Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 9 2013

Genesis 18:20-32

Colossians 2:6-15

Luke 11:1-13

Well there’s been quite a lot in the news about fatherhood this week - and motherhood, of course. The birth of the Royal baby produced a frenzy of excitement in the media, here and abroad - in Italy I had a choice of live coverage from Paddington in French, German and Italian. And the new arrival has turned people’s attention to the joys and challenges of the family and parents in general, as well as the royal family and its history.  

Now I’m sure that William and Kate will do their very best for Prince George, as most families do. But we know that the human family isn’t always perfect, and the Bible knows this too. Both Luke and Matthew introduce the life of Jesus with a genealogy, a list of ancestors - entirely fathers, in Luke’s case. And if you check them out they are really quite a mixed bunch, there is a lot of human frailty and failure and sin that make up the human family. And that family, all those fathers and mothers from the beginning, is the background to the coming of the Messiah. The Bible is quite clear: it is the human race as a whole which is in need of redemption. 

So when Jesus teaches us to call God “Father” he is both revealing something new about God, and showing us what it really means to be a father. He is inviting us into a new and unconditionally loving relationship with God in which our own human relationships, too, will be taken up and redeemed.

Up until this moment in Luke’s Gospel, only Jesus has known this relationship with God. It is Jesus alone who has called God “Father”. It is Jesus alone who has gone off to lonely places to pray in deep communion with the Father. But this is a relationship which Jesus has come to reveal and to share. In the previous chapter he said:

All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

But now the time has come for that revelation. The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and perhaps they are expecting a method, or some kind of training, like you might get if you were practicing meditation or yoga. But this is not what they get. They get a prayer which is uniquely great, and all encompassing, and simple: the Lord’s prayer. Both Luke and Matthew give an account of this prayer: Matthew’s version is the one we are used to praying in the Liturgy, Luke’s is shorter and punchier in style, almost telegraphic. Not one word to excess. 

But look at the words carefully, and think of them in the context of the story that Luke tells of the ministry of Jesus. The words of the Lord’s prayer describe, in a nutshell, what Jesus has been doing. They describe his mission and ministry as Luke has been telling it. And throughout Luke we see, again and again, that what Jesus is doing is what God is doing. 

“Father.” Jesus is the Son of God who has come to call all humanity into that relationship of sons and daughters. Jesus reveals that God is our Father - not a father in the old human way tainted by failure and sin, but Father of a redeemed and restored relationship of unconditional, unfailing love.  

“Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.” God’s name being hallowed is about God’s good name or reputation being upheld. God is love and justice and integrity, and human society is not. So by restoring love, justice and integrity to human society, God’s name is hallowed. This is the preaching of the Kingdom, what Jesus has come to do.

“Give us each day our daily bread.” The Greek word translated as “daily” is unusual and really means something like “super-substantial”. This is the bread of ultimate and deepest necessity. This speaks not so much of bodily sustenance, though we need that, as of the spirit, the food that nourishes to eternal life. “Super-substantial” bread of course calls to mind the bread of the Eucharist, which is the substance of Jesus himself under sacramental signs. But it speaks also of the bread of prayer and God’s word, the daily need of our spiritual sustenance. 

“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.” Again and again in the gospels Jesus says to someone in need, “your sins are forgiven”. The key to restoring health and wholeness, a society at rights with God and with itself, is the forgiveness of sins. Know yourselves to be forgiven, because you are loved. And because of that, forgive others yourself. 

“Do not bring us to the time of trial.” This is the prayer which Jesus will pray in Gethsemane the night before his death. And yet he will add, “not my will be done, but yours”. Jesus subjects himself to the time of trial so that we can be freed from sin and death. From now on, even in life’s darkest moments, even when we pass through the valley of the shadow of death, we will not be alone, for Jesus has passed that way before and is with us to guide us on our way.

Jesus gives his disciples a prayer which describes what he is doing, and that is the same as what God is doing. This is prayer: know that God is your Father, and that you are loved. And attend to what God is doing.  Will what God wills. Desire what God desires. Do what God does.

The essence of prayer consists of locating ourselves in what God is doing. Prayer is not so much telling God what to do or trying to change his mind, still less is it informing God of the needs of a world he would otherwise be neglecting. No, prayer first of all means centring ourselves in God to seek his will and be attentive to what he is doing.   

This is not something that we have to achieve ourselves - it is God’s gift in Jesus. It is the Son who knows the Father and reveals him to us. Through prayer we are drawn into that relationship, so that our prayer is really a sharing in the eternal communion of the Son and the Father in the Holy Spirit. Through that prayer, which is God’s gift to us, we participate in what God is doing, and become co-operators in the building of his kingdom. Through intercessory prayer, prayer for others and the world and its needs, we bring those people and those needs with us into the still centre where God is doing everything. 

Now this needs, of course, attention, and discipline, and persistence. Keep on praying.  

We do need a regular discipline of prayer to sustain and support our lives, but there isn’t a one-size-fits-all prayer life. We need to ask what is appropriate for us with whatever the demands are on our time, and whatever our duties and responsibilities are. But a regular time of silence and stillness, of attention to God, rooted in the Eucharist and in prayerful reading of sacred scripture, are vital. That way, in times of stress or distraction, when we fire off our arrow prayers for help, those little prayers will be rooted in a deep practice of the presence of God.

“Lord, teach us to pray.” The response that Jesus gives is not so much a method as an invitation into the mystery of God. Our prayer is to be drawn into the prayer that Jesus is continually offering, his communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. All that we need and all that the world needs flows out from that deep communion, from that still centre where God is doing everything. 

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.’ Amen.