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Click here if you would like to read a previous sermon by Janice. Each sermon will open in a separate window.
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Making Friends
The central prayer in the Christian tradition is known as The Lord’s Prayer. I learned it in Sunday School and said it mostly every Sunday for some 18 years or so. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to say it at home; it was what you did in church. I don’t remember feeling anything particular about that prayer—it wasn’t something you thought about; it was just something you did—except that by the time I was a young adult I was bored with it, and it had little meaning for me. I spent a lot of years confusing God with the person who answers the phone when I call LL Bean. I give him/her the list of what I want, and they send it off. It has taken me a long time to learn that this prayer is different. This prayer is not about getting what I want. It is about shaping me to be and do what God wants. So please let me take you on a journey, a little bit of my journey with The Lord’s Prayer. And if it bores you, this prayer, remember: the one who taught it to us got murdered for doing so. We find the prayer in Matthew and in Luke. Jesus taught it to his disciples in response to their plea, “Teach us to pray.” In the first 200 years of the Christian tradition, it was kept a secret, passed on to those who were baptized but not told to anyone else, and it was not written down except in those two gospels. Reciting it was a subversive act and Rome might kill you for it. I was in college when my mom and I found ourselves in Nice, France one Sunday morning, and we went to a Catholic Mass in the big church nearby. As English speaking Protestants, we never throughout the service had any idea what was going on until at one point, I realized the congregation was saying the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t know enough French to recognize the words, but I recognized the cadence. I suddenly felt at home, and my mom and I joined with them in saying this prayer that united us, even as we prayed in different languages. Later, when I learned about the Hindu and Buddhist practice of saying a mantra, something repeated over and over as a practice of prayer and contemplation, I wondered why we Christians don’t have a mantra. Then I realized: we do, and it is the Lord’s Prayer. While longer than a traditional mantra, it functions as a mantra for us if we repeat the same version often. Now I believe there are two equally valid ways to say this prayer: one is to say it slowly, thoughtfully, letting the meaning enter into you; the other is to say it as a mantra, trusting that the sound itself is enough to carry you to God, to alter your consciousness, to shape your being. I have stood at the bedside of dying people, people who could no longer speak or respond, and as I bent close to their face and began to say the Lord’s Prayer, they spoke with me, though there was no other sign of responsiveness before or after. In recent year,s as I study how energy works, and as I learn of sound practices in the Sufi and other traditions, I am certain that these words, because they have been repeated by so many people so many times over so many centuries, these words carry enormous power, huge amounts of energy. This is one of the most potent tools we have. Let me share some simple understandings that have enabled me to regard this prayer, which once bored me, as precious and powerful. Our Father. We begin the prayer by addressing God as Father. Jesus, speaking in Aramaic, said Abba, which does not mean father, but daddy, or papa. It is the intimate name a child would use in love and trust. That intimacy with God was shocking in Jesus’ day. He changed the name people used for God in order to open them to a bigger picture of the Holy. We can copy Jesus and change the name in our time. You might choose to begin this prayer with Our Mother or Amma . Father is a perfectly good thing to call God, but not any better than any other names, and in our patriarchal culture, a problem when it is used exclusively. By the way, Father is not the offensive word in this prayer. The offensive word here is our. Have you ever noticed: there are no singular pronouns in this prayer. Christianity is communal. You cannot say this prayer and separate yourself from others.The plural pronoun, and addressing the Holy Mystery as daddy, pulls us back to the essence of our faith: relationship. Years ago I began to do yoga, and one common yoga routine is called Salute to the Sun: a dozen or so postures put together in one long flowing routine. I learned to recite the Lord’s Prayer in synch with those postures. This became my body prayer, which I have continued ever since. Our Father, who art in heaven: heaven is not a space but a consciousness. Heaven is here, now, within, without. When I say this line, I am remembering that there is another reality beyond the material one most frequently recognized. And God is not bound by our small idea of reality. I am remembering that I can’t domesticate God: God does not have a zip code. Hallowed be thy name. This old-fashioned language means your name is holy, you are worthy of all respect. The language I am using here is familiar to most who know this prayer, but there are wonderful versions that use more contemporary language. Choose a version that you can make friends with. Sometimes I let out a sigh when I pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Saying this means I am signing on. I am offering myself to be used to bring about God’s way within myself and also in the material world. God’s kingdom, of course, is about compassion, justice, oneness. God’s will is resistance of evil, reconciliation, forgiveness, self-giving love. I am in favor of all those things, really. But I sigh over that line because I have learned by now that I can’t say God’s will and my will at the same time. One has to go. Saying this prayer is my commitment about which one will go. Give us this day our daily bread. When I pray about daily bread, in those brief 7 words, I am centering myself again: daily means that I choose to live in trust: I don’t ask for enough to make me feel secure, but only enough for my needs at this moment; bread means that I am asking for my needs, but not for luxuries, a concept very foreign to me as part of the American consumption system; and our reminds me that my having enough is not enough; salvation is not just personal, it is communal. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. (Other versions use the words debts/debtors or trespasses.) This is very difficult, this forgiving business, that’s obvious; I also find this line stressful. I count heavily on God’s mercy. It is scary to me to hear myself say that God will not forgive me with any more frequency or grace than I forgive my partner or my friend or someone who has deeply hurt me. But what power this line has! If takes us out of control. We are suddenly at the mercy of someone else’s account of our lives rather than our own. I am at the mercy of all the people who can say Janice has never forgiven me for this. For disciples of Jesus, forgiveness is not an invitation, but a command. It may take a long time and a lot of work, but where we must be headed is not open for interpretation. In commanding us to forgive, Jesus is inviting us to turn the world around and throw a monkey wrench in the eternal cycle of retribution and vengeance. After the Oklahoma bombing years ago, the attorney general spoke of retribution and the president promised the death penalty. But Billy Graham, in a memorial service after the tragedy, spoke of forgiveness. That’s because he was speaking out of this prayer. Nelson Mandela, wrongly imprisoned for 20+ years for fighting apartheid, could have spoken of getting even, and we’d have all understood. Instead, he spoke of forgiveness, and the new South Africa has been built out of that forgiveness. That is because he was speaking out of this prayer. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We might struggle with this phrase. Does God lead us into temptation? Many modern scholars say a better translation is “Save us from the time of trial.” All I know is that life is full of temptation and trial for me and for us, and I pray with all my heart that God will deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Some years ago, I served as pastor to a church in Iowa. I often visited people in a nursing home, and I got in the habit of stopping in one room, although the women there were not from my church. Doris was in her 70’s, and her roommate was her mother Helen, who was in her 90’s. Helen could hardly hear anymore. But it was a great joy to her to pray with others. So we’d visit for a while, and I’d pray, and then Doris and I would sit on each side of Helen’s wheelchair and lean towards her. The three of us would hold hands and we would say the Lord’s Prayer together. I yelled it into Helen’s ear; that was the only way she could hear that she wasn’t praying alone. Helen’s expression, her tone of voice, and the conviction born of 90 years of trying to live this prayer were so overwhelming to me that I would be in tears when we finished. And I would know I had been blessed, profoundly blessed, by a frail, very old woman and a familiar, very old prayer. This has been my journey, so far, with this prayer. I wonder what yours has been. You may have grown up with it, or you may never have heard it before. Perhaps it already has made its way into your soul, helping to shape who you are, or maybe you dismissed it years ago, finding no meaning in it. I invite you to make friends with this subversive and healing prayer, and see how it might bless you. Amen, which means may it be so.
©2009 Janice Jean Springer
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