Last Week Sermon

If you have never had a child, then you know that raising a kid is a piece of cake: it could not be easier. Oh sure, a few things are hard, but kids almost raise themselves. All you really have to do is L-O-V-E them. You know that if you’ve never had a child.

However, if you HAVE had a child, then you know the only people who think it’s easy are the ones who have never done it. The stuff you thought might be hard is hard. But the biggest surprise is that even the stuff you thought would come naturally is hard!

On the first day we said hello to our newborn number one daughter, Karen and I looked at each other: “How do we get her to start breast feeding? I thought that would be easy.” One year later: potty training. I’m asking myself, “How do I not feel like an idiot holding my child above the toilet; saying, “Do it for daddy”?

You find out: kids need to learn EVERYTHING, you have to teach them. Breathing? They can pretty much do on their own. Everything else? Surprise! It’s up to you!

Start With “Our Father”

And I would not be shocked if our Lord experienced a little of that parenting surprise when he was dealing with his disciples. He was ready, I am sure, to teach them the deepest secrets about God and God’s truth. So it must have been odd when they came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Pray?!? That is the most basic thing of all, how could you…. Oh well, it’s silly to get frustrated with what children don’t know. You just gotta start at the beginning.

Jesus teaches them a simple prayer, and God’s children (Lord love them) have been using it for 2,000 years now. We pray it every Sunday in worship. Circles, Bible studies, staff meetings, and other church gatherings often end with it. And at funerals and the like, I’ve discovered that even non-Christians can recite it from memory.

Last week we danced around the “temptation” part of that prayer, but this week I suggest we back up and start at the very beginning: “Our Father….”

These days, I and a few of my feminist friends sometimes trip over that because of the word “Father” – and not without reason. After all, men AND women are created in God’s image, so God is bigger than either gender. The white-haired, well-muscled old white guy on top of the Sistine Chapel was Michelangelo’s symbol for God; it was not a snapshot of God.

But remember: Jesus is talking to children; he’s trying to keep it simple “Our Parent” might sound better to politically correct, 21^st century ears; it’s more accurate, …but it is less personal. Jesus could have started with “Our Creator.” Psalm 8 starts with “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!”

No one image for God contains the whole truth, but I think Jesus is saying “Father” is a pretty good place to start.

Besides, truth to tell, historically speaking: the real problem with that phrase has not been “Father,” but “Our.”

There have been at least two problems. First: some people act as though Jesus’ invitation to call God “Our Father” meant we could get all possessive about God. However, God is not our property.

Liberals may try to turn God into a cheerleader for their health care plan, and conservatives pretend God agrees with their interpretation of the 2^nd amendment, but God refuses to be domesticated. God will not be owned.

We say "our" because of the astonishing truth that the one who created the universe and flung the planets into their courses – the great God of heaven and earth – chooses to treat us beloved children. Before we reached out to God, God reached out to us: claimed us; promised to be our God and to make us God's people.

Implied Siblings

And one other thing about this little word “our” that sometimes trips people up. Jesus wants us to pray, not as individuals, but as a family. If you pray “OUR Father,” you are not only claiming God as dad, but all of us as siblings! (I hope that strikes you as good news, but at the very least, it’s THE news.)

Jesus could have taught us to pray, "My Father...give me this day my daily bread and lead me not into temptation..." He didn’t do that.

There may be religions that come to God through quiet walks in the woods, or by sitting quietly in the library with a book, or rummaging in the recesses of one’s psyche. Christianity is not one of them.

Christianity is inherently communal, a matter of life in the body, the church. Think about how you came to faith in the first place. Was it something you thought up on your own? Was it revealed by staring into the sun, or walking in a field of clover? No.

I bet you’re here because someone told you the story, invited you in. And if you’re EXCITED about being a Christian, it’s probably because someone modeled doing it well. You looked at them and said, "I’d like to be like that – I’d like to be that loving, that forgiving, that serene about the future." Somebody walked the walk and talked the talk. Maybe it was a believing parent, or someone you met at work or school. Maybe it was someone you didn’t know personally, but you learned about them in history or by reading the Bible; maybe it was Jesus himself. But it was a person, a member of God’s family.

Every time we say "Our Father," we are naming the way we are saved – as a group, praying together, correcting one another, forgiving one another, stumbling along after Jesus together, memorizing the moves until his way becomes our way. …Our way.

In “Godspell,” one of my lines is, “Call no one on earth ‘father’ for you have one father and you are all brothers and sisters. Like most of “Godspell,” it’s straight out of the Bible – that one comes from Matthew 23:9.

I get such a kick out of being a dad that I like to think Jesus was exaggerating to make a point, but I GET the point: earthly fathers are a mixed bag – some good, some absent, some horrible – all of them non-perfect. But every one of us shares a heavenly Father who gets parenthood just right.

For those who learn to pray like Jesus taught us, our first family is not biological but the one with which we say, "Our Father."

Christianity says: look beyond the names you’ve written on the front page of your Bibles – and instead see the family tree spread throughout the Bible and beyond. Catch a glimpse of your membership (not through birth, but through baptism and a kind of “second birth) in a family made up of all nations, races, and cultures - the church. That's why we come together each Sunday with folk who ought to be - by the world's standards - perfect strangers, and yet we call them “sister,” “brother.”

Simple, Not Easy

Now I said at the beginning that prayer is basic. It is. It’s one of those things that is simple – it’s like doing a flip on your snow board: eeeoop (draw a flip with your finger). If you can do it at all, you can do it one two-second graceful movement. Simple. But easy? Well, we saw in the Olympics, there’s a variation only one man on earth can do.

Prayer may be basic/simple, but it is not easy. We NEED Jesus to help us pray.

And he does. He gives us words to say "by heart," from the heart, out of habit. We don't have to work up some powerful inner urge to pray. We just say the words of this prayer by heart and we are half-way home, because they’re the RIGHT words.

Paul says none of us really know how to speak with God. But the good news is: the Holy Spirit helps! According to Romans 8: "The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought… The Spirit intercedes (for us) with sighs too deep for words…, according to the will of God."

We don’t know how to pray. That’s not a big surprise, really. When you get right down to it, Christians aren’t even sure we know how to act, live, believe, and feel. Happily, though, what we know is not the point. In Galatians four we are told, "Because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child also an heir, through God."

I would put it this way: as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; as our Heavenly Parent, as God’s Son, and as the Holy Spirit; as our Mother and (yes!) as our Father – God has searched us and known us and loved us in our weakness, and God invites us to begin prayer with, "Our Father..."

Bread

So, we have a good beginning, what do we do next? We’ll discuss that more in two weeks when we resume this series. But since it’s about time for communion, let me end by briefly looking at one phrase: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Bishop William Temple once said, “Christianity is the most materialistic of religions.” In part he was reminding us that the Lord's Prayer gets us down to the nitty-gritty. Asking for bread is a reminder that our regular old, mundane lives – not just stained glass and beautiful sunrises, but also the very foods we eat each day – they are all gifts from God. The Hebrews in the wilderness would have starved if God had not sent the gift of manna (Exodus 16), and the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that all of us are in that wilderness (metaphorically speaking).

That can be hard to remember: like most American men, I like to think that I put bread on the table, and I do it with my own independent effort and mighty middle-aged biceps. But then I remember that a farmer grew the wheat, a manufacturer made the bread, Karen’s salary paid for more of it than mine did, and – for that matter – an Amish woodworker made the table.

ALL of us, at every step of the way, are dependent on God for this fleshy thing we call everyday existence. On top of that, salvation begins with the realization that what is true of flesh and blood is also true of our souls.

When we gather for the Lord's Supper, we face a reality too deep for words: …even the most earthy and ordinary parts of our lives contain signs of God’s presence. A loaf of bread, the fruit of the vine – both let us know our Father is with us.

Amen.

V V V

Hymn

Well, we’ve talked about the prayer, and we’ve already said it once. So, as we prepare for offering and communion, let me invite you to offer it in song. We’ll use the version on page 310. Turn to 310 with me and join in singing, “The Lord’s Prayer.”