Easter 2018

So “Christ is Risen” and I want to talk about the Lord’s Prayer as one way of understanding how we participate in that today. So bear with me on this one. 

The Lord’s Prayer has four parts: first dealing with creation, second with human being (particularly one human), third with the fact of evil and finally, in the end, finding out why the beginning is important. 

So “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” In the Biblical Greek “Our Father in Heaven” is closer to “Dada or Mama of the Universe” and what might that mean? Maybe that the consciousness, the conversation we’re in, is one that begins to be woven before sunrise and darkest night, behind all black holes and supernovas, beyond  any notion of matter, space and time we might conceive: yet is still deeply intimate — close enough to trust, to call in under any circumstances, at any time. You might want to breathe with that one for a while. 

Then there are three imperatives, and the first, “May your name be hallowed” makes me want to take a detour right away. It seems to me that the name (when we use the word “God”) is so overladen with various cultural wars and judgments that it needs a reboot. What if we — like so many of the mystics — named this creating, companioning, conspiring ultimate being “Love, companion, good company close on the way.” And what if “your kingdom come, your will be done” means, “May I incorporate your eternal vision, values, compassion, justice and love into my life here and now. May I be part of the ongoing weaving of earth and  heaven into the present moment as well as with what lasts forever.” Take another breath here, for I think that’s what we’re about here on a good day - You’ll find it in every one of our church services: collects, confessions, lessons, psalms, sermon, intercessions; the memories and hopes from other seasons, learning from history and holding hope high, here is love lasting forever.

That's what God’s reign is about. In John’s Gospel Jesus is asking Abba that we be one: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” This prayer, is here and now,  weaving our daily lives into the world of saints, pilgrims of Sabbath times of all times. We are invited to just say yes, to say Amen like Mary, “Be it unto me according to your word,” like Francis, “Make me an instrument of your peace” — even with a degree of ambiguity like Augustine, “Make me pure, but not yet!” Because receiving a love this honourable means you can be more honest than you are devout. For God (Love) is always willing to be one with us as we are, with all the mix and mess that means, incorporating us into this ministry of mercy. As one Eastern Orthodox theologian put it, “We are the eighth day of creation.” And that starts right here.

So, “Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” The prayer goes from that high point to the deepest necessities of human life together. Just the first six words cover so many things: refreshment and fuel, ecology and economics, connection and company. Bread and wine means flour, grapes and water fermented, mixed and kneaded, warmed and transformed, backs bent, hands stretched out to ensure our share in this harvest.

And when Jesus says, “This is my body, this is my blood,” He is saying I am willing to be known in this Eucharist, and I will be here, but in my love I have taken up with the body and blood of all humankind and all creation, with each of us here today. Jesus says, “This bread and wine are means of my love to you, but I mean to feed you, forgive you, renew you everywhere, in everything, in everyone!” And we have the blessed nerve, the amazing arrogance to respond, “We are the body of Christ”  and move to incorporate God’s rising promise, presence, passion in our lives. 

Here’s where you’ve got to gulp because we’re gathering courage and a amazing amount of bravado and betting the universe hangs together in compassion that tightly, and we’re aiming to give it all we’ve got with the sure and certain  knowledge that we almost always will get it wrong. We deserve to take a breath here — But there are ways to make it easier. When I joined the church fifty years ago at twenty-one, and first came to this celebration, I took the bread and said, “Give me the strength to live this way,” and when I drank the wine, I said, “Give me the spirit to really want to!” I no longer think that God serves two course meals, but I’m glad there is still room in our gathering to pause between taking on the bread and wine to say, “Give me the strength to try hard to do good and (deep breath here) keep giving me a renewing spirit, a forgiving heart for myself and others - or at least as some saint somewhere said, ‘Please make me want to want that.’” In my own experience some days that comes easy, other times you can only want and wait. 

“Lead us not into temptation (Save us from the time of trial) and deliver us from evil.” Here’s the home stretch and it can be more hard going. It’s important to note that nobody wants to go there — even Jesus asked if this particular cup could pass. It didn’t for him, and it doesn’t always for us either. There’s no real satisfactory answer, no reason here, but maybe that makes it more real because the weaving gets particularly thick in that place. And maybe the glory of the church comes when we gather to tell the stories and pray, share the peace, the bread of life, the cup of salvation, and someone is dying, someone’s getting born, someone’s in trial, someone’s found peace, someone’s gone missing and someone wakes to glory. Maybe that’s the way Love weave us through the heart-breaking times of testing and trial, when we share that cup with a friend, with a just and faithful servant, with the love that walks with us all the way home. 

In the oldest copies we have of Matthew’s Gospel the prayer ends there, which makes sense simply because death makes you pause and resurrection is a tough possibility to swallow. But not long after the faithful body begins to breathe into this new beginning and the wisdom of the Christian community, these followers of the way, add this ending like a coda: “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and for ever. Amen” 

Maybe because they were convinced (and we’re invited to believe) that Love lives, and they were preparing (and we are always invited to join) in living out that belief, embodying it from now on. So the prayer ends close to where it begins, not far from where we started, but now we’re all changed, renewed in beginning again, recalling where we come from and where we’re going and remembering the one who cares so deeply to join us on the way.  

For Christ is Risen, Alleluia!