P.R.A.Y.: Yield

Matthew 6:12-13

February 14, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

This is a Public Service Announcement for all the guys in the congregation and online right now: today is Valentine’s Day. Wal-mart will be open after the service is over and Kroger probably still has flowers for sale! Of course today, Valentine’s Day is associated with cards, hearts, flowers and a romantic dinner out (or at least a heart-shaped pizza). We link it with romantic love, which tells us how far this particular feast day has come from its Christian roots. Lest we forget, Valentine’s Day is actually called St. Valentine’s Day. It commemorates the ministry and sacrifice of an Italian Christian priest who—well, it’s sort of unclear what he did. There are a lot of stories about him. Some say he healed a little girl of her blindness, though even which girl is up for debate. Some say he ministered to Christians who were being persecuted and martyred for their faith. Another legend says that he illegally performed wedding ceremonies for Christian men so that they wouldn’t have to serve in the Roman army. If they were married, they could opt out of service, but doing so before fulfilling your service was illegal. This particular legend also says that Father (or perhaps Bishop) Valentine would cut hearts out of parchment to remind people of their love and of God’s love. What the legends seem to agree on is that Valentine was engaged in some ministry that the Roman Empire had decided was illegal, and that he was martyred on February 14. One story says he was beaten first with clubs and stones, and when that failed to kill him, he was taken outside the gates of the city and beheaded. So, yeah, think about that while you eat pasta tonight.

This morning, we’re wrapping up our journey through the Lord’s Prayer using this acronym of P.R.A.Y. So let’s review real quickly. P stands for…pause. R? Rejoice. And A…ask. So that brings us to Y, which comes out of the last two verses of the prayer and stands for the word “yield.” Now, I don’t know about you, but when I’m motoring along and I see a “Yield” sign up ahead, I’m always kind of relieved. It means you only have to stop if someone is coming. By the way, these signs out here, on the road in front of the church—not “yield” signs. They are stop signs, though most people treat them as “Yield.” So you come up on a yield sign, you look both ways, maybe a couple of times, and you roll on through if no one’s coming. There’s only a brief delay to your travels. But in terms of prayer, in terms of the spiritual life, yielding is a lot different than that. As Jesus prays, we find it includes forgiving and being delivered. It involves giving up our own control, and that’s something that’s very difficult for us to do. At its root, though, “Yield” grows out of our love for Jesus, and it’s that truth that links it back to St. Valentine. Regardless of what he might or might not have done to deserve his martyrdom (and his sainthood), everything he did was rooted in a love for Christ that caused him to yield everything he was to his Savior and Lord. I think the question for us this morning, as we come to the end of this prayer, is whether or not we’re willing to yield like that as well.

Act of love number one: forgiveness. Jesus includes asking for forgiveness in the scaffolding of our daily prayers, and I think he does that because he knows we need it. We need it and we need to learn to practice it. Daily life is hard. Even without a pandemic, daily life is hard. We are hurt and wounded and injured and beat up every day. There are a hundred reasons and more every day for us to be angry and bitter if we hold onto them. Jesus urges us to do what is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive: forgive. The NIV, which we read earlier, translates it this way: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (6:12). We Methodists are more familiar with the word “trespasses” and some bold Christians even use the translation “sins.” Just try saying the Lord’s Prayer at an ecumenical gathering; it’s kind of fun to get to this part and not know what anyone is going to say. You get a sort of “trespasses-debts-sins” mess.

But the point here is not really the word. The focus of Jesus’ prayer is not on what needs to be forgiven, but on the act of forgiveness itself. And it’s two-sided, as much as we might wish it weren’t. In fact, this is so important that, after Jesus gives the model prayer, he goes on to talk about forgiveness more in some verses that, as I’ve told you before, I wish he hadn’t said. Here’s the gist, because we don’t have time to get deep into it this morning. The basis of being forgiven by God is forgiving other people. I know, I don’t like it any more than you do! I wish God would just forgive me and not expect me to forgive other people, but that’s, unfortunately, not the way it is. The prayer says “forgive our debts as we forgive others.” In the verses following Jesus even goes so far as to say that we can’t be forgiven by God if we don’t forgive others. When Peter, who was probably in the crowd on this day, later asked Jesus about all this, having pondered the things Jesus was saying about forgiveness, he offered to forgive others seven times. That’s pretty generous of Peter. The rabbis, after all, said you only had to forgive the same person three times. Peter doubles that and adds one. And then comes the kicker from Jesus: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” or, in some translations, “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22). The point isn’t the number; the point is that if you’re keeping track, if you’re counting how many times you’ve forgiven someone, you’ve missed the point. You’re not really forgiving. And forgiving others, Jesus says, is essential in being forgiven ourselves.

I know, I know. Like I said, I don’t like it either. There are some people I struggle to forgive. There are people who have hurt me so deeply that even the thought of forgiving them makes my stomach twist and turn inside. Can’t Jesus let this go? Can’t he just overlook this one? No. He can’t. And he won’t. And I can tell you from personal experience that his Holy Spirit will keep nagging you and prodding you and provoking you and just generally annoying you when there is unforgiveness in your life. Forgive as you have been forgiven. It’s an act of love. You see, it’s not that God the Father will refuse to forgive you if you don’t forgive others. It’s that you’re blocking what he wants to do in your life by refusing to forgive, by holding on to that grudge, by keeping a tally on the other person’s sins against you (cf. Wright, Matthew for Everyone—Part One, pg. 60). A refusal to forgive builds a wall between you and the Father. “If you forgive other people when they sin against you,” Jesus says, “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). When we choose to forgive, we yield control over whatever the situation is and allow God to have his way. Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge” (qtd. in Greig, How to Pray, pg. 169). God’s way is love. His way is peace. His way is restoration. His way is forgiveness. And so we pray a prayer of yielding: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (6:12).

I wonder how many of our national and international struggles could be put into better perspective if we began with forgiveness. The left can’t forgive the right, the conservative can’t forgive the liberal, one ethnicity can’t forgive another, and that conversation on social media that took an angry turn now stands between you and a former friend. It’s far too easy today to label people and put them into a box, holding grudges and staying angry. Our viewpoint is superior, we believe, and if they could just see things my way everything would be fine. But Jesus says, maybe you both need to see things my way. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” In the hurt and the anger and the pain following the years of apartheid in South Africa, when the minority brutally ruled the majority, what kept that country from literally tearing itself apart was the invitation to confess sins and to experience forgiveness. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up to allow oppressors to confess before those they had oppressed. The secret to healing in that nation was forgiveness—not a flippant, “I forgive you,” but the kind of forgiveness that yields, that gives up the insistence on control. Jesus says—maybe you both need to see things my way. “Forgive others, as you have been forgiven.”

And then the prayer brings us to act of love number two: deliverance from trials. “Lead us not into temptation,” Jesus prays, “but deliver us from the evil one” (6:13). There’s a problem here that we probably don’t think about, but do we really believe God would lead us into temptation? Would God lead us directly to a place where we might sin? It actually would be more accurate to translate this as “trial,” as at least one other translation does: “Do not bring us to the time of trial” (NRSV). The difference may seem subtle, but it’s important. A temptation has to do with our desire to sin, in essence to break our relationship with God. That’s not something God would lead us to; in fact, James even says, “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (James 1:13). A trial, though, is a test, a challenge, something that pushes us and assess the depth of our faith. Think about the famous and awful story of Abraham, whom God told to take his only son Isaac to Mount Moriah in order to sacrifice him. Abraham did what God asked him to do, and in the end God provided a lamb to sacrifice in the place of Isaac (cf. Genesis 22). Then God said to Abraham, “Because you have…not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky…” (22:16-17). Abraham is willing to do what God later does (give his only son) because he trusts the God who called him and who leads him.

Or here’s another way to think about it: I have a favorite guide in Israel. I’ve been there five times (planning to go next January for my sixth time—yes, that is a shameless plug), and all of the guides that we’ve had have been great. But there’s one who stands out; his name is Mike. And I’ve begun requesting Mike specifically not just because I like him, though I do. Not just because he’s funny, though he is. I ask for Mike because he knows how to not only show us the important sites around Israel, but to bring out the meaning behind them. Now, certainly, being a guide is Mike’s job. He wants to do the very best he can so that he gets paid well and can continue to work. No question about any of that. But what has endeared me to Mike is how he goes above and beyond. I know that if Mike says, “Hey, how about we go here,” I can trust him. I know, for one, he knows how to get there. And two, I know he will get us there safely. There have been times when I was in Jerusalem that we would learn later there had been some difficulty in one part of the city or another. But Mike knew and knows how to steer his people around the difficulty. He knew how to keep us safe, even if there was trouble in the city. I know I can trust him, and so in those ten days we spend in Israel, I yield control over to Mike. To me, that’s at the heart of this prayer of Jesus. We might pray it this way: “Lord, I know there will be trouble, but I’m trusting you to lead me through it, or lead me around it, or whatever is going to be the best for me. I trust you. I yield control to you” (cf. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, pgs. 128-129).

Then there’s the part of this prayer that often gets people worked up. Some texts read “Deliver us from the evil one” and others read, “Deliver us from evil” (6:13). The original text can be translated either way, and the general witness of Scripture is that evil ultimately comes from the evil one—the devil, Satan. The name “Satan” simply means “the enemy” or “the adversary.” His name describes who he is. Today, it is common, even in religious circles, to scoff at the idea of a devil, and if when you hear that name you think of some guy in red pajamas with horns and a pitchfork, I’d probably scoff at that too. That’s more in line with cartoons than the Bible. I don’t believe the devil looks like that because that would be just too obvious. Satan is sneakier than that. We’re told he prowls around, sneaks around, looking for someone to devour (cf. 1 Peter 5:8). He works in the shadows; he whispers in our doubt. Make no mistake: evil is real. There is an evil one who seeks to destroy God’s people. C. S. Lewis once said, “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan” (qtd. in Greig 189). It does not take much work to see evidence of evil and death and destruction and brokenness; those things are the evil one’s calling card.

And so we pray with desperate hearts, “Deliver us from the evil one.” Really what Jesus is praying here comes directly from his own experience in the wilderness. Just two chapters before this, Matthew tells us how, after his baptism, Jesus was “led” into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit and the sole purpose for that “leading” is so that he can be “tested” by the devil (Matthew 4:1). Do you see the parallels here with Jesus’ prayer? “Do not lead us into the time of testing, and deliver us from the evil one” (my paraphrase). Jesus in his humanness knows what it’s like to be led into a time of testing, and he also shows us how to be delivered from the evil one. First of all, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights (4:2). Now, while I know there is great value in fasting, this is not a sermon about fasting but let me just say there’s no magic in fasting. Fasting is not a way to force God to do something. It’s a way to learn dependence on the heavenly Father. That’s what Jesus is doing here. He’s yielding his life and his security to the Father. So the first thing he does to go through the test and to face the evil one is make sure he is completely yielded to his Father. Then the test begins, and we don’t have time this morning to go through it one by one, but when you read this passage this week, I want you to notice two things. First of all, Jesus responds to every test the evil one puts before him with words from Scripture. If we don’t know the Scriptures, or if the only Scripture we get is what we hear read here on Sunday morning and the few verses we see people post on Facebook, we’re not going to be strong enough to be able to face the evil one. You need to be intentionally studying the Scriptures, on your own and with others. I know this pandemic has made it hard. Many if not most of our LifeGroups and Sunday School classes have not been meeting. That will change, I believe sooner rather than later at this point. Study on your own and when it’s possible, study with others. Know the Scriptures and allow them to get planted deep within you. Jesus faced Satan with the word of God.

The second thing to notice is that Satan knows the Scriptures also. In the second test, he uses Scripture to try to entice Jesus to do what he says (cf. 4:6). And that should tell us, should remind us, that Scripture can be misused. It can be “used” by the enemy. It can be twisted and misinterpreted. If we don’t know what the Scripture says, and by that I mean the whole counsel of Scripture and not just a verse or two here or there, it can be easy to be misled. In my lifetime, I remember the spectacular stories that made headlines: Jim Jones and Guyana, the Heaven’s Gate cult, David Koresh in Waco, Texas—all people who convinced others they had the corner on the market on Scripture interpretation. A charismatic leader used just enough of the Bible to make it sound good, and all of them ended up dead because they believed a lie. Their understanding of Scripture wasn’t yielded to God; it was controlled by one person or a small group of people. And we’ve seen places in history where the church got it wrong, where God had to call people to reform the church. Martin Luther was used by God to straighten out the church’s understanding of salvation, and his namesake centuries later, Martin Luther King Jr., was used by God to proclaim the truth of Scripture about equality and justice and freedom from oppression. Evil can use the Scriptures; we need to know God’s Word better than we do if we’re going to be able to fight against evil, if we’re going to find ourselves delivered from the evil one.

Stanley Hauerwas, who once taught at Duke, puts it this way: “What you are up against, in being saved, is not simply your personal faults and foibles…You are up against what we call ‘the principalities and powers.’ Evil is large, cosmic, organized, subtle, pervasive, and real. The powers never appear as evil or coercive. [Or in a red suit with a pitchfork.] The powers always masquerade as freedoms that we have been graciously given or as necessities we cannot live without” (qtd. in Greig 195-196). Hauerwas wrote that over 20 years ago, but I think we see that even more today—evil is disguised as “necessities we cannot live without.” But that does not mean we are powerless. It does not mean we are too small to win the battle.

Pete Greig tells the story of his family’s hamster, Snuffles, whom he compares to Houdini because Snuffles was very good at getting out of her cage. One day, Snuffles had made another “valiant break for freedom” when she suddenly encountered the family’s other pet: a large Labradoodle named Noodle. Little tiny Snuffles froze at the sight of this enormous wolf-like creature, and the two animals stood there for a moment, staring each other down. Then, the most amazing thing happened. Noodle started to shake, then she lay down and rolled on her back in a sign of submission. Greig describes the scene this way: “I think we can agree that it’s ridiculous for a sixty-five-pound carnivore to fear a tiny, dumb rodent that eats its own poop. Confronted by a mere mouthful of fluff, Noodle said in effect, ‘Please don’t hurt me. Please like me. You can be the boss’” (196). I think that is a picture of the essence of this prayer. Though we feel powerless, though the church may seem insufficient in the face of the evil of the world, the truth is exactly the opposite. We have the power of the creator of the universe behind us when we ask: “Deliver us from the evil one.” Evil has to submit. When we yield to Christ, evil will yield to us because we are people of the King of Kings. Now that is good news, amen?

I began this morning by saying yielding is an act of love. When we surrender control to Christ, it shows our love for him. It demonstrates that we trust him enough to allow his will to become ours. And the way we experience his care for us demonstrates his love for us. He wants the very best for us. He did not come to bring us harm; he came to bring us good, the very best, even though it may not seem so at the time. I think of it in surgical terms, maybe because that’s my context, but it’s like what the doctor did to me on October 12, 2017. He did some things that, in another context, would be understood as hurtful. He cut out part of my heart, he left a huge scar on my chest and he caused me to be in the hospital for a week. In fact, what he did to me caused me to really struggle for a year or so before I began to feel like myself. It hurt. It was hard to get through. But I yielded to his surgical skill because I knew that, in the end, what he was doing would be good. Not everything felt good, but in the end it allowed me to live. And that’s good. Sometimes what we go through, even the things God leads us to (like a wilderness), doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t seem good at the time, but when we yield ourselves to what he is doing and how he wants to do it, it will be good. He will bring good out of all things because he loves us. That is, after all, the promise made to his people way back in the book of Jeremiah: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future’” (29:11).

The way we usually close the Lord’s Prayer is not included in most modern translations because it was, it seems, a late addition, a benediction that was added to the original prayer when it started being used in worship settings. And though it may not have come from the lips of Jesus, this benediction certainly in line with his hopes and desires for the church. We dream and pray and hope for a day when all things are under God’s rule, when testing and evil are done with forever. So, as we close this series on prayer and head into a time of prayer, I invite you to join me by praying the benediction. Let’s pray these words together: “For yours is the kingdom…and the power…and the glory…forever.” Let’s continue to pray.