FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, POWER AND GLORY

Unpacking the Lord's Prayer (Part 7)

Revelation 1:4-8; Matthew 6:8-13 (KJV)

Today we conclude this series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer. With the end of the series I hope you have not finished praying or learning about this prayer. Before we come to the conclusion, let’s take a few minutes to see where we have been since July 21 when we started. We began with the recognition that the Lord’s Prayer is the single most used element in Christian worship, and we asked why that was the case. What is it that is so special about this prayer that one may safely assume that at any one moment in time someone or some congregation somewhere is praying it? You will have to decide if what I have suggested over these weeks answers that question and, more importantly, if what I have said has shed any light on the meaning of the prayer for you.

On the first Sunday we looked at the God to whom Jesus asked his followers to pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” I suggested that the word “father” and “in heaven” are both keys to understanding. First, Jesus used the intimate term for “father,” which may be best translated “Daddy,” and that we are invited to pray to God as a loving, caring parent. Second, “in heaven” reminds us that this is a God beyond the limits of our minds to conceive. I cautioned about restricting the idea of God as being “male.” God in heaven, is surely beyond our categories of gender, and that we should be open to addressing God in feminine as well as masculine terms.

In the second week, we considered the petition, “Hallowed be thy name.” This petition is a reminder that prayer is God-centered. At heart, prayer is simply paying attention to God, and in paying attention we “hallow” God’s name. We talked about Brother Lawrence “practicing the presence of God” as a way to pay attention to God no matter what we are doing.

On the third Sunday of the series we came to what I suggested is the central petition of the prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” God’s kingdom, we remembered, is not a piece of geography, or an institution, or something that is in the distant future. The kingdom of God is whenever and wherever God’s will is done on earth. This should be the first and last of all our petitions in all conditions, even as it was for Jesus on the night of his arrest: “not my will but your will be done.” All of the petitions of this prayer are to be interpreted in the light of this single petition.

When we came to “Give us this day our daily bread” we recognized the difficulties in the translation. Nonetheless, we recognized that this is not a prayer for “my” daily bread, but for “our” (all of God’s children’s) daily sustenance. I also suggested that the petition may be more than that; it may be a prayer for “a taste today” of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.

Then, we came to the petition for the forgiveness of our sins. We acknowledged that the Presbyterians are probably right, that the original words Jesus used were “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We said that “debts” and “trespasses” are simply two different ways of talking about “sin.” We said that God’s love and willingness to forgive are never ending. At the same time, asking God to forgive us while we are unwilling to forgive those who have wronged us is simply unthinkable. As we are forgiven, so are we to forgive.

Last Sunday, we came to perhaps the hardest of the petitions, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I suggested that it may be the hardest, not because we don’t understand it but because it is not pleasant to think about “temptation” and “evil.” “Lead us not” I suggested is not an accurate translation because God does not tempt us. The more accurate translation is “Bring us not” or “Allow us not” to be in a situation of such great temptation or trial that we are in danger of losing our faith. This petition, I said, reminds us to take “evil” seriously, or as Professor Jose Miguez Bonino said, “Call it whatever best suits your ideology. Just don’t trivialize it by considering it mere human weakness.”

There remains one last line in the prayer as we pray it, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” Have you noticed that line is not in the prayer in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as we have read them over the past weeks? When the earliest English translations of the Bible were done (like the King James Version translated in 1611) the earliest manuscripts of the books of the New Testament were from the seventh century, meaning that they were copies, of copies, of copies, of copies, of copies, etc. Since the seventeenth century, earlier manuscripts of the books of the New Testament have been discovered, some dating to the second century. That still means that they are copies of copies of copies, but not nearly so many times far removed from the originals as those used by the scholars translating the King James Version. In the manuscripts those scholars worked with, mostly Latin versions of the Greek, this conclusion to the prayer was present, but in the earliest manuscripts it is not.

If this was not in the prayer as Jesus taught it, where did it come from? The words appear to be based on David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:11: “Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.” While this concluding doxology was probably not a part of the prayer as Jesus taught it, it is not a distortion of the prayer.

When we have hungered for a taste today of God’s will being done on earth, we are given the great assurance – “THINE is the kingdom.” Our prayer is not futile because it is God’s kingdom, not ours. If we seek the taste today it will be granted.

When we have confessed our guilt for debts and transgressions that we can never make good, this prayer takes us into the radiance of God – “THINE is the glory” -- where the shadows are dispelled. Our life has not been wasted. Nothing is irrevocably past and gone. God can forgive our sin, remove our guilt, and enable us to forgive others.

When we are overcome by the fear of temptation, when we realize we can’t stand up under the pressure, this prayer leads us into the presence of One who can help us – “THINE is the power”. Once we have experienced it we don’t have to remain prostrate in our defeats, but rise from them to new lives.

We are not talking easy answers here. This prayer is a song of resistance, not a song of conformity. In the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Acts there is a story about how when Paul and Silas went to Philippi in Macedonia, they were arrested, tortured, and thrown into prison. As they lay there in their chains, they prayed and at midnight, we are told, they praised God (Acts 16:25). Why did they praise God in prison, of all places, and in the darkest hours of the night, of all times? They did it because they found God there in their dark cell; because God was with them; because they felt the joy of God’s presence more vividly than the chains on their ankles.

In the 17th century Marie Durand, with other French Protestant Christians, was locked up in a tower for thirty-seven years. Every day she refused to deny her faith, which would have won her freedom. She etched just one single little word into the wall of the cell next to the window through which she was able to look out onto the free world: it was the word "Résistez" - resist! How was she able to resist? Because daily she praised the God whose nearness and warmth kept her spirit strong.

What do we have to resist? If we hunger and thirst to see God’s will done on earth, then there are issues we will be called to resist. That we don’t all agree on these issues is irrelevant. We have to act out of our own faith perspectives. At a more personal level, perhaps we are chained to alcohol, drugs, or other self-abusive habits. Perhaps we feel “imprisoned” facing debilitating or terminal illnesses. Perhaps we feel “chained” to personal or professional situations where we don’t belong.
Despite the seriousness of all these conditions, resisting self-pity may be our biggest challenge. This danger is far more subtle, but no less real. Someone has said that the terminal illness of our day is, “It’s All About Me.” Some choose to see only their difficulties. “No one else suffers like I do.” That is surely just as much a prison as that of Paul and Silas and Marie Durand. “It’s All About Me” is about more than self-pity; it is also about pride. We pray this prayer in a world where people and powers make gods out of themselves: “Mine is the kingdom, and mine is the power, and the glory belongs to no one but me.”

Whether about self-pity or pride, through the Lord’s Prayer God can lift us above that deadly syndrome. In this we are taught not to pray to “my” but “our” Heavenly Parent. We are taught to pray not for “my” but “our” daily bread. We are taught to pray not for the forgiveness just of “my” sins, but “our” sins, and to forgive those who have wronged not just “me” but “us.” And for being rescued from the “evil one,” we are taught not to pray for “me,” but for “us.” This prayer speaks directly to our great need today, to resist the “It’s all about me” syndrome. When we pray this prayer with “our” instead of “me” we will be able to resist. We can pray with confidence because the kingdom for which we long and for which we labor is GOD'S kingdom, and is brought about by GOD'S power, and the glory is GOD'S glory. Or, as the writer of the Book of Revelation put it, “’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)

Those of you who have dutifully prayed this prayer each day during this series are now released from your assignment. Now, you will have to decide for yourself when and under what circumstances you will pray the prayer. Keep praying!