Fr Ed expects me to repeat the sermon he heard last night again this morning. Well, pay attention, this is a vastly different sermon.

Transcription

1 10 th Sunday After Pentecost July 27, 28,2013 Fr Ed expects me to repeat the sermon he heard last night again this morning. Well, pay attention, this is a vastly different sermon. Todays reading are all about God as the forever forgiving and patient one. However, important that we embrace that quality of God s, that is not the subject of my sermon. I chose instead to focus on the verses in the Gospel which lay out the Familiar Our Father prayer. I want to look at the Our Father because we say it at every Eucharist and if part of your prayer practice is to say morning and evening prayer, then you say it twice daily. I am a firm believer in the idea that familiarity breeds contempt or at least inattention and praying the prayer that we are given from the mouth of Jesus warrants more than that, it warrants our focus. 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 1

2 Let us start at the beginning of the Gospel. Luke points out that Jesus is praying. Luke often highlights that Jesus frequently prays. As a response to seeing Jesus pray, a disciple asks to be taught to pray. What follows in Luke is one of the two versions of what we call the Our Father. It is divided into a holiness statement and 5 petitions. Father, hollowed be thy name: in Semitic thinking the name and the person are identical so if your name is holy, you are. The idea here is that: God will establish his own sovereignty, that we all belong to Him and it is a wish for the day when all people will revere God. 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 2

3 Your kingdom come makes this wish even more explicit. Remember, one of Luke s hallmarks is this theme that Jesus mission and ours is to establish God s kingdom here on earth. The last three petitions are for bread, forgiveness and deliverance. I am going to take these three out of order and start with forgiveness because I think it establishes a pattern for the other two as well as the rest of the Gospel. Forgiveness. Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. Would that this were true! It is easy to interpret this as tit for tat, as if we were bribing God. I ll let off one of my enemies and you forgive me something I have done in return. As much as we might wish, forgiveness is not a hostage exchange. It is more like a straw. If we block the straw, nothing moves in either direction. God is there waiting to forgive us but we can block the process by holding onto our grievances. 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 3

4 A very wise friend once said to me: You can be right or you can have a relationship. I like being right but I have come to understand that I can not hang onto it. Since Christian life and praying are attempts to strengthen our relationship with God, the choice between holding onto grievances or being in communion with God seems clear cut. Let s really concentrate on forgiveness as a reciprocal process. If our ability to receive, really receive and take in God s forgiveness of us depends on our keeping the forgiveness pipeline a two way stream, what about the other petitions here in this prayer. What about give us this day our daily bread? What bread are we talking about? The bread of the Eucharist that we will share here in a few minutes or are we talking about bread as a metaphor for our daily needs? Most commentaries say it is a petition for God to provide our daily needs. I do not think we need to choose one or the other. The main point is that we rely on God to give us what 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 4

5 we need every day. God continually gives and we do not have to be anxiously hoarding to provide for ourselves. How does reciprocity fit in here? Perhaps our ability to ask for what we really need is related to our ability to hear the needs of others. One of those needs is for Literal bread and I have talked before of what I think is our charism for feeding those in need. Also, I have not talked about our feeding the children of Haiti for a while and I realized last evening that I had missed a golden opportunity. Our donation to San Sacrament this past quarter was down 33% from what we had pledged so if you can help to give one meal a day to those 130 children, please put your donation in one of the envelopes for Haiti or mark your check for Haiti. Pere Frederic has increased his efforts to feed the children even when school is not in session. So to receive bread, we must look to give bread. 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 5

6 The Last petition is Luke 11:4 And do not bring us to the time of trial." 1 Although there are instances especially in the Hebrew Testament of God being seen as testing His people, in general, the Devil tempts us, (think about the temptations of Jesus in the desert) God does not tempt us, so this petition is a prayer for God to protect us from anything that could threaten our lives or our relationship with Him. How does reciprocity fit in here? Perhaps our ability to receive and utilize God s protection is strengthened by our practices of protecting others. The Hebrew Testament is full of admonitions to care for the orphaned, the widows and the stranger. The Episcopal church puts great emphasis on protecting our children. How about our political attitudes toward education funding, social security, health care? And there you have Luke s Our Father. 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 6

7 Oh there you have most of Luke s Our Father. There are some early translations that read a little differently. I think the addition is meaningful so I will share it. Luke 11:2-4 Father, 1 hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 2 Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 1 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." 1 One last point, and you can blame the community of members who worshipped here last night for this addition. They teased me about not focusing on the Gospel verse about knocking and the door would be opened. They were referring to my application for ordination. Even here reciprocity applies. I do not picture God as standing behind a door waiting for us to knock. He knocks first. My experience of the desire to serve the Church as a priest did not originate from me and was not at first welcomed or embraced 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 7

8 by me. It grew over time and I have no doubt it came from God. So now I find myself knocking at the door of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem to let me in. We are about to pray Matthews version of the Lord s Prayer in a few minutes Let us focus and really deliberately pray it. God is knocking. Let us really open our minds and our hearts to what God is asking from each of us and from us as a community. 10 th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/27,28/13 Page 8