Homily – July 24

Lord, teach us to pray.  Remember that the people of this time were largely illiterate, with nothing that we would consider to be formal education.  They were an agrarian society of simple folks, so they placed a high value on learned people, teachers, scribes, and rabbis.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because they couldn’t read and write that they were not intelligent.  The people display a wonderful curiosity about the world and about God.  So it is only natural that, being in the presence of a great teacher like Jesus, they would ask for instruction.

Lord, teach us to pray.  And, in an unusual move, Jesus does exactly what they ask.  He teaches them what we have come to call The Lord’s Prayer.  I say it is an unusual move because Jesus rarely answered questions directly.  He was famous for answering a question by asking a different question.  But he more often chose to answer a question indirectly by offering a parable, a story that helped the hearer to understand the point he was making.  OK, he does that too, but we will get to that in a minute.

The Lord’s Prayer has come down through the ages from that brief conversation to us here and now.  Jesus teaches all of us to pray by starting with the way we address God.  We are not addressing some distant impersonal figure.  We are not approaching a King or a President or someone who has no idea who we are.  Instead, we are addressing our Father, the Father who loves us and cares for us intimately.  Think of how the prayer would differ if it began, Dear Sir, or To whom it may concern.  No, we begin by calling God Father to remind ourselves that is who He is, and it is out of love that he will hear our prayer.

Next we say, Hallowed be your name, to remind us that though God is indeed our father, he is very much more than that and we give him glory in these words.  Then, your kingdom come.  That is what we want.  We long for the kingdom of God to arrive, that is our fondest hope.

Once we have given God the honor due his name, we then get to the point of our plea.  Give us our daily bread.  Note that we don’t ask for the next week or month’s bread, but just for today.  This prayer is meant to be said daily, so we need not look for more than our needs for today.  God provides for us just as he provided manna in the wilderness for the Israelites, one day at a time.

Now that we have addressed our present need, we ask God to forgive our past sins.  The kicker here though is we are to remind ourselves that we too must forgive the sins of others.  That is much harder. I once had a young person ask me if God only forgave our sins as much as we forgave those of others.  Think about it.  What we say is forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.  A very astute question from a young person.  My answer was, no of course not.  God forgives us all of our sins.  He was very relieved as he didn’t much want to forgive his little sister.

Save us from the time of trial, or deliver us from temptation, is our prayer for the future.  We ask God to keep us from falling into sin, even though we know that we will.  It is a reminder that we strive to avoid sin, though it always does seem to find us.

So this one prayer captures all of our time, past, present, and future.  We offer praise and glory to God our Father, ask for our needs, and remind ourselves that we too owe a duty to others.  This daily prayer, so simple yet so full, covers all of our life.  We learn it at an early age.  Every time I pray the Lord’s prayer I am reminded of my grandfather.  It was him who taught me this prayer, and he would listen to my prayers each evening before I went to bed.  It was a special time for the two of us, and I felt protected and loved.  At the time I thought nothing of it, it was simply a wonderful time with my grandfather.  But as life moved on, my grandfather died, and I thought I had moved beyond such childish things.  It was only when I had children of my own and returned to the church that a different thought occurred to me.  That special time between my grandfather and I was not about the two of us, but the three of us.  For truly God was present in those times of prayer, and it was the loving presence of both that warmed and comforted me.  Though my grandfather is gone, I still have warm memories of our time together with God and I still think of that when I pray the Lord’s prayer.

I mentioned that Jesus usually taught in parables and this is no exception.  For while he taught the disciples to pray, he then added a parable for them to consider.  This is an often misunderstood parable.  Ask and you shall receive.  Be persistent, keep on knocking.  It would seem that Jesus is telling us that we need to pester God to get him to hear us.  The story makes it sound like God is just an annoyed neighbor that we are bothering late at night.  If you dwell only on that part of the story, it is easy to draw that conclusion.

The real answer comes in the next part, where he asks if we would give our child a snake instead of a fish.  “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”  The story of the neighbor is to show us a sharp contrast.  We don’t need to pester God because we are not an inconvenience to God but his beloved children.  Jesus is putting it into a frame of reference that we can understand.  If we who are but sinners can show great love to our children, then God who is our Father and is without sin can and will show us even greater love.  We are not an inconvenience but a source of love and joy to God.  We are beloved in his eyes and our prayers are music in the divine ear.

Paul tells us not to let anyone disqualify us, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.  He is reminding us that we are not to be swayed by our human constructs and conceptions.  We are created in the image of God, but we are not the same as God.  We live and breathe and have our being through God, not the other way around.  It is all too easy to look at ourselves and think that we are the masters of the universe, that we have evolved past the point of reliance on anyone or anything.  Paul cautions against that, but Jesus gives us a simple yet heartfelt prayer.  A prayer that reminds us that our past, our present and our future belong to God and it is only through the good grace of our Father that we are his people, now and forever.