First Focus

Matthew 6:5-15

April 8, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

What was the first prayer you learned? Do you remember? I can’t say for sure, but I’m fairly certain mine was either, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” or it was, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food.” Two important prayers for me still today: prayer for sleep, and prayer for food! Somewhere within us, we have this desire or need to reach out to someone or something beyond us from a very early age, but we’re not always sure how to do it, how to pray. So simple prayers like those we learn in childhood tend to stick with us, and sometimes we rely on them far beyond childhood, well into adulthood. Regardless of how we go about it, most people pray at least sometimes (cf. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One, pg. 57). Pastor Craig Groeschel tells of being on a rough flight sitting next to a woman who told him up front (as soon as she learned he was a pastor) she didn’t believe in God and she didn’t want him trying to convert her. Ground rules established, they took off and had a pleasant conversation—until the turbulence began. It was so bad, Pastor Groeschel says, he began to pray for forgiveness of any sins he might have forgotten, just in case, and the woman next to him began to utter profanities he had never heard before, so loudly that everyone in the plane could hear her. She only took a break in sharing her colorful metaphors long enough to say to Groeschel, “I still don’t believe in God, but while you’re praying, you might as well pray for me, too!” (Divine Direction, pgs. 179-180). Most people pray at least sometimes.

The challenge we have is that often, we don’t know how to pray, and because we’re people of faith, we don’t want to or like to admit that. It’s supposed to happen automatically, right, when we trust Christ! Well, there are a lot of different ways to pray, and maybe this instructional video can help you.

VIDEO: “The Ways People Pray”

Or maybe that’s not all that helpful! For the next four weeks, though, we’re going to try to be more helpful than that as we talk about prayer and get some practical experience in the art of prayer. We’ve called this series “First,” based on the experience of Nehemiah. Maybe you remember: when Nehemiah receives bad news from back home, he doesn’t immediately put a plan in place to fix things. The first thing he does is pray, and I believe that should be our response as well. How do we get to the place where our first response is prayer? So each of the sermons in this series will focus on a “first.” Next week, we’ll focus on listening prayer and how we need to “first listen” to God. We’ll talk about the ways in which we find our “first hope” in prayer and how we learn to “first trust” through prayer. But this morning, I want to begin at a rather basic level, at the place where our “first focus” should be, a focus Jesus spelled out in his basic teaching about the kingdom of God. We call this teaching, “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Now, I have preached whole sermon series just based on this prayer, so this morning we’re not going to have time cover every point or every nuance of the prayer; we’ll save that for another time. What I want to do this morning is to give us an overview of the prayer Jesus gave and look at this prayer as a framework for the whole of our prayer life. This is a prayer that can give shape and focus to our life of prayer. But before we dive right in, let’s consider the context in which Jesus gives us this prayer. As I said, most people pray at some point, and the ancient world was no exception. Jew or Gentile, prayer was a vital part of each person’s spiritual life. For the people in the nations around Israel, prayer was often done according to particular rituals. Because there were so many gods, you were never sure which god you had offended or which one needed something special to do whatever you wanted. There as a lot of uncertainty and anxiety connected to prayer, so they would attempt particular rituals or formulas in hopes of satisfying the right deity. But they never knew if they were heard, either, so prayer became a primary way of trying to get what you wanted (Wright 57). Israel was different in some respects, though prayer was still largely a ritualized practice. There were, for most good Jews, prescribed times of public prayer every day; morning, afternoon and evening prayers were to be said publicly. You see the same practice today also in modern Islam, especially in the country of Israel where the “call to prayer” often rings out over loudspeakers at the designated times. Regular hours of prayer were part of the culture in Jesus’ time, and later on even the prayers became more ritualized (Card 62; Wilkins, NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, pg. 273).

Everyone had a way to pray, and so in Luke’s Gospel, the disciples want to know what Jesus’ way is. “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). Everyone else has a way to pray, so, Jesus, how do you want us to pray? What should we say? What should we do? In that account, Jesus gives them basically the same prayer he gives them in Matthew 6 as part of the Sermon on the Mount. Were they not listening when he preached that sermon? Or did they think maybe there was more to it? For whatever reason, they ask, and Jesus gives them essentially the same prayer, which is not so much a prayer as it is a framework for prayer. We pray it every time we have communion (as we will in a little bit this morning), and many of us know it by heart (at least the King James Version), but I want to give you a chance this morning to hear it prayed the way Jesus would have prayed it. In Bethlehem, Israel, there is still a community that speaks Aramaic, the language Jesus would have spoken, and every time we are there, they share this prayer in its original language for us. This last year, on my fifth trip there, I finally had the bright idea to record it so I could share it with you. So here’s the Lord’s prayer, spoken in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

VIDEO: Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic

Whether you know this prayer by heart or have never heard it before, or you’re somewhere in between, I want to give you a challenge this morning. If you don’t know the prayer, I want to challenge you to learn it, and if you do know it, I want you to learn to pray it. So often we end up speaking this prayer by rote, but that’s not why Jesus gave us this prayer. It’s not some magic formula that helps us get our way with God. Rather, it’s meant to be a model for our own prayer life. So, in your bulletin this morning, there is an insert that has a prayer guide on it, and I want you to pull that out right now. We’re going to, in the time we have remaining this morning, walk through this prayer and I hope to help you see how this prayer can become the framework for our prayer life, how Jesus’ prayer can give shape to our own prayers.

One of the first things you notice about this prayer is that it’s short. It’s only a few sentences long, which might give us a clue about the length of our own prayers. They don’t have to be long! Jesus has even hinted at his in the verses that come before what we read this morning. He talks about how some folks babble on and on because “they think they will be heard because of their many words” (6:7). God doesn’t need lots and lots of words to be convinced to come to our help. God doesn’t listen to long-winded prayers. Praying longer to try to “wear God down” is what the pagans do, Jesus says, and he is very clear as to what he thinks about that practice: “Do not be like them.” Pagan practice is to believe that we have a better chance of being answered if we get lots and lots of people to pray for something. How many people, exactly, do we think it will take to convince God to do what we want? I was once in a prayer meeting during a presidential campaign and I heard one person pray, “God, there are enough of us here that you’ll have to make sure so-and-so is elected.” What? By the way, that person was not elected! We have muddled theology when it comes to prayer and prayer lists and prayer networks and social media. We wouldn’t say it this way, but we often act like we have to wear God down. Jesus says just the opposite. Our prayers don’t need to be long for God to listen them; they should be shortened by our confidence that God already knows what we need (6:8; Card 63).

The other thing we notice about the Lord’s prayer is that it’s focused so intentionally on God himself. Most of our prayers, if we’re honest, are about ourselves. We jump right in and start asking for things. But this prayer doesn’t ask for anything until verse 11, and even then, what is asked for is pretty basic. The first two parts of the prayer, as the guide says, is all about connecting with God and worshipping him. “Our Father” is a relationship phrase; it’s a reminder that God is not some far-off, distant deity, but that God wants a relationship with us. Jesus often referred to God as “Abba,” sort of like our “Daddy,” which was strikingly intimate to folks in the first century, even though the relationship with God had been described as being like a “father-son” relationship as far back as the book of Exodus (cf. Wright 59). But Jesus wants us to remember we can come to God with anything, just as a little child has no problems asking their parents for anything. There’s another element here, though, of relationship. Jesus doesn’t instruct us to call God “my Father” but “our Father.” We’re reminded that God is Father to us all, and that truth should bring us all together. “Our Father” reminds us that we should have a close relationship with God and with each other as well (cf. Wilkins 275).

From that reminder, the prayer moves to worship: “Hallowed be your name.” That’s not a word we use very much anymore. Do you ever talk about anything being “hallowed”? I think Bibles still translate it that way because we’re so used to it in the prayer, but it really means to set something aside as special. Not untouchable, or only brought out at special occasions like Grandma’s china, but unique, precious, important. To “hallow” something means we treat it with respect; this is, after all, the essence of the first three of the Ten Commandments: don’t have any other gods, don’t make idols and don’t misuse God’s name. When we hallow God’s name, we show proper respect toward the one the name points us to. It’s sort of like how a young child once said he could tell when someone loves you: your name, he said, is “safe in their mouth.” So we worship the God of many names, the one who is “I Am,” the one who is Lord of life and Lord of love and Lord of all. We set him apart and honor him because of who he is.

From that time of worship, now we are prepared to make requests. You see, there’s nothing wrong with asking things of God; Jesus encouraged it. It’s just that we often charge in without really connecting to God, without having our own hearts prepared. It’s not that God doesn’t know you need things to happen, but if our hearts aren’t prepared first by reminding ourselves who God is, then we tend to either ask selfishly or become demanding: “God, you will do this now for me.” Prayer is less about convincing God to do something than it is about changing us, aligning our hearts with God’s heart. So now we’re ready to make requests, and Jesus suggests the first thing we do is focus on what God wants: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (6:10). The question that’s most helpful for me here comes from Rich Stearns, president of World Vision: "Is my heart broken by the things that break the heart of God?” So, for instance, when I’m praying for our leaders in the nation or in the world, I find myself praying for them to have wisdom, to practice justice and righteousness, rather than praying for specific policy decisions. My time of worship has helped me see that my own perspectives might be wrong, and I’m learning to trust that if God’s will is done and God’s kingdom comes rather than the one I envision, we’ll all be a lot better off.

The next verse of the prayer gets even more basic: “Give us today our daily bread” (6:11). Is there anything more basic than bread? When I was growing up, I think we had bread or something like it with every meal. Dinner didn’t seem complete until I’d had my bread and jelly. In Middle Eastern culture, bread was and is even more basic than it is here. When you’re there, you have pita bread with most every meal, and it’s often used as another utensil. Fork, knife, spoon, pita bread. So to ask for daily bread is to ask for sustenance, for the very basic things you need. We don’t think about bread as much as the people Jesus was speaking to did; they literally didn’t know where their next bread was coming from many days. We do—Kroger. Or Wal-mart or Aldi’s or Baesler’s. But the point here is that we can trust God to provide, to bring us what we need. Not always what we want, but what we need. As the psalmist wrote, “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread” (Psalm 37:25). That’s not to say life won’t get hard, or that we won’t have to go without. But we’re reminded by this prayer and this psalm that God never forsakes those who put their trust in him. Jesus made that same promise: that he will never leave or forsake us (cf. Matthew 28:20). So we ask and we trust and in the midst of all of that, we learn to depend on the God who will never let us go.

The next verse turns our attention to what I called in my blog this week “the big work of the church,” forgiveness. “Forgive us our debts (we usually say ‘trespasses’) as we also have forgiven our debtors” (6:12). Notice how, over and over again in the teaching of Jesus, our own forgiveness depends on being forgiving people. I had a friend who sort of took issue with that on the blog this week, but I can’t escape this truth. Jesus says we forgive in order to experience forgiveness. He says it again after the prayer: “If you forgive other people…your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (6:14-15). That’s going into my book on “Things I Wish Jesus Hadn’t Said,” but he did. Whether from selfish motives or not, our experience of forgiveness depends on us becoming more and more forgiving people. If we don’t forgive others, we block God’s ability to work in our lives. So yes, it does depend on us, and yes, it is hard, and yes, we may have mixed motives in practicing forgiveness. I struggle with this, but I think that’s why, of all the prayers and requests Jesus could have included in his model prayer, he chose this one: because it’s hard. And because he knows that, of all the things we might ask for, this is what we most need.

The final verse of the prayer is about the battle we face, the struggle we have to not give into temptation, but notice how it is phrased: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (6:13). A lot of folks are uncomfortable with the idea that God might lead us into temptation, and honestly, we’re pretty good at finding it ourself! Again, though, some of our problems come with the translation; the word Jesus uses here could either be translated as “temptation” or as “testing,” and we do know from other places in the Scriptures that God does, indeed, provide occasions of testing. Some of us know that all too well! So what the prayer seems to be saying is this: we “should pray either for relief from testing…or for [our] testing not to become an occasion for temptation” (Wilkins 279). In both understandings, this prayer recognizes that life is a battle, and that we need strength for that battle. Paul reminds us in Ephesians that our struggle, ultimately, is not against flesh and blood (mere mortals, cf. Ephesians 6:12), but that there is an enemy who wants to undo all the work of Christ and the church. Pastor Rick is beginning a Bible study this week on that very topic, Wednesday mornings, and the reality is that some days, we just need strength to be able to stand. Life is a struggle; there is more than meets the eye. So, God, we pray for strength and protection from the enemy.

Now, in some of your Bibles and in our usual reciting of this prayer, there is a benediction that does not appear in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew’s Gospel. As best as we can tell, that final line was added when the prayer began to be used in worship settings (cf. Wilkins 280) and was added into the Gospel text at a later time. There are, in fact, ten different endings to the prayer that have been identified, representing the many ways this prayer was used in worship (Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, pg. 205). Regardless, it’s an appropriate way to end, to return to worship, to remind ourselves again who this God is that we worship, who it is we trust, who it is we follow. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”

So, that’s the framework Jesus gave us, and I want to challenge us all to use this framework to shape and focus our prayers for the next month, through this sermon series at least. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, for a practice to become ingrained in us, so for the next four weeks, I want to ask you to use this prayer every day as the framework for your own prayers. Don’t just read it; use the prayer guide to direct your own words. That’s what Jesus intended us to learn from and to do with this prayer. So, this morning, I’m going to help you get started. As we prepare for holy communion, we’re going to, as we usually do, pray this prayer, only I want to do it differently and I’m going to pause in between each of the six sections, giving you time to pray your own words silently there. I want you to see how easily this model prayer can become your own. So, as we pray, don’t get in a hurry. Let’s use this time to talk to God and prepare our hearts for holy communion. Will you pray with me as Jesus taught us to pray?

Our father, who art in heaven…

Hallowed be thy name…

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…

Give us this day our daily bread…

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.