Sermon prepared for Epiphany Lutheran Church in the Bronx, July 24, 2022.
I had not yet entered kindergarten when my parents thought it good to teach me the prayer Jesus taught his disciples.
Before that – and this was in the late 1940s – my parents had me kneeling beside my bed each night in my pajamas to pray a nursery rhyme:
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
Die?
Before I wake?
That was a confusing and frightening idea for a four-year-old. My thoughtful parents diluted the prayer to make it less scary.
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. May angels spread protecting wings above my bed.”
Too late.
My parents would have been appalled to realize my pre-K contemporaries had already updated the prayer.
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, Alka-Seltzer’s what to take.”
My parents moved quickly to discard the whole now-I-lay-me theme. They figured that if I was old enough to memorize dialogue from the Howdy Doody Show I was old enough to memorize seven or eight lines taught by Jesus.
My mother would kneel beside my siblings and me and have us quietly repeat each line until we knew the whole prayer by heart. She taught us the Matthew 6 version of the prayer that is slightly longer than the Luke 11 version that is before us today. And she taught the Protestant version that adds a modified doxology after “deliver us from evil; for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
By the time my siblings and I were in primary school we were reciting the Lord’s prayer along with the whole congregation of the United Church of Morrisville, N.Y. This church had Baptist roots so we said “forgive us our debts.” Just up the street the Methodist congregation said “forgive us our trespasses,” which could be confusing because I had been taught that trespassing was climbing over our neighbor’s fence to retrieve an errant baseball. But it was also reassuring to know God forgives trespassing because our neighbor certainly did not.
Probably Jesus taught the prayer in Aramaic, an ancient language that is rarely heard today except in the Syrian Orthodox Church. I love to hear Syrian congregations recite the prayer in Aramaic, not because I understand it but because I’m hearing the same sounds and rhythms that Jesus used two millennia ago.
As we know, the Gospels were written many years after Jesus walked the earth. The Gospel writers never heard Jesus say the words of the prayer and no one wrote them down as he said them. If Jesus used the rabbinic style of rote teaching, that is, having his students repeat and repeat lessons until they memorized them, it’s not unreasonable to assume we have a pretty good summary of what he actually said. Scholars will continue to examine this and offer opinions as to which words of Jesus actually came out of his mouth and which were reconstructed best guesses.
Back in my Baptist days I occasionally visited a liberal congregation that had its own way of interpreting the Lord’s Prayer. In an effort to degenderize the Creator of the Universe they changed the opening of the prayer to read, “Our Mother and our Father …”
Perhaps their hearts were in the right place, but of all the words in the Lord’s Prayer, the ones deemed most authentic are “Abba,” Our Father. I had a colleague who was greatly amused that this well-meaning congregation had blithely discarded the only words of the prayer that are universally accepted as the true words of Jesus: “Our Father …”
This, of course, was the main point Jesus wanted his disciples to hear: the loving Fatherhood of God who, like a loving parent, desires to meet all our needs and offers us models of behavior in our human relationships.
When the New Revised Standard Version of the bible was being prepared in the 1980s the editors were challenged to publish the most accurate possible translation of scripture. In doing so they took care to note when Jesus was addressing only men (as was often the case with his disciples) and to note when Jesus was addressing women and men together (as when he preached to the crowds). As the editors were wrestling with these issues they heard from many women and not a few men who said they had much difficulty with the loving father metaphor of the Creator of the Universe. Many of these women had been abused by their fathers and husbands and, for them, the concept of God as Father was off-putting and frightening.
Pastor Niveen Sarras of the Lutheran Church of Wausau, Wisconsin, writes that many of Jesus’ contemporaries also had unpleasant views of fatherhood.
As we know, Luke is primarily addressing a non-Christian audience.
“Luke’s Gentile Christian audience’s experience with their fathers differs from their Jewish counterparts,” Pastor Sarras notes.
“The fathers in the Greco-Roman culture enjoyed complete control over their children and grandchildren. For example, a father decides whether his newborn child will be raised in the family, sold, or killed. Luke introduces the Gentiles to God, who is generous, loving, and attentive to God’s children’s needs. Luke changes his audience’s perspective on fatherhood by presenting God as 'the Father who cares for his children and acts redemptively on their behalf.' The father-child relationship is based on the confidence of the child. This relationship is centered on love, not fear. God the Father in the New Testament is a personal, intimate, sacred, and trusted authority.”
God the Father – Abba – is a parent full of unconditional love for us. It’s sad when our human fathers become bad examples of this love, even to the extent of making a mockery of it through cruelty and abuse. If the idea of “father” makes some people cringe, it’s our duty to listen to them, understand their pain, and pray that God’s true love will break through the emotional scar tissue to reveal what Jesus means when he says “Our Father.”
When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, his first lesson was this:
Remember God loves you. Never be afraid to approach God in Prayer. And be persistent about it.
These are the footnotes to Jesus’ teaching:
“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:9-13)
Because God is love.
And when we pray, pray like this.
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” (Luke 11:2-4)
God is love.
