A Hymn of Hope for All Creation

A Hymn of Hope for all Creation *;  Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Preached by Steve Cherne; Feb  25, 2018; ICCM

Tony Campolo, a well-known Baptist public speaker and author reflects on his own prayer life, saying that sometimes he feels like his prayer life resembles that a little child, always focusing on asking God for things.  He tells a story about when his son was 7 years old. The boy came to bed.  I’m going to be praying.  Anybody want something?” That’s just a bit off target isn’t it? Prayer is more than asking for things.

Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  But when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” Simple, childlike prayer addresses God as a being completely separate from us but who thinks and wills, knows and hears, grants and refuses more or less as we do, only with a kind of infinite broadband. We can grow and mature in prayer by moving from requests through gratitude and on to prayers of empowerment with God who is both absolutely beyond reach and expression and as close to us as breathing at the same time.

God is like the air: everywhere, for everyone, always, both totally free and absolutely necessary. We’ve learned the Lord’s prayer, most of us as children, we’ve recited it for years, now we move forward to deepen our understanding and discover the layers of meaning and the beautiful poetry of this Greatest Prayer.

During biblical times, reading was uncommon, scrolls on which the psalms and wisdom literature, the books of the law, and the prophets were written were precious.  It was an oral culture and the style of the material reflects that.  One of the poetic techniques is called parallelism. A line is repeated with a slight variation twice or maybe three times.  It’s a “tick-tock” pattern that lends itself to meditation and development of thought.  Each line adds a bit of information and allows the thought to sink in through repetition.

In the bible’s prayer- and song-book, we discover that psalms of request are the most common type.  Sometimes those prayers are direct pleas or petitions, sometimes they sound more like laments or complaints.  Like that 7 year old boy, requests can be a place to start.  Our prayers here in worship are primarily about those we know and care about followed by thanksgiving for prayers answered.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  We should pray our hopes and fears to God, expressing the full range of our thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it’s only through that kind of prayer, even if we complain, that we can find our way back to praise.

We see that in our reading for today in fact.  Donna just read the second half of the psalm.  But the first half of the psalm for today vacillates between complaint and praise.  As I read these verses listen for that movement and listen also for parallelism, the repeating of a thought in slightly different words.

“My God, my God, why have you deserted me? Far from my prayer, from the words I cry?

I call all day, my God, but you never answer; all night long I call and cannot rest.”

 

Yet, Holy One, you who make your home in the praises of Israel—in you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you rescued them.

They called to you for help and were saved; they never trusted you in vain.”

Then just as quickly the psalmist moves back to lament,

“All who see me jeer at me; they toss their heads and sneer: ‘You relied on Yahweh, let Yahweh save you!

If Yahweh is your friend, let Yahweh rescue you!”

 

“Yet you drew me out of the womb; you entrusted me to my mother’s breasts.

You placed me on your lap from my birth, from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”

John Dominic Crossan, in his book The Greatest Prayer, calls the Lord’s Prayer a radical manifesto and a hymn of hope for all humanity… a hymn because it presumes and produces poetic techniques that are the core of Israel’s biblical poetry.  Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is masterfully structured.  Rebecca and I share a love of poetry. Maybe some of you do too.  Maybe some of you could care less about poetry; but bear with me for a while here.  When we pay attention to both the content and the form of the prayer it deepens our understanding.

First, the prayer starts with “Our Father” not “My Father.”  It is a personal address but not a private one—it is intimately close but also expresses the shared nature of our relationship with God.  Second, in the Greek, it is literally “Father of Us” not “Our Father.”  Of course, there’s no difference in meaning, but “Father… of Us” emphasizes the division of the prayer into two halves.  The first half focuses on God, the latter half focuses on us. There’s a few notes on your insert you can turn to that explain this. The first half of the prayer uses the pronoun “you”, and the second half uses “us” and “our.”

Look at the diagram.

Divinity: Father                                              Humanity: Of Us

Be hallowed the NAME of you!                     Give us this day our daily BREAD!

Be come the KINGDOM of you!                     Forgive us our DEBTS as

as we forgive our DEBTORS!

Be done the WILL of you!                                  And do not lead us in TEMPTATION,

As in the heavens, so on earth                         but rescue us from the EVIL ONE!

There are three units on either side.  Divinity includes God’s name, kingdom and will.  Humanity includes bread, debts, and temptation.  Two equal sides.  Parallelism.  The translation printed there is quite literal and sounds a bit wooden.  But when we look at it straight and direct like that we can see how the two halves repeat.

This technique of parallelism slows down the mind, so we can consider how the ideas play off one another.  It’s “tick-tock” rhythm vibrates like a choral chant.

You can see how the prayer starts with a reference to the heavens.  Then there’s a sort of hinge in the middle of the prayer that says, “As in the heavens, so on earth,” shifting our attention from the Divine to the Human.  Like all biblical parallelism, there is a connection between the two sides, an interplay.

Rebecca and I have been taking Spanish lessons.  We’ve been learning about verb tenses and moods.  If you look at the verbs on the insert you’ll see the exclamation points.  Be hallowed! Be come! Be done! Give! Forgive! Deliver! Each one of those verbs is in the imperative form used for commands and orders: “Do It!”  It seems like we should pray more politely like, “may it be done, or let it happen.”  But there’s something else going on.  Who is commanding whom here?  Are we ordering Abba, the Father to act?  Or is God ordering us to act? Or are we ordering one another?

The two halves of the prayer are intertwined.  One needs the other.  God’s name is hallowed when we all have our daily bread—when justice is done, when there is enough for each and all.  God’s kingdom comes when we forgive and are forgiven, when peace and community are the norm not conflict and violence.  God’s will is done when we are not drawn into temptation and evil ways.  God’s side of the prayer cannot be done without our actions.  Our actions cannot be done without God’s power. It’s a dialectic.

Last Sunday we heard Jesus’ first words in the Gospel of Mark: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives and trust this good news!” The Jesus we see in Mark’s gospel is much less interested in the afterlife and much more concerned about what’s going on in the world right now. Jesus message isn’t about redemption in the future. Rather, it’s about the current reality of our world, our communities, and our individual lives. One of the most frequently used words in Mark’s gospel is “Immediately”

God wants the radical transformation of us and our world. Jesus calls this the “kingdom of God” and says it is on the way. It’s emerging all around us, all the time, now. According to Jesus, the kingdom of God is like yeast hidden in flour: eventually it works its way through the whole and transforms it into something new. God’s good news is a catalyst transforming the world.

This is what happens when Jesus tells us to pray for God’s kingdom, to pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He doesn’t tell us to pray that we might go to heaven when we die. Heaven is not just a destination after death.  It’s also the model for how things ought to be right here, right now. Heaven comes to us when we live the Lord’s Prayer.  A radical manifesto and a hymn of hope for all creation, indeed.

Lord Teach us to Pray, and to live.  Amen.