Luke 11: 1-13
With One Voice
(Celebrating the Vietnamese ministry of Richfield United Methodist Church)
Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay
July 29, 2007

Today is a power filled moment in the movement of Jesus Christ.


On this day we are celebrating what it is to be the Body of Christ. Here. At Richfield United

Methodist Church in South Minneapolis.


Two groups of people who look different, who speak different languages, and who have different

traditions and ways of worshipping are joining together because we believe in something bigger

than our differences.


That “something bigger” that unites us is the vision and the teachings of Jesus.


And we celebrate our coming together as family in the Body of Christ guided by the scripture text

read this morning.


The disciples ask Jesus: would you teach us how to pray?


Having come upon Jesus as he is in prayer, they have a sense of the power of his communion with

God. They have watched this man they love and they know that he is in deep relationship with his

God and they too want for themselves that heart connection.


They know too that the followers of John the Baptist have been taught by him to pray in a certain

way. As with many who seek to live into a new identity and a new way of being, the disciples want

Jesus to teach them a practice and a way of sharing their hearts with God that will bind them to

God and to each other.

And so Jesus teaches them to pray, using words we have turned over in our hearts and on our

tongues for centuries. He teaches them to pray in the way that he does.


The two words that begin the prayer have the power to change the world.


Because Jesus tells his followers to begin prayer by speaking to God: the great and powerful and

mighty and unknowable and magnificent God. The God who breathed life into being and tends it

yet. The God who tamed the monsters of the deep and who came to be born in the poverty of a

stable.


Jesus taught the disciples to turn to God with the most intimate of addresses:

He teaches them to call God “Father”.


This was an amazingly radical thing! As a good Jew, Jesus would have been taught that God is so

mighty that God’s name cannot even be uttered by human voice. Scripture tells us that the power

and might of God is so intense that humans cannot look upon God and live.


So imagine what it meant to the disciples to have Jesus encouraging them to turn to God with the

confidence and trust and sense of being held in the way that children turn to their fathers for

holding, strength, and guidance.


Jesus teaches his disciples that God is as close to them as a loving father. As concerned about

them as a committed parent. As full of love as any heart is that has brought to life a new and

beloved being.


Jesus taught the disciples, and teaches us, to turn to God for support and love and guidance with a

trust that we will be claimed and loved.

And years later, we know that for some, praying to “father” only is difficult. Some of us who have

experienced painful relationships with our fathers cannot feel safe calling God “father” when we

turn to the Holy.


So we use other terms for the relationship that brings us life and love. Some of us pray to “Our

Mother” and some of us pray to the Holy Spirit and some of us pray to Jesus.


The name we give God isn’t the issue. That is not the lesson of this day. It is the way we turn to

God with trust and gratitude that matters. That is the lesson of this day.


As is this: Jesus taught his disciples to pray “Our Father”. Not MY father, but “Our Father”. In

teaching his disciples to pray in that way, Jesus was teaching them that God is bigger than any one

person or any one community or any one way. God is the creator and sustainer of us all. So we

are the children of the great God of all life. And that makes us family. Vietnamese, American,

German, Iraqi, Mexican. We are family in the Body of Jesus the Christ.


This praying to and being kin with God and each other is so powerful when we live it together as

church.


This week I was in three different situations where people were feeling blessed and challenged by

life. I was in the hospital room of our day care director, Kalilah McCants, where I was able to meet

her three day old son Nadir. I was in the room of a member of our church who recently moved to a

new place in which she was feeling alone, and I was in the hospital with a member who is

courageous enough to seek healing.


In all three situations, I brought along a prayer shawl knitted by the women of our church. I shared

with the recipients that as the shawls were being created, they were prayed over. Each stitch was

created with the intention of calling God’s presence. Each shawl was created in prayer in order to

surround the recipient with care.


And as I prayed with each of the women, the power of prayer, the power of turning to God as loving

parent, the power of knowing that the same God who is with them in their challenges is with me

and with you and with all of creation. The power of being united in turning to God when we are

frightened and grateful and amazed. That power was in the room with us as we prayed.


I want to share with you my sense that our God who is parent of us all is celebrating with us on this

day. As we begin relationship as one church with many voices, we are living into the vision of

Jesus.


We are many parts. We are one body. We raise our hearts in prayer with one voice. And we are

blessed to call each other kin.

Amen