July 25, 2004

Luke 11: 1-13

For Everyone

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

You have been a most gracious congregation with your new pastor. I have brought with me ideas and practices that you have by and large welcomed without too much concern - that I am aware of, anyway.

One of the practices that I brought that you have struggled with is the practice of using different, more contemporary forms of the Prayer of Jesus, the prayer we know as the Lord's Prayer. I have used versions in worship by Quaker theologian Parker Palmer, South American freedom fighters, and others who have taken the powerful vision of Jesus - the vision of how it is we are invited to talk with our God.

We have prayed those other versions together because they freshen our approach to words we all too often say by rote, and I used them because sometimes the language of the prayer of Jesus can be a door shutting experience for some. More about that later.

Well, I don't use the other versions of the prayer of Jesus as often any more. I got feedback that saying the Lord's Prayer in the traditional way is powerful, and you missed it. And well I understand that.

I was in church in Dublin, Ireland a number of years ago. Some people enjoy shopping and eating and sight-seeing their way through new countries. I enjoy those things with the best of them. Along with that, I love to attend worship in new places. (It thrills my children)

In looking at the options in Dublin, we decided to go to the Dublin Mission Methodist Church, located close to downtown, tucked into an office building.

It was disorienting. We didn't know many of the hymns, and the notes weren't printed - for a note dependent person this was frustrating to me. We didn't know the rhythm of worship, even though we shared the same language and the same heritage.

I felt so clearly a spectator. Until we began the Lord's Prayer. Hearing the lilt of the voices around me praying together a prayer my heart and toungue could latch unto was so moving.

I was no longer a stranger in a strange land. I was a disciple. Folded into the lap of believers who have turned to Jesus for wisdom and joined with each other to lift up that wisdom throughout time.

So why is this prayer we consider today so powerful? With all that the disciples had to share about the teachings of Jesus, why has this prayer become such a beloved and powerful reminder of the life lived in God's embrace?

Its power lies in the first word: Father.

With that one word, Jesus teaches that the kingdom he points to - the way of living in which all are fed and blessed and whole - that way of "us" living - is so very dependent upon our knowing and living and being in intimate relationship with our God.

And so, when we pray. When we enter into conversation and opening of our souls to the source of our lives, we are taught by Jesus to call God by a name that had - and continues to have - immense power.

Jesus addresses God as "Abba", Father. A term that was astounding to his listeners at the time. Because with the use of that term of endearment, God was no longer a lighting-bolt tosser from on high. God was - and is - near enough to be parent, source of encouragement and strength and life. Jesus teaches his disciples to turn to communion with a God who is near and intimate enough to address in the way of kin.

And there is this. In the culture in which Jesus lived, inheritance came through the Father. All that the Father owned was the son's through inheritance.

So for Jesus to address God by the name "father" and for him to encourage his disciples to do the same, was to proclaim that all of what God "owns" - all of creation and all of the hope and love and vision and scope of the Holy - was Jesus' to inherit - and through him, ours to inherit.

We are sometimes apt to say the word so casually as we pray together - our Father, who art in heaven.

Forgetting the radically intimate relationship such a name for God implies.

And, for many of us, forgetting the deeply problematic struggle such a name for God implies.

In recent decades, many have spoken of the need for a more inclusive name for God. One that goes beyond any sort of gender limiting of the Holy. It is in that spirit that I have used other interpretations on occasion. Versions of the prayer which speak of Mother and Father God. The version on the front cover of the bulletin today is an example of one of the rich interpretations available to us as we seek to expand our image of God.

It feels important to keep names for God inclusive because we know that by calling God "Father", many who have been hurt by Fathers are made to struggle with the image of their God sharing the same name as their abuser.

It feels important to keep names for God inclusive because we know that by calling God by exclusively male names, we can sometimes forget that we each were made in the image of God - male and female we were created in God's image - which is to say that God is neither and both genders.

And, it feels important to keep names for God inclusive because we know that Jesus' intent in teaching his disciples to pray was not to confine the gender of God, but to proclaim the expansive nature of a God who wants us to be intentional about conversation with the Holy. A God who wants us to remember that it is our call to ask and search and seek always for relationship.

The gift of finding a common prayer in Dublin or in Richfield lives in tension with the gift found in finding images for God that invite intimate conversation for all of God's children. No easy task.

And so very important.

Jesus teaches in today's lesson and throughout the gospels how very important it is to us, this cultivating of conversation with God we call prayer.

In the midst of this crazy zoo of a life we sometimes live, Jesus teaches us that we have always the gift of turning to God -

For the basics of life, like bread.

For the essentials of life, like forgiveness.

For the meaning of life, when we feel parched and so very alone.

Prayer. It brings with it the gift of personal communion with God.

And, it is intensely communal.

We do not pray give me this day. We pray give US this day. Give us the vision and the courage to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed in the places of pain and into the sores of the community. When we pray, we are no long disjointed and isolated individuals up against too much. We become one through our prayer.

One with God, one with the pulse of Christ, one with a world longing for the spark of healing.

Christian theologian Karl Barth maintains that to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

We don't have to do it in the right way - we just have to do it in any way, this conversation with God.

I watched prayer unfold on Friday afternoon at Westminster Presbyterian Church downtown. I was there to attend a "Let Justice Roll" event during which faith communities were encouraged to think about how we can get people out to exercise their power - their vote.

The preacher was Rev. Forbes from Riverside Church in New York City. He delivered a moving speech. But the prayer that spoke to me most powerfully was delivered by twenty young people.

Twenty youth from New York city's Riverside Church who were steppers. They used their bodies and their voices to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. They shared with us the vision of the prophets. The vision of a land in which no one lived in the fracture of poverty. A land in which no person feels like a motherless child because of our inability to practice compassion, one with the other.

Their presentation was a weaving of reflections and it was an embodied prayer because they - these kids who could have been doing so many things with their summer - they proclaimed through their stepping that they believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to turn things around and they proclaimed that they believe in our ability to ensure that bread is available to all and they

proclaimed through the rhythm and power of their communal prayer that they believe that God can show up through us - the community of God's people.

They danced before their Abba God and all of us present and it was a prayer of the belief in our nation's ability to be rid of the scorpion sting of poverty.

We are inheritors. You and I. Held by a God who is present and listening and longing.

Spend time with your God. So much is so possible.

Amen