The Lord's Prayer appears in two Gospels, in two different settings.
In
the Gospel of Luke, Jesus and his disciples are
traveling around Galilee -- healing, teaching, casting out demons, and helping
people be opened to live the kingdom of God where and as they are. He
also begins sharing the mission with his followers, sending them out in pairs
to different towns to do what he would, if he were there. One day his
disciples see him coming back from a time of solitary prayer, and they ask him
if he can teach them to pray as well -- to enter into the same kind of
relationship with God that he has.
In
the Gospel of Matthew Jesus has just begun his ministry
in Galilee. He is just back from his baptism by John and his time of testing by the
devil in the wilderness, and he has begun to call people to the kingdom of God and to gather a small community of disciples. Then
he goes up a mountain and in the Sermon on the Mount outlines for his disciples
and the crowd around them what the kingdom of God is, how it works, and the
kind of life it calls us to. Part of what he says, is about how we pray.
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
The disciples ask this of Jesus in the Gospel
of Luke.
Not that they don’t know how to say prayers. They’ve been saying prayers all their life – of
all kinds – of thanksgiving, confession, repentance, intercession, supplication
and praise.
But walking with Jesus they see a kind of deeply
centred peace and inner divine authority that’s somehow connected with his
going off alone from time to time to pray, and they ask him to teach them, to0,
to pray as he does.
And something in my head whispers, be careful
what you ask for.
Since childhood I’ve known how to say
prayers. Kneeling at my bedside, elbows
on the bed, hands clasped together, head resting on my hands, eyes closed, and
my mouth and my mind speaking the words:
Now
I lay me down to sleep
I
pray the Lord my soul to keep
If
I should die before I wake
I
pray the Lord my soul to take
And then the litany of requests: God bless mommy and daddy, Carol and Valerie,
grandma and grandpa Rutting, grandma and grandpa Donst … and so on, beyond those
obligatory requests into an always somewhat-changing list of other family and
friends.
As I grew up, I also grew into other, more grown-up,
less childlike ways of saying prayers.
Both routine and spontaneous. Grateful
and scared. Selfish and selfless. If prayers were papers with the words all
somehow written down, my path through the world might well be littered meters
deep with scribbled scraps that I’d be loathe for anyone to read for all they
might reveal about me.
But beyond saying prayers, have I prayed? As Jesus does when he goes off alone? As his disciples ask him to teach them to do?
I assume it has something to do with the
openness to God that is offered. Both
the quality and quantity of opened-ness because the one time we overhear Jesus
praying in one of those away-to-pray times, we hear him saying, “Not my will,
but thine be done.” And it’s not the
gentle, routine response we offer here in our Sunday morning liturgy to our prayers
of intercession. It’s an anguished
cry. A deep and reckless ripping open of
his soul. A grateful, unflinching offering
of heart and soul and life, for God to do with as God will. An honest and unqualified willingness to be
lifted into the presence of God, and carried by God to whatever new place or
way of being God, in God’s goodness, desires.
I think I have at times, come near to that –
on retreat, with the help of others, in moments of unexpected joy, or surprise,
or trust, or need. And you’d think that
having known praying like that sometimes, I’d be open to it all the time.
But I don’t know. You see, I also remember how as I child I
dreaded the visits of my Uncle Ike. Even
at times tried to hide from him. He was
a big, physical man. The kindest and
softest heart in the world wrapped in a body that loved to express its best
desires in hard work, outdoor activity and games, hugs and exuberant displays of
affection. Which meant when I heard him
come in our front door, his voice booming out deep and genuine hello to all in
the house, strong hugs and handshakes all around, I knew that all too soon he’d
come to find me – young, little Brian.
And when he found me he’d bend down just a touch – just enough to wrap
his arms around me, lift me into his warm and wild embrace, then whirl around
in a circle or two with me, all the time saying how happy he was to see me and
how was I doing.
I hated it.
I tried some times to hide from it.
Pretend I wasn’t there. Or was
busy with something else more important.
Because it scared me. I felt afraid. I just wanted my feet to stay on the
ground. Every time he picked me up and
whirled me around in his bear-hug of love, I held my breath and closed my eyes
until I could feel my feet back on the ground.
And I could know I wasn’t going to die.
And I wonder, is prayer – praying as Jesus
prays, kind of like that? Does it lift
us up off the ground of ordinary life, of what we are used to, of how we
normally do things and think about things, and into the embrace of the presence
of God? God in heaven? God beyond the limits and limitations of what
we know? God the Higher Power? God greater and higher than we can ever
imagine, understand, or try to control?
God like my Uncle Ike to young, little Brian?
And just how do we understand this? Describe it?
Experience it?
Paul Tillich is famous for having come through
his own theological and spiritual quest to describe God as the “Ground of all
being.” And although there is more in
that simple, little phrase than we can ever hope to unpack in something as
little and limited as a sermon, there is something here worth looking at, and
hanging on to as much as we can.
The Ground of all being as a name for God
seems to root God more deeply in Earth and the life of all Earth than I’ve
sometimes thought to be the case. As a
child when I said my prayers I imagined myself praying to some being up there –
meaning really “way up there”, in a place above and apart from the Earth, a
place called heaven that I would only get to – if I were good, after I died and
would be able to leave this Earth. And
even as I grew older this image remained, which meant that when I prayed –
really prayed, I imagined myself being somehow lifted up and being removed from
the burdens and concerns of life here, of being invited at least momentarily
into a welcome break and escape from life on Earth.
But the Ground of all being.
I wonder if this means that instead of being
lifted up from the ground I
know to a totally other realm
– separate and disconnected from this world, being lifted into the arms of God
means being whirled around and carried beyond
the ground I know and feel in control of, into a bigger realm – into being connected
with more of this world, this world right here, than I normally am, and
normally feel comfortable with. Not lifted up and out of the world for a
while, but lifted up and carried
beyond the boundaries of the world as I’ve known it, maybe for good.
“Our Father, who art in heaven…” It raises the question of just where heaven
is. Is it up there? Separate from Earth? Somewhere and sometime after physical death?
Or is it here?
Among us in fits and starts?
Under the surface of what we see, or just beyond the horizon of our
limited vision? Somewhere and sometime as we become willing to die to our self-imposed
limitations?
Shortly before he died, Japhia’s father was
contacted by a stranger who asked if he was a son of James Alexander Newell. Bill said yes, he was. The stranger asked a few more questions about
Bill’s dad, about where and when he lived, a bit about his character and life
story. And after hearing Bill’s replies,
he said, “I think I may be your half-brother.”
He asked Bill if he would meet him for coffee, and bring along a picture
of his father.
When they met, got past the opening awkwardness
and each brought out their picture of their father, the pictures were exactly the
same. It turns out Bill’s father somehow
managed to have more than one life, more than one family simultaneously. Their fathers were one and the same.
It makes me wonder how many lives, how many
families, how many other children God our Father may have – is having right
now, has always had, and will always have, besides us. How letting ourselves be opened to them, and
to the corners of the world they know, may actually help us know our father all
the better. And how coming to know and
love our Father makes us want to know them better than we do.
Just who do we have in mind, when we say “our”
father? Just how big is our “our”? And what does it do to us, where does it take
us when in praying we open ourselves to God who is a Father that big?
Lord, teach us to pray.
I don’t know.
Should we be careful what we ask for?
Or are we ready
to let God come in the front door with hugs
and hellos and handshakes all round,
and then to find us out,
bend down to where we are, to wrap us in a
bearhug of love,
then lift us and whirl us around beyond the
little patch of ground we know,
to be connected with something bigger –
with all life on Earth, really,
and with the Father’s loving embrace of it
all?
Lord, teach us to pray!
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