Unpacking the Lord's Prayer (Part 5)
Matthew 6:9-15; 18:21-35
What does it mean to pray the Lord’s Prayer? After last Sunday some of you may be wondering if I am making a simple and straightforward prayer too complex. I hope not. My hope is that this series of sermons will help you “unpack” the prayer so that you will be led into dimensions of praying you haven’t experienced before. I’m not talking about your “head” here as much as I am talking about what you actually experience in prayer. If what I’m saying doesn’t open up new prayer experiences, you still have the understandings of the prayer with which you came, and probably will be more appreciative of them than before we began.
When I was working on this prayer once before, a friend who is an officer in the Coast Guard based in Washington D.C. sent me his counsel about the petition we take up today. He said, “I assume this is the hard part, about forgiving our sins “as we forgive those who sin against us.” I think the conjunctions are interesting, the way different parts of the prayer are linked. “Give us this day, our daily bread, AND forgive our sins, AS we forgive those who sin against us,” for example. It seems as if the lines of the prayer, like the many aspects of following Christ, are intertwined and not to be separated.” I think my friend is right; there are two key conjunctions in our text today. You probably recall from English class that “conjunctions” are words that join together sentences, phrases, clauses, or words.
First, there is the “AND” that connects the prayer for “daily bread” to the prayer for forgiveness of sins. Last Sunday I suggested that the petition for “daily bread” is not just a prayer for our own daily sustenance, but our own urgent plea for the day when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven and all people will have enough to eat. I suggest the conjunction “and” is not there by accident; I think it suggests that we need “daily forgiveness” as much as we need “daily bread”? What do you think?
Before we go any further, I should tell you that this week I almost changed the title of this sermon to “The Presbyterians Are Right! It Is ‘Debts’ And Not ‘Trespasses’.” “Debts” is probably the original word in this petition. “Trespass” is an old English word that means, “crossing over the line.” We are reminded of its meaning whenever we see a “No Trespassing” sign. The meaning is clear: “trespasses” are those occasions when we have crossed over the line in our relationship with God and our neighbor, or violated God’s law. Is that how you have understood it?
There is nothing wrong with that understanding of “sin,” but the word used in this text is “debts.” Sin is here thought of as a debt to God. All that we have done wrong mounts up as a huge debt; this is a petition to lift that load from us, a load we ourselves cannot remove. I don’t propose that we change how we say the Lord’s Prayer but we should know what was probably in the prayer as Jesus taught it.
The second conjunction used in our text today is “AS” meaning, “in or to the same degree in which.” Does this mean that we are being taught to ask God’s forgiveness “to the same degree” that we offer forgiveness to others? God’s forgiveness is unconditional and precedes human forgiveness of other humans, and is the ground and cause of our being able to forgive others. I think Eugene Peterson has it right as he paraphrased in the today’s words for centering in the bulletin: “In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can’t get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God’s part.”[i]
In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone. “Seven?” Peter asked. Jesus’ responded, “Seventy times seven,” and told this story about a chair of the board of a large corporation. Actually, Jesus said “king” but I think if Jesus told the story today this is how it might sound. You’ll have to be the judge of that. Anyway, the Chair of the Board decided to have the company books audited. When the audit showed that the Chief Executive Officer of the company had run up a debt of millions of dollars of unauthorized personal expenses and couldn’t pay them back, the Chair fired him, repossessed all the man’s company perks (house, car, credit cards, and stock options). The CEO pleaded with the Board Chair, promising that if he just had the chance he would pay it all back. The Board Chair was so touched by the man’s plea that he let him off, restored him to his old position, and erased the debt.
As that CEO went out from being forgiven, he came upon a clerk in the mailroom who owed him a hundred dollars. He grabbed him and demanded, “Pay up! Now!” The clerk pleaded for a chance to repay the money, but the CEO fired him on the spot. Someone reported this to the Board Chair. The Chair called the CEO back to him and said, “I forgave your entire debt when you begged for mercy. Shouldn’t you have been merciful to the clerk who owed you a measly hundred bucks?” The Board Chair then required the CEO pay his entire debt. Jesus said that is what God would do for those who don’t forgive when their brothers and sisters ask them for mercy.
We need to be very careful here. The admonition to "forgive" has often been misunderstood. For example, how many women have entered a pastor's study with stories of being abused by their husbands, only to be told to "go back home and forgive your husband?" No vulnerable person should be advised to go back into harms way. The counsel to forgive does not mean to acquiesce to injustice. Where there is no genuine repentance, no real evidence of changed behavior, as there was not with the CEO in Jesus’ story, forgiveness becomes “cheap grace,” which only encourages the guilty party to keep on sinning. But for us to ask God to forgive us without our being willing to forgive those who have wronged us is simply unthinkable. I think that’s what the conjunction “as” means in this petition.
Is this petition simply a prayer for forgiveness, or because the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for the realization of God’s reign on earth, is there something more here, as we saw in the petition for “daily bread”? Consider this: Is anything so detrimental to our keeping focused on the realization of God's rule among us as the weight of guilt and fractured relationships? One scholar has suggested that the reason why the Roman Catholic order of the Dominicans prays this prayer twice a day is the importance of forgiving and being forgiven. Perhaps the most pervasive factor that prevents us from giving ourselves to others is that we are so bound up with internal problems that we cannot look beyond our own needs. When you pray this week, you might try something like this:
"God, let go of the things you are entitled to hold against us, and teach us to let go of the things we think we are entitled to hold against others that we may not be obstacles to the doing of your will on earth as it is in heaven, that we may not miss the taste of your reign.”
“God forgive the sins that weigh me down like a huge debt hanging over my head, even as I ease the burden of guilt of those who have wronged me, so that neither of us will be so preoccupied with our own problems that we miss the taste that you have for us today of your will being done on earth.”
Do you think these might be something of what is “packed” in the petition, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”?
Did you see the story on NBC News a month or so ago about Amy Biehl from Milwaukie, Wisconsin? This young woman had gone to South Africa in 1993 as an advocate for non-violence against apartheid. She was caught in the violence and murdered by a black mob. Her parents came to South Africa where they saw the oppression of Black South Africans and made a promise to their daughter that they would try to do something important in her name. They established a foundation to help the community where Amy was killed. Then, when four men were tried for her death, the parents asked for amnesty, not the death penalty. If that wasn’t remarkable enough, when the court did grant amnesty, the parents hired the four young radicals to work in their foundation. The forgiveness of the parents transformed the four young men. Amy’s father has since died of cancer, but her mother continues to travel the world as an advocate of non-violence, and she travels with one of her daughter’s killers.[ii]
On this day, when we think about forgiveness, it is fitting that we celebrate Holy Communion. In taking the bread and the cup we are reminded that God is present and in this moment ready to forgive our sins. We take the bread and cup as a “taste” in this day of that forgiveness, a “taste” that will enable us to forgive today those who have wronged us. Keep on praying.
[ii] NBC Evening News http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=f3a45ff9-c6f5-469f-bf0f-63ead1bdc840&f=00&fg=copy
1 comment:
Pastor Milo,
I am really enjoying this series of sermons. I have often thought of Jesus during his time here on earth repeatedly trying to explain to people what heaven is like - A place in which everything that everyone does as says is out of complete and unconditional love for each other. There is no self-protection or fear or anger or jealousy - only love.
I am learning to see that this prayer is much more than a pattern of how to structure prayers. It is the example of how people might begin to experience heaven on earth.
I can think of no other more difficult or Christ-like example of love than to forgive someone who hurt you. I agree - it's one of the most difficult things to do!
Love and Prayers,
Robin Bassett
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