so even in Jesus' opening words, he calls us to pray to our father. And historically, this has always been a really important part of the Lord's prayer. That it starts not simply with me praying to my God in my words, but with an affirmation of the collective hour.
Speaker 1:And so even though we're taught to pray in secret, we never actually ever pray alone. We always pray together. We always pray collectively because prayer is an act that connects us not only with the divine, but also with all those who would call on the name of the divine. And so Paul writes in Galatians, and he says that we pray as children taught by the spirit of the son to cry, Abba, father. And so when we say father, we are connecting ourselves with Jesus, with the son.
Speaker 1:We call out to our dad the way that he does. But when we say our, we are connecting ourselves with each other, to the church, to all those who have come before and beside and after us. And so if you've ever heard this idea that the gospel has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension to it, it changes the way we relate to God, but it also changes the way we relate to each other, that or this is that idea in its most economical form. Two words to encompass a whole lot of theology about what the gospel means. So Jesus wasn't just brilliant, he was incredibly efficient as well, and all the engineers in the room said, amen.
Speaker 1:But this is where praying, using language that comes to us as a gift, can be a really beautiful compliment to prayer that comes up from us creatively. Because when I pray using Jesus' words, even in those first two words, our father, I am being taught and shaped and formed into Christian community by Christ. And then Jess walked us through the second phrase of the prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we wrestled with the tension of being involved ourselves in the coming kingdom, while at the same time being convinced that the God's kingdom and God's plan is happening regardless of us.
Speaker 1:I think one of the neat things that just brought out in that week, was the tension that even English translators are feeling when they try to put this into, words we understand. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Is that a period after kingdom come, or is it a comma? And that sounds like a pretty small debate.
Speaker 1:I mean, how can punctuation really matter all that much? But this is the question. Is it your kingdom come as we play our part here on earth to make it happen for you? Or is it your kingdom come, full stop, period? Now how do we live in the light of that to participate with that story?
Speaker 1:Now regardless of how the punctuation goes, I think Jess nailed it. She's right. It is the second imagination that Jesus is inviting us into. God's kingdom is come. In fact, it is already here.
Speaker 1:It is like a mustard seed, small but growing. It's like yeast working its way all the way through the dough. So our prayer is not, God, we really want your kingdom to get here. Our prayer is we know your kingdom is real. Now help us to live in the light of that conviction.
Speaker 1:And then last week, Joel talked us through what it means to trust for God or trust God for bread daily. And in a lot of ways, this is the one that I have the most struggle with on a personal level, probably. And what does it mean for me to get up every day and trust God? Because most of the time, I go through life, if I'm being honest here, not really needing to do that much trusting. I mean, sure, when someone gets sick, when I have a big decision to make, all of these times, I'm back on my knees praying.
Speaker 1:But daily, truth is I'm actually pretty good. I mean, I don't have that much bank, not enough to get through a year on my own or something, but this week I'm probably fine. Today, I'm definitely okay. And yet, when we pray and we learn what it means to trust God daily for everything we need today, we then get the opportunity to be more generous consistently because we know we can trust God tomorrow. And all of a sudden, we find ourselves participating alongside God to bring heaven closer to earth.
Speaker 1:As Stanley Horowitz writes, I think Joel read this last week, Jesus is good news to the poor, for he has brought into existence a people who ask for nothing more than their daily bread. Amen? Now today, it is forgiving those who trespass against us. But first, stand with me, and let's pray as Jesus taught us. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Speaker 1: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 trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 1:Now, you can have a seat. Now some of you are gonna be really glad when we end this series, and we don't have to read this twice a day. Some of you are gonna miss this. And so hopefully, you're finding ways to incorporate some of this language perhaps into your own, prayer life as we go. But big stuff this week because it is no light thing to tie our forgiveness from God to our forgiveness for others.
Speaker 1:And don't kid yourself here. When you say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, that is whether you meant it or not exactly what you just did. You linked those things and tied them together. And just in case you missed it, the only phrase that Jesus decides he needs to give us commentary on after finishes this prayer is this one. Verse 14, immediately following the Lord's prayer in Matthew.
Speaker 1:For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. So look out. I mean, this is some serious stuff here. And Jesus doesn't want us to miss comments on it.
Speaker 1:Now we will spend a lot of our time with this concept tonight. We'll work our way back here. But one of the things that was really interesting in this series is that when Jess read the Lord's prayer in worship, she did so using a newer translation. I think it was from the NIV. And I noticed that as we were saying it out loud, it threw a few people off.
Speaker 1:Because most of us are very familiar with the reading that I used today. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Interestingly though, that is actually not a very common reading to find in any bible. In fact, not even if you are reading the King James version will you find a translation of Matthew that says trespasses in there. Almost every English bible will say debts.
Speaker 1:Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. So what's going on here? Well, the first reason is that the Greek text of Matthew says debts. That's it. The word is and the plain meaning of the word is an actual, normal, financial debt of money that you owe to someone.
Speaker 1:That's what it means. Except that very few of us owe any kind of actual normal financial debt of money to God. And that right after Jesus finishes the prayer, he explains what he means by saying this, for if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive your sins. And that time, the word sin is the word paraptometa, which is where trespasses comes from. Trespasses is just an old English translation of the Greek word for sin paraptometa.
Speaker 1:And so what has happened is that in the liturgical practice of the church, both the Roman Catholic tradition and also in the Anglican Common Book of Prayer. The Lord's Prayer, when it is read in the book of Matthew, says debts. But when it is recited in worship together, it has been changed to show the emphasis that Jesus is making when you take the whole passage into context. And so even though, in the Anglican book of prayer, if you read from Matthew, it will say debts. When you say the Lord's prayer, you say sins or trespasses because they're trying to encompass everything that's going on in Matthew chapter six.
Speaker 1:So that makes sense? But that brings up another interesting question though. What is Jesus doing when he uses the word debts, to describe sins later on? Because in Greek, these just are not synonyms. They don't mean the same thing.
Speaker 1:Even in English, it kind of works, but not quite, really. I mean, what is somebody's debt to me if they sin? Does that mean that every time you and I go for coffee and somehow you seem to have forgotten your wallet again, that I just have to suck it up and say, fine, I'll get it? Is that it? That's forgiving debts?
Speaker 1:Does this mean that if you offend me, we sit down, we bring legal counsel, we determine a reasonable compensation that I am owed for your transgression, and then at the end of it all, I say, don't worry about it. I forgive your debt. Well, at least part of what is going on here is the complication of multiple level language translation. Because while we are translating Greek into English so we can understand it, it's very likely that Matthew is translating both Hebrew and Aramaic into the Greek that he wrote. See, it's very likely that Jesus would have known a Greek, probably some of it.
Speaker 1:Some indications that perhaps he knew some Latin as well. But almost assuredly, he would have known both Hebrew and Aramaic. Hebrew for religious ceremony and religious religious teaching, and then Aramaic for normal everyday conversation, for commerce, and very possibly, very likely, for any open air public teaching that he would have done. Teaching like the Sermon on the Mount, which the Lord's Prayer is part of. That very likely would have been done in the Aramaic language.
Speaker 1:And so when we go back to Hebrew and especially Aramaic tradition, we find that the word for debt in Aramaic has a lot of religious communal meaning to it as well. In Aramaic, debt isn't just about money. It wasn't just about using money as a metaphor for sin. In Aramaic, the language was actually about what we owed each other as friends, family, neighbors, and community. What does it mean?
Speaker 1:What do we owe each other when we live in community together? The point being that Jesus wasn't just using debts the way we think of them in terms of money, and he probably also wasn't just talking about sins the way we often think of them in terms of religious infractions. The language here is probably chosen very deliberately and delicately to encompass a wide broad imagination of what it means to live in right relationship, both with God and with other people. So let me illustrate it this way. Have you ever said something to someone?
Speaker 1:Perhaps something completely innocent and inoffensive. But later, something came to light about that person or their background or the context that made what you said seem completely inappropriate. Here's an example. When my son was really young, I was looking after him one afternoon. Rachel was busy, and he was still small enough at that point where we would just cart him along with us wherever we he went.
Speaker 1:He stayed in his car seat, and he didn't constantly try to run away the way that he does now, because he hadn't learned how to walk yet, and it was awesome. But on this particular day, I was in a coffee shop doing some reading. Rachel was gone, and, Eaton started fussing. And so I pulled out a bottle and this formula stuff that we had, and you'd shake it up, and you mix it, and then you pour in this thing, you give it to him, and he quiets down. Was great.
Speaker 1:That made him happy, and that made me happy, and so I went back to, reading. And this very helpful woman, who happened to be sitting a table over, saw what was happening, saw the scene unfold here, and decided to come up to me and give me some helpful advice and chide me on the use of formula, telling me that this was not healthy and I should not be doing this if I was a loving parent and all this kind of stuff. I should only be given breast milk, and she even offered to Google a link for me about where I could buy my wife a breast pump so that we could do this. And I didn't really feel in this moment like explaining to her that my son was adopted, and so all breast milk all the time wasn't really an option for us. And so I just said thanks, and I went back to reading.
Speaker 1:She walked away, presumably quite self satisfied, and lo and behold, the world kept spinning, no crisis happened. But here's the question, did this woman do anything that could be reasonably construed of having put her in my debt? No. Of course not. Did this woman do anything that could be remotely considered a sin?
Speaker 1:Not really unless you're going to count aggressive helpfulness. But were this woman to show up here at church and join this community or take a job working with my wife or begin a relationship with a good friend of mine and otherwise become part of my world and community, would I still have to learn what it means to forgive her? In a very real sense, yes. If she's part of my world, I can't be annoyed every time time I see her about her breast pumps. I just have to get over it and move on.
Speaker 1:Right? Jesus is not simply talking about financial debts or religious transgressions here. He's talking about all the myriad ways in which we share life with each other. Sometimes something's not a sin. Sometimes it's not a debt somebody owes you, and yet there's still this process of letting go and forgiving you need to do.
Speaker 1:And that brings us back to the question we opened with. What does it mean to link our forgiveness in this broad expansive way, our forgiveness from God to our forgiveness for others? Because at once, this is both an incredibly tall hill to climb. I mean, can we ever possibly do that? But it's also a theological problem to wrestle with.
Speaker 1:Is this how we understand the gospel, the good news of God's grace? I mean, is Jesus really saying that God will only forgive us if we forgive others? God will only forgive us to the measure we forgive others. Because I will contend that if you want to confine what Jesus is talking about to just debts or simply sins, you are faced with either an economic or a theological problem. Perhaps, though, if we can have this bigger, broader, more holistic imagination of life together, things start to make more sense.
Speaker 1:Because this prayer, in fact, everything about Jesus, is about the in breaking kingdom of God. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. That's what we pray. Right?
Speaker 1:But that is not simply a passive call for us to happen or for it to happen to us. It's an invitation for us to live in the light of that reality. K? So what would it mean to live as if the kingdom came? That's the core message of Jesus.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's why people get so upset about him all throughout the gospels. I mean, who does he really think he is? Is? That is the subtext of everyone who is upset with Jesus all through all four gospels. Who do you think you are, Jesus?
Speaker 1:The answer though, obviously, to Jesus is that he thinks he is the kingdom bringer. And so everything he does and says and teaches and prays is about making an announcement that something is happening here in his life. So he goes about his life doing and saying things in order to both explain and demonstrate the kingdom of God. My child, your sins are forgiven. He says this, and then heals a man of paralysis.
Speaker 1:Because for Jesus, the kingdom brings freedom and peace. So where Jesus is, there is healing and forgiveness and wholeness. There is the kingdom of God. And Jesus sits and he eats with tax collectors and sinners, notorious cheats and cultural outcasts. Because for Jesus, the kingdom brings invitation and welcome.
Speaker 1:And so where Jesus is, there is grace and peace and hospitality because this is the kingdom. When he's challenged about this undignified behavior, he tells a story about a father who threw his dignity in the dustbin and ran down the street to welcome his disgraced son home. Because for Jesus, the kingdom brings redemption over propriety. And so where Jesus is, in the words of n t Wright, there is the disgraceful advent of our astonishing god. There is the kingdom.
Speaker 1:Jesus' entire life is about healings, parties, stories, and symbols that all say this, forgiveness in the most expansive way you can possibly imagine it is happening right now under your nose. Not because of what you've done, but because of the fact that God has come to find you. And that, Jesus says, is what the kingdom is about. Forgiveness and grace that searches us out, welcomes us home, heals us, and brings peace. And that right there is the key to unlocking this part of the Lord's Prayer for me.
Speaker 1:Because believing that the kingdom has come is about trading a transactional view of piety. I do this so that I get this. For the grace filled imagination of Jesus that says, God has come to change everything. So when Jesus teaches us to forgive our debts, encompassing not just money and not just religious infraction, but all of the broad social implications of the Aramaic term of what it means to be in community together. What he's inviting us to do is see all the ways in which we've been forgiven, welcomed, healed, restored, graced, and offered peace by him, and to join him in that new way of life.
Speaker 1:Let me go back to Stanley Harrowas here. He writes this, this, that to learn to have our sins forgiven, indeed to learn that we are sinners and needing forgiveness, is to become part of the kingdom of God. If we don't learn to forgive, we will not be forgiven because we will not be part of this new reality, this new people, this new kingdom brought into existence by Jesus. To forgive and to be forgiven is not some crude exchange bargain to get on with life, but rather to participate in the kingdom of God itself. That's what's going on here.
Speaker 1:Jesus isn't saying you will be forgiven to the measure that you forgive others. As if God's forgiveness was somehow dependent on ours. That's not how God works. What he's saying is that you have been invited into a kingdom of expansive forgiveness where the rules are completely different, where to be forgiven and to forgive are a fundamental part of what it means to be a citizen in this world. The question is simply, do you want to come in?
Speaker 1:So it's not about transaction. You forgive this much, God forgives this much. It's not what it's about. It's about completely flipping the script for a new imagination of living life together. That we simply live in a world where forgiveness and being forgiven flows in a generative conversation of being together.
Speaker 1:You either participate in that generative flow of forgiveness and being forgiven, or you don't. And that's not gonna be easy for us to get our heads around ever because it's never going to be simple. It's never going to be clean or clear or defined by readily identifiable borders. And so this is why we have so much trouble taking this way of being and putting it into actual life together, because we are just so darn familiar with transaction. We do this.
Speaker 1:I will forgive you once you apologize to me, or I will forgive you once you change for me. I will forgive you once you start behaving the way that I want or expect or prefer you to act, then I will forgive you. But the problem is that's not forgiveness. That's a transaction. Now don't misunderstand me here.
Speaker 1:I am not suggesting that Jesus wants you to become a doormat for people to dust their shoes off on as they walk over you. It's not forgiveness either. What I'm suggesting is that in the kingdom of God, grace, forgiveness, and consequence are both important, but they're separate things. Think of it this way. If you were to stub your toe in front of Jesus, he would still love you even after you swore in front of him, but your toe would still hurt.
Speaker 1:There's grace, there's forgiveness, there's still consequence for our actions. And so this separation of grace, love, forgiveness on one side, and consequence on the other is not just some bizarre abstraction here. Jesus faces directly into this dilemma in the Lukan version of this same sermon. Same sermon, same prayer, Jesus says this in Luke six, love your enemies, period, full stop. That's what I'm talking about when I say forgive.
Speaker 1:Forgive. But just in case we're not clear here, this is what I mean by that. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.
Speaker 1:If you can get your head past to the sort of hippie Jesus who just says innocuously nice things from time to time, what you see here is a Jesus who's actually deeply wrestling with the tension of living in a grace filled forgiveness posture world, while at the same time, calling his followers to exist within real relationships with real people who sometimes do really nasty things to each other. He starts this way. He says, do good to those who hate you. Go out of your way to be a positive force in the lives of people who have something against you. Whether that is warranted or not, if someone is upset with you, if someone has something against you, you take the initiative to serve them and do good for them.
Speaker 1:Paul picks up on this in Romans. He says this, if it's at all possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. And then he quotes from Proverbs 25. He says this, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink.
Speaker 1:In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Now this is not about being passive aggressive. It's not what Romans is saying. You don't get to do that. The point here is not about how uncomfortable this will make your enemy, so do it and snicker in the background.
Speaker 1:The point is, if you demonstrate goodness on your side, that person may then be forced to look inward and reevaluate their position. K? So loving your enemies sometimes looks like this, doing good for people who hate you. Next, he says this though, bless those who curse you. So say good things about people who say bad things about you.
Speaker 1:Now maybe if someone insists on maligning you or misrepresenting you or attacking you, it's not gonna be appropriate for you to show up at your door with fresh baked cookies to listen to them insult you for half an hour. K? You may have to put up some boundaries there and back off of it, but Jesus says, still, somehow be known as a source of grace and peace even as you speak about people who say terrible things about you. You're not off the hook. But he's still not done yet.
Speaker 1:Because finally, he says this, pray for those who mistreat you or pray for those who persecute you. In other words, hope the best for those who would do you harm. And at this point, someone's trying to mistreat you, hurt you, persecute you, you probably can't have that person in your life right now. If someone's actively trying to injure you, unless there's change, unless there's turnaround, you just can't responsibly give that person unfettered access to your life anymore. And as sad and as difficult as is, there are people who are toxic, and they mistreat us or they injure us.
Speaker 1:They take advantage of us over and over again. And so times, there needs to be barriers and boundaries in our lives. But for Jesus, even if you can't do good for them, even if you can't find anything good to say about them, for Jesus, you are still not yet off the hook with this love your enemies, forgive them thing. In fact, the more vile, the more hateful, the more evil someone becomes towards you. From hating you to maligning you to going out of their way to hurt or injure you, Jesus says, even in the midst of all of that, his kingdom will be characterized by a posture of grace and peace and forgiveness regardless.
Speaker 1:We actively hope the best even when there needs to be appropriate boundaries between us and someone in our lives right now. You don't get off the hook depending on what the other person does. You still need to forgive. See, forgiveness is not about forgetting. That's not what Jesus is asking for.
Speaker 1:He's not asking us to ignore evil or to forget consequences in our relationships. What he is saying is that to enter into the kingdom of God is to recognize our own personal need for healing and for forgiveness, and to be so deeply transformed by that experience of grace that we receive, that we simply can't help but live in the light of it, even in the midst of the complexity of real relationships in the real world where people sometimes do really nasty things to us. Forgiveness is about choosing actively and consciously to be forgiven from the hurt that we've caused in the world and to be healed from the hurt that we've received from others in the world as well. See, the reason that we pray, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, is because the kingdom was never about transactions to begin with. It was always about how deeply healing the experience of being forgiven is and how it radically transforms our posture towards those who we get the opportunity to forgive in our world.
Speaker 1:This is not a transaction where we forgive so that we get forgiven. It's entering into a new world where being forgiven and healed allows us to be healed in ways we can extend that to others. And so perhaps before we pray this prayer one more time, you may recognize that there is hurt or pain or long held animosity somewhere deep in your heart. And Jesus is not asking you to forget it. He's not asking you to ignore it.
Speaker 1:He's not asking you to pretend or act as if it never happened. In fact, perhaps, what he's asking you to do is dig it deep out and bring it up and hold it and own it and understand it so that you can be healed from it. In this prayer, Jesus is inviting us to be healed from whatever hurt has been done to us so that you don't have to hold it against anyone anymore. And so once you don't have to hold on to it yourself, then there's no need for you to hold it against someone else because that's the freedom of forgiving that Christ is offering us in this prayer. It's not a transaction between you and God.
Speaker 1:It's an invitation to be healed and invited into a new way of being in relationship with everyone else. And so this then is how you should pray. 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 trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Speaker 1:And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 2: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. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.