Everyone who prays has
their favorite prayer, or their favorite way of praying. Some like to use prayerbooks, praying the
words of others, and that's perfectly fine, as long as you listen to the
words. Some feel it’s not praying at all
unless you use your own words, and that's fine too: there's room for more than
one view of such an expansive topic. The
kind of prayer most of us are most familiar with is the petitionary prayer,
wherein we ask God for something—in the name of Jesus—like healing or peace or
safety. Some of these are fine: they can
express our hearts’ desires, our yearning to be whole, and our ineffable trust
in divine grace and goodness. Some go a
little overboard, though, and express our selfishness and lack of understanding
instead. My favorite example is the
prayer of Jabez, which was a thing about a decade ago. The book of the same name was pretty hot for
awhile on the Times non-fiction list . . . at that time, doing some internet
research in prayer—because, you know, the internet is such a spiritual place—an ad for the book caught my attention. Here's what it said: “Dr. Bruce Wilkinson . .
. takes readers to First Chronicles 4:10 to discover how they can release God's
miraculous power and experience the blessings God longs to give each of us. . . . Readers who commit to offering the same
prayer on a regular basis will find themselves extravagantly blessed by God,
and agents of His miraculous power, in everyday life.” Then, down at the bottom, came the caveat: “May
have a slight remainder mark.”
Hmm. Seems the prayer of Jabez—or at least the book
expounding it’s virtues—had a shelf-life, seems like sales had leveled off, tanked even . . . which strikes me as
odd, really, because if it really worked as advertised—and would the President
of Walk Thru the Bible Ministries lie?—if it worked as advertised, wouldn’t it
be a hot seller even today? (I’ll avoid
the obvious joke about it making one
guy rich, anyway . . .)
Unlike the prayer of
Jabez, the prayer of Jesus has been
going strong for almost 2000 years, it’s recited in churches day after day, week
after week, year after year, and shows no sign of going out of style . . . the
prayer is said daily in the majority
of Christian churches, which are Catholic or Anglican, and on Easter Sunday 2007 it was estimated
that 2 billion Protestant, Catholic,
and Eastern Orthodox Christians read, recited, or sang it in hundreds of
languages in houses of worship of all shapes and sizes. Why? Well, this
passage—and the one over in Matthew—tells
us: Jesus commands us to say it. He
doesn’t say “When you pray I suggest
you do it this way,” or “it’d be good
if you said these words,” he says “When you pray, say these words.” We are commanded to pray, first of all, and
pray this prayer in particular.
It wasn’t unusual in
those days for each group of believers, each faction of followers of a
particular spiritual path, each coterie of disciples of a particular teacher, to
have its own prayer. Thus, John the Baptist’s
followers would have had one, though it’s been lost to antiquity, and maybe even leaders of other factions within
Christianity, like Apollos or Paul . . . and so it really is—as I have been known to say by way of introduction—the family
prayer of Christians everywhere . . .
It’s addressed to the
head of the 1st Century family, the Father, and we shouldn’t lose
sight of the fact . . . equally, we shouldn’t get hung up on the maleness of
the image, either . . . in the first-century world, the head of the family was by definition the father, or if he was dead, his
brother or another male family member, and though times have changed, and we
recognize that women are often the heads of families, the larger point is that
the head of the family is the provider .
. . it’s the
original trickle-down economy . . . in fact, the word economy is from the Greek
for home . . . the pater familias—and
nowadays it might just as well be mater
familias—is the provider for the family.
And the family prayer
of Christians everywhere is addressed to that parental figure, that provider,
and it’s first and foremost a request for—and acknowledgement of—that provision. It’s a petitionary prayer, every clause is a
petition, an asking . . . and one surprising thing about it is, it’s not
particularly polite . . . there’s no messing around, no namby-pamby “please give us this day our daily bread”
or “if you’re not doing anything else forgive
us our sins” or—my favorite—“if it’s your will
thy kingdom come.” It’s straight out
“hallowed be your name . . . your kingdom come . . . give us each day our daily
bread” . . . in the Greek they’re in the imperative tense, as in “these things
are our due” . . . give them to us . . . and this I think points out some basic
features of this prayer, and perhaps prayers in general . . . first of all,
it’s expected that God will
provide. That’s God’s job, God’s the pater (and mater) familias.
For that reason, you don’t have
to be shy. You don’t have to sidle
up crab-like and whisper all namby-pamby “if it’s your will, Lord,
take away this bunion” or “heal Aunt Tilly.”
As a good head of the family, it’s God’s job to know what we need, and to provide it for us . . .
Have you ever watched a little bird, the
most helpless, dependent thing you’ve ever seen? It can’t fly—if it moves an inch, it’ll
plummet to the ground—it can’t thermo-regulate well yet, so without mama it’ll
freeze to death, and it certainly can’t feed itself, so it just sits there,
squawking, wholly dependent? No
politeness, no deference, just need . . .
and I think that’s an image of us in the face of God . . . like a scrawny
little ol’ bird, waiting on the mater
familias. And
this brings up another point . . . if
God knows what’s God’s will, and
knows how your petitions will be answered, what’s the good of asking about ‘em
in the first place? And I think the answer to that question is seen in the very confidence with which we are told to ask . . . your will be done,
forgive us our sins, hallowed by your
name . . . no ifs, ands, or buts
about it, we’re to be confident of
the answers. It helps us to have faith,
to have reliance on God.
Biblical scholar Bruce
Chilton notes that this prayer is translatable to Aramaic, the language that
Jesus originally spoke it in. Chilton’s translation into Aramaic goes
something like this: “Abba, Your Name will be sanctified, your kingdom will
come, give me today the bread that is coming and release me my debts.” Rather than emphasizing the command of the
imperative in Greek, Chilton focuses on the future perfect, on the affirmations
of core beliefs. And as Theologian Mike
Hardin points out, each petition is demonstrable
from Jesus’ life: (1) He uses the word
Abba all over the four gospels; (2) his doing of God’s will hallows—makes holy—God’s name; (3) he
constantly demonstrates, in word and deed, Kingdom of God on earth; (4) he reveals
the provision of daily bread in both the feeding of the five thousand and the
Lord’s Supper; (5) forgiveness of sin is shot through his miracles and
parables; (6) and deliverance from evil and vanquishing of the evil one is seen
in the wilderness and on the cross.
Thus, the Lord’s prayer
is not so much a request for these
things, but a statement of Jesus’ core affirmations, a statement of his theological beliefs and, thus, our own.
And what is obvious over and above everything else is a supreme confidence in God, a dependence upon God’s providence. When we pray as Jesus commanded, we are
restating our trust in a good God who provides for our needs, who will give us this day what we need this day, not this day what we need tomorrow, who will forgive us our sins as we forgive
the debts of others (note the in this, Luke’s version, God forgives sins if we forgive debts—that oughta make us all
nervous).
And my point is, that kind of trust is
hard to pull off. We’re all Marlboro women
and men, individualists used to doing for ourselves, used to being in charge.
It’s foreign to our natures—many of us, anyway—to depend on God for
anything, to not be in control of our process, our stuff. It’s hard for us to
give up knowing where we’re going, to get the next day’s food or plan or piece of the puzzle, on the next day, not this day, ‘cause we like knowing we’re in charge. I know it’s true for me . . . the hardest thing I have to do is—as the old saying goes—let go and let God. A lot of pastors are control freaks, and for
good reason . . .the buck stops here,
brothers and sisters, and what if the church doesn’t grow? I mean, what if it doesn’t work out?
What if there’s not enough money to pay the light bills or the gas bills
or make the payments on the new bus?
What if membership starts to decline,
rather than rise, what if we don’t get more of those beloved Young Families
With Children? What then?
It’s hard
to practice what we preach, to be dependent upon God, or just as bad, an agent of God . . . it’s hard to do it in
the church and it’s hard in everyday life . . . it’s hard to let someone else
be in charge, to lay our future in someone else’s hands . . . that’s why we
have short-term plans, long-term plans, four-week plans, four-year plans . . . we’ve gotta know exactly where we are, where we’re going,
what we’re gonna do when we get there
. . . we hate not being in charge, we
fear the consequences, we fear the results . . .
And right about now, I’m thinking that maybe—just maybe—that’s why Jesus commands us—not asks us, commands us—to
pray this way? Do you think maybe he gets us, that he’s got us all figured
out, that he knows where we live? Maybe he knows that if we repeat it long
enough, we’ll believe it—after all, every politician
knows it, why shouldn’t he? And it’s a well-known theological principle,
the one behind liturgy of all kinds— in Latin lex orandi—the rule of prayer—is the soil of lex credendi, the rule of faith.
Prayer is the foundation, the soil of belief . . . We believe what we
say, and we say what we believe, and one feeds the other, over and over and
over.
God is
in charge, and the trick in doing God’s ministry
is to recognize that fact and get out of the way. We have to do something we’re not real good
at in this life—hopefully, we’ll be
better at it in the next—we have to be dependent
on and trusting of the Lord. We have to give our lives and our loves and
our direction over into God’s care, into the hands of God’s Holy Spirit. We have to trust—sometimes quite against our
inclinations, I know—in God’s providence, rest in God’s hands, give over control
into God’s good graces.
Brothers and sisters, I am convinced that as
this church is renewed, it is and will be God who does the renewing, not
us. And the results—our look and shape
and ministry—will be what God wants it to look like, not us. What we have to do is put it in God’s hands,
and until we do that, until we trust
in God, we’re working at cross-purposes to the pater familias, to our Provider in Heaven . We have
to pray the prayer of Jesus, not the prayer of Jabez, the prayer of Jesus, and
realize that God will provide, God will take care of Greenhills Community
Church, Presbyterian, God’s will will be
done, on Earth and in Heaven. Amen.
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