Sunday, March 12, 2017

Teach Us to Pray

Matthew 6:5-13 by Rev. Susan Lukey
Series:What We Believe as Followers of the Way of Jesus

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…. On Easter Sunday each year, there are an estimated 2 billion people who pray the Lord’s Prayer, rolling out across the time zones, through churches of every Christian denomination and in hundreds of languages. Every Sunday, time zone by time zone, the Lord’s Prayer is said over and over again, enfolding the whole earth in the words of hope and love expressed in this prayer. Through the course of Christian history, as Christianity has spread around the world, typically the first text to be translated into the language of the region has been be the Lord’s Prayer, long before the whole Bible was translated. When we pray together the Lord’s Prayer in this sanctuary each Sunday, I hear far more voices than can be accounted for by the people present. I believe that it is the communion of saints who join us, all the past generations who have gathered on this spot, their voices echoing with us the words taught by Jesus and repeated so many times in this place, as well as around the world. The Lord’s Prayer it is called, shared by Jesus in response to the disciples’ query, “Lord, teach us to pray….” It is very Jewish in many ways, reflecting the Jewishness of Jesus, his upbringing, his faith tradition. Various of the prayer’s lines are found scattered through Jewish prayers. An evening prayer said in some Jewish communities shares the familiar lines: “Our God in heaven, hallow thy name, and establish thy kingdom forever, and rule over us for ever and ever. Amen.” At the same time, it is very much the prayer of the Christian community. Prayed daily by many, by some countless times daily. Shared across denominations, continents & centuries. Meditated upon.Preached upon. Prayed by rote, day by day. Prayed by rote – by memory. And sometimes we say it so automatically that we don’t always think of the words. Is that bad? Not really. I think that the act of praying together, of letting ourselves be lost in the prayer, also serves a purpose of filling our souls and connecting us with God and with the Christian community. Yet there are times when we need to stop and think about what we’re praying. That’s what we’re going to do today.
Duration:24 mins 7 secs