by Lewis
McKee
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Imagine—just
imagine—that at this very moment we are all sitting together
on the grass at the foot of a hillside. Like the disciples, we
are listening to Jesus. When Jesus is finished we ask him to teach
us to pray. Today, 2000 years later, he still teaches us The Lord's
Prayer!
But
even to this day the $64 question remains:"What do those
words mean to us?" For the next few minutes, we will try
to explore a few meaningful insights and suggestions on the phrase,
"Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil."
As
a very young person I learned the following prayer:
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.
Frequently,
clergy and parishioners are asked to suggest ways to help others
to pray, and to understand what it is they are praying. Prayer
is a mystery. Lots of people, including clergy, have come to
accept that they don't find prayer easy. There is good Scriptural
warrant for finding prayer puzzling, and even mysterious. We
are reminded of this in Romans, when Paul observes, "We
don't know how to pray, or what to pray for as we ought."
In
particular, The Lord's
Prayer sums up fully and accurately the way in which Jesus read
and responded to the signs of the times, and the way in which
he understood his own vocation and mission. He
invited his followers then and now to share it.
This
prayer serves as a lens through which to see Jesus himself, and
to discover that he was giving his disciples and us part of his
own breath, his own life, by sharing this prayer. It cries out
for justice, bread, forgiveness and deliverance. If you think
that any of these things are irrelevant in today's world, read
a newspaper or turn on the TV, and think again.
Someone
once said that there is a fairly obvious order of praying priorities.
When we pray there is usually some sort of mess and we want God
to get us out of it. Also, we recognize some fairly pressing needs
and want God to supply them. Chances are, we'll move from mess
to wants, such as: Please sort out the mess in the Middle East;
please feed the hungry; please house the homeless; please save
us from the time of trial; please save us from evil.
Hopefully,
our prayers might also help us recognize that there really is
a larger world out there—there really is a larger God as
well. If we linger in our prayers at this point, we may find our
priorities turned inside out—the contents may remain the
same, but the order will change. With that change, we move at
last from paranoia to prayer—from fuss to faith. The Lord's
Prayer is designed to help us make this change—this change
of priority, not change of content.
It
is obvious this prayer doesn't pretend that pain and hunger aren't
real. Some religions say that—Jesus did not. Some religions
use the greatness and majesty of God to belittle the human plight—Jesus
did not. His prayer starts by addressing God intimately and lovingly—as
a Father—and then bowing down before his greatness and majesty.
"Save
us from the time of trial." Those words could
provoke a negative reaction in us. "Oh, that's too gloomy.
All this sin business is so morbid and unnecessary." How
easy it is for us to do one of three things with guilt (all of
which are ultimately no good): We can imagine guilt, we can deny
guilt, or we can simply live with guilt.
The
Lord's Prayer is so honest it clears away the paranoia and gets
us down to business. The sequence of thought in the prayer is
designed to clear our eyes to see which bits of our guilt are
purely imaginary and which bits are real, and how to deal with
the latter. Once we face up to that reality, we can do a better
job of dealing with our guilt by confessing frankly and honestly,
and by waking up again to the forgiving love of God, as we see
it in the life and death of Jesus Christ.
As
we pray this prayer, we need to hold God's precious and precarious
world before us, to try to sum up the world's and our own often-inarticulate
cries for help, for rescue, and for deliverance. I
do not believe we can pray these words from a safe distance.
We can only pray them when we are saying "Yes" to God's
Kingdom coming to birth within us, even when we really might not
understand why.
"Save
us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil."
When we pray these words, we become bold enough to ask God to
give us, forgive us, and don't test us, deliver us. But I think
we are also saying, "We can do nothing without you God."
In short, we are confessing that without God we are nothing.
William
Willimon suggests that, "the Christian life is no safe
harbor secure from storms and struggles." And I certainly
agree with him. When we pray to "save us from the time of
trial, and deliver us from evil," we are not asking for some
changed self-understanding, some new way of feeling good about
ourselves, or something to put zest in our lives. I suggest we
take heart with the words, "Our Father," which makes
the prayer bearable. If God is something like a Father, and he
surely is, then it follows that we can approach him as his children.
It
is obvious that as we pray for deliverance from evil, we acknowledge
that we have not the resources, on our own, to resist evil. We
acknowledge that God is greater than any foe of God.
The
Lord's Prayer is so honest. This really is an answer to prayer.
According to Jesus, the most important thing about praying is
to keep at it.
In
one of her books, Agnes Sanford, an Episcopal laywoman, tells
the story about a Dr. Mulenberg. Dr. Mulenberg confessed to her
that much of his private praying was just blubbering, but still
he was speaking words out of his deepest longings and fears. Agnes
Sanford said that was the whole point.
"You
had to expect to believe. That takes work. It takes
practice, and more than anything, it takes faith."
According to Sanford , "It was faith that unbound the hands
of Jesus so that through our prayers his power could flow—miracles
could happen, healing could happen. Because
where faith was and is, prayers are answered."
Yes,
we need to acknowledge that inside us all there is sometimes a
voice of doubt and disbelief that seeks to drown out our prayers—even
as we are praying them.
In
closing, let us not forget, for God all of time is One. We invite
Jesus into our past as into a house that has been locked up for
years. He will help us open the windows and doors so that light
and life can enter at last. Praying The Lord's Prayer and remembering
what Jesus is saying will surely help "save us from the time
of trial, and deliver us from evil."
Amen.
Copyright
2002 Calvary Episcopal Church. This series was first presented
at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, TN.
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