Our Father
Pastor Mathew Magera – 1/15/17 – Sermon 205
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
The Lord’s Prayer. The one prayer you know you can
resort to if put on the spot during a potluck, the one prayer you can use in
front of people who don’t go to church, the one prayer that can utterly confuse
Catholics attending a Lutheran Church and the one prayer that can embarrass
Lutherans attending a Catholic Mass. “And lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil. For thine is the… oh yeah, Catholics don’t say that
part.” Jokes aside, the Lord’s Prayer is one that means everything to us. When
all else fails, the Lord’s Prayer is one that people can recite even when
they’ve forgotten most everything else including their loved ones. I love
bringing Communion to people and to have them pray this prayer with me. I’m
always listening to their voice over mine no matter how quiet it is. They know
it. How many times have you gotten caught up in the words and wondered why it
says what it says? How many times have you skipped quickly through a part
because you didn’t want to mean what you were saying? How often do we let God talk
back to us during the Lord’s Prayer? What might He say if he did talk back?
Perhaps it might go like this…
“Lord’s Prayer” Skit
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
How much stuff do you have buried away in your attic
or dark corners of your basement? You know, the boxes you have held onto for
years. The ones you would never get rid of, the ones you know pretty much what
is inside yet the ones that have been collecting dust and not been touched
since 1963. We’re going up to our spiritual attics today to uncover a box with
the words, “The Lord’s Prayer” on it. You know that box, right? The one you
have held on to for years. The one you would never get rid of, the one you know
pretty much what is inside yet you might have neglected to dig through for
several years. That’s the box that is going to be opened today and I invite you
to open it with me as we journey through it over these next 7 weeks.
As we begin to open the box, it is helpful to
remember where the contents came from, how we got them and why. So, to
understand the Lord’s Prayer and the pieces we will uncover, we must consider
the context in which it was given to us. We must locate it within the Biblical
story. As we search, we find this prayer within a collection of Jesus’
teachings found in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 that is commonly known as the
Sermon on the Mount,. Bible commentator, Frederick Bruner believes the Sermon
on the Mount can be categorized by chapter into three separate sections. In
Matthew 5, Jesus offers a call of mercy. In this chapter, Jesus begins the
Sermon on the Mount focusing his teaching on a Christian life, specifically the
what of a Christian life. This is the what of a Christian life, he might say,
and this life is found in mercy. Skipping ahead to Matthew 7, Jesus offers a
call to justice. In this chapter, Jesus focuses his teaching on the depth and
breadth of God’s divine justice, how it plays out in the world and the ways in
which we are participants within it. This is the why of a Christian life. This
leaves us with Matthew 6, the glue that holds the other two chapters together,
in which we find the Lord’s Prayer. In this chapter, Jesus offers a call to
faith. He focuses his teaching on the how of a Christian life. After learning
what a Christian is and does in chapter 5, Jesus uses this chapter to teach us
how we can be that, and it starts with a call to faith. Not only is it
important to do what is right but it is important to do it in the right way. If
you read Matthew 6, you might see a repeated pattern in how Jesus teaches. He
often starts a section saying something like, “when you do such and such, don’t
do this” and he’ll describe what not to do. Then, he’ll say something like
this, “but, when you do such and such, do this.” It’s no different when
considering prayer. So, if there is anything you remember about this morning or
about the Lord’s Prayer in general as we open up this box, remember that it is
a call to faith.
* * *
Now that we know where we were given the Lord’s
Prayer, why did Jesus need to teach us to pray? Why were we given this gift? In
his introduction to the Lord’s Prayer in the Large Catechism, Martin Luther
identifies two reasons we should pray. His first reason goes all the way back
to the 10 Commandments. We are commanded to pray. In the 2nd Commandment we
learn not to take the Lord’s name in vain. One of the things we just talked
about in our Wednesday Bible study is that when we consider the language of the
10 Commandments continually telling is what not to do we should always
understand that the opposite is just as true, that as we should not take the
Lord’s name in vain, we should instead use it rightly and give God the honor
and respect he deserves. We are required to praise God’s holy name, to call
upon it in every need. That commands us to pray. The problem with this,
obviously, is that we fall short. Luther says, “indeed, the human heart is by
nature so despondent that it always flees from God and imagines that He does
not wish or desire our prayer, because we are sinners and have merited nothing
but wrath.” So, on one hand he is saying
that our sinful nature encourages us away from prayer but that at the same time,
our hearts believe that God doesn’t want to hear our prayers. Both of those
together lead us into a spiritual pit in which we neither pray nor have a
desire to do so. But, where our sinfulness is held down by the thought that God
doesn’t want to hear our prayers, we discover this thought is false.
Luther’s second reason that we should pray is
because of the promise that God adds on top of our prayers. God promises to
hear our prayers and to answer them. In Psalm 50, we hear the words, “Call upon
me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you.” In Matthew 7, Jesus says, “ask,
and it shall be given to you. For everyone who seeks, receives.” We often
downplay this promise when we don’t get what we want, but this promise that God
will hear us and answer us is still no less true. It should encourage us to
fulfill the command. God wants to hear our prayers. God wants a relationship.
Our prayers are cherished and honored. Rather than thinking that our prayers
don’t matter we should be thinking that our prayers are just as precious, holy
and pleasing to God as the prayers of the apostle Paul or any of the other
Christians in the Bible. Our prayers rank right up there with that of the
disciples. It is this that leads us to
the Lord’s Prayer. For, as Luther says, “there is no nobler prayer to be found
upon the earth than the Lord’s Prayer... because it has this excellent
testimony, that God loves to hear it, which we ought not surrender for all the
riches of the world.” If anything, the
Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of love and promise.
* * *
Now that this box is open, we pull out the first
piece. Our Father, who art in Heaven. Sometimes this notion of calling God
Father can come upon deaf ears. The word Father is not always a pleasing sound
to hear. We live in a world of bad fathers, distant fathers, abusive fathers.
This change in how we understand language has led people to replace terms
associated with God to something they can better identify with. While it is not
my intention to discuss this language shift in detail, I will simply say that
Jesus gave us this term for God, not to be something that would make us anxious
or sad or angry but because during Jesus’ time, a father was more than just a
biological family member. A father was a figure of protection, of guardianship,
of provision and authority. The fact that we sometimes cannot handle using the
word to identify God has nothing to do with God getting it wrong and giving us
a bad way to think about him. Instead, it is our fault. It is our sin that
leads us to reject this word of promise and to make up our own. Instead, the
Lord’s Prayer calls us back to that original intention. If we struggle to use
the word Father to identify God because of a situation that brings us negative
feelings, we need this prayer more than ever so that we might be able to see
the true meaning of what a father is and is supposed to be, to find the true
nature of a father that we have been denied in this world. It is a step that
requires faith.
The opening of the Lord’s prayer confirms our
relationship with God. Our Father. It is a term so shockingly simple yet is the
very term in which Jesus gives us to identify God. It is not just for Jesus to
use but our own. When Jesus allows us to address his Father by the address, our
Father, “he is passing on something of his own priceless relation to God.” And if we can call God Father just as Jesus
does, this prayer is evidence that through Christ and his saving work we can
address God as our adoptive heavenly Father. God is our Father.
The opening of the Lord’s Prayer also confirms our relationship
with ourselves. Not only then, is God our Father, but if we can call him
Father, He can call us sons and daughters. No matter how many people are in our
families, no matter how many funerals we attend, at the end of it all, we are
still someone’s family. We are still God’s child.
Lastly, the opening of the Lord’s Prayer confirms
our relationship with others. We cannot being to pray the Lord’s Prayer without
believing that this prayer is not between just us and God. It’s not about me,
it’s about us. Our Father. Not my father, not your father. Our Father. So, not
only in this opening line to we receive a heavenly parent, not only do we
become God’s children but we are given a family of brothers and sisters. We
cannot pray this prayer without each of them in mind as they are as much a part
of the words as ourselves and God.
* * *
Now that we’ve been introduced to the prayer, we
reach the next piece pulled out of the box, the first petition. Hallowed by thy
name. In essence, it as if we are praying, “Hey God? Be God, please.” It seems,
when we first hear that, it might sound a little unnecessary. Of course, God is
going to be God. But, we’re not accustomed to keeping God’s name holy, are we?
We have our perceptions about who God is, what his character is like, what his
role in the world is like. We also use God’s name in very unholy ways. When we
pray, we want God to be who God actually is. It is as if we are surrendering
our preconceived notions about God, putting them aside and asking for God to be
His true self. We are saying essentially, “God, may your true name, your true
nature, your true character, your true mercy, your true grace, your true love
be hallowed, made holy, be glorified.
Asking for this in the Lord’s Prayer also brings up
another point about all of these petitions in this prayer. When we make these
requests, these petitions, before God, we are doing so because we know that
only God can be relied upon to do such things. We pray because we know that the
topics of our prayers are beyond ours or anyone else’s control and that we need
to divine hand of God to be involved. We can’t place our trust in anyone else
except for God. When we do this, we also have to view these petitions not as
commands. On first glance it seems very easy to read the prayer as a God, do
this, do that. Holify your name, bring your kingdom, do your will. Do it now!
Of course, sometimes it does feel like that, but in prayer, a petition allows
God to be seen as the one who acts. In a command, our power is the focus. In a
petition, God’s power is the focus. When you pray, hallowed by thy name or any
other petition, remember that God is the focus, that we have gone beyond all
possibility of us getting involved anymore, we are going to God now.
The last thing to mention about praying that God’s
name be holy is that we remember we are not only praying for us but we are
praying on behalf of everyone. We pray this petition so that God’s name “which
is already holy in heaven be and remain holy with us upon earth and in all the
world.” Just think of the way we and
others misuse God’s name. We might give false testimony about who God is. We
might live an openly wicked and evil lifestyle as adulterers, drunkards,
murderers. When we do these things, the name of God is put to shame. This is
why we need this part of the Lord’s Prayer so desperately. Luther says we
should pray it without ceasing. Yet, the world is so big, full of different
people with different ideas and different religions, how can this possibly
happen that God’s name would be made holy upon the earth as it is made holy in
the far reaches of heaven? Here’s where that call to faith returns. Nothing
else can cause this to happen if not by faith alone. When we fully surrender
ourselves to God in pure faith, anything is possible including God’s name being
made holy in a very unholy place.
* * *
There is easily enough good news within the Lord’s
Prayer to preach on it for weeks upon weeks upon weeks but as we begin to
rummage through the attic through the box we know as the Lord’s Prayer, as we
prepare to go out into the week ahead, let us keep on our minds the promise
that comes through Jesus’ desire for us to call upon God the Father in prayer
in every need that we have. As we go through the prayer, we’ll see how much
faith is required in each petition. What we know so far is that we must trust
that when we call upon God that we cannot make God what he is, but that He
already is what He is, He is our Father, we are His child, together we are His
and He is ours.
Still, while we naturally make God’s name unholy,
God makes his name holy. It is a call to faith, faith that God will be God even
when we are still sinners. Jesus calls us to faith in God because there will
soon come a time when faith will overtake the law in pursuance of salvation.
That time would be coming soon for those in Jesus’ audience as his death and
resurrection would open up a new way of salvation not by works of the Law but
by God’s grace through faith. Calling us to faith through prayer helps to remind
us of God’s grace that saves through faith. God answering our prayers made in
faith is a way we can daily see how we are rescued by His grace. Whether it be
in weekly worship, in your bed at night or at the bedside in a hospital room,
there is always a need for faith, for faith to be exercised, for faith to be
shared. Jesus calls into that faith as we begin to pray. Our Father, who art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.