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Living in the Kingdom Sermon for Proper 9C - July 29, 2007 St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Highland MD
A couple of years ago, there was among the best sellers a little book called "The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life." You probably have heard of this book; you might have even read it. It centers on a little prayer, just one line of scripture…
Oh that you would bless me, and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!
I had never heard of this prayer before the book came out and made the best seller lists.
You might think that the disciples, Jesus' students, unlike me, had heard of Jabez and knew of this little prayer. Even if they hadn't heard of Jabez, they, like me, knew the Psalms, the great prayers of David. They definitely knew how Moses prayed for water in the Wilderness. They had probably heard of Solomon's prayer for "a discerning heart." And everyone knew that Elijah's prayer for the fire from heaven and triumph over the priests of Baal had been answered.
Still, after watching Jesus pray, they ask him to "teach us to pray."
Jesus might have said, "Guys, go read Chronicles 4:10 or 1Kings 18:36-40 or Exodus 15:22-25." He could have sent them to Genesis, to the reading from today's lesson, Abraham's prayer for Sodom. He could have said, "Go study the scriptures and you'll know how to pray." But he doesn't say that.
When they ask, "Lord, teach us how to pray," he teaches them the Lord's Prayer.
We like to think that the Lord's Prayer is a prayer everyone can pray and we often say, "There's nothing anyone could possibly find objectionable in the Lord's Prayer." Usually we say that when we want to pray it in an interfaith setting.
Last week, Rick said that Jesus is an anarchist. If that's true, and I think Rick is right, although I would add that he is also a rebel, then when we say there's nothing objectionable to anyone in the only prayer Jesus taught to his disciples, we must be talking about some other prayer that isn't the prayer an anarchist or a rebel would teach. We must not be hearing the challenge with which this prayer confronts us.
Maybe it's a language problem. When I was a Rite 13 leader, the class read this passage using Peterson's version from The Message, and they hardly recognized it. Peterson's Jesus teaches, Father, Reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three-square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
It's the same, but different, as my sister used to say.
Perhaps it's a repetition problem. We pray the Lord's Prayer so often and learn it so young, that it becomes more of a mantra than an opportunity to sit with God and reflect on the reality of the world around us and what the Prayer teaches us about Jesus and discipleship and that world.
What does the Prayer teach us? How does it challenge us?
The first thing we notice is that Jesus teaches Peter and Andrew, James and John, Barthomew and Judas to say, " Father". Unlike the most of great prayers of Hebrew scripture, this is not one individual asking God for something on his own, whether for others or for himself. When Moses asks God for water for the thirsty people to drink in the Wilderness, he asks as Moses. When Elijah prays God to demonstrate his power and authority and the lack of Baal's power and authority, the prayer is a personal request. David is praising and thanking God for answering his prayer…"I will give thanks…I will sing." Solomon asks for wisdom and a discerning heart so that he personally can be a good ruler. Jabez asks for blessing and enlarged borders. And Abraham, praying for Sodom, asks God as a personal favor to spare the city.
Jesus teaches his followers to pray communally to "Father." For Jesus' disciples, God is to be as close and as personal to them as he is to Jesus himself. They are to live as intimately with God as does Jesus. Not some of them, some of the time, but all of them, all of the time. We too pray… Father…
…"Hallowed be your name" - revered, honored, loved with all our hearts and minds. Instead of saying God's actual name, saying Ha-Shem, the name, was and still is Jewish practice. "Hallowed be your name" "Baruch Ha-Shem"… "Father, we bless you, we honor you, we love you."
…."Your kingdom come." These might be the scariest words and the boldest words we could ever pray.
Do we realize we are asking that God's kingdom come, not at some distant happy-ever-after-time but that God's kingdom come, right now, on this day, right now? When we join with the disciples every Sunday; and pray "your kingdom come", do we realize we are asking that God's Kingdom come right here, in this place, right here?
Do we really want God's kingdom to come? Do we really want God to "set the world right"? And if he does and if it comes, what kind of kingdom will it be?
"Give us our daily bread," we ask. Give bread today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, feed us every day, and not just me, or you, but all of us, all the children, all the family of God. Give bread to the Wall Street stock broker and to the three year old in Darfur. Give bread to the 1st Mountain Division and to the Taliban. Feed us all. Let none of us be hungry.
We know Jesus teaches us that God's kingdom is a kingdom of abundance. We can live with that. We are Americans and abundance is our middle name…spacious skies and amber waves of grain are images that fit beautifully in our picture of God's kingdom.
We can easily envision a world without starving children, although we aren’t sure about drug dealers, the Janjaweed or Al-Qaeda. Perhaps if they aren't well fed, the world might be for us a better place, a safer place?
But in God's kingdom, all have bread. We don't get to choose who.
If we do, we are not living in God's kingdom, and we know it.
We ask, "Forgive us our sins." We recognize that we are often, usually in error. [Jesus says that we are "evil".] Not for our individual sins, although we need to be forgiven those sins also, but we ask forgiveness for our collective sins, those sins that keep some of us fed and others hungry, some of us housed and others homeless. These are the sins not only of commission, but of omission and of silence and acquiescence. These are the sins that in the words of Mark Hatfield, retired Senator from Oregon, enable us to "stand by as children starve by the millions because we lack the will to eliminate hunger. Yet we have found the will to develop missiles capable of flying over the polar cap and landing within a few feet of their target. This…. is a profound distortion of humanity's purpose on earth." These are the sins that allow us to spend $2 billion a week on the war and quarrel over an increase of $5 billion a year in children's health care. These are the sins that allow almost a billion people to live on less that $1 a day and 10 million children to die before their fifth birthdays and ½ million women to die every year in pregnancy or childbirth and 3 million people to die of AIDS and nearly every child in the malaria regions of the world to sleep without mosquito netting.
These sins keep us from God's kingdom and we know it.
And then the corollary - because if we ask for forgiveness, we know we too need to forgive the debts of others. We are to do for others without the expectation of repayment because life is not to be a quid pro quo. We are not to haggle over life. We are not to be enriched by the misfortunes of others or profit from their inadequately compensated labor.
When we are and when we do, we are not living in God's kingdom and we know it.
"And do not bring us to the time of trial." We don't want have to choose, and when we do have to choose, Lord, make the choices easy. Make it an obvious true/false, an apparent multiple choice answer. Still we know the great test, the hard test Jesus outlined – the feed the hungry, cloth the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, visit the prisoner test.
When instead of feeding, clothing, welcoming, visiting, we wait, and wait, and wait and we say, "Not me, at least not now; I'll do it tomorrow," then we're not living in God's kingdom and we know it.
Jesus challenges us. When we pray his prayer, we accept his challenge – the challenge of an anarchist, a rebel. He challenges us to live boldly in God's kingdom - a kingdom of abundance, a kingdom of justice… a kingdom of love - in a world set right -
because for God the kingdom is here and the kingdom is now. Amen.
1 comment:
Living in the Kingdom
Sermon for Proper 9C - July 29, 2007
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Highland MD
A couple of years ago, there was among the best sellers a little book called "The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life." You probably have heard of this book; you might have even read it. It centers on a little prayer, just one line of scripture…
Oh that you would bless me, and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!
I had never heard of this prayer before the book came out and made the best seller lists.
You might think that the disciples, Jesus' students, unlike me, had heard of Jabez and knew of this little prayer. Even if they hadn't heard of Jabez, they, like me, knew the Psalms, the great prayers of David. They definitely knew how Moses prayed for water in the Wilderness. They had probably heard of Solomon's prayer for "a discerning heart." And everyone knew that Elijah's prayer for the fire from heaven and triumph over the priests of Baal had been answered.
Still, after watching Jesus pray, they ask him to "teach us to pray."
Jesus might have said, "Guys, go read Chronicles 4:10 or 1Kings 18:36-40 or Exodus 15:22-25." He could have sent them to Genesis, to the reading from today's lesson, Abraham's prayer for Sodom. He could have said, "Go study the scriptures and you'll know how to pray." But he doesn't say that.
When they ask, "Lord, teach us how to pray," he teaches them the Lord's Prayer.
We like to think that the Lord's Prayer is a prayer everyone can pray and we often say, "There's nothing anyone could possibly find objectionable in the Lord's Prayer." Usually we say that when we want to pray it in an interfaith setting.
Last week, Rick said that Jesus is an anarchist. If that's true, and I think Rick is right, although I would add that he is also a rebel, then when we say there's nothing objectionable to anyone in the only prayer Jesus taught to his disciples, we must be talking about some other prayer that isn't the prayer an anarchist or a rebel would teach. We must not be hearing the challenge with which this prayer confronts us.
Maybe it's a language problem. When I was a Rite 13 leader, the class read this passage using Peterson's version from The Message, and they hardly recognized it. Peterson's Jesus teaches,
Father,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three-square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
It's the same, but different, as my sister used to say.
Perhaps it's a repetition problem. We pray the Lord's Prayer so often and learn it so young, that it becomes more of a mantra than an opportunity to sit with God and reflect on the reality of the world around us and what the Prayer teaches us about Jesus and discipleship and that world.
What does the Prayer teach us? How does it challenge us?
The first thing we notice is that Jesus teaches Peter and Andrew, James and John, Barthomew and Judas to say, " Father". Unlike the most of great prayers of Hebrew scripture, this is not one individual asking God for something on his own, whether for others or for himself. When Moses asks God for water for the thirsty people to drink in the Wilderness, he asks as Moses. When Elijah prays God to demonstrate his power and authority and the lack of Baal's power and authority, the prayer is a personal request. David is praising and thanking God for answering his prayer…"I will give thanks…I will sing." Solomon asks for wisdom and a discerning heart so that he personally can be a good ruler. Jabez asks for blessing and enlarged borders. And Abraham, praying for Sodom, asks God as a personal favor to spare the city.
Jesus teaches his followers to pray communally to "Father." For Jesus' disciples, God is to be as close and as personal to them as he is to Jesus himself. They are to live as intimately with God as does Jesus. Not some of them, some of the time, but all of them, all of the time.
We too pray… Father…
…"Hallowed be your name" - revered, honored, loved with all our hearts and minds. Instead of saying God's actual name, saying Ha-Shem, the name, was and still is Jewish practice. "Hallowed be your name" "Baruch Ha-Shem"… "Father, we bless you, we honor you, we love you."
…."Your kingdom come." These might be the scariest words and the boldest words we could ever pray.
Do we realize we are asking that God's kingdom come, not at some distant happy-ever-after-time but that God's kingdom come, right now, on this day, right now? When we join with the disciples every Sunday; and pray "your kingdom come", do we realize we are asking that God's Kingdom come right here, in this place, right here?
Do we really want God's kingdom to come? Do we really want God to "set the world right"? And if he does and if it comes, what kind of kingdom will it be?
"Give us our daily bread," we ask. Give bread today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, feed us every day, and not just me, or you, but all of us, all the children, all the family of God. Give bread to the Wall Street stock broker and to the three year old in Darfur. Give bread to the 1st Mountain Division and to the Taliban. Feed us all. Let none of us be hungry.
We know Jesus teaches us that God's kingdom is a kingdom of abundance. We can live with that. We are Americans and abundance is our middle name…spacious skies and amber waves of grain are images that fit beautifully in our picture of God's kingdom.
We can easily envision a world without starving children, although we aren’t sure about drug dealers, the Janjaweed or Al-Qaeda. Perhaps if they aren't well fed, the world might be for us a better place, a safer place?
But in God's kingdom, all have bread. We don't get to choose who.
If we do, we are not living in God's kingdom, and we know it.
We ask, "Forgive us our sins." We recognize that we are often, usually in error. [Jesus says that we are "evil".] Not for our individual sins, although we need to be forgiven those sins also, but we ask forgiveness for our collective sins, those sins that keep some of us fed and others hungry, some of us housed and others homeless. These are the sins not only of commission, but of omission and of silence and acquiescence. These are the sins that in the words of Mark Hatfield, retired Senator from Oregon, enable us to "stand by as children starve by the millions because we lack the will to eliminate hunger. Yet we have found the will to develop missiles capable of flying over the polar cap and landing within a few feet of their target. This…. is a profound distortion of humanity's purpose on earth." These are the sins that allow us to spend $2 billion a week on the war and quarrel over an increase of $5 billion a year in children's health care. These are the sins that allow almost a billion people to live on less that $1 a day and 10 million children to die before their fifth birthdays and ½ million women to die every year in pregnancy or childbirth and 3 million people to die of AIDS and nearly every child in the malaria regions of the world to sleep without mosquito netting.
These sins keep us from God's kingdom and we know it.
And then the corollary - because if we ask for forgiveness, we know we too need to forgive the debts of others. We are to do for others without the expectation of repayment because life is not to be a quid pro quo. We are not to haggle over life. We are not to be enriched by the misfortunes of others or profit from their inadequately compensated labor.
When we are and when we do, we are not living in God's kingdom and we know it.
"And do not bring us to the time of trial." We don't want have to choose, and when we do have to choose, Lord, make the choices easy. Make it an obvious true/false, an apparent multiple choice answer. Still we know the great test, the hard test Jesus outlined – the feed the hungry, cloth the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, visit the prisoner test.
When instead of feeding, clothing, welcoming, visiting, we wait, and wait, and wait and we say, "Not me, at least not now; I'll do it tomorrow,"
then we're not living in God's kingdom and we know it.
Jesus challenges us. When we pray his prayer, we accept his challenge – the challenge of an anarchist, a rebel. He challenges us to live boldly in God's kingdom - a kingdom of abundance, a kingdom of justice… a kingdom of love - in a world set right -
because for God the kingdom is here and the kingdom is now.
Amen.
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