A Sermon preached on August 9th,
Pentecost XI, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
2 Samuel 18:5-9,
15, 31-33, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, John 6:35, 41-51
Andy Pickersgill
recently posted an article on our congregation’s Facebook page entitled “Why I
Am (Still) An Episcopalian”.[1]
It’s well worth reading. One of the author’s arguments was that he values “how
our exposition of scripture is not centered on the favorite passages of our
preachers, but on the lectionary. Every week, God is allowed to speak into our
lives through scripture that the Spirit has ordained we read, not through the
strained vision of someone's pet theological peeve.” I agree – though when your
Gospel passage comes from the same chapter of John for the third week running
and you are confronted yet again with the image of Jesus as the bread of life, and
you don’t just want to rehash last week’s sermon, you do begin to wonder what
the Spirit was thinking!
So I’ve decide to
talk about the Lord’s Prayer. No this is not my “strained vision” or my “pet
theological peeve.” When I was reading both the Epistle and the Gospel I felt
that they both inform and illustrate the Lord’s Prayer and that they are
informed and better understood through the lens of that prayer. Neither Paul
nor John have a version of the Lord’s Prayer in their writings. It only occurs
in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels in slightly different versions, but I still
hear echoes of the prayer when Paul tells his readers to “forgive one another,
as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32) or of course in Jesus repeated
use of the image of bread – of life, from heaven – to describe himself and his
gift to the world. So give me the benefit of the doubt on this one please.
The Lord’s Prayer
is so important to us Anglicans that we use it at every single service in our
Prayer Book. Both in Matthew and Luke, Jesus introduces the prayer with the
words, “Pray then in this way” (Matthew 6:9) or “When you pray, say.” (Luke
11.2) As good Anglicans you all know the phrase “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex
Vivendi.” As we pray, so we believe, and (in the expanded version) so we live.”
So too Jesus’ instructions are not just about a prayer, but about faith and
action – as are the passages we heard read this morning.
Our Father who art in heaven
God is not some
distant being, only to be approached with awe-filled reverence. Addressing God
as Father, as Jesus refers to God both in “His” prayer and in the passage from
John’s Gospel – the Father who sent me (John 6:45) – or as Paul does indirectly
in Ephesians (5:1) when he says that we are all God’s beloved children,
transforms our relationship. It becomes a relationship based on fully intentional
and completely unconditional love. One newer translation of the Lord’s Prayer –
from the New Zealand Prayer Book – begins “Loving God in whom is
heaven.” Heaven is not some place far away and in the distant future. We are
not addressing a distant, absent, disinterested God. We are addressing a God
who is passionately interested in us and heaven is ours to have and to experience
in that God when we partake of the living bread of God’s Son.
Hallowed be thy name
Later in John’s
Gospel, as his Passion approaches, Jesus will call out “Father, glorify your
name!" and a voice from heaven will say, "I have glorified it, and
will glorify it again." (John 12:28) It is in and through and by following
Jesus that we glorify and hallow God’s name. For as Paul writes in his letter
to the Philippians (2:10): “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow,” Jesus
is also the name of God.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.
It is the Father’s
will that we follow Jesus. That is what Jesus means when he refers to people
being drawn by the Father to come to Jesus. (John 6:44) No one is excluded from
this invitation – all shall all be taught by God and everyone who has heard and
learned from the Father comes to Jesus. (6:45) But we have to listen of
course and so we pray that God’s will be done. In his version of the Lord’s
Prayer, the Quaker writer Parker Palmer translates the second part of this
petition as “let heaven and earth become one.” That is when God’s kingdom
finally and fully comes. Until then and on the way to that fulfillment, we are
called, in the words of the letter to the Ephesians, to bring a little of
heaven to earth by becoming “imitators of God, as beloved children, and living
in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” (5:1-2)
Give us this day our daily bread
We’ve heard plenty
about bread this and the last two weeks. Of course we need physical bread and
other food and drink to survive and a key part of God’s kingdom coming is
making sure that the food and drink already available are justly and fairly
shared. But the daily bread of this prayer and of Jesus’ teaching in John is
more. It is bread from heaven, it is consumable love. In the words of the
psalmist (Psalm 34:8) we are called to “taste and see the goodness of the
Lord.”
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who
trespass against us
In Parker Palmer’s
version, paraphrasing the prophet Amos (5:24), this petition is beautifully
translated as “let forgiveness flow like a river.” Forgiveness is at the core
of Christianity. The Cross is love and forgiveness. In Ephesians (4:32) Paul
reverses the order of the Lord’s Prayer to become “forgive one another, as God
in Christ has forgiven you,” which makes the connection to Christ’s fragrant
sacrifice on the cross all the more visible. Without forgiveness there is no
access to the altar and to the bread of life. As Jesus says in Matthew
(5:23-24) we must first be reconciled to our brother or sister before we can come
to the altar.
Lead us not into temptation
There are lots of
concrete temptations listed in Ephesians (4:25-29) for us to resist: Putting
away falsehood, not letting the sun go down on our anger, not letting it
possess us, not stealing, avoiding evil talk. Why these ones particularly?
Because they destroy community and communion, they do not build up the body of
Christ, the living temple of God’s Spirit that we are supposed to be, instead
they endanger and weaken to. Most of all we pray to God to help us resist grieving
the Holy Spirit of God by acting against all that the seal, the stamp that we
received at Baptism stands for.
But deliver us from evil.
Or in the
translation of the New Zealand Prayer Book: “From the grip of all that is evil,
free us.” As Paul tells the Christians in Rome (Romans 6:23), “the wages of sin
– of evil – is death,” and it is death that we pray to be delivered from and that
according to Jesus’ promise we are delivered from in him: “Whoever eats of this
bread will live forever.” (John 6:51) The great thing is that the eternal life
that Jesus promises us begins right now. Eternal life is the quality of life, it
means sharing the inner life of Jesus, a life that is on offer at once to
anyone who believes in him. It is a life that goes on after death. It is the
life of the age to come, the kingdom to come that we pray for in Jesus’ prayer.
This new life is the bread that Jesus gives for the life of the world. It is on
offer every week here at his table. So come and be transformed to live in love,
as Christ loved us and as he teaches us in the prayer we say in his name.
Amen
[1]
http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Why-I-Am-Still-An-Episcopalian-Greg-Garrett-07-31-2015.html#.VcAMuw0PSxV.facebook
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