Next week, November 25 is known as "Reign of Christ" Sunday - the last Sunday of the liturgical year before we begin Advent and another cycle. This week November 18 sets us up for looking at the 'reign of Christ' through the lens of the Lord's Prayer.
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Several years ago, 2007 to be exact, I left the
Lord’s Prayer out of the service. You would have
thought I had cancelled church altogether. There were mutterings about the Lord’s
Prayer being taken out of schools, and
now being taken out of churches too. One gentleman said there was no point
coming to church if we didn’t have that prayer –so I
asked him if there were restrictions on saying it whenever he liked. His
response was it belonged in church. I asked why. He had no answer.
So that congregation learned what many
congregations don’t realise –that when a question like that is raised,
they need to have an answer. I challenged that congregation to tell me why the
Lord’s Prayer was so important that it needed to be in every service. Not right
there on the spot, of course, but after they had thought about it for awhile. Interestingly,
no one took up the challenge. I let it go several weeks.
Right when they thought I’d
forgotten about it, I did a series of four sermons exploring the history,
language and use of this prayer. This sermon is a combination of two of those –and explores
the prayer in the language Jesus spoke - Aramaic. I’ve said often that this is
the most profound prayer - and if congregations really understood it, it would
frighten them. So I want you to think about the words and how profound they
really are, each and every time you say it.
And it’s
critical to remember that the prayer we have today is a translation from Hebrew
to Greek to English. The Bible was not written in English, and it’s
pretty well accepted that the beloved King James was not an accurate
translation. Anyone who speaks another language knows that there aren’t
always parallel words in each language. About twenty years ago Norio translated
a book by Reginald Bibby – called“Mosaic
Madness”- into Japanese. English phrases were used
which don’t exist in Japanese, either as words or as
concepts, so words had to be made up to convey the meaning. Every single time
we translate, meaning shifts a little.
Here’s a
very simple example. In Hebrew, ‘ruach’ means
Spirit, breath. Translating into German, Spirit became ‘geist’ or ghost
–the phrase Holy Ghost’. But
’ghost’, spirit and breath’ aren’t quite
the same.
Jesus was a devout practicing Jew; everything
he said and did arose from his traditions. He would have learned to pray first
from Mary. The first prayer a Hebrew mother teaches is 'Into your hands, O God,
I commend my spirit' - to be said before falling asleep, and before death.
Jesus used these words on the cross before death –every
Jew used those words before sleeping, and before death. Jesus would have heard
Mary at sunset on the Sabbath eve, blessing the lamps, 'Blessed are you, O Lord,
King of the Universe, who has given us your commandments and bids us light the
Sabbath lights'. He would have heard Joseph say 'Blessed are you, O Lord, King
of the Universe, who has given us this bread to eat, this wine to drink, fruit
of the earth, of the vine, and the work of human hands'.
Jesus’ disciples asked to be taught how to
pray, and he gave them a very Jewish prayer. It was, in fact, quite commonplace
for teachers to give prayers to their followers, particularly beginning or
ending a teaching session. The Gospel of Matthew gives the prayer in rather
crude Greek, behind which one can sense the Hebrew, Matthew 6:9-15:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this
day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil
one.
In Luke's sophisticated, yet far simpler,
Greek version, 11: 2-4, this becomes:
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom
come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we forgive
everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.
Mark gives us instead the Jewish Prayer of
the Good Name, the Sh\ma ,12:29-31: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord
is One.’, then speaks of God’s name as blessed, and the kingdom as enduring for
ever; then adds to it the prayer of loving God with all one's heart, mind,
soul, and strength, from the blessed Tau Prayer (which is over the threshold of
Jewish homes since the Exodus), and one's neighbour as oneself - phrases taken
directly from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The Lord's Prayer echoes Jewish
prayers to God, hallowing God’s holy name, speaking of the kingdom, and of
the Jubilee - a forgiving of all debts, freeing of all slaves.
It is, in fact, not a very original prayer;
it is a combination of formulas which were in circulation among Hasidic Jews.
The first part, for the coming of God’s realm, echoes the Kaddish - the prayer
for the dead – ‘May his great name be hallowed in the world which he created,
according to his will, and may he establish his Kingdom, speedily and soon.’
The whole of the formula ‘Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as in heaven’ expressed one idea common to Jews -
that the Messianic kingdom would appear quickly, and always subject to the will
of God. Heaven was not “out there”
...heaven was where we belong, here and now, here on earth.
Back to the Kaddish, that the realm of God
would be established quickly and at a near time. The realm is not a place or
system, but a state of being, in which the sacred and holy gives meaning to
everything. We pray that we may be brought into a state of being ‘in tune’ (thy
will be done), that in the choir of the universe, we aren’t found to be singing
flat!
There are then petitions in this prayer: First, ‘your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as in heaven.’. In this understanding, heaven literally comes to
earth. They are not two separate places. The word ‘tzevyanach’ can be
translated as ‘will’, but not in the sense of willpower, or strength of will.
Rather it means ‘heart’s desire’, harmonious cooperation among all things.
Heaven and earth are one, from potential to actual. ‘Arha’ means ‘earth’, and may
be the root of our word. It carries the meaning of ‘all nature, all natural gatherings of mass
and form produced by the universal force - power with movement.”
The second petition is ‘Give
us this day our daily bread...’ The
word for bread is ‘lachma’, but the word also means ‘understanding’. So substitute
that into the sentence - give us the understanding we need for today. Or, give
us the food for all forms of growth and for elementary life in general. The
root of the word demonstrates growing vigour, green-ness, passion, possibility,
and generative power. It became the word ‘hochma’ which in Proverbs translates
as ‘Holy Wisdom’, the breath, and the embodiment of the feminine principle in
everything. This reminds us that as well as the grand picture of unity in
creation, we also need just food or understanding for the moment. It stands
within the context of Messianic expectation, and is quite radical. It is
reminiscent of Solomon praying ‘give us our apportioned bread’, or give us what
we need for today. It makes a strong comment about having more than we need,
over against those who have less. It doesn’t ask God to fill us up with
everything we want - it says clearly give us what we need. Implicit in that is
sharing what we have with others who need more than we do.
On another level it refers to something
outside of the physical needs of the world. The Greek word used means something
close to ‘the stuff we need to survive’, or ‘give us today tomorrow’s bread’ -
and can possibly be read as ‘give us a foretaste of the bread of heaven’ where
the universe is drawn together as one.
In the first part of the prayer we remember
our blessings from the cosmos. In the second part we move to a new cycle of
blessing, facing each other and remembering that we are all part of the divine
Many, pointing to the earth which stands under and supports us. So if we live
out the prayer, we treasure the source of the bread by not hoarding or
demanding more from the earth than we need. That means we are, in fact,
creation centred and aware of our >footprint= on the earth, now and into the
future.
‘Forgive
our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us –‘
Not only can the word ‘washboqlan’ be
translated as ‘forgive’, it can also be ‘return to original state’, ‘reciprocally
absorb’, ‘embrace with emptiness’. The prayer reaffirms that our original state
is clear and unburdened, releasing those things which tie us down and prevent
our growth. While Matthew’s version of the prayer translated the word as ‘debts’
or ‘offences’, it also means ‘hidden past’, ‘secret debt’ any negative ‘inner
fruit’. Luke’s version can be ‘sins’, but could also be ‘failures’, ‘mistakes’,
‘accidental offences’ or even ‘frustrated hopes.’
Two dispirited disciples trudge along a
road, all the stuffing taken out of them. How many times they must have walked
the road from Emmaus to Jerusalem and back again. A stranger meets them on the
road, and begins to talk - and they pour out their hearts and end up in tears.
They reach their home in Emmaus, and persuade him to stay rather than walk a
dangerous road after dark. A simple meal is set out on the table, and the
stranger picks up the bread and says Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha
olam, hamotzi lechem min haartez.....”, breaks and shares it.
The stranger breaks bread and suddenly they
do know him; in both the meeting and the meal, their needs are met. They are
fed with the spiritual bread they need, and then they sit down and feed their
bodies. I cannot help but see action in this prayer. It is a symbol of the
realm of God, in the here and now - on the everyday road of life, the road we
travel so often, sometimes without thinking. How often do we pick up bread and
just stuff it in. How often do we trust that we have enough? That we have been
fed?
It isn’t enough, for me, to put the words
into the liturgy just because they’ve
always been there. ‘Because we’ve always done that’ isn’t good
enough. It seems to us a simple prayer –but it
wasn’t and isn’t. It
was a radical prayer meant to change lives.. Jesus always, always pushed his
followers not to be complacent, and it is the role of preachers to push you
sitting in the pews not to be complacent, even if it makes us unpopular. We
cannot afford to just sing or say the words. The whole intent of the prayer and
the actions we take is to make us new people, in the realm of God, in the here
and now.
O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos
Focus your light within us—make it useful.
Create your reign of unity now— through our
fiery hearts and willing hands.
Help us love beyond our ideals and sprout acts
of compassion for all creatures.
Animate the earth within us: we then feel the Wisdom underneath supporting
all.
Untangle the knots within so that we can mend
our hearts' simple ties to each other.
Don't let surface things delude us, but free
us from what holds us back from our true purpose.
Out of you, the astonishing fire, returning
light and sound to the cosmos. Amen.
Sources: 1. www.jewishencyclopedia.com
2. Religion and Ethics: The Lord’s Prayer www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/prayer
(Archbishop Rowan Williams) 3. Prayers
of the Cosmos - Neil Douglas-Klotz
