2 Chronicles 20:1-12; Matthew 6:5-13
June 25, 2023
- The beginning of the Lord’s Prayer – God
There are plenty of things in life that we have had trouble understanding.
It is hard to understand why bad things happen to good people. It is hard to understand how children can sometimes be wiser than adults. It is hard to understand how there is always a full load of laundry to wash. Even little Suzie was struggling to understand something the preacher had said. She was having such a hard time, she had to go talk to the minister directly about it.
“Pastor,” Suzie said, “I heard you say today that our bodies came from the dust.”
“That’s right, Suzie, I did,” he says.
“And I heard you say that when we die, our bodies go back to dust.”
“Yes, I’m glad you were listening,” the pastor replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you better come over to our house right away and look under my bed, ’cause there’s someone either comin’ or goin’!”
That brings me to another stumper – why we have such a hard time cleaning our rooms, especially for young people. I don’t understand it.
Something else that people have struggled to grasp for a long, long, long time is how to pray. Even if you are one of those happy and blessed souls who feels like you have that covered, I wonder if you would feel the same way praying before or with a group. After all, if you are comfortable praying by yourself and confident in your ability to talk to God, then praying with others or in front of a group should not be all that different. Praying is praying, and we should not try to make our public prayers sound preachery as Jesus warns us. We are talking to God either way. On the other hand, my suspicion is that we are not as confident or as comfortable praying as we ought to be.
We have just spent the last month covering different kinds of prayers to help us become more familiar with praying. No one in this hearing or reading should leave the praying to the so-called experts. We should all want to grow in our praying, and we should do it. There is no growing without trying. This month, we are walking our way carefully and deliberately through the most famous of our prayers, the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes, it is called the Pater Noster or the “Our Father,” but that should not be a surprise. It is my deep desire for all of us to pray and to love to pray, and that means we have to feel drawn to pray.
Even though Jesus has TWO warnings to people before we get to this famous sample prayer in today’s reading from Matthew, I don’t think any of us are truly worried about making prayer a show or throwing all kinds of fancy and flowery words in our prayer. The only people that I know of who might really test God’s patience there is preachers or maybe other worship leaders. Yes, some who lead in worship really like the spotlight on them and want to sound like professional prayers. But prayer should also not be without heart.
People in Jesus’ day must have come to him with this question. He would not go into all of this teaching about prayer unless it was an issue and people were struggling. Just like today, you aren’t going to go into a 10-minute lesson on dividing fractions unless someone there really wants to know or needs that help. Jesus is responding here to a present and heartfelt need. Everyone knew they should pray, but the desperate people flocking to him for help and a better life were not sure how to pray to God so that God would hear them. This was one of the three pillars of Jewish life. This was worth getting as right as possible. They had heard puffed up people making a show of prayer or trying to make themselves sound more important than they were. They had heard people who wanted to get attention for their praying who used $10 words when 5¢ words were just fine, or they just said the same words over and over and over like babble. At that point, it is not about God but about your own need to be noticed.
That is what the word “hypocrite” actually means. In the Bible, it is not someone who says one thing but does another. Maybe it means that today, but back in Jesus’ day, a hypocrite was literally an actor. Pray to impress is the prayer of a hypocrite. Everything is a show.
That’s when Jesus cuts right through to the chase and gives us an example prayer. Something else that we might want to know is that this prayer of his was not meant to be our only prayer. He really did not even mean for us to keep repeating it verbatim. This is an example prayer, a model prayer, to help us understand more clearly how to pray and the kinds of things you might put into a prayer. We are going to talk about these things in the weeks to come, but this is a direction for prayer to help guide your praying and the only prayer to use, but it does push us in some interesting directions.
We begin with the one listening. To whom are we praying?
This was a big issue 2000 years ago and might be today. When you have all kinds of gods around and lots of different religions, how are we supposed to know who is listening out there? In that prayer of Jehoshaphat, there is no doubt the intended God to whom he prays. He uses all kinds of context, pulling in history and relationship and promise. He relies on the covenant God made with the people and lays it all on the line for the one God Jehoshaphat has in mind. Jesus does the same thing but very differently. Jesus wants us to know exactly who God is as the one we are praying to, but he does it by opening a door where there was only a wall.
I know it might be tough to remember what it was like when you were two years old but give it a go. Imagine waddling around as a toddler and finding a special someone sitting in a chair that you recognize. This person is someone you are delighted to see, and you take off to that person with your hands outstretched. The expression in your face is entirely, “Pick me up and hold me, please!” When you are secured and lifted up and sat in the lap of safety and comfort and love, you look at that person in the eyes. As a two-year-old, you say, “Thank you, father,” right? I would imagine that as someone that young and excitable, you probably squealed, “Daddy!” A two-year-old knows very little about formality. I am sure there is some two-year-old out there waddling around in a three-piece suit and only using proper Chicago Style English grammar, but I have never met that two-year-old. When our young niece was in our wedding nearly 28 years ago and became upset being part of the wedding party during the wedding service and wanted her father more than anything else in that moment, she screamed “I want my Daddy,” not “Father, may I have your attention, please?” I am making this point and underlining it a few times because Jesus is doing something similar here.
I could only find three times in the entire Old Testament that God is even called a father. This word here is even different than those. You may have heard the term “abba” elsewhere in the New Testament writings. It is the difference between father and MY father. It is closer and more relational than simply father. You can hear the difference between, “God is a great father,” and, “God is MY father.” Which one sounds more relatable, more intimate, more connected? Which one did Jesus give in this chapter for the first time in Biblical history?
This is the word for someone who KNOWS to whom they are praying, and they are ready to hear and follow. There is a huge difference between my third cousin twice removed and my parent. Both can be family, but you listen to and follow one family member more than the other. That is God, our Heavenly Father.
Just the very idea of speaking this amazes me. This was a culture that was so strict on the name of God that it was forbidden from even writing it out. The way of talking to God is itself a holy thing, but God is also so close and so relatable that God is Dad – my Dad, your Dad. Please do not get hung up on the masculine aspect of this. None of our earthly dads can measure up to God as dad, but our earthly dads can potentially give us a glimpse into sacrificial love, and I hope that is more common than not. In this culture, Abba, Father is the one who can get things done and has authority to guide the household. Abba, Father is the one who will see to the future and provides for those who come after. Abba, Father is a leader for the family, a protector and a provider.
So many times in the older books, God was known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or some naming like that. Now, God relates to me and to you. This is all through Jesus and how Jesus wants us to pray, too. He is teaching all of us to pray as he does. We are to pray as if Jesus is making our prayer for us.
And that’s the whole idea: we are praying in the Spirit of Jesus, in the manner of Jesus, with words that Jesus has even given us. Jesus was not some big, fancy prayer. He did not show off his praying, but he made simple and sincere prayers. His prayer were for real needs and real people, though. He did not waste time praying, but all of his words counted, and he prayed to God out of love and closeness.
Maybe we struggle to pray to God because we do not feel very close to God. Maybe we don’t find ourselves held in Dad’s lap or feel very connected in the heart of our Lord. We know we should follow Jesus and do good things and try to be better people, but we are missing out on a deep love of a compassionate God, our God. This is my Dad and your Dad. Our God is our Dad. In the holiness of God’s name, let us pray….
To God the glory of God. Amen.