Community Church Sermons

Year C

July 28, 2013

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

5 Prayers for a Healthy Soul

Luke 11:1-13

Rev. Martin C. Singley, III

Senior Pastor

“What have you done with my Lord’s Prayer?” she asked in a loud voice of protest! “You’ve ruined it!”

My seminary mentor, Pastor Alan, shuffled his feet and let out a nervous laugh as he tried to explain why he had done what he had done with the Lord’s Prayer in that morning’s service. You see, in place of that version of the Lord’s Prayer that WE pray every week, Alan had used the version of the Lord’s Prayer found in the Gospel of Luke – the one we just heard:

Father, hallowed be your name

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins,

For we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

And lead us not into temptation.

“What have you done to my Lord’s Prayer?” she wanted to know.

Thinking back on that exchange, I realize that she was not asking what had been done to her LORD’S Lord’s Prayer as if she was defending Jesus against those who would take something precious away from him. No, she wanted to know what Pastor Alan had done to HER Lord’s Prayer – as if she owned it in some personal way and was now upset that HER prayer had been taken away.

And that’s the problem with many of us who follow Christ.

We have been immersed in 21^st century ideas of what the scriptures say and mean. And yet even the latest dated books of our Bible were written some two thousand years ago. OUR Lord’s Prayer is NOT the same Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

What Pastor Alan had done was to include in that day’s worship service what is probably the closest version we have to the original prayer Jesus prayed. And this earliest of all versions of the prayer is overflowing with meaning and power that can help us grow up with healthy souls and lives that glorify God.

So this morning, I want to ask you to venture back with me into the ancient past – to an important moment in the lives of the students of rabbi Yeshua – Jesus.

He WAS a rabbi, you know. In that day and time certain people distinguished themselves by their devotion to studying and living the Torah – the first 5 books of what became our Bible. These men – and they WERE all men – could be fishermen or blacksmiths or even carpenters. Many worked seasonally at their craft, and then traveled about the land in the off-season – teaching in the synagogues and out in the open air. Rabbis interpreted the Torah, explained the other scriptures, and told parables. Jewish law required people to show hospitality to these traveling rabbis, opening their homes and providing for their needs. As the rabbis traveled through the countryside, they would often call curious students to come and follow. These were called disciples and they would study under the direction of their rabbi, traveling with him everywhere he went, and observing not only what he TAUGHT, but how he LIVED. This was called “halakhah” which means “walk.” Disciples followed the walk of their rabbi.

And it was like a father/son relationship. One ancient proverb says, “Your father brought you into this world, but your rabbi brings you into the world to come.”

So there is rabbi Jesus, with his twelve disciples, traveling from village to village, eating in peoples’ homes, teaching in the synagogues and the open air, telling parables that explain the kingdom of God, and modeling the way of life God calls us to live. An important part of that life is prayer, and so one day the followers of Jesus said, “Lord, teach US to pray.”

I learned to pray when I was just a little kid. As my mother tucked me into bed, I would ask God to bless my mommy and my daddy, my sister and little brother, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, the milkman, the mailman and anybody else I could think of to avoid having to close my eyes and go to sleep.

Later on, I learned to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” What the heck kind of prayer is that to teach a little kid?

At suppertime, we always said grace, “God is great, God is good, now we thank Him for our food.” Later on I learned, “Rubba-dub-dub, thanks for the grub. Yay, God!”

And prayer was constantly practiced in my life with little benedictions that went like this: “Lord, help!” “Lord, get me out of this!” “Lord, I want that red bike.” “Lord, please don’t let my parents find out about this!” “Lord, let me pass this test!”

Most people are pretty conversant in these kinds of prayers! Even the ACLU can’t stop them because, as someone once said, “There will always be prayer in school so long as there are tests.”

“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples asked rabbi Jesus.

I think by this time, these men following Jesus had figured out that Jesus’ way of praying was different than their own. Like many of us, they probably found themselves praying what the Bible calls “vain prayers” – that is, prayers that God can’t or won’t answer – like when you get a letter in the mail from the IRS and as you open it you pray, “Please, dear God, don’t let it be an audit!”

Or like when the doctor calls you into the office and you pray, “Please dear God, don’t let it be cancer.”

You see, God does not change reality. If the letter from the IRS invites you to an audit, God will not reach into the envelope and change it into a $10,000 refund check.

Vain prayers.

The disciples of Jesus saw something different in the prayer life of Jesus. So they asked, “Lord, teach US to pray.” And in Luke 11 we read what Jesus said:

Father, hallowed be your name

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins,

For we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

And lead us not into temptation.

Did you notice that the disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them a PRAYER? No, they asked the Lord to teach them HOW to pray. So the very first thing we must learn about the Lord’s Prayer is that it is not a PRAYER! It’s actually 5 different prayers. And these 5 prayers, if you learn to pray this way, can empower your soul and guide your life.

“Father, hallowed be your name…”

That’s the first prayer.

And notice how it starts, by calling God, “Father.”

How do you think about God? Some of us imagine God as an old man with white hair, sitting on a throne somewhere far removed from here, issuing edicts that send forth blessings, and curses, storms, and sunrises, health, and illness, life, and death…

Some of us think of God simply as the Source of Life, an impersonal creative power like the Big Bang that got creation started.

How do YOU think about God?

Well, Jesus teaches us to think of God as a FATHER – a GOOD father – a LOVING father – a father who is only interested in the well-being of his children. In his parables, Jesus reveals God as the father of the rebellious prodigal son who waits patiently for his son to come home and then rushes out to greet him when he sees him a long ways away.

At the end of today’s passage, Jesus says, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish will give him a snake, or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion? If you then, even you who are evil, give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Prayer begins with knowing God as your Father. And not only YOUR Father, but OUR Father – that’s how Matthew remembers Jesus’ teaching on prayer. We pray not as individuals, but as the whole family of God.

And then the first thing Jesus teaches us to pray for is the power or the ability to give our Father a good name. “Hallowed be thy name.” In Jewish culture, a person’s name was synonymous with their reputation. One of the central themes of the Bible is that salvation is brought into the world as people hear good things about God. And how will they hear if we do not tell them? So the first prayer of the Lord’s Prayer is asking for strength and power to advance God’s name and reputation by telling others, and showing others how good God is!

Last week, something like 56 adults provided some 45 kids with a fantastic experience of Vacation Bible School! Some of the kids were OUR kids from the Community Church, some were from other nearby churches and neighborhoods, and some were our grandchildren from Michigan and other exotic places. These children were embraced with love, affirmed as children of God, and taught that God loves them and they can trust God. That Vacation Bible School gave God a good reputation! Those adult workers were HALLOWING God’s name!

When we as a church pray “Hallowed be thy name” we are asking God to help us do some important things: “Help us to make our worship services, our fellowship times, our mission projects, our finances, our Bible studies, our conversations with others…help us advance your good reputation in all that we do and say as a church…and all that we do as individual followers of rabbi Jesus.

“Hallowed be thy name.”

“Your kingdom come…”

Jesus was talking about letting God become king over our lives. That’s not an easy thing to do when you think of yourself as general manager of the universe. But let’s think of this as a prayer to begin each day of our lives. “Today, help me enthrone you and obey you. Help me get OFF the throne, and let you ON the throne of my life.” And this prayer carries with it a desire to live out God’s kingdom in our lives and our church. You see, in God’s kingdom, people find forgiveness, and acceptance, and healing. The first become last, and the last become first, and the least among us is loved as the greatest. The job of the church is to be a visible, earthly demonstration of God’s kingdom.

And when a church – and when an individual - practices the kingdom of God, amazing things happen in peoples’ lives.

“Your kingdom come.”

“Give us each day our daily bread…”

In Jewish culture, “bread” meant more than just bread. “Bread” was representative of all food. And it also stood for God’s sustenance of our lives. Throwing bread away was considered a sin. Even today in Jerusalem people hang unused bread in bags near the street so it is available for the poor to take. This is because sharing one’s bread was and is considered a great religious duty and withholding it from the hungry is a great sin.

Did you notice that this prayer does not say, “Give ME this day MY daily bread?”

“Give US…” – the rich, the poor, the deserving, the undeserving, our friends, and our enemies.

“Give US this day our daily bread.”

So when we pray that God will provide OUR daily bread, we are praying not only for ourselves but also for the poor. We are asking that our basic human needs will be met AND that we will have opportunity to share our bread with others. “Father, give US what we need for today, and help US share what we have with others.”

“Give us each day our daily bread.” What an amazing prayer!

“Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.”

I heard a speaker at our Community Church Conference this past week say, “Forgiveness is not difficult!”

Do you agree?

He continued, “Forgiveness is not difficult….it is IMPOSSIBLE…without God!”

I think that’s true! In fact, most of us have never really learned what Jesus meant by “forgiveness” and so we languish in misconceptions that mostly make us feel guilty. “I know I should forgive, but…”

But here’s a Jewish prayer – in this Lord’s Prayer - that embraces what forgiveness means to rabbi Jesus.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget!?” That little phrase kind of argues against a passage in Isaiah 43 where God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and remembers your sins no more.”

So we struggle with this. Someone sins against us – hurts us terribly – injures us – acts unjustly toward us. And we’re supposed to not REMEMBER? We’re supposed to just FORGET?

No.

In the Hebrew language the word “remember” does not simply mean to “recall” something that once happened. It really means “to act out of memory.” In other words, “Because I remember WHO you are, I will not act on WHAT you’ve done.” Forgiveness is the choice to not strike back. You make that choice by remembering the other person as a child of God, and your brother or sister in the family of God.

And in this prayer, you remember how God has treated you. You have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And God knows! God knows WHAT you have done. But God remembers WHO you are.

And so God does not retaliate.

“Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us….”

If you are here today holding in your hand a stone of retaliation, ready to throw it at someone who has hurt you…let it fall to the ground. REMEMBER who they are. Remember who YOU are. Remember the mercy God has shown you.

And finally….”Lead us not into temptation.”

Matthew adds the words, “but deliver us from evil.”

Together they form a powerful prayer. “Lead us not into temptation” addresses the fact that we all have things within us that are not right – not godly – not good. The phrase is a well-known Jewish idiom of the day meaning, “Do not let us succumb to the temptations of sin within.”

Another way of saying it is, “Keep us from letting evil have expression through our lives. Keep us from giving in to those instincts that hurt and destroy and disobey God.”

“Deliver us from evil.”

So there you have it – the five prayers that form the Lord’s Prayer:

· Father, help us today to give you a good reputation.

· Father, help us demonstrate to others what your kingdom looks like.

· Father, give me what I need to live each day, and help me share it with others.

· Father, don’t act on my sin but remember WHO I am, even as I do not act on the sin of others, but remember who THEY are.

· Father, keep us from letting evil gain a foothold in our lives.

These are five prayers that can be prayed every day. Or they can be prayed one at a time over five days. If you were to immerse yourself in these 5 prayers, I believe your life will be transformed over time as you experience the teachings of rabbi Jesus and follow his way.

Now go and give the Father – our Father – a good reputation – show others what God’s kingdom looks like – take the blessings you receive every day and share them with others – don’t judge others and retaliate, but remember, and have mercy – be aware of your own temptations to do wrong, and ask God to help you resist!

And every day may you hear Jesus say, “When you pray, pray like this…”

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The excellent works of Lois Tverberg about the rabbinical character of Jesus and his teachings have been a source of information used in this sermon.