We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, who are still here, and we honor with gratitude the land itself and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.
“Give us Today our Daily Bread” -James Hook (1866)
Michael Foss (Power Surge) lists “daily prayer” as “The first mark of a disciple.”
From Yearning Minds and Burning Hearts: Understanding the Spirituality of Jesus by Glandion Carney , William Rudolf Long
“’Prayer changes us.’” The ultimate value of prayer is that it opens us to understand God and the world in fresh ways. Prayer gives us new spectacles to see the world–glasses that put the seemingly huge demands of contemporary life in a new perspective. Prayer helps us listen to the voice of God, accept the will of God and ask for the good things of God
“The practice of prayer is a standing rebuke to the wisdom of the world. The practice of prayer affirms a dimension to life that is unseen and unmeasurable, while the wisdom of the world considers something important only if it is visible and quantifiable. The practice of prayer proclaims that people are spiritual beings, rooted in the heart, while the wisdom of the world assumes that we are economic beings, concerned primarily with our personal net worth and an adequate retirement income. The practice of prayer indicates that God is the watcher, guide and protector of our lives, while the wisdom of the world teaches that unless we stand up for ourselves, no one will. The practice of prayer proves that “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37), while the wisdom of the world says we need all the resources ahead of time and all the right people speaking up for us or we will not be able to get what we want out of life. The practice of prayer says, “Don’t worry.” The wisdom of the world says, “Calculate.”
“Prayer is one of the principal ways of enlarging our awareness of God and of the universe. Prayer assumes there is more to the world than we can experience with our five senses. The great diversity of living things in the world should not only increase our sense of wonder, but also give us an awareness of our human limitations
“Prayer is the unique opportunity which God gives us to develop a deeper understanding of God and of the world
The latter is emphasized here -“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.” Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972).
Three Characteristics of Prayer
“What is the essential nature of prayer? First, prayer is the door or threshold to the spiritual world where God dwells in unapproachable light. It is the door to the inner world of the heart, whose contours have never fully been mapped. Prayer is the means to a “cartography of the soul,” to a process of spiritual mapmaking. When we pray, we pursue Jesus into the deep things of life, where light and darkness dwell together and neither fully extinguishes the other. Prayer is the door into understanding the heavenly realms as well as the inky abyss. It opens new realms to us.
“Prayer is also the anchor of our lives. It not only opens new vistas into the spiritual life, but also ties us ever more firmly to God in the process. One summer during college I worked at a large office building in San Francisco next to where a skyscraper was being built. It took the crew weeks just to drive the pilings deep into the ground. I still remember the ear-splitting crashes of hammers, the rush of pressurized air and the shouts of workers. They were anchoring the building, now among the tallest in San Francisco, deep into the bowels of the earth so that not even a major earthquake would topple it. Prayer is like that. It anchors us to God by blasting through the layers of debris and dirt of our lives so we might have a sturdy and strong life.
Prayer is, finally, a process of working the earth of the hearth, as the ancient monastic writers might say. In her book The Closter Walk, author Kathleen Norris writes about the ways that the Catholic monastic tradition provides a rhythm and depth for spirituality that many Protestants have never explored. When she says that the life of prayer works “the earth of the heart,” she means that prayer is like the act of cultivation. In order to work the soil, one must break up the hardened dirt clods, water the ground, free it from weeds and then plant a crop. Prayer is the way to “loosen up” the heart. During the natural course of our lives the “earth of our hearts” becomes parched, weed-infested and hard as flint. Unless we take care to break it up to run our fingers again through the rich soil that we know is there, our lives become as destitute and as desiccated as a desert.
Prayer is the means Jesus used to open himself to God, to anchor himself to his Father and to work the earth of his heart. Jesus prayed often and taught his disciples to pray. Prayer was as necessary to him as the air he breathed. I believe it was prayer that gave Jesus his powerful sense of awareness and insight into people and the world. It connected him to God, the source of life, and he began to see things so much from the divine perspective that he had no doubt that his work was God’s work. The practice of prayer gave Jesus an intuitive grasp of the truths of life as well as the political and religious realities around him. He could, figuratively speaking, see into another person’s heart because he knew both his own heart and the heart of God
“… We should, rather, yearn to imitate him and develop a similar commitment to prayer for ourselves. We should look at Jesus’ life as testimony to the benefits of developing a life of prayer. Jesus invites us, through prayer, to experience new, fresh, deep, true and permanent insights into the nature of God, the world and the culture in which we live.
“Ask and it shall be given you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
These two familiar sentences make up one of the great promises of Jesus to us, that when we ask we will receive, when we seek, we will find, and when we knock, the door will open.
But how many times in your life have you found that these promises don’t hold water, that what you asked for you didn’t receive, that what you sought you didn’t find, and that when you knocked, the door remained not only shut, but locked up tight?
That your prayers weren’t answered.
So did God let you down? Sometimes life feels that way—that God didn’t hear and didn’t answer and that our prayers are in vain.
But as Oswald Chambers says in his classic book of devotions, My Utmost for his Highest, “God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time.”
And somewhere deep down inside we believe that God does answer even our seemingly unanswered prayers, because we are here today, and I bet that you, like me, keep praying even when prayer seems hopeless.
So let’s take a few minutes to knock on the door of today’s gospel and ask some questions of these words, and search for what God wants us to find today in these words of Jesus.
The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and so Jesus gives them the words that we know as the Lord’s prayer.
This line, “Give us each day our daily bread,” is an obvious and sensible request. Every day, we ask God to give us what we need for the day, the necessities of life. In Biblical times, bread was essential to life. Even when there was nothing else, people had bread and eating only bread sustained them.
In the Old Testament, then the Israelites were wandering around in the wilderness and complained that they had nothing to eat, God provided bread for them in the form of manna that they found fresh on the ground each morning, and they gathered what they needed for the day.
And then there’s the story of the prophet Elijah, suffering like everyone else in a famine, and God sends Elijah to the brook called Cherith. Elijah goes there, and God sends the ravens to bring him crumbs of bread each day.
But I think that Jesus is telling us to pray for something more than bread when he asks us to pray for daily bread.
In John’s gospel, Jesus says that he is the bread of life, one of the great I AM sayings.
So we can think of this petition, “God, give us this day our daily bread” as asking for Jesus to be with us today, to be all that we need, to sustain us as bread sustains a hungry person.
When Jesus is with me, sustaining me, the other needs I have get put into the proper perspective. When I receive Jesus every day, I can see that my needs have already been met, often in unexpected and unusual ways, just as the raven fed Elijah.
Give us this day our daily bread. Give us Jesus, the bread of life. Asking for this daily bread, Jesus, every day, keeps Jesus with us each day.
I think the person who wrote the words of the old spiritual that Larry sang got the meaning of “Give us this day our daily bread.” Before asking for anything else, the writer asked for Jesus.
“In the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.”
After Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord’s prayer, he tells the them a story about someone going to a friend at midnight and asking for bread, and that due to the person’s persistence the person finally gets up and gives the person the bread he needs.
Sometimes, no matter how hard we pray, it’s hard to feel that Jesus is there with us, so Jesus reminds us to be persistent in praying for daily bread—to be persistent in praying to know the deeper presence of Jesus with us in our lives.
Prayer is not about magically making things happen if you pray hard enough, or pray the right way, but prayer is about helping us to learn ever more deeply what is already true, that is, as Oswald Chambers says, that we pray “to get perfect understanding of God.”
Prayer isn’t some mystical act to make Jesus appear, but we pray to realize ever more and more deeply what is already true, that Jesus is already with us, our daily bread.
Another way to think of this is to remember the teaching of Jesus in John’s gospel. “Abide in me, as I abide in you.” That abiding in Jesus grows our understanding of God over time. And when we abide in Jesus, we have all that we need—our daily bread.
The more we pray, the more we realize that God is with us, providing for us and sustaining us. So Jesus reminds us to be persistent in prayer.
Now we come to the “ask and it will be given you” part of the gospel.
When we talked about this passage in Bible study this past week, we wondered, what is “it?” “It” could be the specific thing I’m praying for—for instance, healing John Whitfield or Roger Key or any number of the people we pray for each day. But now, I’m thinking that “it” is something more.
What if “it” is Jesus himself?
“Ask, and Jesus will be given you.” We already know that having Jesus in our lives is the foundation for everything else we need in our lives.
Imagine what would happen if we ask for Jesus every time we pray, asking for Jesus first, before any of the other things that we need to ask God for—and those prayers are important as well. Asking for Jesus first, before the rest of what we need, is the idea.
Ask, and Jesus will come to you. And then everything else we think we need will work out because we have come to know that Jesus is with us.
Search, and you will find. What if we searched for Jesus before anything else? Jesus is the deepest and most wonderful mystery that we could ever search, and the more deeply we enter into the mystery of Jesus the more we will find the truth of our own lives, and the gracious presence of God with us.
Remember, the Bible is full of references for searching for God. Not too long ago we had this passage from Psalm 63, written by David, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you.” I love that—David knows that God is with him, but he is still seeking out God. He says that his soul thirsts for God, and that his flesh faints for God. Would that we would all be so diligent in our searching and finding God with us in our lives.
And then “Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”
In John’s gospel, in another of Jesus’ I AM sayings, Jesus says that he himself is the door or the gate through which the sheep enter into his fold, where they will be safe.
In our lifetimes, we knock on so many doors. Some open and some don’t. But when we knock on his door, Jesus will always open and let us in, and then we become content with both the open and shut doors that we’ve knocked on, for the most important door, the door into the fold of God, has opened and we are abiding in Jesus.
At the end of today’s reading, Jesus says “How much more will the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”
That’s Jesus’ big, big hint for the disciples to understand the deeper meaning of what Jesus has been getting at in his teaching about prayer. Oswald Chambers says that “the Holy Spirit is the one who makes real in you all that Jesus did for you.” The Holy Spirit is the one who reminds us that we need to ask for Jesus as starving people would ask for bread.
So here’s what I’d like to remember from this sermon, and what I hope you’ll remember too, when we pray.
Give us this day our daily bread—give us Jesus.
When we ask for Jesus, we will receive Jesus.
When we search for Jesus, we will find Jesus.
And when we knock, we will see that Jesus is the open door through which Jesus invites us to enter, so that we can abide in him and he can abide in us.
And then, the first thing we pray for in the Lord’s prayer will be granted in our lives.
The Kingdom of God will become more and more a reality on this earth in our lives together as it is in heaven, for Jesus is with us, living in us, and all of the rest will be well.
When we look back in July and over recent years, the trends from June to July show either a steady increase or a sizeable drop. There is no consistency between years.
We had 74 people visit the harvest in July. That was a significant drop from 96 in June. In 2021, the number from June to July was actually up from 70 to 80 reflecting an increase. 2020 was a pandemic year. In 2019 the number of clients fell from 130 to 101. The year before there was an increase from 100 to 119. So it’s “all over the place.” For the year 2022 is just above 2021, 617 to 615 but the difference between the years has been decreasing.
The real value is in the food provided – and that is up . We distributed 1,254 pounds of food, the largest distribution since March. The year it is 8,841 pounds for 2022 vs 8,718 for 2021. Pounds per client were up monthly from 14.18 to 14.33. The last full year was 2019 which was only 12 pounds. Similarly, the value per client at $6 a pound averaged from $86 to $88 monthly during the period. It was $81 in 2019, the last full year.
One positive is the composition of the foods. Produce shot up from 9% to 34%. In 2019 and 2021 it was comparable at 36%. Meat was the main change at 19% in July, 2022 compared to 15% in 2021 and 7% in 2019
Chorus
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
O my soul, worship His holy Name.
Sing like never before, O my soul.
I’ll worship Your holy Name.
Verse 1
The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning;
It’s time to sing Your song again.
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me,
Let me be singing when the evening comes.
Verse 2
You’re rich in love and You’re slow to anger,
Your Name is great and Your heart is kind;
For all Your goodness I will keep on singing,
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.
Verse 3
And on that day when my strength is failing,
The end draws near and my time has come;
Still my soul sings Your praise unending,
Ten thousand years and then forevermore.
July is often called the butterfly month, and with good reason. They seem to be more visible. At St. Peter’s we have swallow tails, monarchs and this one taken on July 20. There are about 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. About 700 inhabit North America.
Great Spangled Fritillary
Today’s readings encourage us to relate to God with boldness and persistence. The gospel today, Luke 11:1-13, is a collection of Jesus’ sayings about prayer. So the first reading is the story of Abraham’s intercession with God on behalf of some innocent potential victims who live in Sodom. The psalmist gives thanks for God’s strong hand in a time of trouble. Paul warns the Colossians not to exchange the lordship of Christ for human teachings. Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray and illustrates the right attitudes with a story. The readings also present the many faces of God – as challenger, restorer, enemy, parent, and transformer.
The scriptures of the Judeo-Christian faith fully reveal the true character of God. The passage from Genesis is one of the most sublime revelations of the nature of God in the Bible. The extraordinary dialogue between Abraham and God teaches us two vital lessons: first, that God hears the prayers of those whose hearts are in tune with God’s; secondly, that God’s readiness to pardon is an integral factor in God’s justice.
Abraham’s boldness in challenging God came from his firm conviction that the lord could not act contrary to perfect justice by destroying the righteous indiscriminately with the wicked. “Shall not the judge of all earth do right?” This certain and lofty conception of the character of God still has not been fully grasped. For centuries, human societies have continued to truncate and pervert the biblical concept of divine justice, and very often human justice is untempered by mercy.
Abraham’s controversy with God also revealed the noble character of this patriarch whose name means “friend of God.” Abraham went to God in prayer with a conflict in his heart. His own sense of justice—“will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?”—stood against his belief that the wicked must pay the penalty for their wickedness. Here, in Abraham, we see the intimations of God’s own dilemma with human creatures. In Christ we see the solution God provided.
God’s justice and righteousness were brought to bear upon sinful humanity through Jesus. Through Jesus, sinners are granted fullness of life with God as if they were perfectly righteous. The bond of wickedness was cancelled and set aside, nailed to the cross.
Punishment is our understanding of the consequences of our own actions when they don’t work out for us. It feels like God has abandoned us. Rather, God has not abandoned us, but the false god that said if we were good enough good things would happen. Instead, Jesus tells us that God sends rain to the righteous and the unrighteous. But what happens to those who are faithful is that we experience God’s restoration as justice—God brings down the high and raises up the low, as in the Magnificat.
In the gospel passage, Jesus intends to make only one point in his story about the midnight caller. If we, who are not good, know how to respond to a reasonable or good request, how much more will God fulfill requests that are borne to God in earnest prayer.
Many great devotional teachers have offered guidance in the art of prayer. One thing they all seem to agree on is that we should not give up praying for something until we either receive it or it is made clear that it is not God’s will to grant it. “Praying through” requires more patience than most of us can maintain. We blur our petitions in haste, flitting from this to that, dissipating our energy and concentration. How can we expect God to deal with a list of supplications that lightly changes from day to day?
When we call, God will answer, but we must sincerely ask, seek and knock, until heaven opens in one way or another.
Sodeom, along with its sister community, Gomorrah, really serves as a fulcrum that stands between the texts regarding the Visitation at Mamre, and the Bargaining over Sodom, and its eventual Destruction. This truncated selection of verses raises the question of why God wanted to destroy Sodom in the first place.
The Lord God and two angels have, in disguise, visited Abraham, who welcomed them from last week’s visit (Genesis 18:1-10a). As Abraham gradually discovers their identities, they start a trip to nearby Sodom, and the ever hospitable Abraham accompanies them.
Genesis 18:20-32 is the story of Abraham bargaining with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Our second thread in the Hebrew Scriptures this season shares with us the promises of God, how God is faithful to the covenant
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a common example among the prophets for human wickedness that brings God’s just judgment. The specific kind of evil was variously indicated. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah have turned from God and worship other gods, primarily with male temple prostitutes. Isaiah identified it with social and judicial vices (Isaiah 1:9-10, 3:9). Jeremiah associated it with the prophets’ betrayal of their vocation (Jeremiah 23:14). Ezekiel connected it with pride and neglect of the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:46-56).
The “outcry” against the sins of these towns prompts the lord to investigate. God is about to destroy the city completely, near where Abraham’s nephew Lot lives .Because of Abraham’s covenant relationship, he is allowed to know God’s secret thoughts. He begins to bargarin. Suppose there are 50 righteous people—won’t you save the cities for the 50 righteous? God replies that no, God will not. Then Abraham continues to bargain down until, if he can find ten, God will not destroy the cities.
Unfamiliar with the ways of the lord, Abraham intercedes for the innocent who will suffer the same fate as the guilty sinners. Abraham ends with a communal “ten,” and does not mention his family (Lot’s family) as innocents. Abraham returns to his home – a nomad’s tent, and we leave Lot in the midst of a teeming and complicated urban environment. But even though God is willing to bargain, apparently there were not even ten just persons to be found
We know that they are destroyed in the next chapter, but we see that even among Abraham, the idea of total and utter destruction is abhorrent. This is not God’s ways. It happens at times, but this is not what God desires. God’s covenant is about restoration and hope, and as one reads the Bible, the utter destruction of an entire community is never the ultimate plan, but rather, restoration is. But it will take some time for the people to turn from their ways, and for their understanding of God’s justice to change
Abraham ends with a communal “ten,” and does not mention his family (Lot’s family) as innocents. Abraham returns to his home – a nomad’s tent, and we leave Lot in the midst of a teeming and complicated urban environment.
Psalm 138, a song of thanksgiving, praises God for God’s faithfulness, for God’s care not only for the powerful, but the powerless. God’s love endures forever, and God will not forget
This psalm of thanksgiving has many parallels with the later parts of Isaiah, and was probably written sometime after the return from exile. The “gods” of verse 1 may be the members of the heavenly council or the rulers and gods of other nations. Verses 1-4 give praise for the lord’s help, and verses 5-7 describe the effect of God’s majesty and mercy upon the kings of the earth. The psalm concludes with an expression of the psalmist’s trust that God will personally care for him. Although all creation is under God’s care, the lord’s intimate love is available to each individual.
In this thanksgiving psalm, we see God receiving the praise and thanksgiving of the psalmist despite the presence of the other gods. The following verses recite the reasons for such faithfulness on the part of the psalmist. The most profound of these recitations (especially in light of the first reading, and Abraham’s advocacy) is “When I called, you answered me.” That is the strength and the relationship that the psalmist’s faith is based on. There is an attempted universality in the psalm that sits on a spectrum that ranges from the individual thanksgivings of the psalmist to the “All the kings of the earth” who have heard the words of God. There is a similar dimensionality in the following verse in which God “on high” still cares for the lowly, an arc of comfort and of justice.
The Christians at Colossae were exposed to a variety of philosophical and theological teachings, many of which were incompatible with the gospel. Two weeks ago, in the first of this series of readings from Colossians, we saw that Paul had to establish that Christ was superior to any other possible mediator between humanity and God. Then in last Sunday’s selection, we saw that Christ in us is our hope of glory.
Colossians 2:6-19 is a warning against falling into the common strain of thoughts in that day—the Greek philosophy that embedded the cultural teachings, and the Greek mythology of the universe.
Paul warns them against “philosophy.” In Paul’s time the word meant, not rational inquiry, but occult speculations and practices. Such teachings were concerned with propitiating “the elemental spirits of the universe,” probably here referring to angels or to the stars and planets conceived of as living beings having influence over our world. In their hierarchically ordered picture of the universe, the “fullness of deity” was thought to emanate from the highest god and be distributed among the heavenly powers.
What Paul is arguing against is the ritual excess of not just Judaism as well as those of the mystery religions, he also warns against those Christians who have adopted strict practices in contravention to the Gospel of Jesus. He alludes to some of the requirements in an argument which he begins with “you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision” and then placing Christ at the center of the concept. In the manner of Paul, the author positions to elements in distinction from the one another – the fleshly circumcision, and that of the spirit. “The substance belongs to Christ”, he declares, acknowledging that Christ is the head of the Body.
Paul reminds the Colossians that they have “received”—a technical term for the handing on of normative tradition (1 Corinthians 11:23, 15:1, 3)—”Chr ist Jesus the lord.” Thus they are to “live in him” as the only foundation for their faith. The writer reminds the listener that our faith is rooted in Christ, not in human ways of thinking. Paul claims that this “fullness” is Christ’s alone, for he is above all these powers.
Today the question is, “How, then, do we get Christ in us?” Paul’s answer is that when we were buried in the waters of baptism, we were united with Jesus in his saving death, and when we emerged from the saturating waters, we were joined to Christ in his resurrection. (Paul assumes that the ritual of baptism obviously simulates burial and resurrection.)
God’s activity changes everything. With Romans 8, Colossians affirms that nothing can separate us from the love of God. In baptism, we share in death and experience new life in Christ. We are truly transformed in the baptismal waters, becoming a truly new creation, liberated from the past and everything that threatens to overwhelm us. Those who were “dead” because of their sins, God has forgiven by canceling the record of indebtedness (a common Judaic figure for sin).
Luke 11:1-13 contains Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer and also what it means to persevere. Luke’s forms are spare and simple, perhaps reflecting an earlier form than that in Matthew, which is offered at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-15).
This lesson on prayer was urged upon Jesus by his disciples who apparently had experienced the disciples of John the Baptist at prayer. In this episode, Jesus discusses three aspects of prayer: the discipline and form of prayer, the need for persistence, and the effectiveness of prayer
This lesson is also offered in the context of Jesus own life of prayer. Indeed, Luke depicts Jesus at prayer often: baptism, choosing of the Twelve, Peter’s confession, the Transfiguration, at the Last Supper, on the Mt. of Olives, and at the Crucifixion. Jesus is the model for a parent whose love is relational, inspiring, supportive, and nurturing. God does not compete with humankind in terms of power, but wants us to claim our power as God’s beloved children.
In this simple Lukan form, the prayer reflects the expectations of the relationship of a benevolent patron (a father of a household, king or master) to his dependents. Luke affirms the loving parenthood of God. God is the best of parents and – in contrast to the vision of God portrayed in Hosea – gives us grace and support long before we ask.
The opening address identifies God as our heavenly father. The first set of petitions indicate how we, as God’s dependents, will fulfill our part of the relationship by respecting the holiness of God’s name (or person) and make our own God’s aim of creating the kingdom community here on earth.
The second set of petitions asks God to fulfill the divine obligations in the relationship by providing food (“our daily bread”), forgiving our offenses (conditioned, of course, on our forgiveness of others), and protecting us from evil.
We are called to persevere in our prayers, asking God for what we need, and that God’s gifts are good. Sometimes our prayers are not answered the way we want them to be, but Jesus reminds us in this prayer that we are to ask for what we need, and that we need forgiveness.
Jesus then illustrates both the nature of our petitions and the response of God in a parable. The parable is a “can you imagine” situation, focusing on the readiness of the friend to help. In the context in which Luke places it, attention is shifted to the “persistence” of the needy friend. On the principle of what applies to smaller things ought to apply even more to greater things, the parable encourages us to believe that the Father’s answer to our prayerful petitions will always be more ready and certain than that of humans.
Thus, in order to receive forgiveness, we must also forgive. In the same way, we must persevere in helping to meet the needs of others, so that our needs may also be met. Our prayers gain power from our motivation and orientation: when we turn to God, we become godlike in our care for others. We forgive as we have been forgiven and live in the spirit of God’s realm. Resonating with the divine vision, we can boldly ask, seek, and knock, and are inspired not only to expect miracles but accept miracles at the hand of a generous God. God gives us the Holy Spirit and with the presence of the Spirit, we receive everything we need to flourish and to serve God.
Another famous story from Luke. The Gospel reading is here.
“”The Lord’s Prayer” -Psalter (2008)
The Lord’s Prayer is both in Matthew and Luke. Luke’s version is probably older since it is shorter. There are also a few differences in word choice (“sin” instead of “debt/trespass,” for example)
Luke puts a greater emphasis on prayer than the other gospels. -Jesus is praying at his baptism before heavens open (3:21) -Jesus spends the night praying to God before selecting the twelve (6:12) -Jesus is praying before he asks the disciples, “Who do the crowds/you say that I am?” (9:18) -Jesus is praying on the mountain before the transfiguration. (9:28, 29) -Jesus is praying before the disciples ask him to teach them to pray. (11:1)
It may be that Luke was writing to a group of people unfamiliar with Christian/Jewish prayer, so he emphasizes the importance of prayer as he moves among the gentiles.
The contexts for the Lord’s Prayer in Luke and Matthew are quite different. The audience in Matthew (6:5-15) seems to know about praying. Jesus says, “When you are praying,…” They seem to know how to pray and the importance of prayer, but they need further instructions about prayer. In Luke, the audience, (including the disciples,) don’t know how to pray (at least as Jesus’ followers).
The disciples (and Luke’s readers?) ask Jesus to teach them to pray.
There is a reference to John the Baptist. John’s disciples were known for certain practices, such as prayer and fasting (5:33). These practices served as markers for their identity as John’s followers. Jesus prayer also puts an identity on us as Christians. The prayer is intended to be communal, rather than personal. Note also the plural pronouns in the prayer: “our” and “us.” The Lord’s Prayer is a list of those “good gifts”, gifts we may ask of God in the sure knowledge that they are ours in the asking.
Clift Notes version – “God is Holy. Ask for God’s kingdom – reign over all things to become a reality in your life and in your world. Live simply; one day at a time. Stay humble and ask pardon for your wrongdoings. Offer pardon to others just as you want that for yourselves and ask for help to stay out of trouble. When you live with these things uppermost in your life, you will begin to live in God’s kingdom with the help of the Holy Spirit to help you”
There are five key words in the prayer 1. Relationship 2. Hope 3 Nourishment 4 Reconciliation, 5 Peace
1. “Our Father in heaven” – “Relationship”
Possibly the most important one is relationship. Prayer is a relationship — as an intimate, loving, caring parent/child relationship. Jesus begins his prayer with the expectation of close relationship with God. The intimate relationship with God and becomes a model we should have with others. Rather than saying something like “Almighty God, Lord of the Universe,” Jesus starts with a familial word. By addressing God as “Father,” Jesus tacitly shows himself to be in the role of child. And because he is teaching his prayer to his friends, he lets them and us know that we, too, are God’s children.
When we think of prayer we think of asking – and that get’s back to understanding our fundamental dependence on God. When we ask God for something in prayer, we acknowledge both that our need and God’s goodness and mercy God’s presence can often change you as it brings their comfort and love to the situation — and perhaps you are better able to accept what lies in the future with their support. You can live with the uncertainty of the “we’ll see” answer.
Prayer is the presence of God — not that God will always change the situation, but knowing that God is with you, that God is going through the tragedy or suffering or depression or even death with you, not as a far off God, way out in space, but as your very close and loving father.”
“Hallowed be thy name” Hallowing means respecting, treating as holy. This is fundamental to our relationship with God and to all other relationships. Acknowledging the holiness, the dignity, the otherness of the other
Joel Green in The Gospel of Luke also comments on this petition: “Why must God sanctify his name? Because it has been profaned by God’s own people (cf. Lev 22:32; Isa 52:5-6; Ezek 36:29-21). God’s work to reestablish the holiness of his name, then, invokes shame on the part of his people and invites them to embrace practices that honor him
2. “Your Kingdom Comes” – “Hope”
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
It has to do with the “reign of God” coming to earth. This asks for an end to life on earth as it is, and end to all oppression, injustice, and unrighteousness, and instead for God’s realm to replace all earthly rulers and rule. The early Christians were very familiar with this.
With the words “Your kingdom come,” Jesus introduces hope into the prayer. Hope is about the future. When we hope, we begin to expect that the boundaries of possibility are far wider than we once supposed. When we pray for the coming of the kingdom, we show our willingness to participate in the advent of that kingdom here
Our eucharist remembers the image of that kingdom as a great feast where all are included focused on a life broken and poured out in compassion
3. “Give us this day our daily bread” – “Nourishment”
This section and the next focus on needs fundamental to every human and what is necessary to realize this Kingdom of God now.
Nourishment that sustains us just for this day – not yesterday, which is past, nor tomorrow, which is yet to come, but right now. When we pray for sustenance today, we remain grounded in the present moment, the moment in which we can encounter God moving in our lives. Nourishment today helps us hope for tomorrow, and sustains us to continue walking the path with Christ.
“Give us each day our daily bread” may be a reference to the manna, the bread from heaven, that was provided enough for each day during the 40 years in the wilderness between the time of fleeing slavery in Egypt and entering the promised land. ( Exodus 16.). And it is what is needed for service. And it may be a reference to the feast yet to come in the future life to come. But it most certainly addresses the very real and present concern of Jesus’ followers – to have enough to eat that day
4. “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtor” -“Reconciliation”
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” – Anne Lamott
Forgiveness is the action we take in the present to participate in the coming of the kingdom. Nourishment sustains us in the present. Hope drives us to the future. And a close relationship with God allows us to pray
We ask for forgiveness, and at the same time we make a commitment to forgive others. It is when we serve God imperfectly. That we can forgive a little reminds us that God can forgive much.
Forgiveness is in the present tense – it is continual. The word forgiveness means “release” or “letting go.”
People would have understood the reference to debt which was devastating on the people. Debt is control. When the Romans conquered the region, they claimed they owned all the land and promptly started charging people rent. People who, heretofore, were living and farming their own land found themselves burdened with debt. Debt was a way in which the conquerors continued to afflict the conquered.
In forgiving the debts of others, the followers of Jesus reject the power to coerce others. “Release” of debt was a way of living out the reign of God on earth. Forgiving others, both sins and debts, is a sign of the coming kingdom. Disciples who do so “get it,” and they request the same from the Father.
The “forgiveness” we are invited to extend to others is not a personal well-wishing; it is changing the material circumstances of the poor such that they and their families no longer teeter on the brink of disaster, but can earn their living by their work. And we as Jesus’ followers are taught to ask God to extend mercy toward us in our sin precisely to the degree that we extend mercy toward others with our wealth and our power.
5. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. – “peace”
This is the fear, the fear of being tested. But we are encouraged to send this fear up to God. And the thing that occupies the space left by that fear is peace. This peace frees us from the worry that might keep us from praying in the first place.
We will always be tempted and will often fall, but Jesus promises that no temptation, test, or trial has the power to destroy our faith. Let us not be overwhelmed
The sense of the petition seems to be that God not make life any more difficult than it already is: “Dear God, don’t give us more than we can bear.”
->Parable of the Friend At Midnight – Persistence
The “Lord’s Prayer” is only the beginning of Jesus response to the prayer request. The last verses emphasize how much more God will give in this parable.
Summary -A friend comes calling for bread at midnight when you are asleep with your family. The sleeper at first declines but due to the persistence of the friend he gets up and provides.
This parable, which is only found in Luke, is connected to the previous prayer by the words for “bread” and certainly the idea of testing. How could the sleeper ask God to “give us each day our daily bread,” and then fail to give that bread to one of those for whom he has asked God to provide?
Is the friend shameless for asking at midnight or would the sleeper be shameless for not supplying the request. Most authors suggest the latter. Honor which was important at that time demanded that a neighbor get up, awaken his whole family if necessary. The neighbor is shaming the sleeper whose honor was at stake.
Like the person who keeps knocking and knocking to get his friend to come to the door, Jesus tells us that persistence is the key to prayer. Just like improvement in sport comes through constant training, practicing prayer makes the act of praying second nature (or perhaps, even first nature).\
God unhesitatingly meets his obligations when asked; he is always found by those who seek him and will immediately open himself up to those who approach him.
How much more will God give than these sleeper ?
The last paragraph “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” – blessing
This goes back to the idea of persistence and note it is in the present tense. The image is with a young child badgering his parents until she/he gets what is wanted. God is compared to a human father. If human fathers give good gifts to their children, how much more will God do? So what are the good gifts ?
Luke tells us that the good gift is the “Holy Spirit.” Matthew just leaves it as “good things.” The gift of the Holy Spirit to the believer does not just entail the gift of the personal presence of the Spirit of Christ in the life of a believer, but all the promised blessings that flow from our union with God through the Spirit. The “good gifts” are the promised blessings of the kingdom, not the presumed needs of believers.
This scripture also prepares the readers for the events and Pentecost and the Spirit’s work throughout the Book of Acts.
Let’s bring it all together. The persistence in defining a close relationship with God, hoping for the future, finding nourishment for the present, reconciling and asking for forgiveness, and discovering peace leads us into deeper faith in God. Through prayer, we participate in God’s movement in our lives, and our persistence helps us notice God’s blessing in our lives.
St Peter’s goal was to collect 250 boxes of markers, eight to a box for Caroline County school children, to be distributed by Caroline’s Promise on Saturday, July 23rd at Caroline Middle School.
As of Sunday, July 17, we had 183 markers with another 67 to go. We reached 250 during the next week, in time for the distribution.
The photo shows the delivery to Caroline Middle prior to the event. Thanks to all who contributed!
