Today in the gospel reading that we have just heard we have Luke’s account (11: 1-13) of Jesus teaching his disciples what we know as the Lords Prayer. For many, perhaps all of us, prayer is a very spiritual sort of thing at times. It is an attempt to get closer to God, to communicate our needs and the needs of others, and our thanks. It’s grounded in a hope which is sometimes a little bit distant.
We are assured that prayer is always answered but we are not always told how or when. But one of the main things that strikes me about the Lords Prayer is its relevance here and now. It doesn’t matter that the words were spoken by Jesus 2000 years ago, they apply to a vision which we must hold now.
This week there was a huge headline on the back page of the South Wales Echo announcing that ‘God is now a City star.’ It seems that God, not surprisingly I might add, has indeed come to Cardiff. Of course the God that was referred to in the Echo is Robbie Fowler who has signed for Cardiff City from Liverpool this week – God has been his nickname ever since he got rid of the nickname, ‘The Toxteth Terror’.
But joking aside it is a serious point that God is everywhere, all around us, present with us and even in us. He is approachable and concerned for his people and the world today, and this is the sense that he is giving in the Lords Prayer.
It begins of course with praise for God, the creator, the redeemer, the life giver… But then it moves straight on with the words ‘your kingdom come’. The version we know now includes of course the words ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, and that makes it very much simpler for us as we recognise that Jesus isn’t talking about a kingdom that’s just up in the sky, but he is talking about a kingdom that must be established here and now.
Jesus spent very little time talking about eternity, although that’s not to suggest that eternal life is something to be taken lightly, but he spent time talking about a better life for people where they were. He talked about an abundance of life, people feeling contented and peaceful in the very fullest sense.
It is peace here and now that Jesus is primarily concerned with each one of us, and people everywhere, finding. Everything else will follow on from there. And here is where he puts a huge responsibility on us as his followers today, because so many people don’t know that peace, and so many don’t even know that they should be looking for it. The peace of God which passes all understanding as we often say in the blessing, is a peace which is big enough for all to share.
So we pray for God’s kingdom to come here and now, and that kingdom I think will be full of people loving each other, serving and caring for one another, praising God, fighting inequality and injustice, working to end conflict wherever it may be, providing hope for those who don’t seem to have any, and the list can go on and on…
In so many ways we perhaps think the list is impossible to achieve, and if we think like that, then it will be, but with God on our side, all things are possible… This quote is anonymous, but these words which were found scratched on the wall of a bomb blasted air raid shelter in Germany after the Second World War emphasise the depth of hope that we can have: -
‘I believe in the light, even when the sun doesn’t shine…. I believe in love, even when it isn’t given…. I believe in God even when his voice is silent.’
In the next part of the prayer, Jesus extends this feeling of the here and now importance of the Lords Prayer as he says ‘Give us each day our daily bread.’ Jesus spoke this prayer to people who had given up everything to follow him. The next meal was not assured… The disciples really knew what living by faith meant, and yet, there were people then, and there are people today, who are in a worse position. There are people who really don’t have enough food to live each day.
To them ‘give us each day our daily bread’ is a prayer about survival. I think I mentioned before about a village in Africa where there was not enough food for people and one day the Priest came to bring Communion to them, and the people literally dived into the supply of bread, because they were so desperate for food –the bread of life for them was literally to be found in what the Priest had brought with him.
Today we must work to try and help solve the problem of people suffering in that way throughout the world, but perhaps also we should seek to gain that enthusiasm for seeking the spiritual bread of life that we find in Jesus, or perhaps to recapture that hunger for him.
Next, Jesus goes on to talk about forgiveness of sins. We are to pray for forgiveness for the things we have done wrong, but more than that we are to also forgive others. It’s very clear from this that there is no one way street to forgiveness. In being forgiven we must also forgive. And all of us who have tried to forgive and move on when we believe we have been wronged, will know that it’s one of the most difficult things that we can do.
It’s easy to harbour grudges, or to ignore someone because we think they don’t want to speak to us, or to kid ourselves that we have made an effort so it’s now up to the other person, but with God none of these excuses are acceptable. With God our willingness to forgive others is non-negotiable…
And then Jesus moves on ‘do not bring us to the time of trial.’ We often use the word temptation, but in many ways ‘trial’ is more accurate and reflects what Jesus meant in a better way. Jesus wasn’t, I don’t think, just asking us to say that we should never be tempted to do anything wrong, but he was saying that we should ask that we be set free from all kinds of temptation, pain, hurt, anger, wrongdoing and so on. And by being set free he did not mean that we would never face any of those things, but that we would have the strength to get through them – the strength and the power of God.
The Lords Prayer is about a better world here and now. It is about recognising that God has indeed come to Cardiff, and to everywhere in the world, and he needs to be made more visible through the lives of his followers. The Lords Prayer is about a vision for a perfect world today. A world that perhaps we can only dream of, but a world that it would be better if rather than just dreaming about, we prayed for and worked for…
I’ll finish with a quote from Rowan Williams who wrote, ‘The Lords Prayer is completely fresh, it never gets stale because what it’s talking about is the human condition in the presence of God. It’s about the world we live in and the world God wants us to live in… And what it’s praying for is the most revolutionary change you can imagine in the world…’ AMEN
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