Scripture: Luke 11:1–4
A note about the worship video this week: We had numerous technical difficulties, including audio issues and a broadcast connection interruption. A section of Pastor Matt’s sermon was missed at the 00:45:43 time stamp. The best way to experience the entire sermon uninterrupted is to read the text below. Apologies!
Do you remember the first time that you prayed the Lord’s prayer?
Some of you have no memory of your first time, because you have grown up ALWAYS saying it, either in worship or in your personal devotions. I have heard some of you talk about the power and peace that it brings to share these words together, in unison, in worship. That there is something holy in closing your eyes and hearing these words spoken together with one voice.
I came from a tradition that was much less liturgical than our church is, so I don’t remember praying it every Sunday, especially not all together at the same time. In that tradition, there was a concern that anything that we said together in unison was too “Catholic” so we steered clear of all of that. In fact, when I started leading worship in my first American Baptist church, where they did say it in unison, I could not for the life of me remember to finish the morning prayer with the Lord’s Prayer. For months on end, I would finish the prayer, and just say “Amen,” and everyone would look at me like I was nuts. It took me a while to get used to the Lord’s Prayer. I would begin this morning by suggesting that the Lord’s Prayer means different things to different people.
Even different Gospel writers!
You will notice that Luke’s version is NOT the Lord’s Prayer that we pray every week in worship. It is not the prayer that Mark [Robinson] sang so beautifully [earlier in the worship service]. It is not the form of the prayer that we will sing together for the final hymn of the service in a few minutes. Instead, the liturgical version of the Lord’s Prayer that we share is more or less the version that we find in the Gospel of Matthew. Luke’s version is a little shorter, and a little simpler…perhaps used a different oral tradition of the same story, or maybe Jesus talked to his disciples more than once about how to pray!
Scholar Niveen Sarras suggests that Luke’s version is different because it is addressed to a different ethnicity. Matthew’s version is meant to be a liturgical example for Jewish Christians to understand the format for how they were to pray in worship together. But according to Sarras, Luke was writing to Gentile Christians, and so his purpose was to explain to his readers the purpose and reasoning behind prayer. While most of the apostles would have been Jewish, and would have understood a Jewish format for prayer, Luke aimed to explain why prayer mattered to an audience that might not have been raised with the practice of prayer. She suggests that Luke’s prayer is less of a worship style guide, but a tool for teaching why prayer is important.
Jesus was teaching his disciples how to pray and live out of this alternate reality that he referred to as the Kingdom of God. It was not the way the world worked, but it was present in the world, breaking in to our own reality in transformational ways. That in-breaking meant that the way that we live in this world is impacted and transformed by the Kingdom values. Every time I do a series on prayer, I preach at least one sermon on the topic of “ora et labora.” This is a Latin phrase that means “prayer and work.” Many ancient Christian authors use this phrase, or at least this idea. It is a part of the teaching of St. Benedict, and is now a motto of Benedictine communities. He and others have suggested that what matters is that balance. Prayer AND work. Luke seems to lean heavily into that balance, reminding his disciples of the importance of both prayer—which he did often—and labor—they have just returned from a “work trip” in Luke 10.
There is a real temptation, then and now, to engage in “ora et ora.” Prayer for the sake of prayer. In Luke, Jesus resists that. He teaches that prayer is only the beginning: Again, if the Kingdom is breaking into our world, then our prayer is the conduit for that in-breaking. Prayer opens the door to our labor. In short, when Jesus teaches his apostles to pray, he is giving them marching orders for the life of faith. Let’s take a few moments and dig into those marching orders:
Marching Order #1: “May your Kingdom come”
A quick review from the book of Luke about what his Gospel means when it talks about Kingdom. And the quickest way to do that is to remind us about these two rails: Magnificat and “Mission Statement.” Luke is the Gospel that begins with Mary’s Magnificat. If there is a picture of that eschatological hope, where the in-breaking of the Kingdom becomes real in our world, Mary hits the nail on the head. Those who are in power will fall from their thrones. The hungry will be filled and the poor will be lifted up. Then, just a few chapters later, Jesus delivers his own version of the Magnificat. Remember that Pastor Cristina talked with the children about Jesus’ “mission statement.” The poor will hear good news, the captives will receive freedom, the blind will receive sight, the oppressed will become free, and the indebted will have their debts cancelled.
Read through these two rails of Magnificat and Mission Statement, the Lord’s Prayer in Luke takes on new meaning. If we aren’t just offering lip service to the words that we recite in the Lord’s Prayer, then we are proclaiming a radical, eschatological way of living in this world! How is the “ora” that we pray matching the “labora” that we practice? Are we working to bring health to those who need it? Are we bringing freedom to the incarcerated? Are we ready to watch those in power tumble from their thrones…even if that includes us? Are the hungry and materially poor and indebted our priority, or do we tell them that they need to work harder and that their poverty is their own fault? These two rails call us to proclaim a Kingdom come on earth that is not here yet. Have we joined the Labora of that work?
Marching Order #2: “Give us each day our daily bread”
This is a complicated one. The Greek word in this version is a little vague, and can mean at least a couple of different things. The first is akin to the eschatological hope that we heard in the first Marching Order. This is a word in the Greek that only shows up in the Lord’s Prayer, and can literally mean “give us tomorrow’s bread.” Again, this feels like it can be referring to that coming Kingdom, suggestive of the feast of the Great Banquet that Jesus preached about. But the Greek can also mean “give us our daily bread.” If this is our Marching Order, it means that we live in a way that is attentive and hopeful that God will provide. Each and every day, God will give us what we need. But again, this is a radical reorientation. Scholar Richard Vinson says that for the average American, this means that we are praying for a pay cut. It means that we would be willing to live in a way that was not reliant on our own bank balance, and instead willing to say that each day we were ready for God to provide. I would offer a third way, that maybe Jesus meant both. Maybe the in-breaking of the Kingdom means that we live in a way that is less reliant on our own power, and more expectant of God. Radical Marching Orders indeed.
Marching Order #3: “…forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us”
This one shows us the biggest disagreement when it comes to the Lord’s Prayer. Debts. Trespasses. Or sins. Wars have been fought over this one. And Luke doesn’t tend to help. He isn’t even consistent throughout. He starts with sins and ends with debts. But again, it is Vinson that suggests a consistency behind the dual language. He points again to the mission statement of Jesus, proclaiming that our Marching Orders are to relieve and release debt for those locked into indebtedness. But when we pray for forgiveness of our sins, Vinson suggests that Jesus is referring to the sin of greed, which creates the system of debt in the first place. Again, our Marching Orders are clear: what are the ways that we ignore creation, causing chaos and debt to others in the world? What are the ways that we support an economic strategy that drives our neighbor and the economy into debt? What are the ways that we choose unequitable economic systems, which favor those already in power? Forgive us for our broken greed. Let us forgive the debts that such greed causes.
Ora et labora. We have some work to do. If we are to pray this prayer honestly, it means it is time for a reevaluation and a reorientation and a redistribution of the power and resources that we possess. We have our marching orders.
But I don’t think that is quite the end of the story. Remember, in Luke Chapter 10, Jesus had just sent the 12 and then the 72 into a big ol’ pile of “Labora.” In fact, he talked openly about the labor that they were going into…to proclaim release, and bring healing, and—as Kathy preached about last week—participate in the overturning of the Empire. Labor was the assumption. They had already done it. Jesus had just offered a prayer of praise for God’s work subverting the brokenness of the world. Everyone was on cloud nine, celebrating their wins, and sticking their thumb in the eye of the so-called wise and worldly powerful.
But in the middle of the party, someone noticed that Jesus was gone. Again. Someone thought that they had noticed him slip away at the height of the celebration. And when he didn’t come back right away, they knew where he was. “He was praying in a certain place.” Perhaps the party continued, unabated, or perhaps a thoughtfulness came over the disciples. For sure, by the time that Jesus had returned, they were thoughtful and curious. One of them voiced the confusion that was on all of their hearts: “We got our marching orders, and we did them! Why do you need to pray again? Did you go to get more marching orders? Or to deliver the report? You did the ora and we all did the labora…what’s left? Teach us the way this works.”
Perhaps we can relate. The work comes at us fast these days. Those who have ears to hear will listen to those who are lost and afraid, threatened and unemployed, unable to pay for gas or groceries or medications. Where do we start when those in power embrace wholeheartedly the racism and sexism and greed and bigotry of our world? We pray. Just like we cannot be a people of ora et ora, we cannot be a people of labora et labora. We cannot work our way out of systemic sin. Perhaps the Lord’s Prayer in Luke demonstrates our marching orders, but that is not the end of the story. We pray because while there is plenty of work to be done, we do not do that work alone. For alongside of the Marching Orders of the Lord’s Prayer, we receive the hope of God’s Promises.
Prayer Promise #1: “Us. Our. Us. Our. We ourselves. Us. Us.”
Did you notice that none of the pronouns in the prayer are individual? All of them are meant to remind the disciples that none of us are meant to do this alone. We are in this work together. How many of us watch the news or see a social media post about something that national or international leaders are doing and we feel immediately responsible to do something to fix it. But I think Jesus is saying that the first step is to listen to what others are doing, and perhaps join that work. It’s not all about me.
Prayer Promise #2: “Father, may your name be revered as holy”
This is the first line in the prayer, and it says a lot. I return to scholar Niveen Sarras, who suggests that Luke’s Greco-Roman audience would have had a mental model come to mind when they heard the word “Father.” In that context, “Father” was consistently a strict, overbearing, grace-less autocrat. Fathers could declare that their children could live, die, or be sold into slavery, on whatever whim they felt that day. The Jewish and now Christian model was very different, describing a nurturing parent who cares about his or her children. In fact, as a part of this larger teaching, he tells his disciples that a Father wants to give good gifts to his children, which would not have been the prevailing opinion in the Greco-Roman context. The promise here is that God is with us. Wherever we find ourselves on the Magnificat journey of overturning a broken world, Jesus reminds us that we aren’t doing this work alone. God is already at work bringing peace, and justice, and righteousness, and hope. We don’t know what Jesus was doing in those quiet places alone, but perhaps he was remembering that all of this work was not on his shoulders alone. We are likewise emboldened to remember that we don’t have to do all of the Labora ourselves. Look for that God work, and join it. Don’t feel like it is all on your shoulders.
Prayer Promise #3: “And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
These two phrases are the first and last words of the prayer, and they serve as bookends to remind us that it isn’t all up to us. This last phrase probably deserves some more unpacking, but for now, I would suggest that it is a petition to God to save us from ourselves. We choose to ignore the Biblical commandment to care for the poor and the immigrant, and it results in the trial of our racist world where everyone is looking over their shoulders at the “other,” who might take their stuff or their jobs. We choose to ignore the Biblical commandment to give to the materially poor, and it results in homelessness we can see on our streets and in our neighborhoods. We choose to ignore the Biblical commandment to care for the broken of spirit and body, and it results in medical and insurance systems that are overworked and unjust. In response we pray, “God, save us from our own choices, and help us to make better ones.”
The prayer reminds us that God is already at work out there, and God is already at work in here. So much of the work of mission begins with our own humility and our own learning. We are learning that together as the team headed to Nicaragua to work with AMOS. We are not going to Central America to serve as a used car salesman, or even as a car repairman. We are learning how to build a car. How God is already at work in our world out there, and how that learning impacts our own understanding of who God is.
So, to close, let us pray Jesus’ prayer from Luke. Our marching orders. Our prayer promises. The words of our Lord:
Father, may your name be revered as holy.
May your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
Amen.
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