Tag: prayer

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Church
November 20, 2022
The Lord’s Prayer, Part 6

At the beginning of worship: 

Two weeks ago, at Mayberry Church, we held a training event titled “Centered and Soaring.” This event was sponsored with partnership funds from the Presbytery of the Peaks. Those there were provided several “take-away ideas” to strengthen our discipleship as a follower of Jesus. One take-away was a Prayer Covenant. The idea is that we join with another individual to pray for each other for a specific time. Sometimes the prayers may be general, other times they may be more specific, as when we need help in a particular area. 

Jesus wants us to pray for each other

When Christians pray for one another, we’re doing what Jesus teaches in the Lord’s prayer. This is not a prayer about us as individuals. It’s about us in community. Consider the words: “Our Father, Give us, Forgive us, Lead us not, Save us…” There is no “Me” in the prayer. It’s all about community and for that reason, we need to be praying for one another.

This will be our six and final Sunday focusing on the Lord’s Prayer. I have never preached a series on Jesus’ prayer and in a way am sad that it’s coming to an end. There is so much more that I would like to say. This prayer is steeped in our tradition. As Matthew’s version of the prayer reminds us, we’re to use this prayer as a model or template for our own prayers. 

Lord’s prayer as a template

At the Presbytery meeting this past Thursday at Second Presbyterian in Roanoke, our moderator modelled this. She didn’t say she had written a prayer based on the Lord’s prayer, but as I listened, I could pick out the various petitions of the Jesus’ prayer. When you need to pray and are lost for words, you might consider the parts of the Lord’s prayer. And, to reiterate, if we find a lot of “Me’s” or “mine’s” in our prayers, we should compare how we pray to how Jesus teaches us to pray. 

Before the reading of Scripture:

While I didn’t watch Jeopardy this week (which is nothing new), I heard about it. One of the questions in a championship round had to do with which epistle of Paul’s had the most Old Testament references. According to Jeopardy, the right answer was Hebrews. I didn’t realize so many familiar with the Bible watched Jeopardy, for immediately Facebook and Twitter blew up with people pointing out Jeopardy’s mistakes. For nowhere does Hebrews tell us that Paul was the author and there are some who question labelling it an epistle as it’s more of a sermon than a letter. And finally, Romans appears to have more links to the Old Testament than Hebrews. They got it wrong on many levels.^[1]Hold that thought, I’ll come back to it in a moment. 

Petitions in the Lord’s Prayer: A Bit of Jeopardy-like trivia

Today we’re looking at our last petition in the Lord’s Prayer: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” I noted in one of my earlier sermons that while we tend to consider the prayer to have six petitions,^[2] there are some who divide it into seven. To do this, they split the last petition into two separate parts, one on temptation and one on the evil one. You can find this in Luther’s Catechism^[3] as well as the catechisms of the Catholic Church.^[4]One of the reasons for making this prayer into seven petitions instead of six is that it seven is consider a perfect number.^[5]

This kind of trivia might do you well if you find yourself on Jeopardy. Of course, you’ll have to guess which source their experts consulted as to if there are six or seven petitions in this prayer.

Read Matthew 6:9-13

I recently spent a lot of time with John Bunyan’s classic, Pilgrim’s Progress.^[6] I had read parts of it before, but never spent much time studying the book until a theology group of which I am a member decided to study it. In preparation, not only did I read the book, I also read a commentary on it and also reviewed books on Puritanism which I had read decades ago. 

Popularity of Pilgrim’s Progress in 19^th Century America

I had looked forward to delving into this work of Bunyan. I had known for some time that Pilgrim’s Progress was the second most popular book in the 19^th Century for those moving into the American West. On wagon trains and clipper ships, the Bible was the number one book people had in their possessions. If they had a second book, unless you were Samuel Clemens, the book was most often Pilgrim’s Progress. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, wrote a humorous piece about hauling a dictionary across the continent.^[7]

Christian’s journey

Pilgrim’s Progress begins with the story of Christian, who becomes convicted the city in which he lives (aptly named “Destruction”) is about to be destroyed. No one wants to listen to him talk about what’s to happen. He’s mocked by friends and family. So, he decides to flee. He leaves on a pilgrimage to the Celestial City, to God’s kingdom. While he abandons his family, he begins his trip with two friends. But they quickly leave him. His travels are often solo or with just one companion, such as Faithful, who is martyred along the way… 

Obstacles to overcome

Christian must overcome many obstacles to reach God’s kingdom. In the second half of the book, Christian’s wife Christina and his children make their way to the city, following Christian’s example. Unlike Christian, who is often alone, they travel in a group and while they have their own trials, they make the journey with less trouble than their father, who has become an encouragement to other pilgrims. 

The reader of Pilgrim’s Progress comes away with the impression the Christian life is one of constant challenges and temptations. Nothing is easy about the pilgrim’s journey, but the hope of the eternal city keeps the pilgrim moving forward and making the right decisions. 

Pilgrim’s Progress and the ending petition

The ending of the Lord’s Prayer captures Pilgrim’s plight. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” The language here is stark. Deliver us could also be “snatch us”^[8] as if we’re about to walk off a cliff. Metaphorically that’s what we’re about to do when evil confronts us. 

Early in his pilgrimage, Christian is caught in the Slough of Despond. In this prayer, temptation is the pit or slough where we find ourselves stuck when caught in sin. And the evil one is the power that draws us into the pit.^[9]

Evil forces in the world

This prayer reminds us that there are forces in the world who challenge us and seek to keep us from faithfully following Jesus. And prayer challenges those powers. As Karl Barth, the great 20^th Century theologian, said, “To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”^[10]

Prayer is where we start. Before we do anything else, we need to be sure we are on God’s side. This prayer helps us do because it refocuses us, away from our petty concerns, and toward God. Before we set out to save the world, which isn’t our job by the way, we should pray. We pray because we see dimly in this world,^[11] and we need God to light or direct our way.

Subtle temptations

Temptations can be so subtle. Often temptations are good gifts but are not used in the manner intended. When anything moves between us and God, the good is tainted. And the evil one knows this, which is why he makes temptations seductive. So, we ask God to help us as we navigate this life. We only have glimpses of the holy, of God’s plan and glory. But we move forward, through the fog, in faith, praying and holding out to the hope we have in Jesus.

Lack of community

One of the things that struck me in my recent study of Pilgrim’s Progress was the lack of community.^[12] Christian is often on his own. I’m afraid this aspect of Bunyan’s book has been detrimental on American Christianity. The book’s popularity in our early history tempted the church to deemphasize community over the individual. 

A theologian friend of mine has suggested the Achilles tendon of the Reformed Tradition is our lack of understanding of ecclesiology.^[13] That is, by focusing on the individual, we don’t have a good understanding of the church and how it is to help us grow disciples. This over-emphasis on the individual may stretch back to the Puritans, of which John Bunyan was one. But in Scripture, as we see in this prayer, the focus is most often on the community. We need to regain a sense of how the Christian community works to draw us closer to Christ. 

Lord’s Prayer is based on community

The Lord’s prayer is not about the individual. It always pulls us from our individual concerns to the concerns of others. We don’t pray, “Save me,” but “Save us.” The community, the church, is to be there to help us when we falter along the way. While we look for God’s guidance as we are tempted or challenged by evil, we are also to be supported by other godly people. We have two hands and should hold God in one and God’s people in the other. 

It is interesting that Jesus’ begins his prayers with a focus on God as Father, and ends this prayer on a downer, talking about the evil or the “evil one.” We can give him a name, “Satan.” Perhaps this why a doxology is added onto the prayer. However, as we see, most Bibles don’t have this doxology. If you’ve worshipped in a Catholic Church you’ll know they don’t say it. I found this out the hard way when I was a student pastor and participating at a Thanksgiving service at St. Mary’s of the Mountain Catholic Church in Virginia City. I continued to pray, along with a handful of Presbyterians, while the rest of the congregation ended their prayer early.

Ending doxology

The doxology was found in texts dated to around the 10^thCentury.^[14] It’s found in the King James Version, but even then, it was known that this passage may not have been original. John Calvin admits such in his writings.^[15] Today, as it is not found in any of the older manuscripts, translations leave out the doxology. However, thanks to the King James Version, the phrase has been adopted by us liturgically. After all, who wants to end a prayer with the focus on Satan?

Why might this doxology have been added? One suggestion is that the prayer ends so ruggedly so we might continue with our own prayers. This is kind of like how I write my pastoral prayers. Generally, on Sunday mornings, as I watch a new day emerge out of the darkness, I write a paragraph or two. Then, we when we come to the prayer, based on shared joys and concerns and how I’m feeling, I finish praying “off the cuff.” 

In favor of the doxology

Personally, I don’t think we should get rid of the doxology even though it’s not in scripture. Instead, it concludes this prayer in a “shout out” to Almighty God: thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.^[16] But if you want to pray the prayer as it is found in the gospels, do so and tack your own prayers of praise at the end.

Conclusion

I hope you have learned something about prayer over the past six weeks. If I was to quickly summarize the highlights of this prayer of Jesus, I’d say it focuses us on God, on our necessities and the necessities of others, and to our need for God’s protection and the fellowship with other believers. Amen. 

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^[1] This is the example of one such article to come out of Jeopardy-gate: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jeopardy-paul-hebrews/

^[2] Both the Heidelberg and Westminster Catechisms have six petitions. These are found in the Presbyterian Church USA, The Book of Confessions (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2018). The same is true for John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559, Ford Lewis Battles translation), III xx.

^[3] Martin Luther, “Large Catechism,” Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 433-435

^[4] See https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/686/

^[5] The Greek early Church fathers mostly divided the prayer into six (two sets of three, and Matthew often uses sets of three in his gospel). However, Augustine along with Lutherans and Catholics use the “perfect” seven sets. Fredrick Dale Bruner, The Christbook: Matthew 1-12 (Grand Rapids: Eerdman, 2004), 293.

^[6] In addition to reading Pilgrim’s Progress and listening to it on Audible, I also read Robert Maguire, D.D., Commentary on John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” (1863, Minneapolis, MN: Curiosmith, 2009).

^[7] Mark Twain, Roughing It (1871: Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 18-19.

^[8] Bruner, 314

^[9] Bruner, 314.

^[10] As quoted by William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach US: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996), 109.

^[11] 1 Corinthians 13:12.

^[12] My other concern is the apparent lack of grace that is seen in Pilgrim’s Progress.

^[13] Ecclesiology is the study of the church. Dr. Jack Stewart, formerly a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and I have discussed this several times.  As a scholar of Charles Hodge, Stewart points out that Hodge had planned but never completed a fourth volume of his systematic theology that would have been on ecclesiology. 

^[14] Alister McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), 242, 244.

^[15] Calvin, Institutes, III xx 47. 

^[16] Willimon and Hauerwas, 98.

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Churches
November 13, 2022
The Lord’s Prayer, Part 5
Matthew 6:9-15, 18: 23-35

At the beginning of worship:

I came across a quote this week that struck me. “The worst thing is not being wrong but being sure one is not wrong.”^[1] Let that sink in. “Being sure we are not wrong.” Why is that so bad? Because we often fail to see or understand our sinfulness. It’s easy to see sin in others, but harder to see it in ourselves. But one day, we’ll all stand before God’s throne. And we will all stand in need of forgiveness. But we don’t like to forgive, do we? We’re going to talk about this today. 

Before reading today’s scripture

Today we’re looking at the fifth petition in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. 

Debts or Trespasses

Historically, those of us in the Reformed Tradition, including Presbyterians, have always said debts and debtors. When I say the Lord’s Prayer at a funeral or an ecumenical gathering, I just quietly say debts knowing I’ll be drowned out by those who say trespasses. I am not sure why others—from Roman Catholics to most Protestants—say trespasses. 

In preparation for this sermon series, one of the books I read was by two Methodists, William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas. I thought they might enlighten me, as the Methodists say trespasses. Instead, they admitted that while there is a long history of saying trespasses in the prayer, it’s not what’s in the Bible.^[2] Maybe this is the one thing we get right.

If you look at almost all English translations of the Lord’s Prayer from the King James Version on, the Greek is translated as debts. Now, right after the prayer, as we’ll see, Jesus speaks of trespasses. But not in the prayer. In the prayer as recorded in Luke’s gospel, Jesus uses the words for sin and for debts.^[3] I think there is a reason for the use of debts, for we are all in debt to God. 

Read Matthew 6:9-15 & 18:23-35

The Swamp Fox

I have been listening to John Oller’s, The Swamp Fox, an audible book this week.^[4] The Swamp Fox was Francis Marion. A Revolutionary War hero from South Carolina, Marion did his best to be a thorn in the side of the British and Loyalists. This was especially true as Britain began its Southern Strategy in 1780, with the hopes of gathering loyalists and moving north to trap George Washington and his army. During this period, Marion destroyed British supply routes between the coast and the upland. As Cornwallis’ army moved north, it was ill prepared for what they would face and eventually they became trapped. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, and the war ended. 

South Carolina during the Revolutionary Way

During the war, South Carolina had more engagements than any other colony and was the bloodiest theater. But in many ways, the Revolutionary War in South Carolina wasn’t so much a war against Britain, but a Civil War. While there were a few British regulars in South Carolina, much of the combat occurred between loyalists and patriots. At the time, these two groups were also known as the Torys and the Whigs. They were merciless toward the other. And sometimes, spats between neighbors determined which side one was on. 

When a patriot did something to his neighbor, his neighbor became a loyalist and fought for Britain. This also went the other way, too. The armies burned homes of their enemies, and often killed their prisoners. Marion supposedly detested such behavior and was willing to court-martial his own soldiers when they behaved in such a manner. But he had his hands full. Because of the animosity between groups, after the war, most loyalists migrated to Canada or back across the sea. 

South Carolina was not a good place in the Revolution

South Carolina would not have been a good place to live in the late 1770s and early 1780s. (I’m not sure it’s any better today, but I’ll leave it at that and not include more of my North Carolina bias). But I hope you can you see how the lack of forgiveness leads to chaos. The home of one side was burned, someone else burns a home of someone on the other side of the conflict. I think it was Gandhi (at least in the movie) who said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” 

What’s So Amazing About Grace?

In his book What’s So Amazing about Grace, Philip Yancey says grace is the best gift the church has given the world. But two pages later, he also acknowledges that the church often communicates ungrace to the world.^[5] When we in the church fail to grant forgiveness, we don’t appear graceful!

Physical needs before forgiveness

As we saw last week, Jesus, in the Lord’s Prayer, first takes care of our physical needs. “Give us our daily bread,” is the first petition that concerns us directly. Then, on its heels, Jesus addresses the human condition.^[6] We are a sinful people. Not only do we need to eat, but we also need forgiveness. And we need to forgive others. It’s the only way we can break the cycle of vengeance that is too prevalent in our world today. 

Forgiveness is difficult

But face it, forgiveness is hard.^[7] And it’s not very popular. Many churches forego prayers of confession, which I think is one of the most important prayers we have. After all, where else can we find forgiveness. It’s the one unique thing the church has to the offer the world. Lots of what the church does can be done by other groups, and in many cases, they can do it better. But Jesus gave the church the keys to the kingdom.^[8] We have the right to proclaim the forgiveness of sin that can only come through Jesus Christ. No other group has that kind of gift that is so desperately needed in our world today.

We are debtors!

This prayer assumes we have debts. This may have come from an old concept where, when we sin, a notation is made into a ledger indicating the debt we now owe. And debts need to be repaid. It’s the only way the books can balance. Yet, we are all guilty. In other words, we are all debtors. As Paul writes, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”^[9] Our debt may be from that which we have done which is against God or against neighbor. And it may be that which we left undone but should have done. There’s a ledger book for us all and it’s filled with sins of commission and omission.

Forgiveness is not cheap

Sin is serious and forgiveness is not cheap. Jesus paid the price for our sin, enabling us to be forgiven. The only way we can be forgiven is for God to wipe out our debt.

Forgiveness with a caveat

But this forgiveness comes with a caveat. While we are forgiven by God through Christ, in our striving to be more “Christ-like,” we are to be forgiving others who have done wrong to us. We don’t do this to obtain forgiveness. Instead, we forgive graciously, knowing what God has done for us. When we act in this manner, we break that cycle of revenge that threatens to tear our world apart. First God forgives us, then we are to go and do likewise and forgive others. 

When we forgive someone who’s wronged us, it’s like throwing “a monkey wrench into the eternal wheel of retribution and revenge.”^[10] But it’s the only way forward. As C. S. Lewis once said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”^[11]

Matthew 1

As we heard in our reading from Matthew 18, Jesus told a frightening parable about this. A man owed and obscene amount of money to his king. 10,000 talents. Each talent was worth 15 years of wages, so this man would never be able to pay unless he lived 150,000 years. We’re talking about a debt as great as what Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter. Now the king wants to clear his accounts. Unable to do so, the man and his family are to be sold into slavery. He begs his creditor, the king, for forgiveness. Surprisingly, the king relents and forgives. 

But the man who was forgiven such a great sum, was unwilling to forgive another who owed him 100 denarii, or the equivalent of 100 days of work. The one forgiven the obscene amount wasn’t willing to forgive the one who owed a fraction of what he owed. And the king in the story, who represents God, is furious when he learns about this ingratitude. We don’t want God furious at us, do we?

All of us need forgiveness and to be forgivin

We stand in need of forgiveness, but we must also be willing to forgive. Failing to forgive, the cycle of revenge will only grow and eventually lead to our destruction. The good news is that God forgives us. Accept this incredible gift and strive to let others also experience this gift. For when we forgive, we are displaying a central characteristic of a loving and gracious God. And may we do it all so that God will have the glory. Amen. 

c2022

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^[1] The quote is attributed to Paul Tournier, The Whole Person in a Broken World. It was posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Brian_Scoles/status/1590754738794270720

^[2] William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 79. 

^[3] Luke 10:4. 

^[4] John Oller, The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution, Joe Barrett, narrator (2016).

^[5] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 30, 32. 

^[6] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christbook: Matthew 1-12 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 309. 

^[7] While I didn’t want to go down this path in this sermon, one of the problems I have with dispensationalism is that some theologians who hold such beliefs see the difficult teachings of Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount applying not to the present but to a future dispensation. This concept makes the commands in Jesus’ sermon easier for us to “ignore” in the present age because they are too hard, instead of seeing them as a goal which we may not successfully reach, but should still attempt.  See John H. Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism (1991) or Bruner, 310.

^[8] Matthew 16:19. 

^[9] Romans 3:23.

^[10] Willimon and Hauerwas, 84. 

^[11] This quote was quoted in What’s So Amazing about Grace?  See Yancey, 64. 

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Churches
November 6, 2022
The Lord’s Prayer, Part 4
Matthew 6:7-13 and 4:3-4

At the beginning of worship:

We don’t like to be dependent on anyone other than ourselves or perhaps our spouses. It’s the American way. Pull yourselves up by our bootstraps, be independent. But there’s a problem with such thinking. It runs counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In all things, we are dependent on the providence of a loving God. And we live in an economy that demands we depend on others. Could you make your own car or build your own road? But today, I want us to consider God’s providence.

We owe where we are in life to God. Think about it, we could have just as easily been born in Ethiopia or Ukraine. We could have been born with a birth defect or learning disability, contracted a terrible disease at an early age, had horrific parents, or been run over by a truck. Some of you may have experienced such, but even then, God sticks with us. If God was not present, where would we be? When we consider the blessings received in this life, most of us should be humbled. Look for the blessings you have and be grateful.

Before the reading of scripture:

As we continue to look at Lord’s Prayer, let me say a little more about this prayer as it appears in Matthew’s gospel. First, the prayer is almost exactly in the center of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. If you look at this sermon in the Greek, which runs three chapters in the gospel, there are 116 lines before the prayer and 114 after it.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus said a lot about prayer. Prayer is central to Jesus’ teachings. 

Jesus begins this prayer saying, “So you should pray like this.” For some reason, the New Revised Standard Version (along with some others), leave out the “You,” but in the Greek, Matthew emphasizes it. Jesus says his followers are to pray like this (this is the You in this sentence). We’re not to pray like those in other faith traditions. Nor is prayer just about putting in an order for stuff. We are to pray like Jesus.

A second point is that this prayer is given as a model. It’s not the law. We don’t have to pray these words, exactly. Instead, this prayer becomes a template for our prayers. “You should pray likethis.”^[1]

The fourth petition

Today, we’re looking at the fourth petition of this prayer. Remember, the Lord’s prayer can be divided into two equal parts. The first three petitions praise God and reorients us toward God. The second three petitions are about our needs. The first is for our daily bread. Jesus is interested in our well-being. We ask for bread even before forgiveness, which indicates the importance of our physical health. The word bread, in how it is used here, implies more than something made with wheat (which should be good news for any of you who may be gluten intolerant). 

While the word translated as bread literally means food, here it probably also refers to all we need to survive. And note, we ask for bread, not cake. We can be thankful when we’re given cake but should be satisfied with bread. We ask God to provide the basics, day in and day out.^[2]

 I am again reading the prayer from Matthew’s gospel along with a short passage from Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4. 

Read Matthew 6:9-13 and 4:3-4.

My work in a baker

I’ve shared with you before that I spent five years working in a wholesale bakery. I started there as a summer job, between my freshman and sophomore years of college. And I stayed on for a while. You know, there are plenty of jokes about working in the bakery. People say such things as “you must be rolling in the dough,” which isn’t the case literally or figuratively. 

The bakery industry involves tough work in a difficult business climate. Because bread goes bad fast, it must arrive fresh in the stores almost every day.^[3] Once I became a supervisor, I was on call always unless I was on vacation.

Daily bread and the wholesale bakery

Give us our daily bread, we pray. This took on a whole new meaning when daily bread was being shipped out in a dozen tractor trailers each evening. Or, as happened once, when we ran out of flour, we kept looking down the railroad tracks for the train bringing the hopper car full of flour, that was a day late. Even in modern times, there is no guarantee of daily bread.

The bakery was never idle more than one day at a time. Starting around midnight on Saturday night and going through late afternoon Sunday, we’d bake what was shipped out late Sunday afternoon and evening. Smaller trucks took the bread to stores where it was fresh on the shelves early Monday morning. The plant was shut down on Tuesday and Saturday, which was when our deep cleaning occurred. And if you had a breakdown, you worked until you got the product out because if it wasn’t on the shelves, the customer would buy another brand. 

Short shelf life for things on earth

This prayer, “give us our daily bread,” reminds us that things on earth have a short shelf-life. There is some debate over this petition as to if we’re asking for heavenly bread (as in the banquet in God’s kingdom) or bread to sustain our bodies on earth. Both are important, but I go with the later. If we don’t have food, we die. Surely, we are to store up our treasures in heaven, as Jesus recommends. Jesus acknowledges that there is a danger of accumulating even solid things on earth, which over time will rust away, or be consumed by moths, or stolen.^[4]

But Jesus also realizes that we need to eat. That’s why he fed the multitudes, a miracle found in all four of the gospels.^[5] And it’s also why the church’s mission from the beginning has been to feed people.  

Jesus, the “Bread from Heaven” also fed peopl

Yes, Jesus says he’s the “bread of life,” which we find in John’s gospel.^[6] But Jesus never says that we don’t need anything else. He fed the 5,000 because they were hungry. But Jesus didn’t want people to depend on him for just physical bread when he could give so much more. 

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness to turn a stone into bread, as we heard in our readings, he said one doesn’t not live by bread alone. Notice, he didn’t say, one does not live by bread! It goes without saying that we need food and the necessities of life. 

Such gifts we ask daily from God; otherwise, by hoarding, we may begin to think that we’re in charge of our abundance and see no need for God. We’d be like the guy in the parable who wanted to build larger barns, only to die before he could enjoy their benefits.^[7]

Communal aspects of bread

Yet, no one wants stale bread. And moldy bread isn’t good for us. Of course, today there are options such as freezing bread and pulling it out when needed, but that wasn’t the case in Jesus’ day.^[8] Bread was baked daily. Bread is also an example of a communal dependance on one another.^[9] Also notice, we pray for “OUR bread,” not “MY bread.” 

The baker depends on the farmer to grow the grain. Grain is hauled a great distance, even in Biblical times. Think of Joseph’s brothers taking grain from Egypt back to Canaan to feed their families.^[10] Before the baker can use the grain, a miller grounds it into flour. And the flour needs to be used soon or bugs begin to grow in it. If the baker in Jesus’ day was in a city, he’d have to have hire someone to bring him firewood for the oven. 

Bread, something we take for granted, requires a whole village. Few people can do all it takes to prepare bread, and if we could do all it takes, from growing grain to grinding, to kneading and preparing fires for baking, we’d have no time to do anything else.

Luther’s interpretation of this petition

In his catechism, the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther said that when we pray for our ‘daily bread,’ we are asking for everything necessary to have and enjoy our bread. Luther has a good point here. At the same time, Luther continues, we ask for protection from everything which would interfere with us enjoying our bread.^[11]

In his little book, A Simple Way to Pray, which Luther wrote for his barber, he includes a prayer based on this petition which thanks God for blessing our temporal and physical lives. Then Luther strangely continues, “Graciously grant us blessed peace. Protect us against war and disorder. Grant our dear emperor fortune and success against his enemies…”^[12]

War and bread prices

It may seem strange to pray for peace when praying for our daily bread, but perhaps, if you’ve been following world news, you’ll understand. Bread, even in ancient days, wasn’t something people took for granted. In Jesus’ day, much of the grain that fed Rome came from North Africa. War has a way of disturbing transportation arteries, making wheat and other food stuff more and more expensive. 

We’re seeing this now with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the world’s breadbaskets. A large percentage of the world’s grain and vegetable oil, especially in the poorer regions of African and the populated cities of Asia, come from Ukraine. If all a sudden the world lost 42% of its sunflower oil, 16% of its maize, 10% of its barley, and 9% of its wheat, which is the share of these products supplied by Ukraine in 2019, people will suffer.^[13]Grain is a commodity. Producers sell commodities where they can get the highest price. Therefore, a war thousands of miles away affects prices in our grocery stores. 

Conclusion

So, after reorienting our lives toward God, we ask God to care for us. We don’t pray to be indulged with goods or supplied with rich foods. Instead, we ask, day by day, for what we need to get by so we might enjoy this good world in which God allows us to live. And, as this prayer reminds us, we don’t pray, “give me” but “give us.” We want everyone to have enough that their stomachs might be satisfied. This prayer not only orients us on God; it also focuses us on the needs of our neighbors.

I hope you see this petition in a new way. First, we’re not just asking for our own needs, but for everyone’s need. Second, we ask this prayer daily, for we continue to need to be reoriented toward a gracious God from whom all good things flow.  Amen. 

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^[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christbook: Matthew 1-12 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 292-293.

^[2] Bruner, 306-308. For a detailed discussion of the word used for bread, see James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 334-335. 

^[3] When I worked in the bakery (1976-81) bread only stayed on the shelves three days. After a week, it would often mold. Today, it appears that bakers are using better preservatives than were available then, as a loaf of bread often last two weeks in our house.

^[4] Matthew 6:19-21.

^[5] Matthew 14:12-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-15.

^[6] John 6:35. John 6:35-59 discusses the crowd’s desire for more bread, but Jesus had already fed them when they were hungry and now wants them to seek not just temporal benefits but spiritual benefits of believing in him. 

^[7] Luke 12:16-21.

^[8] When I was working in the bakery in the late 1970s and early 80s, flash freezing was just coming into use. Unlike slow freezing, flash freezing keeps the dream from losing taste while frozen and when it thaws it is still fresh. I’m sure this is used even more today in the industry. 

^[9] William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 76.

^[10] Genesis 42.

^[11] Martin Luther, “Larger Catechism,” The Book of Concord (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 430.

^[12] Martin Luther, A Simple Way to Pray (Louisville, KY: W/JKP, 2000), 25. 

^[13] Figures from the BBC, “How Much Grain Has Been Shipped from Ukraine?”, November 3, 2022.

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Churches
October 30, 2022
The Lord’s Prayer, Part 3, “Thy will be done”
Matthew 6:9-13, 26:36-46

Before reading the scripture:

We continue to explore the Lord’s Prayer today, as we look at the third petition. As I suggested over the past two weeks, this prayer begins by reorienting us toward God. The first three petitions all focus on God, not us. 

The Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments

These petitions parallel the first table of the law. The first four commandments—which deal with not making or worshipping idols, not misusing God’s name, and keeping the Sabbath—all focus on our relationship with God.^[1] Likewise, the second half of the prayer focus on our needs roughly parallel the second half of the Ten Commandments. 

Calvin on the Lord’s Prayer

John Calvin, in writing about this prayer, notes that the beginning reminds us to keep God’s glory before our eyes. We’re not to look for advantages for ourselves. Instead, we want God’s Spirit to govern our hearts and teach us to love the things that please God.^[2]

Again, I will read the prayer from Matthew’s gospel, followed by the passage of Jesus praying in Gethsemane on the night of his betrayal.

Read Matthew 6:9-13 and Matthew 23:36-46

Friendly bantering and contempt

I have friends who are college football fans. Those in the SEC can be a little fanatical. Yesterday, the University of Georgia and the University of Florida met on the gridiron. All this week my Twitter feed has been clogged with their back-and-forth banter about the big game. Now it’s all over and I can get back to looking at pictures of nature and dogs. And congratulations to the Georgia Bulldogs. 

But now I’m starting to see similar bantering between Astros and Phillies fans as the World Series kicks off. It never ends. We are so sure of our side, which can be fun when it’s just a game… but when we take things too seriously and start demonizing others in real life, seeing our opinions as Gods and theirs as Satanic, we’ve crossed a line. In such cases, we develop an unhealthy case of contempt for others, which can be even more harmful to us than to those we perceive as enemies.^[3]

Lincoln’s Second Inauguration 

Dawn broke on March 4, 1865 with rain and storms. Early in the afternoon, dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit (a company which until a few days ago I didn’t realize existed back then), Abraham Lincoln stepped out of the porch of the unfinished capitol to deliver his second inaugural address.^[4] It was a short speech, especially for inaugural addresses, but one peppered with theological and Biblical references. 

This brief speech by a President who never joined a church is considered the most theological of all presidential inaugural addresses. In roughly 700 words, Lincoln tries to frame an understanding to what the country had endured in the Civil War while offering a vision for a better future.

A little over half-way through, he said: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.” Sound familiar? We gotta be careful in claiming God to be on our side.

Lincoln continues, hinting at his own convictions: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.” 

God’s will may be different

The Almighty has His own purposes… Ponder these words… Then Lincoln continues: 

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away… Yet, if God wills that it continues until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

Lincoln then offered a vision for a hopeful future as he closed and as the sun broke through the clouds: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”^[5]

Humble Abe

Honest Abe. He may have been the last of the honest politicians. While he felt he was on the right side, he was not going to second guess God. He always allowed for the possibility that in some things he would be wrong. When he first entered politics, his moniker was “Humble Abe,” and he lived up to it. 

“Your will be done” is not a natural prayer

“Your will be done on earth as in heaven…” we’re taught to pray. Like Lincoln admitting that he may not be completely right, I don’t think praying for God’s will be done is a natural prayer. We seem to think we know what is right and what should be done. But do we? Are we willing to so surrender to God that we give up our own beliefs and desires? We must be taught to pray this prayer. Otherwise, our prayers will only focus on our wants and needs. 

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying

In the Garden of Gethsemane, we witness the humanity of Jesus as he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” The cup is a metaphor for death. Think of the agony facing our Savior. He’s leaving behind his disciples who are unable to support him in his time of need. He knows that as the sun rises in the morning he’ll face the worse sort of torture, punishment, and eventually death. 

Matthew doesn’t show us a Jesus heroically marching to his death. Jesus in the garden depicts a normal man. He’s full of fear and anxiety.^[6] No one would want to endure what Jesus faced. But Jesus ends his prayer with a humble acknowledgement, “yet, not what I want but what you want.” “Thy will be done.”

A bold prayer

Praying as Jesus taught, as one of my professors said in a commentary on this passage, “can be costly when a serious decision is being contemplated.”^[7] Are we so bold? Are we willing to accept God’s will and to seek it in our lives? If we believe God is with us, we can endure anything, but that requires faith. 

Martin Luther, the great Reformer, understood us to pray in the first petition for pure teaching. In the second petition, we seek trust in this teaching. And in the third petition, we ask for perseverance to carry out God’s will.^[8]

The “postscript” to the first half of the prayer

The first “table” of the prayer, focuses on God, ends with a postscript. This can grammatically be applied to all the first three petitions. “As on earth as in heaven” goes for the hallowing of God’s name, the fulfillment of God’s kingdom, and God’s will being done. Think of it this way: all three petitions are already done in heaven. We don’t ask to be snatched up from earth, but for what’s happening in heaven to come to earth.

Nor in praying this prayer, do we ask God to help us do these things. While implied, we leave it up to God to determine how. We ask God, by whatever means God determines, to fulfill these three requests.^[9]

I’ve already alluded to in this series,^[10] heaven and earth are to be brought together. This happens at the end of Revelation.^[11] We pray for it to be fulfilled.

Conclusion

In this prayer, we trust that God is good and will give us what we need. In praying this petition, the focus is on God and not us. Instead of demanding what we want from God, we position or reorient ourselves to accept and to do God’s will in our lives. Amen.

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^[1] Exodus 20:1-17 or Deuteronomy 5:1-22

^[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559, Ford Lewis Battles’ translation), III.xx.43.

^[3] For a study on the impact of contempt, see Arthur C. Brooks, Love your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt (HarperRow, 2019). For my review on this book, see https://fromarockyhillside.com/2019/04/love-your-enemies/.   

^[4] For the weather and the “Brooks Brother’s coat, see the prologue in John Meachan, And There was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (New York: Random House, 2022), xxiv.

^[5] For a detailed exegesis of this speech, see Ronald C. White, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002).

^[6] Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation, a Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 300-301.

^[7] Hare, 302. 

^[8] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christbook, Matthew 1-12, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 304. 

^[9] Ibid, 304-5.

^[10] See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2022/10/the-lords-prayer-thy-will-be-done/

^[11] Revelation 20 & 21.

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Churches
October 23, 2022,
The Lord’s Prayer, Part 2
Matthew 6:9-13, 22:1-10

At the beginning of worship:

In his book on the church, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that we are called by God into the church. This call extends to us before we ever enter the community’s common life. Therefore, we enter “not as demanders, but as thankful recipients.”^[1]

Gratitude is a quality all Christians should have, but we live in a fallen state which causes us to create our own idols and to follow the wrong path. Therefore, we need to foster gratitude and one way we do this is to pray like Jesus. The opening of the Lord’s Prayer, as we saw last week and will continue to explore today, begins by reorienting our lives toward God. Prayer is not about us demanding from God what we want; it begins with us responding to God’s gracefulness with gratitude and thanksgiving.

Before reading the Scriptures:

Last week we began our look at the Lord’s Prayer with the Lukan version. This week, we’re going to look at the prayer from Matthew’s gospel, which is a little different. Both prayers are short, but Matthew adds a few more words and petitions to his prayer. Both gospels have the second petition, “your kingdom come.” If you remember from last week, I’m working through each of the petitions of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray. 

Kingdom is a political term

Kingdom is a political term. The “United Kingdom” came about with the merger of England and Wales with Scotland. A kingdom is an area under the control of a king or a government. This is true for God’s kingdom, too. Except that God’s kingdom encompasses all earthly kingdoms and the cosmos itself. For God is sovereign over all, including those in rebellion. 

But God’s kingdom is different

You know, we got this war going on in Ukraine, where Russia tries to impose its rule. Russia wants to assume power over another nation, bring it under its control. That’s how kingdoms work here on earth. While God already has such power, our God doesn’t work within human constraints. God has this crazy way of making the weak strong, the last being the first, death resurrecting into life. God’s kingdom will be fulfilled, but God’s ways are not our ways. God’s time doesn’t equate to our time. And God’s politics are not our politics. Instead, the old life and the old ways must give way to God’s method.  

Leaning into God’s future

Our prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” is our way of leaning into God’s future, of longing for God to fulfill history so that we’re all under the lordship of Jesus Christ. There is an eschatological element in this prayer. While we can prepare ourselves, we can’t bring about God’s kingdom on our own. And if we assume we can do so, we are mistaking our desires for God’s will. This is the problem with Christian nationalism (which in my opinion isn’t Christian). Only God can bring about God’s kingdom.^[2]

Today, I am going to read the Lord’s Prayer from the 6^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel. In addition, I’ll also read a parable of the kingdom found in Matthew 22. 

Read Matthew 6:9-13 and Matthew 22:1-10

Martin Luther addresses the second petition of the prayer with a story about a poor beggar. A rich and mighty emperor invites this beggar to ask for whatever he desires, promising that he was willing to give the beggar great and princely gifts. The beggar being hungry yet foolish, only asks for a bowl of broth. Luther suggests the beggar is rightly considered a rogue and a scoundrel who mocks his imperial majesty’s command and is unworthy to come into his presence. Imagine how we dishonor God when we are invited to ask for such wonderous gifts and only seek something for our stomach.^[3] And what more of a blessing can we ask for than experiencing God’s peaceful kingdom?

This prayer is not about us

“Thy kingdom come” reminds us early in the prayer that this is not all about us. Our lives are first about God, who gives us every breath. And we focus our prayer first, not on what we desire or think we need, but on God’s promises. 

This morning, we opened with a call to worship taken from Isaiah 65. At the end of Isaiah, God has the prophet proclaim a new peaceful kingdom. Jesus, himself, speaking in the synagogue in Nazareth, interprets Isaiah’s envision kingdom in his own life.^[4]But how does this kingdom come about?  As N. T. Wright asks in a commentary on this prayer, “How can the Prince of Peace defeat evil if he has to abandon Peace itself in order to do so?”^[5]

The coming of God’s kingdom

This request for God’s kingdom to come was answered at Easter. God triumphed over evil. God’s love for the world shined through the wickedness of an empire that put to death an innocent man. As Wright goes on to say, “in the unique life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the whole cosmos has turned the corner from darkness to light.”^[6]

How Jesus fulfills prayer

Wright offers two metaphors as ways of thinking of how Jesus fulfils this prayer. He’s a medical genius who invents a wonder drug like penicillin. We are the doctors, who are both healed by this drug and then use it to heal others. The second is that Jesus is a musical genius who writes the greatest musical score of all times. And we are the musicians who perform this work before the world. 

Wright concludes his thoughts on these metaphors writing: “The kingdom did indeed come with Jesus; but it will fully come when the world is healed, when the whole creation finally joins in the song. But it must be Jesus’ medicine; it must be Jesus’ music. And the only way to be sure is to pray his prayer.”^[7]

So, when we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we not only want God’s kingdom to be fully realized, but we also imply we’ll do our part. 

Parable of the Kingdom: The Wedding Banquet

The parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, which I read, speaks of God’s coming kingdom. The banquet is for the wedding of the son, whom we can identify as Jesus. In fact, the wedding imagery plays out through scripture, with Christ being the bridegroom, as earth and heaven are brought together in a marriage union.^[8] In this parable, the king’s friends offend him by refusing to honor his son. In response, the king opens this banquet up to those normally not invited to such functions. Come, and enjoy the party, he says to us.  Or, if we’re already in, God sends us out to invite others. 

The Kingdom of God is a party in which unlikely people, those like us who don’t belong, are invited out of divine generosity. Jesus makes it possible for us to attend. As one commentor noted, this is why the church can be a real pain. Jesus invites all kinds of reprobates to the party.^[9] The church consists of those called by Jesus, not chosen by us. Instead of looking around and complaining, we should be honored and thankful we’re included.

We don’t wait idly for the kingdom

While only God can bring about his kingdom, and we’re to wait and have patience, we don’t idly wait on the sidelines. God’s kingdom is not just something in our hearts. It involves a reversal of the way things work in the world. Yet, we still have our own internal work we can be doing. John Calvin writes that “God sets up his Kingdom by humbling the world, but in different ways.” Some of us he tames, others he breaks our pride.^[10]

While God’s kingdom for which we long is communal, it also involves our internal work. We should invite God to help us examine ourselves so that we make daily progress in becoming more Christ-like and worthy of the Kingdom. We must draw back from worldly corruption and visions of kingdoms that reflect our values and not God’s. 

Conclusion

So, we pray for God’s kingdom, and we strive to be worthy of it. We do this knowing we’re like the bystanders invited into the wedding party. We are not worthy of inclusion on our own, but only because of the graciousness of our Savior Jesus Christ. May his name be forever praised and may we truly long for God’s kingdom to come upon a healed earth. Amen. 

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^[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship, John W. Doberstein, translator (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1954), 28.

^[2] For an understanding of Christian Nationalism and its dangers check out “The Resilient Pastor” podcast with Russell Moore on Christian Nationalism and Public Theology: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/11-russell-moore-on-christian-nationalism-public-theology/id1607415483?i=1000579340759  The discussion on Christian Nationalism begins around 23 minutes. 

^[3] Martin Luther, “Larger Catechism,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 426.  

^[4] Luke 4:16-21. 

^[5] N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 15.

^[6] Wright, 17.

^[7] Wright, 18. 

^[8] See Revelation 19:7-9, 21:1-2.

^[9] William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life (Nashville; Abingdon, 1996), 59.

^[10] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Battle’s translation, 1559 edition), III.xx.42.