The Lord's Prayer
Bankruptcy
There is one kind of story that as far as I know only appears in the Bible and its derivative works. That is the story of the childless woman whose prayer is answered. Sarah, Rachel1, Hannah, and Elizabeth’s stories are all like this. Childlessness makes a woman or couple feel like useless failures regardless of what the circumstances may be, at least it did us. Cheyenne and I were married for almost nine years before Lily was born, which is nothing compared to Abraham and Sarah but plenty of time to feel like a giant failure. Lots of times when we fought in those days this would come up. I don’t think we ever came right out and blamed the other but we each felt like we had failed the other and we felt blamed whether we ever were or not. I can’t help wander looking back how much of our other, seemingly unrelated depression and misery really came from this existential inadequacy and the deep hopelessness that sets in.
Lily Hope is named after my beloved grandmother Lillee Mae, but I picked her middle name, as a reminder that we will never again be without Hope.
And I can say with absolute certainty and sincerity that,
Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:5
What prayers there were for Lily before she was conceived were mostly wordless cries of misery, the screaming of failed, broken, wretched people. Those prayers were answered in the fullest and most complete way possible. Lily was not an only child for long, only about six weeks which must be a contender for the record. Cheyenne’s sister spent her twenties moving from man to man often living in hotels or sleeping on someone’s couch and had a little girl and then a little boy along the way. As my long-time readers are aware I am occasionally plain spoken to the point of bluntness and my sister-in-law had never wanted me around after I told her many years ago that Eliyana’s dad was just using her as a whore, so I didn’t get to see my big kids much before the summer and fall that we are talking about2. Cheyenne did though and they were the apples of her eye. She spared neither time nor effort to lavish her love on them and seeing them often homeless and hungry, fearing that they might be abused by the string of men who came in and out of their home broke Chey’s heart3. Lily was born in May and her aunt and cousins started staying with us in June and we found them an apartment I think sometime in July. By August there was a drug dealing, violent, convicted sex offender boyfriend living with them and this time the prayers were different. It was early October when Cheyenne told me that the situation absolutely had to change and I prayed that the Lord would give the children to us.
I don’t pray a lot and when I do it is not usually a thought out, planned thing. I don’t have a ‘prayer life’ or a regular planned whatever. But when I cry out He hears and He answers. I think that I prayed on Friday or Saturday and it was Tuesday morning that CPS showed up telling their mother that they couldn’t stay with her anymore and that if there wasn’t family who could take them that they would be leaving with the caseworker4. So, if I tell you some sort of right way to pray and laud the virtues of blah blah it will be a bunch of bull. But I will say that the Pater Noster, the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, touches the deep things in my soul and we are gonna try and look at it today.
6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
We talked quite a bit about the contrasts between sincerity and hypocrisy and the needy and the worthy last time and about the reward of being like Our Father.
In these verses, Christ looks at the showy righteousness of the world, a righteousness which they shove in the Lord’s face with their prayers and their religion5 and He insists that we be different.
7 And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.
Our prayer is not answered because we do it right or do it often. In Christian prayer neither quality nor quantity matters for success, rather it is founded on a God who knows our needs intimately and who is not impressed with religion but rather disgusted by it. He is however moved by His own innate6 compassion for us.
9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
In Hebrew thought someone’s ‘name’ is the things by which they can be distinguished from everyone else.7 So, the truly unique and individual thing about Our Father, is that He is absolutely unique and individual, separate and different, unlike any other. He cannot be placed in any group or society whatsoever but always stands against the whole world, the flesh, and the devil. The One that we pray to is in Heaven, far above all earthly cares and He is different both from men and from all of creation, ‘hallowed’, separate and holy from all of the world, in a word transcendent. Such thoughts might make Him seem less accessible, less capable of understanding, less inclined to help us except that these thoughts are redirected by the opening words ‘Our Father’, so by these two little words we are both knit to the transcendant God in the closest relationship and forged into a society separate from and transcending the earth. That ‘Our Father’ is the gift of Immanuel to us, that brings God and man together, makes the transcendant immanent. Because to be a child is to be inescapably destined to be like your Father. Therefore in saying that He is above earthly cares, different, separate, and holy we are really teaching that we are these things according to the new and unperceived creation8 and soon shall be actually above earthly cares, perfectly like Our Father and Our one Teacher the Lord Jesus Christ and that though we look and feel and in many ways are much like the world around us, that the wheat is becoming wheatier and the tares more tareible9 and that we are going to our Father and they go to theirs.
The Narrow Gate of Matthew 7 has been very much on my mind throughout the whole of this study, the entire Sermon is a colossal contrast between ‘You’ and ‘Them’, the Individual who passes through the Narrow Gate and the hard Way to life and the Group, the Crowd, who pass through the broad gate and easy way to destruction. Our Father is not a member of any group. He has no seat in any Pantheon and if we are rejected in this world it is because He was rejected first. He knows no compromise, no syncretism, no ecumenicalism. His Christ prefers the Way of the Cross to any Olympus, prefers IRS agents, hookers, and panhandling drunks to the elites on either side of the aisle and such is our calling, to scorn and spurn the high and mighty and lift up the lowly and condemned, as He does to us. The root of the difference between You and They is not found in any of our works or our ways but in children becoming like their father, which happens without and often in spite of our efforts. The contrast is between the gracious self-abnegation of the Heavenly Father and the self-seeking of the father of lies. On this earth then the contrast is between those who humiliate themselves and those who exalt themselves, between the Needy and the Worthy, between those who trust in the righteousness that comes as a gift and those who have and hope in their own righteousness.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
The saints do not pray to be great, for themselves or their country. Rather, all of the greatness of the kingdoms of this world is dismissed as passing away and easily forgettable. Sorry guys, that’s just not the goal. They do not pray for ‘their tent to be enlarged’ as one popular piece of prosperity gospel from a few years ago had it.10 They pray for the kingdom that does not come with observation, the kingdom that is not of this world and never will be, but is already here, invisible, sacramental, and catholic11, and present in each heart whether it arouses love or hatred in that heart.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
The center of prayer is neediness and the faith to ask Our Father for the things that we lack. We live in an illusion of plenty that masks a reality of poverty. If your Father doesn’t actively choose to feed you then I promise you you will go hungry. Quickly. Your refrigerator and your bank account and your career notwithstanding.
As we are now in the depths of a plague of obesity, this point should perhaps be clearer to us than it was to other generations. No amount of food can nourish us and provide for our bodies, to say nothing of our spirits, apart from the divine favour. Rather, if we obtain food without grace it is only poison to us and rather than making us strong and energetic brings death closer. So, we should learn that if ‘our’ daily bread is a gift from God that all of the other things which we call ‘ours’ are only ‘ours’ in the same way.
12 And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
This is not a prayer offered by strong, moral men of integrity but by weak and poor sinners. But, this is the prayer of all who follow Christ. Christ’s kingdom is not a kingdom of lenders but of borrowers, not a kingdom of landlords but of tenants, not a kingdom of jailers but of prisoners, not a kingdom of philanthropists12 but of beggars, not a kingdom of prosecutors but of defendants and guilty ones at that. We are not brave and mighty warriors but weak and needy cowards who fear to come into combat with the devil because we know from long experience that defeat is the most likely outcome by a long shot. And though this certainly describes me personally, this is the common state of all of God’s children on this earth. If this is not you, if you are not a trespasser and debtor, if you left sin behind you by force of will and preferring good to evil, if you are so righteous that you seek battle with the devil rather than fear it, then hear this clearly: Kudos to you on your greatness but this prayer is not for you. You are not a disciple of Christ. You are not a child of the Heavenly Father.
That’s not us though. We are the small and dirty, the bankrupt sinners who pray for mercy and seek a strong protector from our creditors whom we cannot pay and our enemies whom we cannot fight. Do we even need a devil to tempt us to sin, but aren’t we all as James says tempted by our own lusts? How much worse is it then to have an active enemy seeking to tempt us and how great is our need for delivery? But even more, how great is our Deliverer.
14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Christ’s call is a call to a new life, not a life where you are righteous and don’t sin, but a life of free grace and the forgiveness of sins, a life of resemblance to the Father. These are not terms of a deal, but a description of passing from the old life to a new life. ‘If anyone is in Christ the old life has passed away and a new life has begun.’ I talked earlier about how my two oldest children came to live with us and about their mother’s frankly abusive behavior. Well, she still hurts them. She puts everyone and everything before them. She misses scheduled visits and breaks promises like it is nothing. And I sit up at night listening to them cry themselves to sleep after a missed visit or with mysterious aches and pains after she has ignored them or broken promises. What do I do? I wait, hoping for a chance to hurt her that won’t boomerang back on my children. Sometimes I pray for a chance to avenge their broken childhoods. If that doesn’t fit comfortably into your idea of Christianity that’s ok. Mine either. But it’s the truth. That prayer hasn’t been answered yet. I don’t know what that means.
I’ll confess another sin.13 There was something absolutely horrible that my granddaddy Carl did, I’m confessing my sin not his so we won’t worry about what right now. And in his last illness I had a recurring daymare that I would see him and he would ask for forgiveness and I would have no choice but to give it. The idea of forgiving him horrifies me. Everything within me says that it would be wrong. I feel pretty much the same way about forgiving Chassity. I’m not interested in that. Not looking for it, praying for it, or trying to do it. So, I don’t have any clever theology about unforgiveness to offer you, any casuistry, any Go/No-go gauge of right and wrong. This verse certainly appears to exclude me from the hope of forgiveness. I can’t offer any reason why it doesn’t. By any measure, I am on the unforgiveable end of the scale, with Chassity and Granddaddy Carl. If He refuses to forgive me, then He will be right, and just, and holy, and good, and merciful, and loving. My faith doesn’t consist of believing that He will do what I want Him to do or of believing that things will always go my way, even in the most important matters. It consists of believing that whatever He does is right, even in condemning me. I can’t change Him. And, to a great extent I can’t change myself either. That’s not an excuse just a fact. I am a broken person who can’t forgive and doesn’t really want to but even this cannot take away from me my Hope. If I need to be changed then He will change me. He provides everything else that I need. I can trust Him with that.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Perhaps less explicitly for Rachel than the others
2017 for any aspiring biographers.
At this point Eliyana was 4 and Kingsley 2.
They didn’t leave with the caseworker. When we were still childless Cheyenne worked in social services and had all of the contacts to cut through red tape etc. etc. and our home already had approval as a ‘host home’. Weird how things work out.
The Lord’s inveterate hatred of religion is a point that we would not miss if we had sense enough to study the Hebrew Prophets. The disgust is seen throughout with Isaiah 1 being a very good example.
Technically, ‘innate’ means from birth and is not appropriate to the Lord but I couldn’t find another word that I liked as much.
Thus, the command to pray ‘in Jesus’ name’ means to pray based on what is unique about Christ and different from all others, His unending kindness to sinners, His limitless power at the Right Hand of God, in short to pray Gospel prayers.
which is invading the old world that we know so well
As terrible as that pun?
The singularly tareible Prayer of Jabez
or mysterious and universal if the Latin, which has been sort of hijacked, offends you. It is sort of instructive about human nature that even the word for universal, used by the Church Fathers to distinguish the ‘Gospel which has gone out into the whole earth’ from any private revelation or sectarianism has become sectarian and the word for mystery, sacramentum has been rigidly delineated.
or philanthropaths
I suspect that very few people make it to the end of one of my sermons anyway so this isn’t as big of a thing as it might seem.
"Though He slay me, yet will I love him."