Matthew 6:9
During the past week
or so, you may have heard Jesus referred to as a “community organizer.” That’s an interesting description because
during most of the past two centuries many liberal theologians insisted Jesus
never intended to leave behind a church, a community of followers. I think we’ll find the first word of his most
famous prayer challenges that notion. By
the way, it may be ill advised to compare any contemporary politician to
Jesus. After all, the Jerusalem
establishment considered the Man from Galilee to be a maverick from a wild and
wooly state to the north. My point is,
don’t let anyone tweak the Bible to make a candidate seem more appealing.
“Our” seems to suggest this prayer
will be voiced by a community with a shared vision of God as Father. All of the pronouns in the prayer are plural.
The pronouns Jesus
used regarding God as Father are interesting to examine.
He often spoke of
God as “My Father,” when he stressed his singular relationship with the
Father. He was reminding his listeners
that he was God’s Son in a way that no one else ever was or ever would be God’s
Son. The beloved John 3:16 describes
Jesus as God’s “only begotten Son.” The
word translated as “only begotten” or “unique,” in some translations, means
“one of a kind.”
When Jesus spoke
to his followers about their relationship with God, he spoke of “your
Father.” That, too, is a special
relationship born of God’s grace, but it is not the same relationship Jesus had
with the Father. [Classic liberal theology is sometimes described as having taught “the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”
That shorthand phrase is a good summary as long as we keep in mind it is
shorthand. Liberal theology had its
complexities as any worldview does.
While the liberal may have rightly seen Jesus’ emphasis on God as Father
to be something to celebrate, that same liberal often missed the unique
character of the relationship Jesus claimed to have had with the Father; in
short, the liberal denied the deity of Christ.
Moreover, the liberal failed to stress that Jesus calls us to repentance
and faith if we are to fully know God as Father and our fellow humans as
brothers (and sisters).]
So, when we read
“our Father” at the beginning of this model prayer, we need to remember it is a
prayer Jesus is prescribing for his followers, not for himself. Last week we looked at some of what it means
to have God as “our Father,” this morning we’re going to look at another
implication of that relationship.
Jesus anticipated his followers being part of
a community. Those within that community
are brothers and sisters.
In earlier days,
some Christians kept that reality before them by the very language they used to
address one another. Now, addressing another believer as “sister”
or “brother” belongs to the world of sawdust trails and storefront
chapels. Perhaps, that’s just as well
because it can become just a habit, a convention without meaning. Ultimately, how we greet one another isn’t so
important as recognizing the reality of the relationship we have through
Christ.
Christians in New
Guinea understand themselves to be part of God’s tribe. Listen to this:
The Christians [of New Guinea] thought of themselves a
God’s clan. This meant that the individual
was bound to serve the whole clan with such gifts as he possessed, and that the
clan as a whole was responsible for the life of the individual. The whole group shares in the benefits of the
life that has become manifest in the individuals. In such communities no one is lost; in them, every individual finds protection,
both in his inward and social life.
What do I mean by suggesting that the Lord’s
Prayer was intended to be used in a community setting? Do I mean that we should never pray this prayer
as individuals? No, it is a fitting prayer
for both personal and shared devotion.
Yet, I think the community of faith, the fellowship of believers, the
family of God; the church, if you will, is often the most likely venue for the
petitions embodied in the prayer to be answered. How?
·
When we pray that God’s Name be kept holy, we
find it is the church which most often encourages us to worship and honor God,
to join it in singing, “Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore Thee….”
·
When we pray for God’s Kingdom to come, we find
that the church is the one entity charged with the responsibility and endowed
with the gifts to advance that Kingdom in our world.
·
When we pray for God’s will to be done, we find
that, despite her faults, the church is where his will is most often discerned,
defined, declared, and demonstrated in and before a confused world.
·
When we pray for our daily bread, we are ready
to let God use our own hands as the tools for obtaining that bread but find the
church is ready to share bread with us should the opportunity to work be denied
us.
·
When we pray for forgiveness, we find the church
loves to rehearse the story of God’s grace and the sufficiency of Christ’s
sacrifice for our sins.
·
When we pray for strength to do the hard work of
forgiving others, we find the church will cheer us as we let go of the right to
strike back.
·
When we pray for help as we struggle with
temptation’s lure, we find the church is ready to pray with us and encourage us
to hold on.
·
When we pray for protection from evil’s
onslaught, we find the church will be a sheltering fortress in the battle.
Every
Sunday morning, men and women around the world offer up this prayer—or one
modeled upon it—as they gather to worship.
Many of those men and women are far different than we are. Usually, they will offer that prayer in a
language other than English. During the
service, some of these Christians will sing songs unfamiliar to us, as they
raise their hands and shout praises to God, as tears freely flow down their
cheeks; others will recite this prayer in a liturgy that their churches may
have read for centuries. The sermons the
men and women will hear will vary from carefully reasoned treatises to
bombastic calls to repentance. After the
service, they will probably go home to a meal far different than the meals most
of us will eat following our service.
Yet, this prayer reminds us that we are one great family of faith.
It
is understandable if we should feel closer to those believers who are most like
us. But, it violates the very spirit of
he New Testament if we ever forget we are related to all, wherever they may be
or whoever they may be, who sincerely offer up this prayer to our one Father in
heaven.
As
in any family, there will be differences of opinion about some matters. We won’t all agree on the war, on global
warming, on welfare, on worship styles, and the list could go on and on. Yet, we are one family, with one Father. We are linked to that one Father though our
relationship with Jesus Christ. The key
New Testament concept here is “adoption.”
Belief in Christ brings us into a new family. Christ’s work enabled us to become children
of God.
There
are no physical characteristics—hair color, eye shape, skin tone—which mark us
as part of God’s family. The key is our
relationship to Christ. Allow me to
paraphrase a definition of Christian offered by Richard Niebuhr. Being in the family of God is to be among
those “for whom Jesus Christ—his life, words, deeds, crucifixion, and victory
over death—is of supreme importance as the key to the understanding of
themselves and their world, the main source of the knowledge of God and man,
and the ultimate deliverer from evil.”[i] That common faith links us together in a
spiritual family.
All
this means we must tread carefully when we criticize our brothers and
sisters. We might disagree with them,
but we can do so without denying they are part of God’s family, simply because
they disagree with us. It’s possible for
someone to be our spiritual brother or sister and have the wrong take on some
problem. I hope I don’t have to remind
you there are almost certainly occasions when our spiritual brothers and
sisters are right and we are wrong.
When we pray this prayer,
it should be in a spirit of humility. Our
spirit should be the very opposite of those Jesus described a few verses
earlier. Jesus said, “And when you pray,
do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues
and on the street corners to be seen by men.”
When we pray this prayer alongside our fellow believers, we remind
ourselves that we are all “standin’ in the need of prayer,” as the old
spiritual says. None of us can become
too inflated with our own piety.
We’re blessed to
be in this community. Our responsibility
to pray for our fellow believers is matched by their responsibility to pray for
us.
Jesus would later
talk about the power of praying together.
He told his disciples, “Again
I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” This is why churches like ours use a prayer
chain to encourage members to pray for one another. When we do, we are resting on Christ’s
promise.
This model prayer
inspires the scope of our praying for one another. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us we may pray for
those who may be facing any spiritual or physical challenge.
When Jesus calls
us to follow him, he didn’t call us to be alone. He called us into a family.
[i] Christ and Culture, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951, p. 10. Though Niebuhr finds this definition
inadequate for his purposes, I still find it appealing.
