Eugene Cho (Korean pastor in the USA) on the scandal of indifference and the need to pray:

prayer for hostages in afghanistan – day 11 « beauty and depravity

Technorati Tags: EugeneCho, SouthKorea, hostages, Afghanistan, Taliban, prayer

Luke 11:1-4

Introduction
Today is one of those rare Sundays when you have the misfortune to hear me
preach twice. Not only do we have this morning service, I am also the preacher
at tonight’s united service. That means two things: firstly, you have advance
notice, and if I see fewer than usual Methodists present this evening, I shall
guess why! Secondly, it means I have to write two sermons for today!

Now since both services are taking today’s Lectionary Gospel
reading of Luke 11:1-13, I
have decided to divide the passage in the following way. This morning I shall
explore the first four verses, where we have Luke’s account of the Lord’s
Prayer. This evening I shall look at verses five to thirteen, where Jesus gives
further teaching on prayer: the parable of the friend at midnight, and the
ask-seek-knock poem.

I feel encouraged to spend two sermons exploring prayer
after comments someone made last Monday night at our open meeting. I gather
several preachers have been mentioning prayer recently. Prayer has also been an
important theme in our discussions about mission, and we agreed on Monday
evening to set up regular gatherings for prayer, and explore occasional church
‘quiet days’.

So, then, this morning, to the Lord’s Prayer. But how can
you deal with the Lord’s Prayer in one sermon? In the past I have preached a
series of sermons on it; I have given a seminar on what it might mean in
today’s [post-modern] culture[1];
and I have given an academic lecture
on one petition in a series. There is so much in the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps
we shall never plumb all its depths before glory!

However, the approach I am going to take this morning is
simpler. Much as I would like to preach a series on it, that is not practical
when I only get to preach here once a month. And I can’t split the Lord’s
Prayer into two halves, one this morning and the second tonight: that wouldn’t
be fair on the Anglicans and Salvationists this evening. I have opted to do
this: I simply want to examine what Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer tells
us about the character of God. I have identified six characteristics of God in the
Lord’s Prayer. That means only very brief comments about each of them!

1. Father
‘When you pray, say: Father’ (verse 2).

You can’t read the word ‘Father’ as applied to God in the
New Testament without the background of knowing that Jesus and Paul interpreted
this as the Aramaic word abba, the
affectionate word a small child used for their father. ‘Daddy’ might not quite
capture it in English, but it’s as close as we might get.

So for me, as one who came to fatherhood later than most, I can’t
help but think of a smiling daughter or son exclaiming, ‘Daddy!’ and running to
kiss me, throw arms around my legs or jump on my lap. Sometimes I think there
is nothing better in the world than those moments.

In that respect, I see Jesus introducing prayer as an
address to ‘Abba/Father’ as a sign that prayer is not a duty but a welcome. Not
that prayer is always exciting, but it is a place of warmth, a place of the
Father’s embrace.

But sometimes prayer to the Father does mean joy and
excitement. On Friday morning, Rebekah came back with Debbie from the end of
her weeklong summer holiday swimming crash course with two certificates. Her progress
had been fantastic. We decided to reward her with chocolate for one certificate
and an ice cream for the other. So, too, when members of God’s family come to
the Father, it is a place to celebrate joy, to weep together in pain and to
embrace mundane things. In that simplicity prayer begins.

2. Holy
Just because we begin with the welcoming nature of the Father does not mean
that we reduce prayer to a chatty mateyness:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
(verse 2)

To hallow God’s name of ‘Father’ is, perhaps, the positive
New Testament restatement of the Old Testament prohibition of blasphemy. God’s
name is to be honoured, not defamed. For that we pray.

What exactly are we praying, though? It’s more than our
upset when someone uses the name of God as a swearword. It’s more than the
casual way in which we might attribute something to God without being careful: ‘God
said this’ – are you sure?

We pray that God’s name will be hallowed in our lives and
among us as a Christian community. It is thus prayer that we might have a
credible witness. It is prayer that we might be more worthy ambassadors for God’s
kingdom, that we will bring credit to his name, not dishonour.

And it is prayer for God’s name to be hallowed by others. In
that sense, this is a prayer for evangelism. As I said, it isn’t simply a
prayer against blasphemers; it is a
prayer for blasphemers and others – a
prayer that will find the joy of this wonderful Father. And when they do, they
will want to honour him in word and deed.

If we want to hallow God’s name, we shall want to be people
who are good news to others, good news in the name of the Father. Can we pray
that for our lives? Who are the people in our orbit for whom we are praying
that they might find the Father?

3. King
Let’s take it a bit further:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
(verse 2)

The Father whose name we honour because it is holy is also a
king. He has a kingdom. He is the focus of the kingdom of God. The kingdom,
which we long to see coming, is not so much about us as about the king acting
with kingly power.

This is to say, Lord, there is nothing we desire more than to
see everything in creation line up with your will. (Which is why in Matthew’s
version, ‘Your kingdom come’ is paired with ‘Your will be done on earth as in
heaven.’)

‘Your kingdom come’ is language of petition and intercession.
We petition the Father that we might have the grace to do his will. And of course,
he answers that! He does not call us to do something and leave us without the
spiritual resources in his Holy Spirit to fulfil his desires for us. To pray ‘Your
kingdom come’ and mean it is to take our oath of allegiance to our Father who
is also our King.

Granted, ‘kingdom’ language may be more difficult today when
monarchs have only symbolic power. Brian
McLaren has
suggested we speak instead of the ‘revolution
of God’. We are signing up for the revolution. That is a revolution in our
lives, and a revolution for the whole of creation. It is prayer for healing,
justice, and an end to poverty and war. The kingdom has begun to come in Jesus
himself, and we see it coming more when God performs his will; we pray for its
fuller coming.

4. Giver
Next we pray,

Give us each day our daily bread.
(verse 3)

Daily bread?
Surely God isn’t that concerned with physical and material things, is he?
Shouldn’t we just pray about ‘spiritual’ affairs? Should we not see this as a
request for the bread of heaven, the bread of life?

If you think that, let me take you to a village rubbish tip
just west of the River Nile, at a place called Oxyrhynchus. A hundred years
ago, some papyri were discovered. In 1925, a Swiss professor found the word
translated ‘daily’ here on a shopping list that also included chickpeas and
straw. As Jesus called people to pray for their daily bread, mothers were
sending teenage boys on errands to the baker’s, telling them to make sure they were
sold today’s bread, not yesterday’s stale bread.[2]

Jesus and the Father are very
interested in our material needs being met. Do not be ashamed about bringing
those basic needs to God. It is all part of his fatherly concern. I would not
see my children lack food or clothes. The heavenly Father feels the same, if
not more.

And in that respect, he often enlists us in answering these
prayers in others. Therefore, as we
struggle to
find good news in the midst of the current floods in the UK,
it was heartening to see news footage the other night of a church giving out
free bottled water. The Father longs to meet the needs of his children, so he
encourages us to pray. However, he also enlists us as his agents to take what others
need to them, and to change those structures and policies in the world that
prevent others receiving what they need.

5. Forgiver
And so to perhaps the hardest words Jesus ever uttered (and there is plenty of
competition for that accolade):

And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(verse 4)

I could spend a whole sermon on these words. I find it
curious but understandable that it is easy for us to pray, ‘forgive us our
sins,’ and we do that regularly – not least in confession during public
worship. However, rarely do we connect our confession with our commitment to
forgive others. Although one is sure to exist, I have yet to find a liturgy for
confession that ties the two together.

How do we tie our desire for forgiveness together with the
call for us to forgive? Our forgiveness is not just something we experience in
the present: it is something we shall hear at the Last Judgment. Because we
know we shall be forgiven, we forgive now.

But that still needs grace! How many of us find it easy to
forgive? Few of us, I would guess. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive’ can be a
way of asking the Father to show us things from his perspective. When we look
at the Cross of Christ, and when we think of what God has forgiven us, then the
barriers begin to tumble. So we pray for that divine insight, that heavenly
revelation that puts our petty refusals to forgive into the perspective they
deserve. And when we forgive, we are a sign of God’s grace to the watching world.

6. Deliverer
The final petition is,

And do not bring us to the time of trial.
(verse 4)

I think that’s a preferable translation to ‘Lead us not into
temptation’ (which at very least requires the corresponding ‘But deliver us
from the evil one’ that is missing from the best manuscripts of Luke). However,
even these words have their problems. What kind of trials? Are we always
delivered from them? Clearly, Christians do go through trials in their lives,
and some of them quite vicious – note the missionary nurses and teachers from
South Korea being held hostage
by the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the twenty-three has already been executed.

Certainly, God sometimes allows us to face trials we would
have ruled out beforehand, but he graciously sustains in ways we could not have
imagined. Perhaps this prayer is that we might not face trials beyond our
ability to endure. If so, it is a salvation prayer – not salvation from our
sins, but salvation from being sinned-against.

God our Deliverer is in process of bringing a comprehensive
salvation as he ushers in his kingdom. Deliverance is not only in terms of
forgiveness, it also comes in the shape of holiness, as we are delivered from
the practice of sin, and in terms of justice and righteousness as he delivers
his creation from the presence of sin and its effect on victims. ‘Do not bring
us to the time of trial’ unites us with Christians around the world and down
the centuries, the majority of whom have suffered for their faith, but who one
day will be vindicated by God.

Conclusion
And that is where it ends: the prayer that began with a child sitting on Daddy’s
lap ends with the new creation, where there will be no more mourning or crying
or pain. May it be so soon. Come, Lord Jesus.

Technorati Tags: prayer, LordsPrayer, BrianMcLaren, Taliban, Afghanistan, EugenePeterson

Luke 11:1-4

Introduction
Today is one of those rare Sundays when you have the misfortune to hear me
preach twice. Not only do we have this morning service, I am also the preacher
at tonight’s united service. That means two things: firstly, you have advance
notice, and if I see fewer than usual Methodists present this evening, I shall
guess why! Secondly, it means I have to write two sermons for today!

Now since both services are taking today’s Lectionary Gospel
reading of Luke 11:1-13, I
have decided to divide the passage in the following way. This morning I shall
explore the first four verses, where we have Luke’s account of the Lord’s
Prayer. This evening I shall look at verses five to thirteen, where Jesus gives
further teaching on prayer: the parable of the friend at midnight, and the
ask-seek-knock poem.

I feel encouraged to spend two sermons exploring prayer
after comments someone made last Monday night at our open meeting. I gather
several preachers have been mentioning prayer recently. Prayer has also been an
important theme in our discussions about mission, and we agreed on Monday
evening to set up regular gatherings for prayer, and explore occasional church
‘quiet days’.

So, then, this morning, to the Lord’s Prayer. But how can
you deal with the Lord’s Prayer in one sermon? In the past I have preached a
series of sermons on it; I have given a seminar on what it might mean in
today’s [post-modern] culture[1];
and I have given an academic lecture
on one petition in a series. There is so much in the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps
we shall never plumb all its depths before glory!

However, the approach I am going to take this morning is
simpler. Much as I would like to preach a series on it, that is not practical
when I only get to preach here once a month. And I can’t split the Lord’s
Prayer into two halves, one this morning and the second tonight: that wouldn’t
be fair on the Anglicans and Salvationists this evening. I have opted to do
this: I simply want to examine what Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer tells
us about the character of God. I have identified six characteristics of God in the
Lord’s Prayer. That means only very brief comments about each of them!

1. Father
‘When you pray, say: Father’ (verse 2).

You can’t read the word ‘Father’ as applied to God in the
New Testament without the background of knowing that Jesus and Paul interpreted
this as the Aramaic word abba, the
affectionate word a small child used for their father. ‘Daddy’ might not quite
capture it in English, but it’s as close as we might get.

So for me, as one who came to fatherhood later than most, I can’t
help but think of a smiling daughter or son exclaiming, ‘Daddy!’ and running to
kiss me, throw arms around my legs or jump on my lap. Sometimes I think there
is nothing better in the world than those moments.

In that respect, I see Jesus introducing prayer as an
address to ‘Abba/Father’ as a sign that prayer is not a duty but a welcome. Not
that prayer is always exciting, but it is a place of warmth, a place of the
Father’s embrace.

But sometimes prayer to the Father does mean joy and
excitement. On Friday morning, Rebekah came back with Debbie from the end of
her weeklong summer holiday swimming crash course with two certificates. Her progress
had been fantastic. We decided to reward her with chocolate for one certificate
and an ice cream for the other. So, too, when members of God’s family come to
the Father, it is a place to celebrate joy, to weep together in pain and to
embrace mundane things. In that simplicity prayer begins.

2. Holy
Just because we begin with the welcoming nature of the Father does not mean
that we reduce prayer to a chatty mateyness:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
(verse 2)

To hallow God’s name of ‘Father’ is, perhaps, the positive
New Testament restatement of the Old Testament prohibition of blasphemy. God’s
name is to be honoured, not defamed. For that we pray.

What exactly are we praying, though? It’s more than our
upset when someone uses the name of God as a swearword. It’s more than the
casual way in which we might attribute something to God without being careful: ‘God
said this’ – are you sure?

We pray that God’s name will be hallowed in our lives and
among us as a Christian community. It is thus prayer that we might have a
credible witness. It is prayer that we might be more worthy ambassadors for God’s
kingdom, that we will bring credit to his name, not dishonour.

And it is prayer for God’s name to be hallowed by others. In
that sense, this is a prayer for evangelism. As I said, it isn’t simply a
prayer against blasphemers; it is a
prayer for blasphemers and others – a
prayer that will find the joy of this wonderful Father. And when they do, they
will want to honour him in word and deed.

If we want to hallow God’s name, we shall want to be people
who are good news to others, good news in the name of the Father. Can we pray
that for our lives? Who are the people in our orbit for whom we are praying
that they might find the Father?

3. King
Let’s take it a bit further:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
(verse 2)

The Father whose name we honour because it is holy is also a
king. He has a kingdom. He is the focus of the kingdom of God. The kingdom,
which we long to see coming, is not so much about us as about the king acting
with kingly power.

This is to say, Lord, there is nothing we desire more than to
see everything in creation line up with your will. (Which is why in Matthew’s
version, ‘Your kingdom come’ is paired with ‘Your will be done on earth as in
heaven.’)

‘Your kingdom come’ is language of petition and intercession.
We petition the Father that we might have the grace to do his will. And of course,
he answers that! He does not call us to do something and leave us without the
spiritual resources in his Holy Spirit to fulfil his desires for us. To pray ‘Your
kingdom come’ and mean it is to take our oath of allegiance to our Father who
is also our King.

Granted, ‘kingdom’ language may be more difficult today when
monarchs have only symbolic power. Brian
McLaren has
suggested we speak instead of the ‘revolution
of God’. We are signing up for the revolution. That is a revolution in our
lives, and a revolution for the whole of creation. It is prayer for healing,
justice, and an end to poverty and war. The kingdom has begun to come in Jesus
himself, and we see it coming more when God performs his will; we pray for its
fuller coming.

4. Giver
Next we pray,

Give us each day our daily bread.
(verse 3)

Daily bread?
Surely God isn’t that concerned with physical and material things, is he?
Shouldn’t we just pray about ‘spiritual’ affairs? Should we not see this as a
request for the bread of heaven, the bread of life?

If you think that, let me take you to a village rubbish tip
just west of the River Nile, at a place called Oxyrhynchus. A hundred years
ago, some papyri were discovered. In 1925, a Swiss professor found the word
translated ‘daily’ here on a shopping list that also included chickpeas and
straw. As Jesus called people to pray for their daily bread, mothers were
sending teenage boys on errands to the baker’s, telling them to make sure they were
sold today’s bread, not yesterday’s stale bread.[2]

Jesus and the Father are very
interested in our material needs being met. Do not be ashamed about bringing
those basic needs to God. It is all part of his fatherly concern. I would not
see my children lack food or clothes. The heavenly Father feels the same, if
not more.

And in that respect, he often enlists us in answering these
prayers in others. Therefore, as we
struggle to
find good news in the midst of the current floods in the UK,
it was heartening to see news footage the other night of a church giving out
free bottled water. The Father longs to meet the needs of his children, so he
encourages us to pray. However, he also enlists us as his agents to take what others
need to them, and to change those structures and policies in the world that
prevent others receiving what they need.

5. Forgiver
And so to perhaps the hardest words Jesus ever uttered (and there is plenty of
competition for that accolade):

And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(verse 4)

I could spend a whole sermon on these words. I find it
curious but understandable that it is easy for us to pray, ‘forgive us our
sins,’ and we do that regularly – not least in confession during public
worship. However, rarely do we connect our confession with our commitment to
forgive others. Although one is sure to exist, I have yet to find a liturgy for
confession that ties the two together.

How do we tie our desire for forgiveness together with the
call for us to forgive? Our forgiveness is not just something we experience in
the present: it is something we shall hear at the Last Judgment. Because we
know we shall be forgiven, we forgive now.

But that still needs grace! How many of us find it easy to
forgive? Few of us, I would guess. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive’ can be a
way of asking the Father to show us things from his perspective. When we look
at the Cross of Christ, and when we think of what God has forgiven us, then the
barriers begin to tumble. So we pray for that divine insight, that heavenly
revelation that puts our petty refusals to forgive into the perspective they
deserve. And when we forgive, we are a sign of God’s grace to the watching world.

6. Deliverer
The final petition is,

And do not bring us to the time of trial.
(verse 4)

I think that’s a preferable translation to ‘Lead us not into
temptation’ (which at very least requires the corresponding ‘But deliver us
from the evil one’ that is missing from the best manuscripts of Luke). However,
even these words have their problems. What kind of trials? Are we always
delivered from them? Clearly, Christians do go through trials in their lives,
and some of them quite vicious – note the missionary nurses and teachers from
South Korea being held hostage
by the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the twenty-three has already been executed.

Certainly, God sometimes allows us to face trials we would
have ruled out beforehand, but he graciously sustains in ways we could not have
imagined. Perhaps this prayer is that we might not face trials beyond our
ability to endure. If so, it is a salvation prayer – not salvation from our
sins, but salvation from being sinned-against.

God our Deliverer is in process of bringing a comprehensive
salvation as he ushers in his kingdom. Deliverance is not only in terms of
forgiveness, it also comes in the shape of holiness, as we are delivered from
the practice of sin, and in terms of justice and righteousness as he delivers
his creation from the presence of sin and its effect on victims. ‘Do not bring
us to the time of trial’ unites us with Christians around the world and down
the centuries, the majority of whom have suffered for their faith, but who one
day will be vindicated by God.

Conclusion
And that is where it ends: the prayer that began with a child sitting on Daddy’s
lap ends with the new creation, where there will be no more mourning or crying
or pain. May it be so soon. Come, Lord Jesus.

Technorati Tags: prayer, LordsPrayer, BrianMcLaren, Taliban, Afghanistan, EugenePeterson

Luke 11:1-4

Introduction
Today is one of those rare Sundays when you have the misfortune to hear me
preach twice. Not only do we have this morning service, I am also the preacher
at tonight’s united service. That means two things: firstly, you have advance
notice, and if I see fewer than usual Methodists present this evening, I shall
guess why! Secondly, it means I have to write two sermons for today!

Now since both services are taking today’s Lectionary Gospel
reading of Luke 11:1-13, I
have decided to divide the passage in the following way. This morning I shall
explore the first four verses, where we have Luke’s account of the Lord’s
Prayer. This evening I shall look at verses five to thirteen, where Jesus gives
further teaching on prayer: the parable of the friend at midnight, and the
ask-seek-knock poem.

I feel encouraged to spend two sermons exploring prayer
after comments someone made last Monday night at our open meeting. I gather
several preachers have been mentioning prayer recently. Prayer has also been an
important theme in our discussions about mission, and we agreed on Monday
evening to set up regular gatherings for prayer, and explore occasional church
‘quiet days’.

So, then, this morning, to the Lord’s Prayer. But how can
you deal with the Lord’s Prayer in one sermon? In the past I have preached a
series of sermons on it; I have given a seminar on what it might mean in
today’s [post-modern] culture[1];
and I have given an academic lecture
on one petition in a series. There is so much in the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps
we shall never plumb all its depths before glory!

However, the approach I am going to take this morning is
simpler. Much as I would like to preach a series on it, that is not practical
when I only get to preach here once a month. And I can’t split the Lord’s
Prayer into two halves, one this morning and the second tonight: that wouldn’t
be fair on the Anglicans and Salvationists this evening. I have opted to do
this: I simply want to examine what Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer tells
us about the character of God. I have identified six characteristics of God in the
Lord’s Prayer. That means only very brief comments about each of them!

1. Father
‘When you pray, say: Father’ (verse 2).

You can’t read the word ‘Father’ as applied to God in the
New Testament without the background of knowing that Jesus and Paul interpreted
this as the Aramaic word abba, the
affectionate word a small child used for their father. ‘Daddy’ might not quite
capture it in English, but it’s as close as we might get.

So for me, as one who came to fatherhood later than most, I can’t
help but think of a smiling daughter or son exclaiming, ‘Daddy!’ and running to
kiss me, throw arms around my legs or jump on my lap. Sometimes I think there
is nothing better in the world than those moments.

In that respect, I see Jesus introducing prayer as an
address to ‘Abba/Father’ as a sign that prayer is not a duty but a welcome. Not
that prayer is always exciting, but it is a place of warmth, a place of the
Father’s embrace.

But sometimes prayer to the Father does mean joy and
excitement. On Friday morning, Rebekah came back with Debbie from the end of
her weeklong summer holiday swimming crash course with two certificates. Her progress
had been fantastic. We decided to reward her with chocolate for one certificate
and an ice cream for the other. So, too, when members of God’s family come to
the Father, it is a place to celebrate joy, to weep together in pain and to
embrace mundane things. In that simplicity prayer begins.

2. Holy
Just because we begin with the welcoming nature of the Father does not mean
that we reduce prayer to a chatty mateyness:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
(verse 2)

To hallow God’s name of ‘Father’ is, perhaps, the positive
New Testament restatement of the Old Testament prohibition of blasphemy. God’s
name is to be honoured, not defamed. For that we pray.

What exactly are we praying, though? It’s more than our
upset when someone uses the name of God as a swearword. It’s more than the
casual way in which we might attribute something to God without being careful: ‘God
said this’ – are you sure?

We pray that God’s name will be hallowed in our lives and
among us as a Christian community. It is thus prayer that we might have a
credible witness. It is prayer that we might be more worthy ambassadors for God’s
kingdom, that we will bring credit to his name, not dishonour.

And it is prayer for God’s name to be hallowed by others. In
that sense, this is a prayer for evangelism. As I said, it isn’t simply a
prayer against blasphemers; it is a
prayer for blasphemers and others – a
prayer that will find the joy of this wonderful Father. And when they do, they
will want to honour him in word and deed.

If we want to hallow God’s name, we shall want to be people
who are good news to others, good news in the name of the Father. Can we pray
that for our lives? Who are the people in our orbit for whom we are praying
that they might find the Father?

3. King
Let’s take it a bit further:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
(verse 2)

The Father whose name we honour because it is holy is also a
king. He has a kingdom. He is the focus of the kingdom of God. The kingdom,
which we long to see coming, is not so much about us as about the king acting
with kingly power.

This is to say, Lord, there is nothing we desire more than to
see everything in creation line up with your will. (Which is why in Matthew’s
version, ‘Your kingdom come’ is paired with ‘Your will be done on earth as in
heaven.’)

‘Your kingdom come’ is language of petition and intercession.
We petition the Father that we might have the grace to do his will. And of course,
he answers that! He does not call us to do something and leave us without the
spiritual resources in his Holy Spirit to fulfil his desires for us. To pray ‘Your
kingdom come’ and mean it is to take our oath of allegiance to our Father who
is also our King.

Granted, ‘kingdom’ language may be more difficult today when
monarchs have only symbolic power. Brian
McLaren has
suggested we speak instead of the ‘revolution
of God’. We are signing up for the revolution. That is a revolution in our
lives, and a revolution for the whole of creation. It is prayer for healing,
justice, and an end to poverty and war. The kingdom has begun to come in Jesus
himself, and we see it coming more when God performs his will; we pray for its
fuller coming.

4. Giver
Next we pray,

Give us each day our daily bread.
(verse 3)

Daily bread?
Surely God isn’t that concerned with physical and material things, is he?
Shouldn’t we just pray about ‘spiritual’ affairs? Should we not see this as a
request for the bread of heaven, the bread of life?

If you think that, let me take you to a village rubbish tip
just west of the River Nile, at a place called Oxyrhynchus. A hundred years
ago, some papyri were discovered. In 1925, a Swiss professor found the word
translated ‘daily’ here on a shopping list that also included chickpeas and
straw. As Jesus called people to pray for their daily bread, mothers were
sending teenage boys on errands to the baker’s, telling them to make sure they were
sold today’s bread, not yesterday’s stale bread.[2]

Jesus and the Father are very
interested in our material needs being met. Do not be ashamed about bringing
those basic needs to God. It is all part of his fatherly concern. I would not
see my children lack food or clothes. The heavenly Father feels the same, if
not more.

And in that respect, he often enlists us in answering these
prayers in others. Therefore, as we
struggle to
find good news in the midst of the current floods in the UK,
it was heartening to see news footage the other night of a church giving out
free bottled water. The Father longs to meet the needs of his children, so he
encourages us to pray. However, he also enlists us as his agents to take what others
need to them, and to change those structures and policies in the world that
prevent others receiving what they need.

5. Forgiver
And so to perhaps the hardest words Jesus ever uttered (and there is plenty of
competition for that accolade):

And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(verse 4)

I could spend a whole sermon on these words. I find it
curious but understandable that it is easy for us to pray, ‘forgive us our
sins,’ and we do that regularly – not least in confession during public
worship. However, rarely do we connect our confession with our commitment to
forgive others. Although one is sure to exist, I have yet to find a liturgy for
confession that ties the two together.

How do we tie our desire for forgiveness together with the
call for us to forgive? Our forgiveness is not just something we experience in
the present: it is something we shall hear at the Last Judgment. Because we
know we shall be forgiven, we forgive now.

But that still needs grace! How many of us find it easy to
forgive? Few of us, I would guess. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive’ can be a
way of asking the Father to show us things from his perspective. When we look
at the Cross of Christ, and when we think of what God has forgiven us, then the
barriers begin to tumble. So we pray for that divine insight, that heavenly
revelation that puts our petty refusals to forgive into the perspective they
deserve. And when we forgive, we are a sign of God’s grace to the watching world.

6. Deliverer
The final petition is,

And do not bring us to the time of trial.
(verse 4)

I think that’s a preferable translation to ‘Lead us not into
temptation’ (which at very least requires the corresponding ‘But deliver us
from the evil one’ that is missing from the best manuscripts of Luke). However,
even these words have their problems. What kind of trials? Are we always
delivered from them? Clearly, Christians do go through trials in their lives,
and some of them quite vicious – note the missionary nurses and teachers from
South Korea being held hostage
by the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the twenty-three has already been executed.

Certainly, God sometimes allows us to face trials we would
have ruled out beforehand, but he graciously sustains in ways we could not have
imagined. Perhaps this prayer is that we might not face trials beyond our
ability to endure. If so, it is a salvation prayer – not salvation from our
sins, but salvation from being sinned-against.

God our Deliverer is in process of bringing a comprehensive
salvation as he ushers in his kingdom. Deliverance is not only in terms of
forgiveness, it also comes in the shape of holiness, as we are delivered from
the practice of sin, and in terms of justice and righteousness as he delivers
his creation from the presence of sin and its effect on victims. ‘Do not bring
us to the time of trial’ unites us with Christians around the world and down
the centuries, the majority of whom have suffered for their faith, but who one
day will be vindicated by God.

Conclusion
And that is where it ends: the prayer that began with a child sitting on Daddy’s
lap ends with the new creation, where there will be no more mourning or crying
or pain. May it be so soon. Come, Lord Jesus.

Technorati Tags: prayer, LordsPrayer, BrianMcLaren, Taliban, Afghanistan, EugenePeterson

Pam BG has an excellent post on the deeply sub-Christian nature of the Religious Right (hat-tip to Dave Warnock). She rightly delineates the differences between the North American and British scenes. (I guess Pam has a special take on that, as an American who has long been resident here.)

If

the ‘Religious Right’ hold as core
to their belief system that human beings have a God-given right to
life, liberty and private property

then that needs a lot of questioning. ‘Life’: well, as an evangelical Christian (in the historic sense) I am pro-life. My basic stance on abortion is that it is generally wrong: it is the taking of life, not surgery on part of a woman’s anatomy. But to be in favour of life more widely puts one at odds with much of the Religious Right’s agenda. While I am no longer a pacifist, the easy promulgation of war and covert operations against rogue states is hardly pro-life. Nor is the support of economic policies that cause extreme poverty in nations where our TV news operations don’t regularly have cameras and reporters. Nor is the denial of global warming combined with an approach to creation that sees it as purely for our benefit, leading to environmental rape and further damage in the first instance for developing nations. So exactly how pro-life is the Religious Right? Not much, in my opinion.

‘Liberty’: well, that word needs careful nuancing. All too often its meaning is taken from Enlightenment roots in the French Revolution and American Constitution, and tends to mean ‘the freedom to do what I want.’ In contemporary consumer culture that makes an idol of the self (as I point out in my comment on Pam’s post). I am sovereign. But in biblical terms Christian liberty is something entirely different. It is being set free from these very things! It is to be set free from the self-centredness which is sin, so I can use my liberty in the service of God and humankind. If the Religious Right in the States and other places were promoting an agenda that saw thousands and millions of Christians waiving their own rights in order to transform the lives of others, I’d find them more credible. In fairness, too, ‘rights’ language is also misused by liberals and the left: witness the growing disillusionment in this country over the frequent invocation of Human Rights laws since the Government signed up to the European Convention (although also conversely, note how those who bemoan its use by others like to invoke it for themselves).

‘Private Property’: there is a thoughtful exchange of views between Pam and one of her commenters, Peter Kirk, on this one. It comes down to an issue that even if we do believe property or possessions are ours to make decisions about, they are not ultimately ours. They are a gift of God’s ‘common grace’ (if an Arminian can gladly use a Calvinist phrase!) and we are but stewards of them.’All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.’ I’d love to believe the Religious Right endorsed this, but I’d need some convincing.

All of which makes me glad for the diversity of evangelical Christianity in the UK. I am delighted to see TEAR Fund play a major rôle in campaigns against poverty, third world debt, climate change and so on.

Am I saying that no evangelical Christian should hold right-of-centre views? Absolutely not. I think of two friends who are active in the Conservative Christian Fellowship, and it makes sense, because they have particular passions about the sanctity of life and family issues. To my mind, biblical ethics cannot be confined to modern views of left and right. They tend to splurge across a range of political convictions. God is neither left nor right, as Jim Wallis has reminded people. Evangelical (as well as liberal and catholic) Christians are found across the political spectrum in the UK, and that makes sense to me.

But my limited experience of the North American scene is rather different. In 1995, when I visited the Toronto Airport church, I encountered one American who was shocked when I said I supported the idea of a welfare state. I quoted Genesis, about being my brother (and sister)’s keeper. Incredulously to me, he claimed that Scripture reserved the duty of care for the poor to the church – as if the church had the reserves to meet all society’s social needs, and non-Christians were not under any moral obligation in the eyes of God! Similarly, an English friend of mine moved to work in the States a few years ago. He is a scientist researching treatment for HIV/AIDS, and an evangelical-charismatic Christian. He found a church where he felt at home theologically, but was staggered by the assumption that it was an evangelical duty to vote for George W Bush, and almost tantamount to heresy even to comtemplate voting differently.

Pam, thank you again for such a thoughtful piece.

Technorati Tags: PamBG, DaveWarnock, ReligiousRight, pro-life, humanrights, PeterKirk, TEARFund, ConservativeParty, JimWallis, TorontoAirportChristianFellowship, InternationalPartnershipForMicrobicides, GeorgeWBush

John Meunier kindly posted a comment on the earlier article and tried to include a link that unfortunately Typepad didn’t reproduce in full. Follow this link to find the story he is referring to.

Technorati Tags: GarrisonKeillor, Methodism, GeorgeWBush

Pope’s move on Latin mass ‘a blow to Jews’ | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited(-)

Here’s a difficult one: the Pope is under fire from Jewish groups, because his willingness to allow the Latin Mass to be said again means that on Good Friday Catholics will pray for Jews to ‘be delivered from their darkness’ and converted to Catholicism. The rite calls for God to ‘lift the veil from the eyes’ of the Jews and to end ‘the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ’.

Am I the only person to feel somewhere in the middle on this? As a Christian, I am a member of a missionary faith, and if I believe Christ is the light of the world, then I cannot but want anybody and everybody to know that. If the call is for conversion specifically to Catholicism (as it would have been pre-Vatican II), I obviously beg to differ, but I cannot deny even an unreformed Catholicism’s right to prosyletise and organise its spiritually appropriately, just as I would want to with my different convictions. There is also the question of how Christian converts from other faiths feel about moves to oppose evangelism across the faiths. In this specific case, there are many Jewish people who have concluded that Jesus is Messiah, and who will equally be upset.

At the same time, it is one thing to be committed to evangelism in principle, and it is another thing altogether how one goes about it. Here the history of Christian-Jewish relations especially bears upon the Jewish reaction to the Pope’s decision. The forced conversions of the past (for which today we condemn Islamists) and other atrocities understandably make Jewish people nervous about Christian evangelism. I want to pray that people may find the light of Christ, but one of the big problems is that we Christians are often those who have interposed darkness between people and his light. It simply isn’t right to cast liturgy and policy in terms that construe us as purely the goodies and everyone else as the baddies.

There are other problems with the Latin Mass, not least that it is in Latin. The Observer article linked to at the top of this post quotes a thirty-year-old Frenchman, Mathieu Mautin, on why he favours it. His reasons are illuminating:

‘I want my children to enjoy it too,’ Mautin said. ‘The liturgy creates
a universe that makes the mystery palpable. The fact that the priest
faces the altar signifies for us that he is leading the people of God.’

Everything about that is curious to me. I welcome the idea that liturgy creates a universe of palpable mystery. It is frequently missing in the clinical, rationalist worship of Protestants (can I still use that word?). There is a recovery of concern for a sense of mystery in alternative worship and emerging church circles. But mystery by putting things in a language that is not ‘a tongue understanded of the people’, as the English Reformers put it, defeats biblical worship. Paul’s very point in 1 Corinthians 14 about tongues and prophecy is that in public worship the content has to be understood by those present. We have to introduce mystery into worship differently – by symbolism and the creative arts, for example.

My other concern is Mautin’s notion of Christian leadership. If the priest faces the altar as a sign of leadership it means his back is to the people. For a Brit this is culturally rude – perhaps it isn’t in other places. But it codifies a sense of ‘Catch up with me.’ The leader on this model is Moses coming down from Sinai with the tablets, where no-one else has the same level of access to God. It stands for a deeply unreformed Catholicism.

At the same time the problem cannot be solved simply by the priest turning to face the congregation. That still gives what Alan Hirsch and others call a ‘Christendom’ model of church, where most of the Body of Christ are passive, watching a performance. In some congregations, woe betide the preacher who makes a gaffe and mistakenly thinks that we’re all family together. In today’s western culture, as Hirsch points out in ‘The Forgotten Ways‘, it makes the congregation into consumers, with all the attendant idolatry. Church leaders must not only face the congregation, but be part of it. Unlike Hirsch I still think there is some place for certain Sunday services that are led from the front – there are issues of group dynamics and how we use particular gifts that lead me to that conclusion. However his basic point is right, and in any case leadership is something that is led, not simply spoken. We could all do with a measure of self-examination.

Technorati Tags: LatinMass, Judaism, evangelism, ministry, AlanHirsch