Give Us This Day

A sermon for Sunday, March 29, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God our loving parent, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Make your presence known among us here and now, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Leave your eyes closed, or close them if you don’t close your eyes when you pray. No judgement if you don’t close your eyes when you pray, but close them now so that you can focus your imagination for a minute. I want you to spend 30 seconds imagining a perfect world. Imagine what it looks like, what it smells like, who all is with you, what everyone is doing, how your heart feels. Take 30 seconds to imagine a perfect world.

Okay. If you’re with somebody else, or if you can call or text someone else, talk about your perfect world with someone else for a minute. If you don’t have anyone around you, write down some notes about your perfect world.

Good. Now, here’s the trick. What would it take for your perfect world to exist? What would have to happen, what would you or others have to do, in order for your perfect world to become a reality, here in this world, right now? Talk to one another or write it out.

Anyone feel like your perfect world is actually possible? Anyone feel like your perfect world is possible now?

I’m not here to tell you that your perfect world is within your grasp if you just change your perspective. I’m not even here to tell you that God wants your perfect world to exist. Christianity isn’t a self-help book and the Lord’s Prayer a deeply Christian prayer. There’s not any space in this prayer for anything less than God’s perfect love brought into existence in this world. The Lord’s Prayer is a world-changing prayer, friends. This prayer is about God’s perfect world, and what has to be done in order for us to live in it.

And the way we know that this prayer is about God’s perfect world is that it begins and ends with God. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven mirrors For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

My partner, Ian, is down here, riding out the governor’s Stay at Home order with me, and thank God for that. When I asked him what he’d preach on if he had a Sunday to preach on the Lord’s Prayer, he said, “God’s sovereignty,” and I frowned. I so, so dislike talk about God’s sovereignty, about how everything’s a part of God’s plan, which is the usual direction that talk about God’s sovereignty goes. A virus that has killed 30,000 people around the world and is still spreading? That’s a part of God’s plan? No. I’d rather leave the pulpit and the Church forever than avow that this new coronavirus was God’s intention for us all. I don’t want to talk about God’s sovereignty. I can’t talk about that. I can’t pray for that.

But what I can talk about is the God who is love, and what I can pray for is that the reign of God’s love is as real here on earth as it is in heaven. So if we’re going to change this world-changing prayer in these times that so desperately need a change, we need to first remember who this God is that we’re praying to. We need to remember who God is in order to pray for God’s perfect world to come to this earth.

So let’s talk about it. You’ve already heard me lay my cards on the table. I believe that God is love and I believe that creation as it was meant to be, creation as it will be again one day, is a gracious outpouring of that love. I believe that we were born in love, by love, and for love, and that at the root of all the love, true love, that we will ever know in this world, is God.

Do you agree with that? Am I making sense to you? Or is your idea of God completely different? Talk it out with someone, or write it out. This is your moment to write a scathing dissent from what I’m saying, or to just puzzle over who God is to you. Take some time and sketch out a big idea of who God is to you.

Now, take another minute and think about this first part of the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Does that line up with who you understand God to be? If you were to identify God, would you say, Our Father? Is God in heaven? What does it mean for God’s name to be hallowed? Talk it out or write out what you’d rather say instead.

And let’s think about where the prayer is going to land. For yours is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever. What does it mean to you for God to be glorious, to have power, forever? What kingdom is God’s? Work through those lines. Rewrite them as you need to.

To me, as I said, God is love. But I also believe that all things come from God and all things will go back to God. I like to talk about God as life-giver, as those who come on Wednesday night know already. God our life-giver, God who is higher than any other, your name is what it means to be holy, is how I’d rewrite this. It puts God on the side of life, it reminds us that God is more than we can ever imagine, and yet, we’ve all had an experience with something holy. God is both above us and directly with us. And that’s the glory of God, to me. God is as close to us as breath and yet God is beyond our mind’s comprehension. And yet, God is not just glory. God is not just something we notice. God is active.

God is active, even now. God has power, even now. God will continue to be God, to be love, and to act accordingly, forever. A virus doesn’t stop that. So God is active in our world. God is there, with those who are tirelessly caring for the sick. God is with each of us as we deal with our new reality. God is with those who need food, and shelter, and love and care and attention and unconditional positive regard during this time, and God is always drawing our attention to where those needs are, and to how we can help. God is with each of us as we mourn the loss what was normal for us. God is with all those who choose life over death, confirming them, and God is working in the hearts of those who choose differently. God is never powerless. God is never anything less than glorious. And God is always working to bring about the reign of God, God’s perfect world.

And if we follow such an active God, a God of never-ending, never-failing love, then we certainly need to be praying prayers that help make us capable of following such a God. Luckily, we have the Lord’s Prayer.

We can pray: Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

If our God is love, then we’re not asking for the imposition of some horror, some dictator who assures us that he knows better than we do and then goes off doing things that benefit him and only him. If our God is love, then praying for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is praying fervently that love would be in the hearts of all on the earth, praying that each family, each group, each community, each nation would be grounded in and flourishing in love. If God is the life-giver, then praying for God’s will to be done is to pray for life and health and peace for all. We can pray that our wills line up with God’s will.

We can pray: Give us this day our daily bread.

We can pray for God to give us enough. Goodness, what hard prayer that is to pray right now. God, give us what we need to get through this day. Enough masks in the hospitals, enough ventilators. Enough food in our pantries. Enough supplies to keep ourselves safe, enough supplies that everyone can keep themselves safe. Enough money to make it through this time, enough money to get us through whatever comes next. And God, enough for all. God, give all of us, all your children, enough. And God, where our over-abundance stands in the way of another having enough, teach us what it means to have our daily bread, and open up our hearts so that others may have it too.

We can pray: Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Remember that God love. Remember that this part of the prayer shouldn’t be prayed how I so often pray it: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. It’s not a begrudging acknowledgment that we should forgive others, whether we want to or not. That’s not love. That’s guilt. But what would it look like if we were able to pray for forgiveness, a restoration of our relationship with God and with us, and pray at the same time that others might receive that same kind of grace and restoration? God, forgive me for my anger. God help me forgive the one who made me angry. God, bring us all back together.

This is such a crucial part of the prayer, such a crucial part of the work of making God’s perfect world. We all know how much strife that we can create by being more willing to accept forgiveness than to grant it, to think that we haven’t done a thing that requires forgiveness while pointing out the faults and sins of others. God is love and God does not desire for us to continue to separate ourselves from one another. God, forgive us our sins. Help us to forgive.

If we have already gone on this journey so far, we can pray: lead us not into the time of trial, but deliver us from evil.

If we’ve humbled ourselves, if we’ve already acknowledged that we need God’s help to be forgiven and to forgive others, to see what is unloving in ourselves and to have grace for what is unloving in others, then we can pray that God does not put us into a time of testing.

I remember that Jesus’ disciples were teenagers, teenagers frustrated with the world around them, teenagers ready to prove themselves. Put us to the test, Lord! Let us prove ourselves! Feed us to the lions and let us show you how we will wrestle them to the ground!

But that is not what we need to be praying. We do not need to pray for a battleground. Remember, we’re praying for God’s perfect world here, and we can’t walk into it with unearned pride. Instead, Jesus teaches us to pray: God, don’t take us anywhere we’re not ready to be yet. God, save us from those things that will destroy us.

Think back to your perfect world. What isn’t in it? Because what doesn’t belong in our perfect world is something that we have decided is evil.

Take thirty seconds. Think about what evil is to you. Talk it out or write it out.

Friends, this week, I want you to gather up all the thoughts this has stirred up in you, and I want you to rewrite the Lord’s Prayer for yourself. Pray that God’s will be done and pray that God works on you so that your will lines up with God’s. Write yourself a Lord’s Prayer in the time of COVID-19. I’m sending you home with homework.

Because we all know that this world is not a perfect world, and we don’t know how to make it one. But we know the one who can, and we’ve been taught the way we should pray. Make this prayer yours, so that the God who knows how to heal can better do that healing work in this world that needs it.

Amen.