A Sermon
preached in
Christ Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan
by The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse, Associate
by The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse, Associate
The Tenth Sunday
after Pentecost
Proper 12 Year C
July 24, 2016 (Saturday, 7/23 5:30pm service)
July 24, 2016 (Saturday, 7/23 5:30pm service)
May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
be always acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
be always acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
How
many of you have ever been asked,
“can
you teach me to pray?” What was that like?
Or
for how many of you have you asked someone else,
“how
do you pray?”
Prayer
in any form is a common language.
Prayer
is, simply, conversation with God.
“In
the beginning was the logos, the Word,
and
the Word was God, and the Word was with God."
Roughly
translated, the logos can mean “intimate
conversation.”
“…in
the beginning was the intimate conversation.”
And
that is prayer.
Sometimes
when I am asked how to pray
(it
comes up in Baptism preparation,
or
in pre-marital preparation,
or
when counseling someone about a recent loss or struggle),
I
recall the little book by Author Anne Lamott.
Help,
Thanks, Wow.[1]
In
about 100 pages she unpacks
with
laughter and tears
the
three essential prayers for today.
Help, Thanks, Wow. That works, in
a pinch.
In
today’s gospel text, the disciples ask Jesus
to
teach them to pray.
Jesus
responds by instructing his disciples
how
to have an intimate conversation with God,
how
to have a conversation that centers on the Kingdom
of God.[2]
This
Kingdom of God, for Jesus,
was
shorthand for his message and his passion,
both
spiritually and politically.
In
this Kingdom, God empowered Jesus and his work.
In
this Kingdom, God presented
the
mystical reality of all things, seen and unseen.
In
this Kingdom, God blessed the people
with
a beloved community.
This
Kingdom of God perspective grounded Jesus
and
guided him throughout his ministry.
See,
the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed
stood
in stark contrast to
the
Kingdom of Herod or the Kingdom of Caesar
that
surrounded the peasant people, his followers, at that time.
The
Kingdom of God, to which Jesus alluded,
promised
a life where God was king
and
the rulers of the world were not.
To
the first followers of Jesus,
his
vision of this kind of Kingdom
offered
hope for life on earth.
As
scholar Dom Crossan would say,
“Heaven’s
in great shape; earth is where the problems are!”
That’s
why Jesus taught,
“thy
kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
And,
for the earthly life,
Jesus
prayed for the basic needs: food.
“Give
us our daily bread” was a real need in the 1st century.
Bread,
enough food, was always an issue for that time.
Many
people were hungry, especially in the peasant class.
In
God’s Kingdom, there would be enough bread for everyone.
For
this earthly life,
Jesus
prayed for the basic needs: forgiveness.
Debt,
along with bread, was a primary survival issue
in
peasant life.
Indebtedness
could mean losing the land
and
could lead to the precarious life
of
a tenant farmer or day laborer.
When
landless, people with debt
could
then be sold into indentured labor.
So,
this well known prayer names
two
central basic concerns of peasant life:
bread
and debt forgiveness.
This
prayer invites us to wonder today:
how
we can do God’s work in the world
to
bring about the dreamed-of Kingdom of God?
What
about daily bread:
what
do we, personally and communally,
need
to sustain us for the journey?
And
- to whom might we be invited by God
to
provide that daily sustenance?
What
about forgiveness:
to
what are we, personally and communally,
in
bondage?
For
whom can we release from any debt
that
we may hold from others,
inviting
them to live a liberated life?
Today’s
good news is that we are
living in God’s kingdom.
God
gives us (through others)
the
“bread” we need for our hearts and for our souls.
God
forgives us and releases us
from
the bondage of what holds us back,
which
is why and how we can forgive others.
All
this good news is manifest in both
the
prayer we say together and
the
Holy Communion – the bread and wine – we share.
A
few years ago, I came across this little book,
Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the
Aramaic Words of Jesus.[3]
It
is a study and interpretation of the Lord’s prayer
as
translated from the Aramaic,
the
language that Jesus actually spoke.
In
this small and powerful book
we
find an alternative and expansive understanding
of this prayer
that Jesus taught.
Here is one
possible translation from the Aramaic:
O
Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,
Focus
your light within us – make it useful:
Create
your reign of unity now –
Your
one desire then acts with ours,
as
in all light, so in all forms.
Grant
what we need each day in bread and insight.
Loose
the cords of mistakes binding us,
as
we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.
Don’t
let surface things delude us.
But
free us from what holds us back.
From
you is born all ruling will,
the
power and the life to do,
the
song that beautifies all,
from
age to age it renews.
Truly
– power to these statements –
may
they be the ground from which
all my actions grow: Amen.
God’s
invitation is to open our hearts today.
God
is praying us into a new Kingdom.
God
is opening the door on which we are knocking.
God
offers us extravagant Love.
In
this kingdom, bread for the journey is abundant.
In
this kingdom, forgiveness liberates our hearts and souls.
Inspired
by God’s gift, may we also share in that heavenly kingdom.
Amen
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