Overcoming Impossible : Radical Prayer
Feel free to check out the video version of this sermon
here.
Welcome
back to yet another week here on Making Waves! We are so glad to have you back
with us for the third part in this new series we are taking on. The title of
this series is Overcoming Impossible
and we are focusing on the Sermon on the Mount from the gospel of Matthew. This
passage has been occasionally refereed to as an impossible list of demands from
Christ. And, if we didn’t know better, we might be tempted to agree with them
after the last two weeks of study we have had. God has called us to a life full
of humility and putting other first. We learned that Jesus came to complete the
laws of Moses and make them even harder to live up to.
This week we are going to take on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a
prayer that all of us over at Pelham UMC have memorized and I’m sure that most
of you out there could say the same. It’s an incredibly important prayer. But…
it’s easy to simplify it and get it confused. Let me give you an example. Let’s
see what some big kids say about their thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer when they
were a little younger…
- When I
was a child, I learned this prayer as "Our Father, who are in Heaven,
Howard be thy name." I always thought that was God's real name.
- My
son, who is in nursery school, said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven,
how didja know my name?"
- I
remember thinking this prayer was "Give us this day our jelly bread."
- When I
was younger, I believed the line was "Lead a snot into
temptation." I thought I was praying for my little sister to get into
trouble.
· When
my twin daughters were young, I taught them to say this prayer before going to
bed. As I listened outside their door, I could hear them say, "Give us
this steak and daily bread, and forgive us our mattresses." My husband and
I always had a good laugh over this. That was over 50 years ago, and the memory
still remains in my heart.
Those are obviously some silly examples, but this is a
serious topic. We can get the words mixed up in our head. Whenever we learn a
prayer or a scripture by the words alone, we can make up our own
interpretations and confuse hallowed with Howard.
What I believe is so important about this prayer is that it
encapsulates Jesus’ ministry so perfectly. Jesus came for us out of LOVE. The
greatest of these is always love. He came to us bearing the covenant of love
and this is clear and evident in the passage of this prayer. in honor of this,
I want us to do this reading together (yes, even those of you in the virtual
congregation). After each line of the prayer, I want us to all say, “I am born
in Love, by Love, and for Love.” It’s appropriate to hold your hands on your
lap with your palms facing upward during this moment, if you want to allow the
Spirit to impact you in that way. I will put the words for us to say out loud
together in bold.
9 “This,
then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
I am born in Love, by
Love, and for Love.
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
I am born in Love, by
Love, and for Love.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
I am born in Love, by
Love, and for Love.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
I am born in Love, by
Love, and for Love.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”
I am born in Love, by
Love, and for Love.
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But
if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your
sins.”
–
Matt 6:9-15
Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the
words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together in this place be
acceptable in Your sight. For You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Let’s start today by looking where anyone should look when
they read the Bible: the context of the situation. So first we look at this
Jesus guy. Clearly, we know Him to be Messiah today, but who was He to the
majority of the world? Jesus asked this exact question to his disciples and
what did they say? Well, Jesus, some say that you are John the Baptist. Others
say you are a wise leader. So, there are many out there that see Jesus as this
religious leader. Well, during this day and age, the religious leaders taught
their followers prayers. John the Baptist in particular taught his followers collections
of prayers.
In the gospel of Luke this norm of leaders teaching prayers
led the disciples to ask Jesus, “Why don’t you teach us a prayer?” Jesus knew a
thing or two about prayer. He prayed often in the gospels. So much so that it
led Paul to encourage the Christians in Thessalonica to pray ceaselessly. Thus,
Jesus decides to teach His disciples a prayer, but not just any prayer, but the
prayer that sums up Jesus’ ministry in its entirety. It’s in that passage, as
well as this passage in Matthew, that we see this prayer known as The Lord’s
Prayer.
But, of course, this is no normal prayer, and Jesus is no
normal guy. This might surprise you, but spoiler alert: Jesus was a radical leader. The things that He says
in this prayer are life-changing
even though we just brush past them out of monotony in today’s liturgy. So
let’s break down the prayer piece-by-piece and examine what Jesus is saying
through these words.
I had been planning to go through the Lord’s prayer
piece-by-piece, breaking down each line and explaining the meaning. But, as I
was writing out this sermon, I couldn’t even get past the first two words.
Let me go ahead and tell you, Jesus pulls no punches. He
starts off the prayer with a punch right to the gut of the traditional beliefs
of the era. “Our Father.” Now, to us this may sound innocent enough, but to the
people of this day and age that is revolutionary. Jesus is saying that God, the
God we worship is OUR Father. As in everyone, ever. Not just the Israelites,
not just the Jews, not just the disciples. Even deeper than that, the people
that we hate more than anything. The Samaritans, the Babylonians, the kings and
queens, the soldiers, the murderers, those who truly hate us.
Those who we are in war against. Those who oppress us. Those
who harm us and our families.
Whatever you might be feeling right now, that’s how the
people listening to this prayer felt. They are probably thinking, “Okay, Jesus,
so first you tell me I have to love my enemy, now you are telling me that my
enemy is my brother? I have to be related to them. I am cut from the same cloth
as those who murder?”
We are born in love, by love, and for love. Think of the
most evil person you can imagine in your mind. He or she is a child of God born
in love, by love and for love.
Let me tell you a story. This past weekend I had the chance
to attend a seminar at Duke Divinity School. It was led by Alan Storey, and
during the course of the weekend he told us this story that I am about to share
with you.
A South African mother, let’s call her Mrs. Smith, comes
home from work one innocent day to find her 14-year-old daughter stabbed 9
times in the chest. Heart-broken and outraged, her mind races to find the
murderer and perform some act of revenge. She is surprised to find out that the
murderer is in fact her 17-year-old other daughter. Now, all of a sudden, Mrs. Smith finds herself
in the most conflicting circumstances. In fact, she finds herself in the shoes
of God. Mrs. Smith is heart-broken over the death of her one daughter, but is
bound by love to support her other broken daughter. The case goes to trial and
Mrs. Smith goes, but sits behind her living daughter. Certainly not condoning
her actions, but loving her nonetheless. She goes onto the stand and says that
she so desperately wants to hate her daughter, but she can’t do it. She can’t
bring herself to hate her living daughter. Her daughter goes to prison and Mrs.
Smith tells her daughter that she forgives her for what she has done. Mrs.
Smith visits her as often as she possibly can until she passes on. Imagine for
a moment that I approach Mrs. Smith and say, “Mrs. Smith, in honor of the life
of your daughter I would like to find her murderer and give that person the
same punishment. Repay death with death!” Mrs. Smith would likely weep and beg
me not to. Because what good does it do to her to be without both of her
daughters? What good does it to her to suffer not just one loss, but two?
Many of you may say that this is just a caricature. It is
some far-fetched story that is completely unrealistic. But, I tell you that
this is the story of God’s view for us. We have the right to forgive.
We are born in love, by love, and for love. This phrase
could be the rest of the prayer and the same message would be shared. The
prayer contains phrases of allowing God’s will in our lives, a will that is
full of love. Then we ask God for our daily bread, our blessings from Heaven, a
physical representation of God’s love. Next we ask God to forgive us as we
forgive those who trespass against us. We ask God to help us love as He loves
us. We then ask for God’s guidance away from evil and temptation, but instead
to draw us into love.
Jesus then concludes with what? Forgive those as God
forgives you. Why? Because we are born in love, by love, and for love. So, let
us go and love.
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