Matthew 6:9-13
Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
August 8, 2021
During the sermon, you’re encouraged to fidget with something that creates tension. If you’re at home you might want to look for a rubberband or stretchy hair tie. You could use any piece of fabric or yarn or ribbon that you can pull tight and then release again. If you’re here in the sanctuary, you should have received a rubber band when you came in this morning. If you didn’t, please raise your hand and we’ll get one to you.
Does everyone have their fidgety tension toy? How do you feel when you play with tension - pulling something out tight and then relaxing it again? Do you start to feel tense yourself? I mean, I can’t imagine why anyone would be feeling tense these days (ha ha) but maybe you are. When I think about tension, I have to admit that my mind first goes to the negatives. Feeling tense, and all that.
But there are some really lovely tensions in our lives, too.
When you get a hammock strung up just right between two trees and you climb in and relax into it. Tension can create a space for comfort and rest.
How about when you’re out fishing? And your line has been slack for an hour but suddenly you feel a little tug. Tension can mean excitement and hope.
I can remember going to the physical therapist when I was dealing with a lower back problem. I’d be on the table and she’d have me hold onto a bar overhead and then she would grab my ankles firmly and pulllllll down, stretching me out as far as I could go. That tension brought healing and relief from pain.
Tension stretches us and helps us grow. It creates safe spaces for comfort and rest. And when we’re springloaded we are sometimes ready to leap to the next bit of excitement, looking for hope around every corner.
For the next several weeks, we are going to be exploring the Prayer of Jesus during worship. Each week we’ll look at one short line in the prayer, working our way through it. Jesus taught this prayer to his disciples as they were all living in the midst of great tensions together. Pulled this way and that by the news of the day, uncertainties, hope, terror, joy and all the rest.
It is my hope that this sermon series will be a time of exploration and growth for you as we live through our own tense times. Imagine with me a child’s weaving loom with a bunch of those colorful nylon bands stretched out all over it - each time you pray the Lord’s Prayer at home or ask a new question about it or contemplate a phrase in a new way - another piece is woven into your faith story. Together we’ll stretch and grow and find joy and strength as we get caught up in this ancient prayer together.
Are you ready to start weaving?
This morning we’re looking at the very beginning of the prayer. Luke says, “Father, hallowed be your name,” and Matthew writes, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” There are at least three beautiful tensions in this short sentence that we can weave together this morning.
First, when teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus uses the name Father. Those who have difficulty with a Father image for God can, of course, substitute Mother or Parent. The idea is of a person, close to us, familiar to us….and that person is the source of our life, our creator who gave us breath. Ideally, a parent is one who is with us in our daily struggles and joys. One who gazes on us in love and awe and wonder. One that we look up to. One who teaches and guides and hopes and dreams with us. One who protects and nurtures and sustains. Not all of us get earthly parents who are able to do these things for us, and Jesus is inviting us to name God as our heavenly parent. In that naming - in that relationship - there is an intimacy.
More than just intimacy, though, there is also a grand sense of hope. Biblical scholar N.T. Wright reminds us that the first time God is referred to as parent in the Bible is in the Exodus story. [1] God claims Israel as a beloved child and promises them their freedom. To be the child of God is to stay that we are NOT the children of any earthly ruler, like Pharoah. Instead, we are created by and belong to God, who seeks our freedom and wholeness. It’s a revolutionary, hope-filled claim to call God parent.
And in the same breath that Jesus calls God this familiar name, Father, he also hallows God’s name, setting it apart as holy. The one we pray to is simultaneously intimate and holy. Sweet, beautiful tension.
Another tension is that we are talking to this God at all! Because the very next line says God is “in heaven.” In the Bible, when they say heaven they’re talking about the sky - the dome above. A far away place that can only be reached in their imaginations. To say that God is “in heaven” is very much to say God is somewhere else, not here. And yet here we are talking to God intimately, quietly, and with assurance that God is listening. So which is it? Is God here, listening to me just like you are? Or is God up, out, beyond somewhere in the heavens? Yes, Jesus says. God is. Sweet, beautiful tension.
The final tension I want to name this morning is about the prayer in general. What is it, exactly? Is it a prayer for beginners? For those who don’t know how to pray? Or is it a prayer for people of mature faith? N.T. Wright says part of what makes this prayer so powerful and captivating is that it’s both and I love the way he describes this tension. He says we are invited into the boldness of praying “our Father” when we first become followers of Jesus, and he says it’s a bit like a spiritual version of a baby’s first mug and spoon set. We claim it as our own prayer even when we are in the infancy of our faith. But it’s not just for beginners, Wright says. It’s also a full suit of clothes designed for us to wear in our maturity as we continue to grow in our faith. Most of us, he writes, “putting the suit on week by week, have to acknowledge that it’s still a bit big for us, that we still have some growing to do before it’ll fit.” [2] We claim this prayer in the infancy of our faith but we keep trying it on day after day as we mature in our faith and seek to fully understand Jesus’s prayer. A baby spoon for a new Christian and a suit for a fully-grown person of mature faith. Sweet, beautiful tension.
These next few weeks, we’ll be trying on this suit together, looking up to our big brother in the faith, Jesus, as he teaches us to pray. This week, at home, I encourage you to pray the entirety of the prayer each day. Perhaps at dinner or before bed.
I’ve also set up a page on our website to go with the series. It has different versions of the prayer and an online response form where you can share your questions, observations, stories about what it’s like to explore this prayer each day. Just go to uccmanhattan.org and then click the “teach us to pray” image on the homepage.
Together, we’ll weave our observations, questions, and wonderings into a single garment as we try on Jesus’s prayer of sweet, beautiful tensions.
NOTES:
[1] Wright, N.T. The Lord and His Prayer, 4.
[2] ibid., 1.
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