World Communion

2 Tim. 1:1-14

Luke 22:4-23

               Once again there is so much in this passage that we can glean.  What do you learn about communion from this passage? 

               Jesus starts off by saying that he is eager to have this Passover meal with his apostles.  He wants to share his ending with those he loves.  He wants to eat and commune and be with those people who have been with him, with his family, his community.

               He gives of the meal even to his betrayer.  He does not withhold his meal, his food, his love, his communion, even from those who would destroy him.  Jesus is announcing that this is his body and blood.  This has layers and layers of meaning, but one of the things it says to me is that it is God’s sacrifice, God’s giving of God-self, provides for us everything that we need.  When we eat, when we drink, it is because God has provided that to us out of the sweat and tears of God’s own being.

In light of that, why does Jesus then give this meal, this food, this sustenance, this sacrifice even to the one who would betray him?  This is such a strong statement about God’s love and forgiveness of us.  Even those of us who have made mistakes, or done bad things, ALL of us are offered the life that God gives because ALL of us are loved, all of us are forgiven.  It doesn’t mean there are not consequences for our actions, but it was not Jesus who rejected Judas, but Judas who eventually was so devastated himself by his own actions that he hung himself, according to the gospel of Luke.  God was still offering love, still offering bread, still offering life even to the one who would hurt him.  He still offered forgiveness, and what’s more - a new chance, in every moment, with every bite of bread and drink from the cup he offered Judas, and he offers us a new choice, a new option for choosing life.  Judas, in the end, did not choose life, but still it was offered.

               I think about this in light of World Communion Sunday in which we take communion with Christians of all denominations all over the world today.  It doesn’t matter today if you are Presbyterian or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or Baptist or Pentecostal or whatever.  This, too, is incredibly significant because we all come to communion with different understandings of exactly what communion is.  Catholics believe in transubstantiation, which means that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.  Lutherans believe in consubstantiation which means that while the bread and wine stay bread and wine, the literal body and blood of Christ become “attached” to that bread and wine and are taken in with the bread and wine.  For Presbyterians we believe in something sometimes called “receptionism” which basically means that we do not believe that there is a literal blood or body in communion: it is symbolic and God is spiritually present with us in the meal that we take. 

               But what is amazing about this day is that on World Communion Sunday, we put aside these differences, we put aside a belief in the importance in our dogma or understanding and we choose instead to focus on what we have in common.  We share a faith, we share a deep belief that our relationships with God matter, are important, are significant.  We share a belief that we are all God’s children, united through this meal, for one thing, and united by the fact that God loves each of us deeply, fully, completely.

               Jesus’ ministry included so many meals, so much feeding.  There was the story of the feeding of the 5000.  And in Matthew as well as Mark there is also the feeding of the 4000 which is a very similar story but simply with different numbers of fish, loaves, people and left-overs.  But other stories in the Bible also talk about food and eating.  The disciples, we are told, picked grain and ate on the Sabbath.  Jesus was eating with the Pharisees when the woman came and washed his feet with her tears (Luke 7:36- 50).  Jesus was attacked for eating with sinners and tax collectors. (Mark 2:0-6)  Jesus tells us we are the salt of the earth.  He compares the kingdom of God to yeast.  He chooses to eat and drink, changing the water into wine.  He tells the parable of the great banquet.  He describes himself as the bread of life, and says those who take of him will never hunger.  He deals with his own hunger as a temptation which he defeats.  After the resurrection, we are told, the disciples recognized the risen Christ when he broke the bread, THROUGH the breaking of the bread.  Jesus was recognized through his sharing food with his disciples.  Food is an important theme throughout Jesus’ ministry and in this, too, he never discriminates, never differentiates.  He feeds everyone who comes to him, he eats with any who will eat with him.  And it is through that feeding, that sharing of food, that sharing of a meal in which Christ is known.

               It is another thing as well.  There is a wonderful song called Big Joe by David Bailey.  The words are:

It was just another Sunday at the big church down on main.

He was just another homeless man, Big Joe was his name.

She was just a kitchen helper, Miss Betty mild and meek,

who prepared the sacred elements, every single week. 

Well the prayers had all been said, the hymns had all been sung. 

The pastor set the table, invited everyone.

Big Joe heard the music, he took a step inside. 

He saw a bunch of well-dressed folks who looked like they were trying to hide. 

He saw a man in fancy robes hold up a loaf of bread,

tear it into pieces.  And Big Joe thought he said,

“All ye who are hungry…”  Joe thought, “That’s me!” 

So, he walked on down the aisle, hoping it was free.

Well the pastor looked uneasy, not sure what to do.

But the usher held the plate out and said “broken just for you.”

Big Joe felt pretty lucky, then they handed him some wine.

The cups were pretty small but it tasted pretty fine

Then he said to the usher, “That bread was good.

Could I have a little more? Do you think I could?”  

Now the usher looked uneasy, looked a bit confused. 

Then he said “I'm sorry sir.  That's not how this bread is used.”

Joe said “I'd like to talk to the master of this meal. 

I'd really like to know just exactly how he feels.

'Cause up there on the table I can see it plain as day:

You got a half a loaf left over  - you’re gonna throw it away.

Cause I got a bunch of friends – they’re sleeping in the street –

right outside your door and they could use a bite to eat.” 

Well the ushers got to talking, then they began to shout.

Then before you know it, a fight had broken out. 

Meanwhile miss Betty slipped away, to the kitchen she did go,

filled a basket up with bread.  She brought it back to Joe.  

She said “Take this to your friends and you come on back next week”. 

Joe said “As you've done to them - you've done to me!”

That's how it all got started at the big church down on Main,

where people come from miles away to break bread in His name! Hallelujah!

As this song points out, communion was a meal, was a feast, was a celebration, was a feeding.  But it is also an opportunity for us to expand our vision of who is to be included, who is to be invited, who it is we are called to feed and with whom we are called to eat.

               It is in all of these things – Jesus’ ministry of feeding, Jesus feeding of even Judas at the last meal, the opportunities we have to feed each other, and this day in which, every year, we celebrate our collective faith through World Communion Sunday – in all of these ways and in all of these things the overabundant theme is once again a grace that overcomes every barrier, a grace that breaks down walls, a grace that forgives and offers new life to any who would like to partake.  World Communion Sunday is a day in which we are all invited to eat together a meal and to remember that God is in this meal with us.  God is in community with us.  God is in the basic stuff of life with us.  It is through this meal that we remember what God has done through history and what God continues and will continue to do through our lives. 

               Communion is remembering.  We remember Jesus’ death and resurrection.  But it is also a time to remember what God has done throughout history.  When Jesus ate the Passover meal, he was remembering the Israelites freed from slavery.  We also remember the return from exile.  We also remember that Jesus was recognized by his disciples after the resurrection through the breaking of the bread – through eating with them in communion and community.  Communion is the New covenant of forgiveness and grace and life.  Through it, we thank God, we bless God, we anticipate God’s fulfilling of the kingdom on earth.  We trust in and receive Christ’s love, we manifest the reality of the covenant of grace in reconciling and being reconciled.  We proclaim the power of Christ’s reign for renewal, justice and peace in the world.  The church is also bound with Christ and with one another, united with all Christians, nourished by Christ’s presence, and we ask to be kept faithful.  We renew our baptism vows by taking communion.  We celebrate the joyful feast of the people of God and anticipate the great banquet where all people will be united and made whole.  We are given a gift in this meal.  And that gift is a grace, a grace that we accept by eating together.  It is a grace we are also invited to pass forward by inviting all, as Jesus invited all, to join us in this meal. 

Come to the table and let us truly celebrate together.        

Discerning the Body

1 Corinthians 11: 17-33

Ephesians 2:14-18

               In today’s first passage Paul is confronting bad communion practices.  He starts with this: “So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk.  Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing?”  So his first point is that all are included, regardless of economic level, regardless of what they can bring to the meal.  Also note, as I’ve mentioned before, that communion was meant to be a meal.  It was meant to fill those who came, feed them in a very real and concrete way.  It was a supper, it was a gathering of community, it was a celebration of God-in-our-midst, God who provides our daily needs of food and drink, God who comes to us in the ordinary and every day experiences of eating and drinking, of joining together with friends.  Today’s passage from 1 Corinthians ends with this, “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat, you should all eat together.”  We do this after church on Sundays: just snacks, most of the time, but that eating together, that time for community and sharing of food, that is communion at the deepest level.

               By the way, this idea that communion is a meal is mirrored in the very words we use when we say, “this is the joyful feast of the people of God.”  It is meant to be a feast, a meal.  A feeding.

               Obviously we don’t do it that way anymore.  The communion “feast” became limited to a small piece of bread and a small sip of drink in a time when people were afraid that folk were coming solely because they were hungry and wanted to be fed, rather than for the “proper” reasons of remembering Christ’s life, death and resurrection.  But I will tell you honestly, it always feels more like real communion to me when we are feeding and sitting with those who are there simply out of need than it does to me to take a single bite of bread and call that communion.  Jesus fed people, including the hungry.  And when we do the same, we are more accurately following Jesus’ footsteps, we are more accurately acting out the “sacrament” than any other way we do communion.  Sacraments in the Presbyterian church involve three components: 1.  Jesus participated in it.  2.  Jesus did it for us.  3.  Jesus called us to do it.  When it comes to communion, Jesus ate, Jesus fed, and Jesus called us to do the same.  We are sacramentally called to feed one another, and when we do so in community, it truly gets at the heart of the sacramental practice of communion.

               Paul ends this passage in Corinthians with the following statement: “Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.”  So what does it mean to “discern the body?”  He’s already said that excluding anyone who comes to the table is a failure to discern the body.  He has also said that eating within your own small groups is a way of failing to discern the body. 

               The passage we read from Ephesians gives a bit more insight.  “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.  For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”  So “discerning the body” has to do with an ability to get past our differences, to remember that we are connected, united in Christ.  “Discerning the body” is about seeing one another with eyes of love and peace and recognition that we are all children of God despite our differences, despite our disputes.

               Roger Wolsey sent me a story this week in which he described an encounter he had with someone on the opposite side of the theological spectrum from himself outside the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.  They were arguing with each other loudly, with passion, with intensity, about LGBTQ inclusion.  Wolsey wrote, “In the midst of this nasty melee, I felt a breeze against the back of my legs. I turned and saw a tall man in a suit reaching in between us with a large cookie in his hand, saying, “Have a cookie!” The guy with the sign and I looked at each other, then at him, and then we took the cookie being offered. We broke it in half and started to enjoy the cookie. The guy in the suit walked off hardly breaking stride at all. We found ourselves still arguing, but our volume level went way down and we somehow shifted into a more civil mode of, slightly, more rational debate. He learned my name is Roger. I learned his name is Fred. And at the end, we honored each other as being fellow Christians, we shook hands and pledged to pray for each other (both of us certain that the other needed prayer).”  He continued, “the line between enemy and friend is not a rigid one and … the concept of “enemy” is only there to the extent that we want and allow it to exist.  Historic writings about the early Church tell us that non-Christians often remarked of Christians “See how they love each other!” There was a time of such a lack of love in ancient Roman society that any show of love or joy, let alone unconditional love like the kind that had them going out of their way to ensure that the poor people of Rome received proper burials, set Christians apart from the rest of the crowd. People could sense something was different about those Christians. That difference was inclusive, radical love and compassion – and that difference made Christianity worthy of consideration. Those early Christians provided proper funeral services for the indigent strangers when no one else would. They rescued infants with birth defects from the garbage heaps who’d been rejected and discarded as refuse by families unwilling to raise them. And they notably tended to each other when they took ill, experienced hardship, became widowed, etc.”

               On this World Communion/Peacemaking Sunday it is especially important that we remember this.  We are celebrating communion with Christians around the world today.  We are also remembering the needs, and especially the hungers of people around the world as we collect the peacemaking offering which goes in large part towards the ending of hunger around the world.  These three things: our connections to each other around the world, our feeding of each other through communion, and peacemaking are all intimately connected. 

               So today as we celebrate both peacemaking and world communion Sunday I invite you to take part at a deeper level in both being fed and in feeding.  In terms of being fed, we have baskets full to the brim with different kinds of breads from around the world.  Do not just take a bite, but take a real piece of bread.  Savor it, taste it, let it fill you in body as well as in spirit and in soul, let it be part of you even as you see that same bread becoming part of those around you.  In terms of feeding one another, I encourage you to give generously to the peacemaking offering that we will be taking in a few minutes.  In our praying, I encourage you to remember people around the world, our brothers and sisters, our family whom we have yet to meet, and to lift up deep prayers for their wholeness, their well-being, their safety and health.

               Communion is so many things.  It is remembering.  We remember Jesus’ death and resurrection.  We also remember what God has done throughout history.  When Jesus ate the Passover meal, he was remembering the Israelites freed from slavery.  We also remember the return from exile.  We also remember that Jesus was recognized by his disciples after the resurrection through the breaking of the bread – through eating with them in communion and community. 

               It is New covenant of forgiveness and grace and life. 

               It sustains the church by Christ’s pledge of undying love and continuing presence.   

               And on this World Communion Sunday it also connects us to people around the world in a commitment to love, to peace, to justice.

               We thank you, God; we bless you, God; we anticipate, God, your fulfilling of the kingdom on earth.  We trust in and receive Christ’s love, we manifest the reality of the covenant of grace in reconciling and being reconciled.  We proclaim the power of Christ’s reign for renewal, justice and peace in the world.  We bind the Church with Christ and with one another, united with all Christians, nourished by Christ’s presence, and we ask to be kept faithful.  We renew our baptism vows through this taking of communion.  We celebrate the joyful feast of the people of God and anticipate the great banquet where all people will be united and made whole.  Amen.

The Bread of LIfe

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

Ephesians 4:25 - 5:2

John 6:35-51

         As we look at the passage from John for today I am struck with a basic difference between the people that Jesus was speaking to and us.  We, in this congregation, are a people who do not worry about where our next meal is coming from.  We know that we will eat, often; and enough, sometimes more than enough.  So those words that we hear today, “I am the bread of life…(followed by words referencing the manna that fed the Israelites when they were truly struggling to find food in the desert, and then continuing): I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  These words promising bread that will enable Jesus’ hearers to eat, to not go hungry, to live – these words don’t have nearly as much impact on people who are comfortable and who have enough to eat, as they did for those who were not always assured of where their next meal was coming from. 

For people who were hungry, these words were promising another day of living; but more, they were promising a life freed from the anxiety of worrying about their next meal, or the next or the next.  It promises that with Jesus’ sacrifice, life is abundant, everlasting, eternal – and again, without hunger, without craving, without emptiness and without fear.  We understand these words to be about something much bigger than fulfilling hunger. We understand that the life Jesus was promising was not the daily life that we live. He spoke in parables, in metaphors and here he is not talking about physical hunger. Still, in a place, within an experience, where life is so fragile, so precarious, so short, and so full of the fear and reality of hunger, a promise of everlasting bread spoke to Jesus’ hearers so much more than it possibly could for any who have not suffered shortage of food.

Sarah Miles, in her book Take this Bread, said, “it’s the really hungry who can smell fresh bread a mile away.  For those who know their need, God is immediate – not an idea, not a theory, but life, food, air for the stifled spirit and the beaten, despised, exploited body.”  That is what is offered in communion, in this last supper, in the sacrament of that meal.  We are offered food, yes, but more we are offered life, we are offered God’s presence here in this meal.  Sarah Miles continued, “What Jesus offered was a radical…love that accompanied people in the most ordinary actions – eating, drinking, walking, and stayed with them, through fear, even past death.”  She connects all of this with Jesus’ call and command to Peter…She said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about another (Biblical) story: Jesus instructing his beloved, fallible disciple Peter exactly how to love him:  ‘Feed my sheep.’  Jesus asked, “Do you love me?”  Peter fussed, “Of course I love you.’  “Feed my sheep.”  Peter fussed some more.  “Do you love me?” asked Jesus again.  “Then feed my sheep.”  It seemed pretty clear.  If I wanted to see God, I could feed people.”  We talked about this last week: somehow that act of feeding others, and allowing others to feed us, connects us to God in a way that is hard to explain, but deeply profound.  God IS the bread of life.  Jesus exemplifies that for us, but also calls us to share that bread of life with one another.  This is both metaphoric and literal.  Feeding others, making sure others have enough to eat, to live: both at a physical level and at a spiritual level: that is what we are called, most deeply to do.  What do others need that we have?  And what are the ways in which we are called to share that, every single day?  This is what stewardship is about.  We are entrusted with God’s resources in order to share them, to make sure that all have what they need.  And again, this extends far beyond food: education, well-being, health care, companionship, the right to live free of fear from violence or persecution.  These are not things we have earned: these are graces, lent to us by God so that we might share them with others.  Nothing we have is ours.  All of it is God’s.  And our call, always, is to share our bread, share our resources, share God’s gifts with those most in need of them.

Those who are fed by God, not by daily food, necessarily, but by God, those people, no matter how poor they are themselves, those people find within them the strength and gift of feeding others. Greg Mortensen begins his book, The Three Cups of Tea by recounting his story of finding himself in an impoverished Pakistan village after a failed attempt to climb K2.  He was exhausted, he was sick, and yet these poor strangers fed him, cared for him.  The story continues, “(Mortensen) took a bite of warm chapatti dunked in lassi, wolfed all that he’d been served, and washed it down with sugary tea.  Sakina laughed appreciatively and brought him more.  If  Mortensen had known how scarce and precious sugar was to the Balti, how rarely they used it themselves, he would have refused the second cup of tea.”  The story goes on to explain how he had also been given by them their best blankets, their best food, their best everything, things they had so little of, things they did not use for themselves.  They found in the midst of their physical poverty, but their spiritual wealth, that they had this to share.  And they began it all with “communion” – with sharing the food of life with this stranger.  Those who find their fulfillment from God always find that they have something to share, no matter what they lack.

There is a story about a young student who had to be away from his fiancée for a few months as she travelled overseas to do peace work.  This was agony for him, to be so separated from his love.  He was sad and depressed.  He was on a bus traveling back to school, and the bus stopped at the Greyhound station, a rather dreary place.  He sat down on an unraveling, revolving seat at a dirty counter.  The counter was U-shaped, so he found himself sitting across from an old woman.  She saw him and said, “Honey, you sure do look depressed.”  He said, “I am, and before he knew it, he was crying.  The woman reached across the counter to pat his cheek with a dirt-under-the-fingernail hand and he pulled back when he saw it.  She simply asked, “What’s wrong, honey?” and he told her about his fiancée, and how much he loved her, and how much he missed her.  He showed the woman her picture.  The woman said, “Oh, I’ve never seen such a beautiful young woman.”  Then she began to tell him that she had been married to a traveling salesman who had since passed away.  And she related how they used to weep, both of them, each time he had to go away, but how happy they were when he returned.  She said, “You’re going to have a wonderful marriage.  Everything’s going to be fine.”  Then she suggested that he might feel better if he had something to eat, so she ordered a donut from under the scratchy plastic.  And the woman took the donut, broke it, and she gave it to him.  As she did, an announcement came over the loudspeaker and she said, “O my goodness!  My bus is here.”  And she disappeared.  Only then were his eyes opened and he recognized the visitation, God’s presence, in the breaking of the donut.

Again, in that need, and in the feeding, the fulfilling, the answering of that hunger, both physical and emotional, God was recognized.  In food, in the fulfilling of hunger God fulfills deeper needs.  God is present in this food, in this meal and God fills us. 

A Facebook acquaintance posted this story: "When I go through a drive-thru the person taking my order says something like, "does that complete your order?" I always respond by saying, "unless you would like me to buy you something." Usually they will giggle and say they appreciate it, but decline. The young lady today asked, "are you serious?" I told her to add her meal to my order. When I got to the window, there was this young lady with tears streaming down her face. She thanked me profusely and began to tell me her story. Folks, you never know what others are going through. The people taking your order at the fast food place are often working 2-3 jobs just to get by. This young lady was working 3 jobs, pregnant, and was evicted from her apartment yesterday. She now lives in her car. All this info because I bought her a salad ... yes, she ordered herself a salad. When we take time to be kind to one another, we open up the possibility of connecting with people. I'm not sharing this story to hear accolades. I'm sharing it in hopes you will step out of your comfort zone and dare to be the kind, connectional person God created you to be. Who knows ... you may just be the image of God that person needs at that moment. That's worth the $6 and 45 minutes I spent with her... yes, I had lunch with her and gave her lots of community resources to connect with." 

As I read that story, I found myself thinking that it was not just the young woman who was fed by this exchange.  The person who posted the story was fed too: God is in those meals, God is with us whenever we offer our gifts to share with others.

There is a poem I’d like to share with you called the “enough” poem.  It reads:

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger. 

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good- bye. (Credited to Bob Perks)

In our wants, in our needs, in our pain, in the hungers that fill our lives – hunger for bread, for connection, for comfort, for ease of pain or grief or sorrow – in those hungers Jesus comes to us and offers himself – his very being to fill this our hunger, to feed our needs, to fill our desires, to fill our hopes and dreams and deepest yearnings to connect to LOVE.  As we eat our meals today, with one another or separately, may our eyes be opened to seeing God with us in this meeting of our basic needs, to tasting the goodness of everlasting life and love.  May we be fed in the breaking of the bread, and may we meet Jesus anew in the fulfillments of the hungers of ourselves and those around us.  Amen.

Communing with God

2 Sam. 11:26-12:13a

John 6:24-35

When we look at the bigger context of today’s gospel reading we see it as follows: Jesus has been healing the sick.  Then he performs the miracle of feeding the 5000.  Then Jesus walks across the water towards the disciples.  All of that directly precedes today’s story. What happened in the passage we read for today?  The disciples, and the people, literally “the crowd” are looking for Jesus.  When they find him he says that they are looking for him, following him, not because of what he has said and not even because of the “signs” he has given, but because he has fed them and they are filled, they are satisfied.  Jesus acknowledges that being filled is very important. It is so important that people work hard for it.  They are also willing to follow and want to be led by someone who will fill them, who will feed them.  But, he says, they are focused on having their bodies fed.  They are not focusing on what will really satisfy them, really bring them peace and wholeness, which is seeking after spiritual bread, after truth, after relationship with God, after following in the way, which is Jesus himself.  That is what will really fill them, but they can’t seem to change their focus from that of getting basic physical needs met. 

That is the central focus on today’s text. But as I sat with this text there was a sub story, related but not the focus, that really stood out for me.  And that has to do with the next part of the story.

After all of this: after hearing what Jesus says to them, after being told what they really want is to be satisfied and not with just physical bread but the bread of life: after they have been miraculously fed and after Jesus has walked on the water and after all of the healings he has performed, then this outrageous thing happens and they then ask Jesus for a sign!  Apparently, they’ve forgotten all the signs he has just produced.  Or perhaps they simply weren’t satisfied with the healings, they weren’t satisfied with the feeding of the thousands, they weren’t satisfied with him walking on the water.  They don’t want to have to do anything except be fed, be healed, be attended to.  And so, when Jesus asks them to do something in return, when Jesus asks them to follow him, they want proof, more proof, that this effort on their part will lead to them continuing to be fed, to be healed to be attended to.  They ask for another sign.  They point to Moses saying, “well, he fed us manna, so give us a sign so we can believe.”  (again, obviously what they are really asking for is a very specific sign: they want Jesus to feed them again).  But Jesus corrects them saying that Moses didn’t do that, God did that.  And that Jesus is there to feed them, is feeding them, has been feeding them: but at this moment, not in the way that they want to be fed, are demanding being fed. 

I think this is the key point here, actually.  They want to never be hungry again, physically.  They want to be fed in a way that makes them feel safe, physically.  They want to be shown that they will never suffer again, never hunger again, never be in need again.  And when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never hunger again,” they are still thinking in terms of physical hunger, physical bread, physical needs being met. 

We still do this.  We all want life to be physically easier, to be smoother.  We don’t like to suffer, and we don’t like to see others suffer, especially people we love.  So we, too, beg and plead for something different, for a bread that will satisfy us always, without us needing to do anything.  We want to be children, taken care of.  More, we want a Santa Claus God whose job and role is that of answering our every need, but also our every wish. 

And what this shows me, what this says to me, what should be obvious looking at today’s culture and at the world and into our own hearts as well, is that people have a hard time believing. They have an even harder time committing to their faith and to living that out.  They have a hard time trusting in their faith, trusting in God, trusting in what they’ve even been experiencing through these miracles.  They’ve been given signs.  They’ve been fed.  They’ve heard the Word of God spoken again and again, and yet they still ask for more proof, more feeding, more signs. They still struggle to believe in a God who loves us beyond our imagining but also calls us into action.  They want to believe in a God who will feed them constantly like a mother bird, without them needing to do anything. But they struggle to do so.  They need constant reassurance. And because of that, no matter what Jesus did, they would ask for more: more signs, more feeding, more proof. 

Frederick Buechner, in his book “Wishful Thinking” speaks eloquently for us in his essay on faith when he says, “I can’t prove the friendship of my friend.  When I experience it, I don’t need to prove it.  When I don’t experience it, no proof will do.  If I tried to put his friendship to the test somehow, the test itself would queer the friendship I was testing.  So it is with the Godness of God.”

He continues, “The five so-called proofs for the existence of God will never prove to unfaith that God exists.  They are merely five ways of describing the existence of the God you have faith in already. Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved.  I can prove the law of gravity by dropping a shoe out the window.  I can prove that the world is round if I’m clever at that sort of thing - that the radio works, that light travels faster than sound.  I cannot prove that life is better than death or love better than hate.  I cannot prove the greatness of the great or the beauty of the beautiful.  I cannot even prove my own free will; maybe my most heroic act, my truest love, my deepest thought, are all just subtler versions of what happens when the doctor taps my knee with his little rubber hammer and my foot jumps.

“Faith can’t prove a ...(darned) thing.  Or a blessed thing either.”

There is something very human in a desire for some kind of “proof” at times of God’s presence.  There is something very human in a desire to know for sure that Jesus is God’s son.  There is something deep within us that wants God to shout out in clear and concrete terms what we are supposed to do and be with our lives, what God wants for us in each moment.  There is something very human in this deep desire to be fed, cared for, taken care of, without needing to give and serve and trust in order to experience that satisfaction and fullness.  And some of the time, at least, we probably feel that the signs God does give just aren’t clear enough.

In reflecting on the nature of signs and presence and feeding in our lives, I was reminded of the movie “Bruce Almighty.”  He’s driving down the road demanding, insisting on a sign from God.  He passes a sign that says “caution ahead” which he ignores.  He prays more and begs with even more insistence for a sign.  He sees another sign, “turn back!”  which he also ignores.  He crashes into a pole and gets out of the car cursing and yelling at God to answer him!  To respond to him!  And then his pager goes off.  We know the person paging Bruce is God, but Bruce doesn’t know that.  Instead, he takes the pager and yells at it, “Don’t know you.  Wouldn’t call you if I did.”  And we are left both laughing but also reflecting seriously on the truth of that.  He didn’t see God when God was right there, answering his prayers, responding to his pleas, even calling him and asking him to listen.  He didn’t know God.  He didn’t call the God who is real, who exists, who is not Santa Claus, just there to dole out what we believe we need at any moment.  And if he had known this God, Bruce probably would not have called on that God. “Don’t know ya.  Wouldn’t call you if I did” was all too accurate a statement from this man begging for a sign.

But while it is entertaining for those of us watching the movie to see how blind and unaware Bruce is to God’s presence and direction for his life, we have signs in our own life as well.  For us too, these signs are not always so easy to discern.  We are each given and we each use eyes that are sometimes foggy as we look for God in our world.  These visions and insights into God’s will for us change depending on our gifts, our moods, our circumstances.  What you and I fail to see may be obvious to those around us.  What you and I do see as signs of God’s presence may completely elude others.

 There is a person in my life whom I am very close to.  We’ve known each other forever, and have been close for a long time.  In our adult lives, we share a dedication to education, we both have a love and interest in psychology (one of my majors was psychology, she has a PhD in psych).  Our children are near the same age and we share a similar parenting style.  Politically we are in a similar place and we tend to agree on almost every issue of real importance.  But this person is also different from me and especially so in one area.  This person I will call Jane is an atheist, as devout an atheist, I believe, as I am a Christian.  She cannot understand why I believe in God when to her, science, chance, luck can explain the Universe and everything within it.  To her my faith is nothing more than superstition, and, I believe she would say, an unhealthy superstition at that.  In answer to her questions about how I can possibly believe in a God, I really have only my experience as an answer.  There is no book and there are no signs which I can offer her which she cannot answer with some historical, scientific or rational explanation.  And yet, there are no experiences that I can recall in which I do not see God’s presence, see God’s hand, see God’s sign.  I experience God’s presence in the extraordinary, but perhaps even more so in the ordinary.  I experience signs of God’s presence and love in the very things which she experiences as scientific and mundane. 

What signs would make her believe?  If the world were to crumble tomorrow and angels and devils jump out of the earth, I doubt that these would be signs enough for her of God’s existence.  While for me, if I never were to experience a “miracle” again in my life, I would still see the signs of God’s presence and care all around me.  We see the world and God’s signs differently.  That doesn’t mean though that there aren’t times when I too find myself wanting, needing, even asking for a sign of God’s will for my life.

God understands us and accepts us as we are in all our humanity.  God knows that we are people who are unsure.  God knows that even the most blatant signs are sometimes hard for us to see, and that we cannot help but ask for them once in a while.  And so, while Jesus seems to scold those who could not simply trust and believe, Jesus also gave the signs that were asked for.  And Jesus did feed them.  I want to say that again because all of us need to hear it.  God does not reject our need for signs, or our need to be fed, but gives them in spite of the fact that what God wants for us is for us to focus on spiritual hunger, on our need to eat more fully of things beyond food.  In today’s passage, Jesus does remind the disciples of his feeding miracles.  Jesus did appear to Thomas and encouraged him, not only to see, but to hear, to touch, to experience the risen Christ to ease his doubt.

In light of this what are we to do? Jesus proclaims himself to be the bread of life.  He also proclaims himself to be the way and he declares that any who would come, who would seek out this bread of life, must be willing to take up his/her own cross to follow. We experience this bread of life, we experience the wholeness God wants for us, we feel what it is to be truly filled when we are communing with God, when we are doing what God asks us to do, when we are following on the way.  And while there are many ways to do that – sitting in beautiful settings such as this one, meeting with others who are faithful, experiencing an incredible sunset, I think we need to take what Jesus says about this very seriously.  He invites us to be fed by following him in his actions.  And those actions, that WAY, is one of loving one another, especially the oppressed, the displaced, those without justice, those without compassion, those without food.  We are not called to be people who simply sit at Jesus’ feet and beg for more signs and more bread.  We are called to be disciples and it is in being disciples that we will find ourselves fed to the core of our beings.

One of the many mission trips my congregation took was to replace the flooring in a mobile home that after one of the storms that hit the Eastern seaboard, had destroyed the roof which then meant the rain and other elements had destroyed the flooring of this woman’s house.  She was extremely poor.  She was extremely bitter.  For the first day that we were there, she watched us work while she sat on her porch smoking and complaining.  She complained about her neighbors, she complained about how unfairly life had treated her, she complained about what we were doing – (that doesn’t look perfectly matched, I don’t like that color, I’m sure I’d picked something a darker shade of brown).  We encouraged everyone to listen because we felt sure that the most important part of our mission work was not just the flooring, but seeing people, hearing people, treating them as the children of God they really were.  The listening opened a door, but it was a small crack.  The change came, though, when she offered us something to drink and made us all some lemonade.  I know that sounds strange, it sounds odd, it sounds tiny.  One of our folk didn’t want to take the lemonade from her because “we were there to serve her” but we just emphasized that accepting hospitality was as important as giving it.  And what we saw was nothing less than amazing.  In allowing her to serve us, we did several things.  First we equalized the playing fields.  We became people who were serving each another.  Second, it gave us a pause in our work to sit and really talk with her – an equal exchange of stories, in which we all saw that there are blessings and challenges for every life.  That act of drinking together, which eventually became eating together, sharing a meal of care, of service, of faith became an opportunity to see the face of God in one another. 

Jesus fed people.  He also allowed others to feed him: giving the woman at the well the opportunity to give him water, allowing the sinful woman to wash his feet with her tears and hair, (Luke 7:36-50).  Those who were most in need were not just cared for, but were allowed to give care as well.

When we want to be fed, it might be well to ask ourselves how we might feed others.  It is in this exchange – in this communing with God, that we are truly fed.  And it is in truly being fed, that we find our proof of God.  Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”  God is all around us, just waiting to be seen.  The best way to see God is to serve and love God’s people.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Faith and Lamentation

Lamentations 1:1-6
Psalm 137
Luke 17:5-10

           The Israelites with money and power, the elites of Israel were sent into exile because of the way they treated their poor and outcast, according to the prophets as well as books such as the psalms and lamentations.  In the first two of today’s passages then, the exiled are expressing deep sorrow and lament.  The passage from Lamentations says, “Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress….Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe.”  In lamentations the pain of exile is expressed in the third person.  In the psalm, it is more personal – expressed in the first person, the psalmist laments, cries out, or expresses the pain of the exile.
          According to the psalmist, those who have captured and exiled the elite Israelites, the Babylonians, are now asking the exiled Israelites to share with the Babylonians their music, to entertain them with the songs that define who they are, their values, their beliefs, their culture, their heritage.  The psalmist is crying out that the very request is deeply painful for it shows how little understood is the depth of their despair at being taken from their home.  The pain is intense.  It is real.  It is deep and profound to the core. The Babylonians may have been mocking them in this very request. The Israelites have been uprooted, all that mattered to them demolished.  This destruction included the temple and because at that time it was believed that God resided in the temple, the destruction of the temple meant for the people that God had left, abandoned them, at least during this time while they are in exile.
         While the prophets declare that this exile is nothing more than justice for the way they have treated the poor and outcast in their midst, the Israelites in this psalm are not expressing guilt.  They are not repenting of their behavior.  They are also not living in the promise that God will return and then return them to their home.  In this psalm, and in the passage from lamentations, they are expressing the pure pain of being in exile, the pure hope for revenge, the pure anguish of lives changed, lost, uprooted.  They are expressing anger, stopping the circle of violence by not acting it out but sharing it with God.  They trust they can express all of their pain, anger and wish for revenge to God knowing God will still love them and that God will be the one to serve justice.  Through their expression, through this writing in the psalms and in lamentations, they have likewise given us permission to express our pain, our sense of loss, our anger, grief, and despair at times when we, too, have experienced this kind of pain.  So I want to start today be asking you, have any of you ever experienced this kind of pain?  This sense of being in exile?
         For African Americans and other people captured and enslaved, for refugees escaping for their lives, for people who feel they have no other choice but to leave, these passages of lament voice a deep and very real experience.  But most of us have not experienced exile in these ways.  Still, I would guess that some if not many of you have felt that you were uprooted in a way or to a place you had no desire to go – sent away or made to move from a place you loved?
          A friend of mine was sharing with a group of us about a time when her husband took a job overseas in a country in Asia.  This friend did not want to go, made it clear that she did not want to go, but there was no choice for her and for three years she lived, as she said, as one in exile.  One of the other members of our group confronted this perception saying to her that she could have chosen not to go with him, and that this is very different from the exiled Jews who had no choice but to go and who had lost everything in the going.  But for my friend, the choice felt extreme.  She could have chosen to stay behind and forfeit all the things in her life that were meaningful to her – her husband, her family, her financial support, or she could leave her home and go with her husband into what felt alien and distant and against her wishes.  She felt exiled.  And for her these passages of lament spoke to her of her experience.  While she could not attribute the exile to God’s justice or to a sense of prophetic fulfillment, she could feel the abandonment, the anger, the anguish of being a stranger in a foreign place in a way that felt against her will.
       For those of us to whom even this kind of exile is foreign, I imagine that still, we have, at one time or another, felt some kind of psychological exile: a time when we were in a group where we felt we did not belong, in a culture that was not our own and in which we felt completely “different” or other.  Maybe this takes you back to high school or even grade school and a time when you were left out or made fun of. If you have ever been the center of public critique, that, too, may feel like a place of exile, where those who would condemn you do not really know you but would judge you anyway.
           The theme of exile, being outcast and seeking restoration, reconnection, seeking to come home – this is one of the great meta-narratives or broad themes that speak to us throughout the Bible. There are three basic metanarratives in scripture:  Being a slave freed from slavery, being an exile returned home and being caught by sin and forgiven for it.  We don’t focus as much on this particular metanarrative but it is a very important theme throughout scripture. The story reflects a universal experience of being taken from home, of searching for home, of feeling that it is very hard, if not impossible to find home, to get home.   For many poets and theologians, exile and these passages have spoken to them of the experience of feeling that being here on earth is a kind of exile, a time of being away from a true and deep sense of home.
          While it may seem odd that we would focus on this theme on World Communion and Peacemaking Sunday, it is in fact not only appropriate but important that we look at this theme on such a day as today.  On World Communion Sunday we celebrate the universality of our human experience, which is one of brokenness seeking wholeness.  Today we focus on the universality of exile, of lament, of crying out to God.  This universal experience of depression, of being lost, of searching for home, is part of what makes us human.  We are united in the common experience of distance from home and even from God, and we are called in our unity to be part, through our peacemaking efforts, through our faith, of bringing every person home from exile, of bringing every person into community, of restoring right relationships both between all people, and between ourselves and God.
           This is not just a hypothetical or distant injunction.  We are called, we are commanded, to love neighbor and even enemy as self – to not be part of the exiling or exclusion of others, but to be part of the restoration, the bringing home of the exiled, the creating of community and “home” for all who are lost.  Part of the way in which we do this first and foremost is by eating with one another.  We, in this congregation, are a people who do not worry about where our next meal is coming from.  We know that we will eat, often, perhaps too often and enough, often more than enough.  So those words that Jesus spoke, “I am the bread of life… I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  These words promising bread that will enable Jesus’ hearers to eat, to not go hungry, to live – these words don’t have the same impact on we who are comfortable and who have enough to eat as they did for those who were not always assured of where their next meal was coming from.
For people who were hungry, these words were promising another day of living; but more, they were promising a life freed from the anxiety of worrying about their next meal, or the next or the next.  It promises a life that brings us home, a life of abundance, without hunger, without craving, without emptiness, without exile, and without fear.  We understand these words to be about something much bigger than fulfilling hunger. We understand that the life Jesus was promising was not the daily life that we live.  Still, in a place, within an experience, where life is so fragile, so precarious, so short, and so full of the fear, loneliness and reality of hunger, a promise of everlasting bread spoke to Jesus’ hearers so much more than it possibly could for any who have not suffered shortage of food.
         Sarah Miles, in her book Take this Bread, said, “it’s the really hungry who can smell fresh bread a mile away.  For those who know their need, God is immediate – not an idea, not a theory, but life, food, air for the stifled spirit and the beaten, despised, exploited body.”  That is what is offered in communion, in this last supper in the sacrament of this meal.  We are offered food, yes, but more we are offered life, we are offered Jesus himself – his body, his blood, his presence here in this meal.  Sarah Miles continued, “What Jesus offered was a radical…love that accompanied people in the most ordinary actions – eating, drinking, walking, and stayed with them, through fear, even past death.”  She connects all of this with Jesus call and command to Peter…She said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about another (Biblical) story: Jesus instructing his beloved, fallible disciple Peter exactly how to love him:  ‘Feed my sheep.’  Jesus asked, “Do you love me?”  Peter fussed, “Of course I love you.’  “Feed my sheep.”  Peter fussed some more.  “Do you love me?” asked Jesus again.  “Then feed my sheep.”  It seemed pretty clear.  If I wanted to see God, I could feed people.”
                      Feeding, eating together, these are ways in which we find home, in which we make home. Those who are fed by God, not by daily food, necessarily, but by God, those people, no matter how poor they are themselves, those people find within them the strength and gift of feeding others. Greg Mortensen begins his book, The Three Cups of Tea by recounting his story of finding himself in an impoverished Pakistan village after a failed attempt to climb K2.  He was exhausted, he was sick, and yet these poor strangers fed him, cared for him.  The story continues, “(Mortensen) took a bite of warm chapatti dunked in lassi, wolfed all that he’d been served, and washed it down with sugary tea.  Sakina laughed appreciatively and brought him more.  If Mortensen had known how scarce and precious sugar was to the Balti, how rarely they used it themselves, he would have refused the second cup of tea.”  The story goes on to explain how he had also been given by them their best blankets, their best food, their best everything, things they had so little of, things they did not use for themselves.  They found in the midst of their physical poverty, but their spiritual wealth, that they had this to share.  And they began it all with “communion” – with sharing the food of life with this stranger.  Those who find their fulfillment from God always find that they have something to share, no matter what they lack. We are called to serve in the same way.  But first to see those we are most called to serve.  And that must start with an understanding of what it is to be exiled, to feel cast away from home.
      On this world Communion and peacemaking Sunday, we are called first to remember the experience of being cast out, and to remember Jesus’ experience of exile and rejection, to remember that he, too, stood with the outcast and rejected even as he experienced being one of them.  Second, we are called to unite with the exiled, to eat together, to create home and community with all who would join together on this day, to eat together, to make food together.  The hymn that we will be singing in a moment calls us to remember and to experience again the universal sense of lament.  I invite you to allow yourself to sit with the words, to be in the words, and to hear God’s voice calling us to solidarity with those who are exiled, and to peacemaking as we remember our call to be with, beside and empowering those who are rejected.  Let us be in a spirit of prayer…

Sermon from last Sunday in July - Lord's Prayer

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.

            Another problem with the way we say the Lord’s Prayer is that by saying it together the same way every week, we also miss the larger message of the story and of the prayer.  The paragraph right before the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, again using the Message translation reads: “The word is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant.  They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God.  Don’t fall for that nonsense.  This is your parent you are dealing with, who knows better than you what you need.  With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.  Like this…”

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. 

            Someone once pointed out that if you want to know what to pray for you could use the acronym ACTS I. 

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.

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.