7/31/16
Luke 11:1-4
Matt 6:9-13
An interviewer approached a Jewish man who was praying
at the wailing wall in Jerusalem. This
wall is the only part of the temple that remained after the Romans destroyed
the temple in 70 A.D. and to this day remains a place where faithful Jews can
gather to lift up their prayers to God.
The interviewer asked the Jewish man to tell him about his praying. The man told the interviewer that he had been
coming to the wailing wall every day for 60 years. When asked what he prayed for he responded
that he prayed to God to bring peace to the world, to end war, oppression and
poverty. This man spent at least an hour
a day praying with every fiber of his being that God’s kingdom of Shalom, of
wholeness, of peace would come to earth.
The interviewer was moved deeply by this man’s profession of faith and
dedication to prayer. After a moment of
awed silence he finally asked the faithful man how he felt coming to the
wailing wall day after day. The faithful
man replied, “I feel,” and he paused, struggling to find the words to express
his feelings. “I feel,” he started again
and as the tears began to course down his face he finally choked out, “I
feel... like I’m talking to a wall.”
This morning we read
to you both gospels that contain versions of the Lord’s Prayer. What we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer
is not in all four gospels, but only in Luke and Matthew. Did anything strike
you during the reading of these two versions of the Lord’s Prayer?
Let me share with you
one more translation – this is another translation of the Matthew version:
Our Daddy in
Heaven,
Reveal who
you are.
Set the
world right;
Do what’s
best – as above, so below.
Keep us
alive with three square meals.
Keep us
forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe
from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in
charge!
You can do
anything you want!
You’re
ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes.
Yes!
Again, anything
strike you?
The bottom line, and
what I want to talk about with you today, is that there are several problems with
the way we say the Lord’s Prayer now.
First of all, and most importantly, our current way of saying the Lord’s
prayer is just plain inaccurate. And
there are a few things I want to highlight about that. First, the word we translate “Father” which is
a very formal word of address, should be properly translated from the Greek as “Daddy”,
which is a word of intimacy and closeness.
The word is actually Abba, and it is a word that young children would
have used to talk to a close parent.
This word is not just one of familiarity, of closeness, it is also a
word of trust, of dependence, of recognition that God as our Daddy, as our
Mommy, is someone we rely on, someone we need for our very being, someone we
love dearly and who loves us dearly as well.
Same with the word “thy” and “thine”.
These have become very formal words.
And again, that is a mistranslation.
Originally, the words “thine, thou, thy” were actually words of
intimacy, proclaiming a closer relationship than the word “you”. It was at the time when they were words of
closer intimacy that they were placed into this prayer to make the translation
right. But now that those words are
actually “distancing” or “formal” words, they make the translation
inaccurate. Jesus was making a very
strong, clear and, frankly, a very scandalous statement at that time. I think judging by how we say the Lord’s
Prayer now, it is scandalous in our own time as well, by telling us we should
pray in an intimate way with God.
Address God as Daddy, (or Mommy – words of intimacy and closeness), use
words that indicate an extremely close relationship such as “thy” or “thine”
used to do. We are not following what
Jesus asks us to do when we use terms that distance God rather than pulling God
closer.
Secondly, words like debt
or trespasses are old, confusing, unclear, and again inaccurate. What Jesus is calling us to do is to pray to
God to forgive us when we mess up. Debts
and trespasses imply mostly monetary and space misuses. Both of those are part of the “messing up”
umbrella, certainly, but not all of it by any means. We shorten and also obscure the prayer by
using those words.
Thirdly, as I have mentioned before, a large part of the
Protestant reformation was an insistence that God gave the scriptures to ALL
people and that therefore they should be written in our own language, the
language of the people. Our scriptures have become written in our own language
now. However, at the same time, we have
hung on to old language that is no longer the language of the people in things
like the way we say the Lord’s Prayer.
As we read in today’s scriptures, the way we say the Lord’s Prayer is
NOT an accurate translation into today’s language of the people. But we have become used to the way we do
it. It brings comfort at some level to
say it in the words our parents used and our parents’ parents used. There is value in that. But there is also a cost. Part of the cost is inaccuracy in
understanding. But a bigger cost is that
the children do not know what they are saying.
How can it truly be a prayer for them if they have no idea of the words
they are using? We’ve all heard the
jokes of children’s hearing of this prayer, “Our Father, whose art is heaven,
Howard be thy name.” And I have to ask
if leaving our children out of this prayer is worth the value we find in the
tradition of saying the prayer in a familiar way. We are failing to pass it down to them in a
meaningful way, which means it probably won’t stay in their lives. Is that really what we want? The prayer does not have the same meaning for
them that it does for us, though frankly, I wonder if it has the same meaning
for us as well when we rotely say words that are not part of our current
speech. And while we can talk about what
these words mean with the kids, saying our most common prayers in THEIR
language, in the language they use also sends an important message that God is
not so lofty as to not want to hear from children. God is here, and accessible and open to
hearing even from our kids. And again,
while speaking to God formally may have a message of respect towards God that
has value, it also sends a message of inaccessibility. The very message, in other words, that the
protestant reformation was working to challenge. More importantly, the very message that Jesus
was trying to confront.
Did you hear that?
We aren’t supposed to use a formula or program when we pray. Instead we are to pray “like” the Lord’s
Prayer. Jesus didn’t say, “pray using
these exact words.” In both gospels a
most accurate translation is “pray like this” or “pray in this way”. “Pray in this way” means, these are the ideas
and things about praying that are important for us to do. And there is much in the Lord’s Prayer that
is important.
Those
letters then stand for
Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication
And
Intercession.
In other words, just as in the Lord’s Prayer, we are called to
adore or express our love, “Holy is your name, Yours is the kingdom,
power and glory”,
Confess: “forgive our sins as we forgive others”
Offer Thanksgiving,
Lift up prayers for the world, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”
And pray for our own needs “Give us this day our daily bread, don’t lead
us into temptation, deliver us from evil”
Another way to say this is that in our prayers, as in everything else we
do in life, we are called to do three things:
Love God, love others and love ourselves.
The passage in Luke goes on to tell us to pray with all
urgency, to pray continually, to pray as if your life depended on it, which of
course it does.
That is the message
of the Lord’s Prayer. Jean asked me a
couple weeks ago why I begin the Lord’s Prayer with all of you but then mute my
mic for most of it. I do that because I
recognize that you need to say the prayer in the way that is most meaningful to
you. Prayer really is about our
relationships with God, and if your relationship with God calls you to pray it
in the way you always have, I honor and respect that. For me, my relationship with God calls me to
pray it slightly differently, using words that are in the language of my
children and connect me more intimately with God. I therefore use “you” instead of ‘thy and
thine”. I use “holy” instead of
“hallowed” and I use “sins” instead of debts.
I pray what has become known as the Ecumenical Version of the Lord’s
Prayer and that more and more of our congregations use for exactly the reasons
I have outlined.
Our Father/Mother/Creator who is in heaven, Holy is your name.
Your kindom
come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us
today our daily bread
Forgive us
our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
But again, I
recognize and honor that your relationships must be your own. I encourage you to think on these things, but
you must ultimately be guided by your relationship with God.
I want to end today by sharing
with you a prayer written by the Rev. Dewane Zimmerman. He wrote
The Lord’s prayer
(as it might be prayed by God to us):
(I encourage
you to listen differently and to ponder these in your hearts):
My children
who are on earth:
You
reverence my name
But you do
not celebrate my will for you.
You pray my
kingdom come,
But how can
it
When you ARE
what I mean by my kingdom?
You pray for
your daily bread,
But you have
enough-and to spare.
You pray for
forgiveness of your sins,
But how
often you will not forgive each other.
You ask me
not to lead you into temptation,
But what can
I do for you
That I am
not already doing?
Use the
gifts I am giving you
And you will
know my power and glory
Forever and
ever. Amen.
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