Sunday, October 29, 2006
(picture via the web)I openly admit that I’m not very good at the formal act of prayer.
Well, I’ll admit skill in the public version, but in the day-to-day private version of prayer, I’m not so adept. I won’t bore you with a lengthy discussion on the particulars: I’ll just say it and confess that it bothers me somewhat.
Some time back, I developed the habit of praying the concepts of the Model Prayer (of Jesus) every morning as a focusing prayer. This has been helpful. I’ve developed the habit, and for that I am glad. This morning, however, my sermon text was the Model Prayer from Matthew 6, and in my preparations I discovered how much of it I had missed.
I now believe that the prayer Jesus volunteered as instruction for his followers on how to pray is a prayer for revolution. As Bible scholar, Warren Carter, said, “To pray this prayer is to seek nothing less than total transformation of life on earth.”
That’s pretty serious stuff, huh?
The Thesis Statement: “Hallowed be your name.”
I’ve been praying this by declaring that God’s name is holy and far above me, etc. Just a little lesson in humiliation. Instead, I’ve now learned that the prayer’s theme is that God’s name become glorified in all the earth. This is a prayer of vision, not of evaluation.
The companion statements that “God’s kingdom come” and that his will be done on earth as in Heaven make this thesis stronger: followers of Jesus learn to pray for the world to be transformed so that the wrongs of the world are made right, and that God’s way of peace and joy, of hope and love becomes a reality.
The prayer then turns its attention to us.
* As we envision God’s will on earth, we pray for what we need every day. May we have the resources (i.e. daily bread) we need to accomplish God’s will through our lives.
* And we pray for mercy. May our sins not stand in the way of God’s will coming true in the world around us. We, as God-followers, are already about the business of mercy by the very nature of it all. We pray that our own shortcomings don’t stand in the way.
* And we pray that God won’t “bring us to the time of trial.” Not that we won’t be tested. Instead, we pray that God won’t let us get to the point where the powers of this world can have their way with us. It is a prayer that despair won’t win.
In Matthew 6, Jesus had to confront the contemporary views of God that stood in the way of kingdom life. The Jewish leaders had become so familiar with God that their synagogue prayers had become pure production. The Greco-Roman view of an aloof God had led them to jabber heavenward in hopes that he might look their way every once in a while. Jesus, on the other hand, taught that God was a father with a world revolution on his mind, and that those interested in God’s Empire would pray with that focusing thought in mind.
Today, I believe our world is more familiar with a tame grandfatherly-type God, a God who smiles and gives us a quarter when we come over to visit.
What I proposed this morning is that God wears a beret with subversive revolution on his mind. Not with guns and grenades, mind you, but with the subversive, transforming weapon of enduring love.
And I have a new thought to pray now.
