Pentecost 11

THE PRAYER
Luke 11:1-13

July 28, 2013

Every night they would end The Prayer this way: The dad would say For thine is the The boy would say KINGDOM The dad would say and the The boy would say POWER The dad would say and the The boy would say GLORY The dad would say forever and ever The boy would say AMEN This was the bedtime ritual to conclude the childs night time prayers prayers in which they prayed for family members, hungry children in the world, and anything else that might come up on any given day. At the end of those prayers before lights out, they would say The Prayer (you know, the Lords Prayer they would say it together) and always, they would end it with that back & forth and the KINGDOM and the POWER and the GLORY forever and ever AMEN. Later on as that boy grew he was taken to church most every Sunday and he would hear The Prayer again always tempted to shout out KINGDOM, POWER, and GLORY, AMEN as The Prayer concluded. Later, in about 7th grade, he was hauled off to religion classes taught by the pastor and there he learned about (some of) what The Prayer meant when he would pray Our Father who art in Heaven. That God was truly our Father and we are truly his children. That we may approach him boldly and confidently in prayer (he had to memorize), even as beloved children approach their own dear father. That was OK for him, he thought, but one of his friends didnt have a dad, he died; and another of his friends had a dad who was mean and gave him awful hard lickins he wondered if they could pray The Prayer like he did.

PAGE 2 Then as he went away to college he found himself praying The Prayer before exams, some times before he went to bed, when he would go out for a jog to get exercise, he would say The Prayer huffing & puffing along the way. Later on as an adult, he continued to say The Prayer not with regularity, but when he went to church he (of course) said it with all the people in worship, he said it at weddings & funerals, when he had to go to one, he said it occasionally to himself when he was troubled or struggling with something. Then one day he came across a version of the The Prayer that totally caught him off guard he was in a bookstore and he came across this book

it was placed on a stand in the Religion section of the store. For some reason, it caught his attention and so he picked it up and began perusing through the pages and right from the get-go he came to a page that had The Prayer. It didnt look like The Prayer as he ever had seen it, but sure enough, it bore the title The Lords Prayer he had always called it, The Prayer, ever since being a child.

PAGE 3 It looked like this

but printed below this Aramaic version was the English translation, which read like this: Our Father who art in Heaven . O breathing life, you are the sacred source of our being. Hallowed be thy name Your name shines everywhere. Focus your ways, your light Thy Kingdom come, within us. Make us useful for your purpose here on earth, On earth as it is in heaven. so that your desire and our lives become one. Give us this day our daily bread ... Grant us what we need in each day in bread and insight. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive .. Loosen the cords of mistakes & failures binding us, as we those who trespass against us release the strands we hold of others faults. And lead us not into temptation, but ... Do not let surface things delude us, snare us, and lead us deliver us from evil. away from You and Your purpose. For thine is the Kingdom, the power, .... From you arise every vision, power, and song from and the glory for ever and ever. Amen gathering to gathering. May our future actions grow from here.

He learned, that this was the language Jesus spoke, Aramaic and that when Jesus taught the disciples the prayer weve come to call The Lords Prayer , it probably sounded nothing like how we say it today.

PAGE 4 He learned a lot about the prayer from that Aramaic translation though he never memorized it that way, certain parts of it just stuck with him Parts like: Grant us what we need in each day in bread and insight. That daily bread is more than food, but also the wisdom to make it through each day a God desires of you. Parts like: Loosen the cords of mistakes & failures binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others faults that gave some some perspective on how angry we get with others and how easy it is to be in denial of your own broken places. Parts like: Do not let surface things delude us, snare us as a way of expanding the depth of what temptation can be. No, he never memorized the Aramaic version of the Lords Prayer but from that time on, he never able to say The Prayer again without something deeper rising to the surface as the words rolled across his lips. Now, the boy who first learned The Prayer with his dad as a bed time ritual; the kid who thought of his friends who didnt have a dad or whos dad was mean , how would they say Our Father who art in Heaven; the adult who learned of deeper places where The Prayer can take you now

this boy, this kid, this adult well, now he is an old man pretty much confined to a wheel chair and bed. Hes in a place where they take care of people like him. A pastor comes by every so often to visit, read some scripture, bring him communion. And guess what The Prayer is said everytime The boy, the kid, the adult now an old man, suspects that the words of The Prayer will be among some of the last words that pass over his lips before he takes his last breath. PAGE 5 Of course what you just heard is a fictional telling of one persons relationship with the Lords Prayer the prayer that today we read, Jesus gives his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray. But though that account is fictional, every aspect of it (from the boys bed time prayer to the old man saying The Prayer with the visiting pastor every aspect of the story is true. There really is a boy who had that bed time prayer experience with his dad. There really is a kid who worries about his friends and how The Prayer and saying, Our Father who art in heaven ... a kid who worries how saying those words squares with having a mean dad or nor dad at all. There really is a man who was seized by depth of meaning that the Aramaic version of the Lords Prayer offered him. And there really is an old man who clasps my hand when we say together, the Lords Prayer after giving him communion. You see, this fictional account is made up of true real life composites of people I know putting them all together in ne person is not too much of a stretch. This prayer, The Prayer, the Lords Prayer is a prayer that people know, be they church goers or not,

be they religious or not, be they saying it from rote or with depth this prayer has the power of Jesus presence in it when you say it, it makes a difference somehow.