The lord’s prayer: We have needs too!
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 23, 2003
Matthew 6: 7-13
Professor and Preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, shares this story about her granddaughter: “I have a seven-year-old granddaughter by marriage named Madeline. She is blond, skinny and tall for her age. Last May she came to celebrate her birthday. Dressed in her favorite blue bell-bottoms, Madeline watched the candles on her cake burn down while we sang to her. Then she leaned over to blow them out without making a wish.
“’Aren’t you going to make a wish?’ her mother asked.
“’You have to make a wish,’ her grandfather said. Madeline looked as if someone had just run over her cat.
“’I don’t know why I keep doing this,’ she said to no one in particular.
“’Doing what?’ I asked.
“’This wishing thing,’ she said, looking at the empty chair at the table. 'Last year I wished my best friend wouldn’t move away but she did. This year I want to wish that my mommy and daddy would get back together…’
“’That’s not going to happen,’ her mother said, ‘so don’t waste your wish on that.’
“’I know it’s not going to happen,’ Madeline said, ‘so why do I keep doing this?’
Says Taylor, “No one answered her. It would have been insulting under the circumstances, since her question was better than any response we could have given her. Why do any of us keep wishing for things we know won’t happen. Why do we keep tossing the coins of our hearts’ desires into pools of still water that swallow them up without a sound?”
To expand on that question, why do we keep offering up prayer concerns here each Sunday morning? We pray for healing and loved ones and friends still get sick and die. We pray for peace in a nation and world hell bent for war. We pray and pray and pray…and does anything really change? Do we get any answers?
“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 the last three petitions of the Lord’s prayer, there is a noticeable change in tone. The focus shifts from God to the needs of God’s people…”Hey, God, I have needs too!” The three phrases that were directed toward aspects of God’s character – your name, your kingdom, your will – are now matched by three phrases that ask God for help – give us bread, forgive us, rescue us.
I’m reminded of an old cartoon which shows a little boy, pajama-clad, preparing to mount the stairs to his bedroom. Just before he goes up, he calls to his parents, “I’m going to say my prayers now. Anybody want anything?” Is that how we are to view these last three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer? Jesus saying, “I’m about to wrap things up now; let’s finish by telling God what we want.” Let’s first take a brief look at each of those petitions.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Is this simply a request for bread? “God I need; you give!” Perhaps. Obviously we need food to make it through each day. Or, at a deeper level, could it be recognition, an awareness, that human life depends upon all the daily gifts from the gracious hand of God? No matter how much we have, we would be lost if God were to cease to provide for our needs. As much as I might want to believe that I can take care of myself, that I don’t need anything or anyone but me, the petition for daily bread is a reminder that without God’s grace, it can all turn to ashes.
“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” This is a plea to God to forgive our sins. “Debts” is synonymous with “sins.” Now this can be a difficult passage because to ask God to forgive us as we have forgiven others makes it sound like we get from God only as much forgiveness as we give – kind of a “heavenly bookkeeper.” But forgiveness is never a matter of bookkeeping. Elsewhere Jesus makes it clear that it is the very nature of God to be generous and merciful and forgiving. God’s forgiveness does not somehow depend on our forgiveness.
Commenting on this passage, New Testament professor, Thomas Long, writes, “Being a citizen of God’s kingdom, like being a citizen of a nation, is not just an idea; it is an identity, a way of life.” Now remember – the Lord’s prayer is in the middle of the Sermon on Mount; and Jesus is talking about life in the kingdom. What does life in the kingdom look like? Long continues, “To be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven is to see the world in kingdom ways and to practice the customs of that kingdom, such as forgiveness…Thus forgiveness becomes part of a living relationship with God and others…Forgiveness is to the Christian life like breathing; constant and life-giving. What we breathe in from God’s mercy we express to others. Inhale. Exhale. Forgive us, as we forgive; as we forgive, forgive us.” Again, it is what life in the kingdom is all about.
“And do not bring us to the time of trial.” Or the more familiar, “Lead us not into temptation….” Another tough passage. Why would God purposely cause us to be tempted? “Well, let’s see, how many trials and temptations can I put in Gene Nelson’s path today? I know, I’ll let him know that the steelhead are really going to start biting in the Russian River, about 10:30 A.M. next Sunday!” I don’t think God works this way, certainly not the God revealed by Jesus Christ. Rather I think this is a prayer to God to just hold us together, to give us strength to be faithful disciples in a difficult world. In the words of Long, “The best way to understand the petition, ‘do not bring us to the time of trial,’ is to envision the congregation heading out the front door of the church to do God’s work in a storm-tossed world and whispering the prayer, ‘Keep us safe out there, O God…and bring us home at the end of the day even stronger in faith then when we went out.’”
Thinking of these last three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer reminds me of one of my favorite theologians, Snoopy. He is sitting under an outside water faucet with his empty water bowl in his mouth. He just sits there, but no water is forthcoming from the faucet. Suddenly it begins to rain – it pours. The rain fills his bowl. He sets it down and takes a long drink. As he walks away, he says, “I’m going to have to think about that one for a while.”
That’s what I would like to do with the remainder of this sermon. Rather then spending more time on the three specific petitions of the prayer, each of which is a sermon in itself, I want to think with you for a while, think about the larger question of just what it means to come to God with our petitions, to ask God for something specific. It would seem that Jesus gives us permission in this prayer, indeed encourages us to do so.
Let’s return to Madeline and her protest – “I know it’s not going to happen, so why do I keep doing this?” Indeed, why? Why do we keep at it when we are so often disappointed; why does Jesus seem to encourage us to keep at it? “Give us this day our daily bread.” Is there any efficacy at all in this kind of prayer?
Reflecting on her granddaughter’s despair, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “What I want Madeline to know is that the best thing about prayer is the relationship itself. Whether or not she gets what she asks for, I want her to keep asking. I want her to pester God the same way she pesters her mother, thinking of 12 different ways to plead her case. I want her to long for God the same way she longs for her father, holding fast to him even when his chair at the table is empty. When she complains that none of this does any good, I am going to ask her to tell me the difference between how she feels while she is praying verses how she feels when she thinks about giving up. If I am lucky, she is going to tell me that she feels more alive when she is praying.”
Concludes Taylor, “There is more to prayer than the answer to prayer. There is the pray-er, us, the one who is shaped by the praying. The most important time to pray is when your prayers seem meaningless. What are you going to do? Take to your bed with a box of Kleenex? Forget what matters to you altogether? No. Every day of your life, you are going to get up, wash your face, and go and ask for what you want. You are going to trust the process, regardless of what comes of it, because the process itself gives you life. One day when Madeline asks me outright whether prayer really works, I am going to say, ‘Oh, sweetie, of course it does. It keeps our hearts chasing after God’s heart. It’s how we bother God and how God bothers us back. There’s nothing that works any better than this.’”
Relationship – us bothering God and God bothering us right back. I think that really gets to the heart of these last three petitions of the Lord’s prayer and indeed of all the petitions we offer in our prayers. Because what lies at the heart of all things and determines their workings must finally be described in personal terms, not impersonal ones. For people of faith, this universe is not some abstract, mechanical monster; not ultimately a gigantic machine heartlessly grinding away at some appointed task. No, at its very deepest level, reality is personal. So when we pray, what we really are saying is that we are staking on lives on personal relationships – with each other, but more significantly, with God. We are affirming our faith, as you have heard me say before, that at the very heart of things there is a heart. This finally is the meaning of our prayers - giving ourselves over to personal encounter.
William James must have listened to our children’s sermon today because he once said, “We are saved by making connections.” That is what the closing petitions of the Lord’s prayer are; indeed that is what all our prayers are…prayers for connection - opening ourselves to that which is life-giving, nourishing, gracious in our universe. In the words of seminary professor, Thomas Parker, “With or without words, the desire to connect with something divine fuels our need for prayer. When we are blessed, we need to give thanks, and when we are guilty, we need to express remorse. When we are cut off, we need to cry out for communion, and when we are so crowded, to seek solitude. Is there anything human that cannot be made into prayer? The desire for communion with God underlies every prayer and the heartfelt answer to prayer is communion with God. An alive sense of the presence of God satisfies the restless heart.” We make our heartfelt prayer requests, and in response, God provides God. The very being of God. And much to my amazement, I discover that that is just about all I need.
In a small woodland chapel at a Benedictine monastery in Massachusetts, a man kneels in prayer. Before him is a row of photographs and a list of names. Among the photos is a picture of his wife and on the list are the names of many others for whom he offers daily prayers. The names and pictures create a living picture of the ceaseless intercession that binds all of us together in the communion of saints. Does it work? Who knows? But it seems to me that it is an experiment worth repeating, again and again and again, even if its final outcome will be known only in heaven. “Give us this day, our daily bread.” Let’s keep at it. Us, bothering God, and God bothering us back.