The Lord's Prayer-An Exegesis of sorts
- Details
- Created on Saturday, 08 July 2006 18:00
- Written by Karen Lewis Foley
Readings:
1. “A Prayer for the World,” by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner:
Let the rain come and wash away the ancient grudges,
the bitter hatreds held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels, beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and feel the sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun be so strong that we will see all people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by rain, bring forth flowers to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts to reach upward to heaven. Amen.
2. Matthew 6: 5-13 (Don’t be like the hypocrites who pray in public in the synagogues; don’t be like the gentiles who pile up empty phrases; pray in private, and pray like this. The traditional “Lord’s Prayer” follows.)
3. Jim Cotter, New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, a version of the Lord’s Prayer:
Eternal Spirit,
Life-Giver, Pain-Bearer, Love Maker,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The Hallowing of your Name echo through the universe!
The Way of your Justice be followed by the people of the world!
Your Heavenly Will be done by all created beings!
Your Commonwealth of Peace and Freedom sustain our hope and come on earth!
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For your reign is the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. Amen.
The Sermon:
This spring I led a retreat on prayer with seven people from three faith traditions—Unitarian Universalist, Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ. You’d think we’d have difficulties around common language or even about what prayer is, especially given their experiences of prayer—a Unitarian unsure whether there was a God to pray to, a Roman Catholic ordained deacon steeped in liturgical prayer, and five other souls with their own stories.
But it wasn’t difficult at all. With all their differences, a tone was quickly struck of openness, honesty, respect, and—a sense of deep yearning. It’s that yearning I believe is at the heart of prayer, and is why such a diverse group of people could spend a weekend together trying out different kinds of prayer, and listening to each other with such attentiveness. What I saw expressed there was a desire to find ways to pray that could make sense of their lives, of their hopes, their failures, their yearnings.
Someone once told me that every good prayer needs to give voice to four things: thanks, yearning, forgiveness, and hope. This recognizes the human need to express gratitude for blessings, name what we most yearn for, admit our need to be forgiven and our willingness to forgive, and remember and touch our deepest hope. I often keep that foursome in mind when I write prayers for worship. Though I admit I don’t think of it at all when I pray on my own. I just look inside and say what’s on my heart. And if I’m paying attention, I remember to shut up and listen. That’s the hard part!
So this morning I’m thinking about one of the greatest pray-ers of all time, that man from Galilee, and how he taught so many people down through the centuries about the human-divine relationship. I’m thinking about the most famous prayer he taught his friends in that reading from Matthew, what has come to be called “The Lord’s Prayer.” There are 2 versions: Matthew’s is the familiar one; Luke’s is briefer.
In divinity school we learned this process called “exegesis”—which means approximately examining and taking apart a text in an attempt to understand it better. Now I was an English major and went on for a masters in English, and had learned a lot about taking apart texts to understand them in English studies. So I took to exegesis like a duck to water and enjoy it very much. So I can’t help turning to exegesis with this well-known prayer and am calling this sermon “an exegesis of sorts” on the Lord’s Prayer.
A quick bit of Biblical history. Of the 4 gospels, Mark is the earliest; Matthew and Luke used Mark as a basis, adding other stuff, some of it shared, some different. These 3 are called the synoptic gospels because they are roughly parallel synopses of Jesus’ life. John’s gospel is the latest, a highly literary, metaphorical, even poetic piece of—dare I say it?—propaganda. It is a beautiful piece of literature, but its anti-Semitic rumblings are troubling and its proximity to historical truth highly questionable.
But it does seem that Jesus prayed throughout his ministry; frequently alone, especially after a busy day of healing and teaching. I don’t know if he was trying to teach by example, but I do know it’s good for me to stop and touch base with God in the midst of my work. And I always need to do it to start my day. The last time we see Jesus praying is just before he was arrested. This is one of the few times we hear the words he used—an intimate discourse with God: please, if it is possible, don’t let me die; but, I will follow your will, not mine.
The Lord’s Prayer came earlier in his ministry. In the gospel of Luke, his friends asked him, teach us how to pray. Let’s look first at what he says about prayer before we look at the prayer itself. Here in this morning’s reading from Matthew he tells his disciples, look, don’t be like the hypocrites of our own faith tradition who pray in public; prayer isn’t a show, it’s a private conversation between you and God. But he doesn’t tell them to stop being Jews either. Don’t be like the Gentiles, either (in my translation the word is “pagans”), he says, with their “empty words.” You needn’t be highly articulate; God knows your need. He paints a picture of a much deeper and more intimate human-divine relationship than the formal religion of the day acknowledged, and he often talked about that relationship.
Elsewhere (in both Matthew and Mark) he says if we have faith, if we believe we’ll receive what we pray for, we will. This isn’t easy for many of us to accept—especially if we’ve ever prayed for something and not gotten it. And anyway, I don’t like to think of prayer as a “tool” to get my way. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind. Here he says if you pray sincerely, you will receive your reward—he doesn’t say how. Perhaps he was speaking less in terms of our particular desire of the moment and more in a larger context—as he did at his own life’s end. What he wanted, and asked for, was to not die; but what he more deeply desired was expressed in those words: thy will, not mine, be done.
What, now, of those words that have become so familiar that most of us can say them by heart?
Our Father, who art in heaven: God as father was a new concept then. Over and over in the gospels Jesus refers to God as father—but not as formally. The word he used was “Abba,” which means approximately: “Daddy.” This is a much more intimate image—and one that supposes absolute human dependence upon the divine. Another concept that is not universally accepted among Unitarian Universalists, but one that keeps coming up for me, over and over again, and maybe it does for some of you too. Maybe not in an “other” super-natural force, but maybe, sometimes, in the love and care of family or friends, or the rhythms of nature.
Hallowed be thy name: There’s a story about a little boy whose father overhears him praying, “Dear Harold, bless Mommy and Daddy, etc.” He asks his son why he’s praying to someone named Harold. The boy replies, “It says right in that prayer, Harold be thy name.” Which goes to show the power of words we don’t understand. Jewish theology held—and holds—that the real name of God is too sacred to even pronounce. “Jahweh” or “Jehovah” is a version of the letters JHWH or JHVH which stand for the words God said to Moses when Moses asked who God was. God said, “I am that I am.” Who are you? I am Being Itself. I just am. And being is holy. Which has implications for all of life. “Honor all beings,” we say as we end our benediction here each Sunday. Hallowed be thy name!
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: Jesus was very big on the kingdom of God. We need to understand “kingdom” in historical context; at the time, the earthly image of immense power was a ruler. Back then that was a king, and the exercise of that power was king-dom. When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he made it clear he was talking about something human beings need to help create. “The kingdom of God is among you,” he told people. God’s will being done on earth is, literally, sacred power entrusted to and acting in us: Jericho Road helping a Lowell non-profit get started; a neighbor bringing us a casserole when we’re recovering from surgery. This is no passive hey God, make everything OK; this is, may your spirit be in us as we try to make things better. Prayer doesn’t change things, said someone once; prayer changes people, and people change things.
Give us this day our daily bread: Matthew’s version. Luke says, “Give us each day our daily bread.” I’ve always thought that “this day” called for a willing suspension of anxiety—sort of a lilies-of-the-field attitude. Just give us what we need to keep us today; tomorrow we’ll pray for tomorrow’s need. But my Bible commentary says that the word Jesus used for “daily bread” actually means “bread for the morrow.” So Jesus is really asking for a supply of bread to show up each day throughout life. May we always be sustained by enough to keep us going; may we always find the means to keep body and soul together.
And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors: Luke’s version is: forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Clearly we’re not dealing here with material debts but with sins, those missings-of-the-mark, those many little selfishnesses, me-firsts, fulfillments we think will serve us but wind up separating us from each other and gnawing at our souls. Trespasses, as Protestants have come to say, suggest how our sins great and small violate something essential in and for others. Jesus also makes clear that being forgiven is contingent upon forgiving; it is always, for Jesus, a two-way street.
Jesus was bigger on forgiveness than almost anything else. As soon as he finishes the prayer he goes on, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” And that is his only summary of this prayer. It’s all, finally, about forgiveness. The prayer, until now calling upon God to act in our lives, suddenly recalls the praying person to her own responsibility: she has to do something if she expects God to do something.
And lead us not into temptation: This is where Luke ends the prayer. Matthew continues, but deliver us from evil. There’s been a lot of commentary on these lines. Some recall Jesus’ temptations during his 40 days in the wilderness. But would Jesus suggest we shouldn’t have to face temptations? I’m not so sure; facing them strengthened him for his ministry. Some think this is a request that God not “test” us; but I don’t recall any other places in the Bible where Jesus suggests that God tests people. I wonder if Jesus, who knew his Scripture well, is recalling the 23rd Psalm, where God leads us by still waters and in the paths of righteousness. These lines suggest that we know our own fallibility and attraction to evil all too well. Be with us in times of temptation, don’t let us fall into evil, is how I’d read them.
That little word “and” in this prayer intrigues me: Give us our bread…AND forgive us our debts…AND lead us not…. That little word links together receiving daily sustenance with forgiving and being forgiven and with being kept safe from temptation and evil. Jesus wasn’t an English major (or even an Aramaic major) but am I going too far in noticing how closely he links together these three things? Three requests, with forgiveness at the center. It seems that our daily sustenance is more than physical (Jesus did say that people don’t live only on food) and that spiritual wellbeing hinges on our ability to forgive and be forgiven.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. This Protestant ending—often used by Catholics now—is missing in the originals. When did it get tacked on? Actually, two versions of this ending existed long before Protestants existed. A source I consulted mentions them in half a dozen or more versions of gospels from the 4th through the 9th centuries. I haven’t been able to find out more than that. But it seems that some Christians decided a bit of reminding was needed at the end here, of who was in charge, and it wasn’t them.
Now, given that Jesus has just recommended praying alone, and did so himself, isn’t it curious that he prays this prayer in the first person plural? Our father, our debts, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. It’s possible that the gospel authors meant to offer a corporate prayer for the newly emerging Christian community. After all, the gospels are not just literature, and not just biography. They were written to teach and spread the news and create community. But suppose these are the historically accurate words of the historical Jesus?
Jesus did stress each individual’s relationship with God, but he also insisted that the individual is responsible to others and to the community. Whoever does this to the least of these does it to me; who is your neighbor; feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. The first person plural brings us back to the beginning of the prayer: the kingdom of God is ours to create, and inextricably woven with human community. This can’t be done by one person alone. Not: the kingdom of God is in you, the individual. But: The kingdom of God is among you, the people.
All four of those elements someone once told me should be in every good prayer—Jesus had them all. Gratitude for the presence of the sacred in our life. Yearning for bodily daily bread, and for the strength of spirit to withstand temptation and evil. Forgiveness: the lynchpin—being forgiven, but first forgiving. And hope: that in community we might enact the presence of the sacred among us.
If you are one for whom the personal address to a personal God is an impediment, I invite you to hear echoes of this prayer in the “Prayer for the World” by Rabbi Harold Kushner, which I read earlier. He just says, let us be healed, let us be able to see clearly, let us feel our neighbors’ joys and sorrows, let us experience each other as neighbors, let us live in earth’s beauty, “let the mountains teach our hearts/ to reach upward to heaven.” It is not very different from what another Jew, 2000 years earlier, was praying.
Prayer in Early Summer
Spirit of the blue-green morning,
God of the golden light that first touched the trees,
Goddess of the rivers moving over the land,
Animating force that turns our earth each day toward the sun,
Still, small voice within, calling us into the stuff of our lives:
By whatever names we call you, we acknowledge
your holding together this wonder of cosmos and life
and giving us a little time in its midst
to marvel, to praise, to live, to be grateful.
We come into this place of ages of worship
in many ways—many of us returning to
what sustains us through years,
some of us seeking a place of solace and connection,
some of us guests vacationing far from home.
We come in all sorts of conditions, all of us with yearnings
we can name in an instant—or vague stirrings of knowing
something just beyond our knowing and naming.
There are ways we would be better than we are.
There are things we want to accomplish and don’t know if we can.
There are people we love who suffer and we want to help.
There are healings we need in body and soul.
There are empty spaces in our lives, where we long for connection.
We acknowledge our ability to change some things
and our utter helplessness in the face of others.
We need courage for the changes, and we need to accept our helplessness.
We come with hurts we need to forgive.
May we not hang on too long to resentments that eat away our inner peace.
We know we have hurt others—out of self-interest or without even knowing.
May we have the courage to ask to be forgiven and to repair what is broken.
May we here lay down what troubles us and what delights
and rest for this hour in the knowledge of deep and abiding presence
that holds us as surely as the planets in their orbits,
that binds us one to another with sacred obligation,
and motions us into the days ahead
with work to do, this earth to enjoy, and others to love.