Sermon on the Mount
#5: Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth
October 29th, 2006
Gary Harder
Text:
Matthew 6:1-16
Introduction
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name”
Awed to heaven. (A prayer by Walter Brueggemann, “Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth”, p. 85)
We are the ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.
We flip off this series of words too readily.
But they are precious words to us because they tell the whole tale
of our life, and we savor them:
ransomed… healed…restored…forgiven.
Made new, made innocent, made possible.
More than that, these words that tell our truth bind us to you,
and to your passionate truthfulness. While the words linger sweetly
on our lips, we are summoned beyond ourselves – as we always are –
summoned to you, in awe and doxology and exuberance.
Summoned past ourselves to you…only to say…
Alleluia….God of heaven;
alleluia…still the same forever;
alleluia…slow to chide, swift to bless;
alleluia…gladly all our burdens bearing.
When we sound these ancient cadences, we know ourselves to be at the threshold with all your creatures in heaven and on earth, everyone from rabbits and parrots to angels and seraphim…alleluia…angels teaching us how to adore you.
Awed to Heaven
“Oma, opa, why do you pray”? Eight year old native grandson is asking. “Why do you pray?” Our grandchildren are over for dinner. They are over a couple times a week for meals, and always we pray thanks for the food, for them, for family. Usually we hold hands around the table. Sometimes we sing “Hands, hands hands”. But they are getting a bit to old for that by now. Sometimes we sing “God is great and God is good”, or we will recite it or another rote prayer together. Sometimes either oma or opa will say a spoken spontaneous prayer. But always we pray before a meal. That is a part of our identity, of who we are and of what we do. Suddenly, after years of doing this, grandson asks, “Why do you pray”?
“Why do you think we pray?”, asks oma in return.
Grandson ponders a moment, and then responds, “Because you are white?”
Ah, grandson is very conscious of being native. And is very conscious that in his home they don’t say “grace” before meals. Oma and opa try to tell him that his mother also prays, but in different ways, and that she too gives thanks to the creator, and does participate in spiritual ceremonies – candles and sweet grass, and so on. Grandson soon tires of this overextended God talk and continues eating his meatloaf.
The next day his mother calls oma and opa, laughing hilariously. “Mom, dad, what are you teaching my son”? “What do you mean, what are we teaching your son?”. “Do you know what he asked me today?,” she laughs. He asked me, “When did God and the Great Spirit become friends?” He had put all this together in a rather profound way.
But why do we pray? Why do we pray before meals? Especially when its just rattling of a memorized little prayer? Do you know that I am still inclined to go back to the German grace I learned as a child – “Segne Vater diese Speise, uns zur Kraft und Dir zum Preise, Amen”.
Outward piety
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them”, warns Jesus. “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others”. Jesus is not yet finished with his warnings. “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.” Heaping up empty phrases. Babbling on and on. The philosopher Seneca, in scathing sarcasm, says that such praying only “fatigues the gods” (Epistulae Morales 31.5).
You are in a restaurant. You have ordered a fine meal, which the waitress has just served. Do you return thanks before you eat?
You might debate the question of praying or not praying in a restaurant this way. “Of course I/we will pray. That is what we do at home. It is a part of
who I am. Isn’t it hypocritical of me not to do so just because I am in a restaurant. Am I so ashamed of my faith that I don’t want people to see that I pray before meals. My personal integrity is at stake here. How can I not pray?”
Or you might debate this way. “Isn’t that exactly what Jesus is cautioning us about in the Sermon on the Mount? He is warning us against making a show of our prayer life. Saying grace is not meant to be a public thing where others can see you and say, “why, what a fine religious person you are”. Prayer is meant to be a private and personal thing. “Don’t pray to be seen by others.”
We are driven back to the basic issue of the whole Sermon on the Mount. Moving beyond outward forms of faith and rules of faith to internalizing them, to writing them on our hearts. Transforming outer structures into inner realities. And yet we need external forms. I still need external forms and structures of prayer. But they aren’t enough. I need to write prayer deeply into my heart. Jesus is not saying that we should not be pious, that we should not pray, that we should not give alms. He assumes these. He assumes that these are part of every faithful Jews’ life. He assumes that these are a part of every one who believes in God. What he is saying is that we shouldn’t make a show of praying and fasting and giving to people in need. Don’t make a public display of them. Don’t do them with the wrong motives.
I grew up with the “Calendar Blatt”. Every breakfast mom or dad would tear off a page from the calendar and read it. It had a short Scripture text, a few reflections on the text, and a short prayer at the end. Sometimes dad would add a spontaneous prayer. It was spontaneous, sort of, but we kids thought it always sounded the same. Some of you still use a form like this for your prayer time. Others use “the upper room”, or “Rejoice” the Mennonite devotional guide, or some other devotional material.
At our Seminary in Elkhart there is quite an emphasis now on “spiritual disciplines”, or “spiritual exercises”, on a rather disciplined form of regular praying. You have a clear structure, a clear outline of your prayer time. Some Scripture. Some silence but with guiding questions to reflect on. Perhaps a hymn to sing. Some written prayers. Opportunity for spontaneous prayers. A rather comprehensive and disciplined structure for praying.
I know that Kendall and Charlene are using these now, and are finding them very meaningful. The discipline of doing them morning and evening frees them, they say, for a deeper encounter with God. These are contemplative prayer practices that come from a more Catholic framework, more from medieval monasticism. Many Mennonites are embracing these prayer practices these days.
Others say, “No, no, what we need is more spontaneous praying, not more disciplined praying using outward forms. Pray more spontaneously, many times a day, while driving a car, while sitting on the bus, while going for a walk, while staring into a campfire, while enjoying a concert. That is real prayer, real communion with God when it just wells up from within you. Don’t rely on outward forms.
I would certainly say “amen” to that. Wonderful to pray spontaneously throughout the day. But how many of us are able to sustain that kind of prayer? Are we really able to do that. Would we really have a rich prayer life without some kind of discipline to help us in the long run?
Teach us to pray
In the Gospel of Luke the Lord’s Prayer is set in the context of a request from the disciples. They have been observing Jesus’ prayer life. And suddenly they see that their own prayer life seems empty. “He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’”
But the disciples all know how to pray, don’t they? They have been taught how to pray from childhood on. They know all the proper prayers, the “Shema”, for example. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Every Jewish person growing up would know the prayers, would have been taught how to pray, when to pray, where to pray.
But the disciples have been watching Jesus pray, and suddenly their own prayer life seems shallow and routine.
“Teach us to pray”, they plead. And Jesus does. He teaches them what we have come to know as “the Lord’s Prayer”.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”. And in one stroke Jesus lays before us the awesome mystery of God, both God’s nearness and God’s farness, both the immanent God and the transcendent God.
“Our Father”. Intimacy. Familiarity. The Aramaic word used here is “Abba”, the term a Jewish child would use in addressing his or her father. A relationship of trust and of love and of closeness. Loving, open access to God
Today, praying to a “father” God doesn’t feel like that for everyone. Especially if we exclusively name God as Father and start every prayer that way. For some it has become a symbol of an exclusively male God proclaimed by mostly male prayers. Some, who have violent or abusive fathers, then also see God that way. Then “Father God” is not the intimate, loving, open access God Jesus is praying to.
I was 23 years old, one month into being a pastor in the Lively co
mmunity near Sudbury. I was teaching Daily Vacation Bible School to a roomful of adolescents. I was trying to give them pictures of God. I said, “God is like a father”. From there I wanted to move into teaching the Lord’s Prayer. One 14 year old girl glared at me and said, with absolute vehemence, “If God is like a father, then I hate God”. I learned later that her father had molested and abused her.
But that doesn’t take away from the picture Jesus has of his Father God and our Father God. It is a picture of intimacy and tenderness and caring and loving and forgiving.
“Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” In one stroke God is pictured also as transcendent, as beyond us, as holy. That is what “hallowed” means. Holy. Awesome. All powerful. Beyond our understanding. Beyond our control. Not to be trifled with.
Let your name be hallowed.
Let your kingdom come.
Let your will be done.
The prayer begins with God, not with us. The prayer begins with doxology, with praise, with awe at who God is. The prayer begins with God’s agenda, not ours.
Awed to heaven. Alleluia.
And then the prayer returns to earth. In fact, it is very rooted in earth.
Brueggemann’s prayer continues:
And then in the middle of our praise which causes us to float very light, we are jarred and sobered:
Dwellers all in time and space…
In time – the beginning of hot summer and not all the poor have air conditioners…Alleluia.
In time – just days from (world series) while the homeless urinate and evaporate…Alleluia.
In place – just near (Iraq) and the intransigence of fear…alleluia.
In place – just near Hebron where the pot of old resentments boils to the rim…alleluia.
Dwellers then in time and place
here, near (Toronto), Iraq, Hebron, and “inside the beltway” where you are so weak and vulnerable.
That is how it is when we praise you. We join the angels in praise, and we keep our feet in time and place…awed heaven, rooted in earth. We are daily stretched between communion with you and our bodied lives, spent but alive, summoned and cherished but stretched between. And we are reminded that before us there has been this One truly divine (at ease with the angels) truly human…dwellers in time and space. We are thankful for him, and glad to be in his missional company. Alleluia. Amen.
“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will? What is God’s will? Why, that is what Jesus has been teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount. God’s will is blessing the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger for righteousness, those who are merciful, those who are peacemakers. God’s will is that we, followers of Jesus, not destroy relationships by breaking our marriage covenants, or by nursing our anger, or our lust. God’s will is done when we love our enemies, and when our prayer life has become internalized, when we reject the ultimacy of materialism, when we don’t ruin our life with worry, when we live out our faith.
But more than this. God’s kingdom is already here on this earth, God’s will is already visible, tough other wills are also loosed on this earth. And God invites us all to participate in that big picture work of bringing in God’s Kingdom. But in the end it is God’s work, not ours alone, and it will happen whether we choose to be partners with God or not, and it will continue to happen long after we have left the stage. It will happen.
Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Then come the petitions. Then we move from God’s agenda to our agenda. Then the rooted-ness on this earth takes us to our own daily struggles of living.
“Give us this day our daily bread”. Help us survive this day by having enough food on the table. Not yet tomorrow’s bread, but today’s bread.
“Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors”. We have memorized “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Most likely it does mean “forgive us our sins, our sinfulness, our messing up our relationship with God and with people”. Forgive us as we forgive others when they mess up, when they hurt us, when we are offended by what they do.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. Protect our relationship with you, O God, for we humans easily fall away. Don’t bring us into situations that will overwhelm our faith. Recognize that our faith is fragile at best, and we are not strong enough to manage really hard times faithfully. Hold us in faith when we can’t hold ourselves. Keep us from the temptations that threaten to overwhelm us.
Three short petitions. Only three.
And then, at least in the way we have learned the Lord’s Prayer, it returns to doxology, to praise. It turns focus again to God. “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.”
This last bit isn’t in the best and earliest Greek manuscripts, says my commentary (Believers Church Commentary) It may have been added later to Matthew’s text. But it does fit so well. The prayer begins and ends with doxology, with praise to God. It begins and ends “awed to heaven”. And in between it gets rooted to earth and gives attention to our daily needs.
Conclusion
“Oma, opa, why do you pray”. Because, dear grandson, our praying expresses our relationship with God. Because we want God’s will to be done on earth. Because we are profoundly grateful for the life God has given us. Because without prayer our spirits would begin to shrivel.
Awed to Heaven. Rooted to earth. The holy, distant God, the near, intimate God, bring heaven and earth together, and holds our life together. How can we keep from praying.