The Scripture Luke 11:2-4
One day Jesus was
praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:
“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who
sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”
Here ends this reading of the word
of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen
Let us pray...
The Message Our Needs
Give us
today our daily bread.
And
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And,
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The
portion of the Lord’s Prayer we are discussing this morning is summed up as the
“our needs” section. Over the past month, we have looked at the Our Father part
of the prayer, where we lifted up that we are praying to Our Gracious God, the
mother and father of all people and all of creation. Then, we focused on the
“hallowed be thy name” portion of the prayer, we remembered that God is the
source of all that is Holy. Last week, we focused on the part of the prayer
when we ask for God’s kingdom to come more fully on earth, as it is present in
heaven. And, now we turn to the part of the prayer when we focus on asking God
to take care of the things we need.
We
start with sustenance.... we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread.” Do
you notice how simple this is? We do not ask God to give us our daily bread,
diamonds, pearls, and riches. We ask God to give us just what we need.
Food,
shelter, water, clothing, healthcare...all people require these basics to
sustain our lives. We invoke God to help us have the essentials human life
depends upon. As Americans who are constantly bombarded with advertisements, we
are sometimes a little confused between what we need and what we want. We ask
God to give us what we need—it is our work as Christians to make sure other
people also have access to what they need. This is why our work to support the
Daily Bread Food pantry locally and support offerings through the national
church that help distribute food to the hungry and relief after natural
disasters is so important. We ask God to help us to have what we need; it is
our work to help others to have what they need.
The
next part of the prayer is: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
This is another example of us saying a portion of the prayer using
old-fashioned language. We mean to ask God to forgive us when we do things that
are wrong and ask God to help us to forgive other people who wrong us. God
knows that we are not perfect, and we make mistakes. But, that does not mean we
have carte blanche to do things wrong on purpose. As people of faith, we must
strive to do the right things in our actions and to say the right things when
we talk to others. We ask God to forgive us when we fail to do and say the
right things.
We also
ask God to help us forgive other people who have wronged us. This does not mean
we have to forget what people have done. If others have crossed boundaries we
are uncomfortable with, God does not demand we forget what they have done or
open ourselves up to future violations. Forgiveness is important for our souls
and our mental well-being. Sometimes, we carry our pain so tightly that we harm
ourselves by obsessing about the past or the wounds of the past. As we pray, we
are invited to talk to God about our feelings, our hurts, and our trials. Even
if we do not feel safe opening up to other people about what we have
experienced, we can talk to God about everything. We work to forgive others so
that we are not burdened by the past.
Part of
forgiveness is also working to forgive ourselves. We all have experienced
things that cause us to second-guess ourselves. We regret things we have said
or things we did not say. We regret actions we have done and actions we wish we
had done. I am guilty of waking up in the middle of the night and obsessing
over things I said during conversations I had with co-workers when I was in
high school. For the sake of our mental health and the well-being of our souls,
we must work to forgive ourselves for our past mistakes.
The
next part of the prayer is a little tricky – what we say is “And, lead us not
into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Do we really think God is the one
who leads people into temptation? Again, we are using a version of the
prayer that was translated into English hundreds of years ago, when we spoke
differently than we do now. A more current translation from the Biblical Greek
into English of this line would say: “And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.” We are asking God to help us avoid
temptation, to avoid things that are difficult for us to resist. We are asking
God to protect us from evil. The evil could come from external sources – peer
pressure, marketers, drug dealers, bartenders – and the evil can come from
within us. I do not need an external tempter to invite me to eat a bar of
chocolate or sleep through my alarm clock so that I do not get up and exercise
– oftentimes, I am the source of my own problems. When we ask God to help
keep us from temptation and deliver us from evil, we are asking God to help us
stay on the straight and narrow path, to help us be our best selves and avoid
the things that cause us harm.
When
Jesus was asked how we should pray, he said a simple, succinct prayer in
response to the question. His words cover the basics of how to begin our
conversations with God. But they are just a beginning. In the hymn “What a
Friend we have in Jesus,” we say that it is a privilege to carry everything to God
in prayer. When we pray, we can tell God everything.... our hopes, our
struggles, our painful moments, our failures. When we talk to God, God
encourages us, comforts us, and protects us. God listens to everything we say
and helps us through everything we experience.
For,
God is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen.
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