Oct 20 | “The Gift of Prayer,” (Sermon, October 5th, 2016)

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ 2He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3   Give us each day our daily bread.
4   And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

Luke 11:1-4

 

Think of that grownup in your life who you trusted more than anyone, and who deserved every drop of that trust. It might be a parent or a relative, or it might be a family friend.

What was the thing that they said to you that you can still hear so perfectly in your head that you can mimic the exact cadence of their voice?

For me, it’s my mum, and it’s the Lord’s Prayer.

This is how it sounded: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.”

It’s one of my earliest memories. I know this because I can remember hearing the words and mimicking the sounds with no real understanding of what they meant.

This was our nightly incantation. A talisman against the dark.

What was yours?

Was it words, or was it a gesture?

It’s that thing that filled you with a certain degree of awe, because it was probably one of the first things that gave you a sense of something – some piece of wisdom or some strange ritual – that was much bigger than this one person whom you trusted so deeply that they seemed close to divine.

It’s that thing that, when you got older, you recognized was not actually universal among families, and that changed things. You began to really understand that this thing was a marker of identity. It was both vastly important…and it was not shared with just anyone.

It’s something that’s so important that even the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child mentions that children have the right to this wisdom, just as they should have the right to challenge it as they get older.

We all have more than one family. Our blood family had this wisdom, but so too do the various other social groupings in which we find ourselves. And so too does this one, where we gather today.

Jesus’ disciples knew that John had special prayers. Some of them probably crossed the floor from John to Jesus and maybe knew these special prayers. They were in a new community now. They trusted Jesus so much that they had left everything behind. Now they needed something to tie them all together.

They knew that he prayed regularly. They figured it was something he was good at. They wanted their own prayer. A talisman against a world that had become hostile.

And so we were given this gift.

We were given the words of our Beloved, which we use together in prayer.

It doesn’t sound quite the same as the one we know. There are two versions – the one in Matthew is longer than the one we just heard from the Gospel of Luke. It is not included in Mark or John, which may suggest that it formed part of the hypothetical Q document that some scholars believed contained a collection of Jesus’ sayings. The context in which the prayer is given is different in each Gospel. In Luke we heard that the disciples wanted a prayer like John’s disciples had. In Matthew, Jesus gives them this prayer while going on a rant about ostentatious prayer. This prayer is then meant to be simple and accessible.

Markers of identity usually need to be, if they are to be universally adopted.

A piece of wisdom for our family, from the one who loves us.

We know it’s a family prayer, because Jesus referred to God in Aramaic not as the rather formal “Father,” but “Abba” – Daddy. If it’s difficult for you to speak to God in this way, that was the point. Jesus came to break down walls between us.

You could say the entire journey of the universe has been our building walls and God tearing them down. In the garden, we got it. God was still “Abba.” But in the quest to receive wisdom, we built walls. God’s first response is Torah. “You don’t remember how to be with me? I’ll give you exactly what you need to know. Here, write it down.”

We did what humans do. We ignored it, or we got so bogged down in details that we began to forget the spirit in favour of the letter.

God’s second response came to live among us. And we have his words now too. If we know nothing else about who God is, at some point at least our ancestors figured out that those words would bind us together across generations, and inserted them at the moment when God comes close to us in the Eucharistic feast.

So today, I encouraged you to put down your books at the Eucharistic prayer. You know the words – or if you don’t, let yourself lean into them as the rest of the community says them. Concentrate instead on sight. And when we speak the words of our Beloved, imagine that he is with us, as indeed he is.

In that moment, all is right. We have become again the fully trusting children of God.

And despite all other failings and all other uncertainties, that moment is worth everything.

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