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"The Lord's Prayer"
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, February 25, 2007
First Sunday in Lent
Deuteronomy 26: 1-11
Romans 10: 5-13
Luke 4: 1-13
“Lord, teach us to pray” asks a disciple.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”
is the teaching.
I would guess that the Lord’s Prayer is the most widely
known prayer among Christians throughout the world. That is
a good thing because it can be said anytime, anywhere with authenticity
and relevance. Children learn it at a young age and many older
people who have severe memory loss can recall many of its words.
It is at once simple and yet so full and rich that the world
itself could not contain the books that could be written about
it.
When we pray this one part of the prayer that says “lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” we are
placed in the setting of the Gospel story we have just heard
– Jesus in the wilderness for forty days. We may pray
“lead us not into temptation” – but that is
exactly what happens – Jesus was “led” by
the Spirit in the wilderness to temptation. And we pray, “deliver
us from evil” – because we will continually encounter
evil just as Jesus did, when for forty days he was in the presence
of the devil.
The Lord’s Prayer contains mention of the wilderness
experience because Jesus wanted us to remember it and see it
in our own lives, as individuals and as a community. Among the
traditional Lenten disciplines of fasting and almsgiving is
prayer. And I suggest that one practice that all of us commit
to is to say the Lord’s Prayer at least once or twice
every day.
The wilderness is a difficult place. The Israelites called
it “great and terrible, an arid wasteland with poisonous
snakes and scorpions” (Deut 8:15). It is dry, rough, and
exposed. It is also purifying and a place to prepare for new
beginnings. It is in the wilderness where Moses unexpectedly
encounters the living God and is changed forever. The wilderness
is a place where we discover who we are, stripped of comforts,
distractions, masks and hiding places. It can be disorienting
at first but during a forty day fast, a person becomes increasingly
focused and alert. Even a mild fast, doing without coffee or
sugar for a couple of weeks will help you experience a sense
of greater awareness and a sharpened focus.
For Jesus, the wilderness is a place to prepare for three
final temptations. Taken together, they represent all that has
broken the human family and all that separates God from his
creation.
First, the devil challenges Jesus to turn a stone into a loaf
of bread. On the one hand, this isn’t such a bad idea.
If Jesus doesn’t eat something soon, he will begin to
die of starvation. People who fast for forty days, and there
are those who do this, must begin to eat something or risk permanent
damage to their bodies. So it isn’t that Jesus doesn’t
need to eat, because he does. He is human and famished. But
is from God that bread will be given – from the Creation
according to God. There is plenty of bread in the world, then
and now. Hunger is not a problem of overpopulation or scarcity
but of greed and political failure. Millions of tons of U.S.
corn are being turned into ethanol while millions throughout
the world go hungry, many in DuPage County. But in the wilderness,
there is no bread unless it is given by God. To turn stones
into bread is both a cheap magician’s trick and a mockery
of Creation. It gives tacit permission to rampant materialism,
to turn every stone into something we think we want –
to bury ourselves in bread, butter, all-you-can eat buffets,
Slimfast, plasma TVs, SUVs and as many McDonald Happy Meal toys
as China can manufacture. To turn stones is to be buried in
bread and other stuff so that we can’t move or breathe.
It is death and the devil knows this. Jesus knows this and will
wait to eat the bread that has been mixed, kneaded and offered
by human hands. The temptation to turn stones into bread is
our very real temptation to lose ourselves in materialism and
to see our happiness and salvation in the next purchase or dream
kitchen. Our resistance and assurance is found in this prayer:
“give us this day our daily bread.”
There is the second temptation. The devil offers Jesus the
glory and authority of all the kingdoms of the world. To me,
this is like a guy in a polyester suit offering to sell you
the Brooklyn Bridge. Nonetheless, the offer of power, privilege
and prestige is even more alluring than a loaf of bread. Jesus
is offered all of the bread in the world and in addition, the
control over it. To have power over other people is intoxicating.
To have prestige, or to be highly esteemed in the eyes of others,
is a pursuit that we are all familiar with. Jesus is offered
the ultimate worldly goal, to be lord and emperor over every
nation. NPR has been doing a series of reports about college
admissions. Competition continues to increase for entrance to
the nation’s top colleges. Northwestern’s applications
increased by 20% this year. Only 1 in 12 applicants will be
admitted to Princeton. Dartmouth hasn’t gone to its waiting
list in years. Alison Selking is a high school senior with excellent
grades and testing scores. She says, “I am a very competitive
person with myself. I want to do better than I have done in
the past, but I don’t like being better than other people.
I want to be in a supportive environment.” The school
she is applying to Hendrix College in Arkansas, not a household
name. She adds, “The moment I walked onto the campus,
I knew it was the place for me. I met so many students. At other
colleges, I only met the tour guide.” Such an attitude
is rare in our national craze over prestige, rank and fame.
Our identities are increasingly determined by a narrow set of
societal foci – your college, your car, your address and
your net worth. This week I saw footage of the late Anna Nicole
Smith literally drowning in camera flashes on a sea of red carpet.
She had money, beauty and fame – looking down on all of
the kingdoms of the world. As Christians, we are called to resist
the temptation to buy into this mindset. We claim that every
person reflects the image of God, which is reflected in our
baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons. It
is the Lord’s Prayer again which supports and guides us
as we pray “for thine is the kingdom, the power and the
glory.”
The third and final temptation is the most seductive and sinister
of all. The devil places Jesus on the roof at the southwest
corner of the temple. It is thought that this is where the trumpet
was blown to announce the Sabbath and other Holy Days, and it
would be, in the devil’s logic, the logical and most visible
place for Jesus to announce his Messiahship to the world. The
devil and Jesus are now out of the wilderness and all of the
sounds, smells and sights of Jerusalem rise up to them. The
devil doesn’t push Jesus but proposes that he throw himself
down – and the double meaning is clear: to throw himself
off of the high place and to throw himself down in worship at
the feet of the devil – both equally perilous. It is the
devil’s use of Scripture to entice Jesus that is the most
heinous to me at this point in time in the life of the Anglican
world, and a warning to everyone that Scripture can be the tool
of evil among those who abuse the Gospel and seek their own
agendas rather than God’s.
Behind the third temptation is the ultimate goal of all evil,
beyond materialism, beyond power and prestige – it is
the desire to make God a servant - to control and manipulate
God. We have seen this at the beginning of the human story.
The woman in the garden knows that God said, “You shall
not eat of the fruit of the tree...or you shall die” (Gen
3:3). To eat, which is what she did, was to put God to the test
and to seek control over God. This is the original sin and the
one that we face head on in our own lives. And again, we can
turn to the Lord’s Prayer for guidance and right relationship:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” We
hallow, or make the name of God sacred within us. We remember
that we are God’s and not the other way around.
Jesus ends his period of temptation at the holy dwelling of
God. Full of the Holy Spirit, he returns to Galilee to begin
his ministry. As the Gospel is proclaimed, what the devil wanted
to see is seen in God’s saving work: the hard stone of
our hearts is turned into living bread; the kingdoms of the
world worship God; and the hands of the body of Christ bear
up the poor and hungry so that they do not dash their feet against
a stone.
In the February edition of Episcopal Life, our presiding bishop,
Katharine Jefferts Schori, asks the church this fundamental
question: “How do we understand our mission – as
Christians, as Episcopalians, as congregations in this church?”
She uses three questions to frame the issue of mission: “Who
are you? Why are you here? What are you doing about it?’
I think Lent is the right time to ask these fundamental questions.
As I mark my first year anniversary at St. Mark’s today,
I feel the movement of the Holy Spirit among us, prodding us,
provoking us to ask who we are – individually and as a
congregation. The Holy Spirit would only ask such a difficult
question of a parish that is ready for this, and I think we
are. We are at a point of strength, togetherness and palpable
joy. I know that the top level of answering who we are is easy:
We are the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head. Our broad
mission is to restore to all people unity with God and each
other in Christ. We are an Episcopal Church. We are a part of
The Episcopal Church, also known as E.C.U.S.A. We are inter-generational.
We are children, youth, college students, adults, married, single,
white, people of color, rich and poor, men and women, straight
and gay, all seeking, some with much doubt, others with great
assurance, some with extensive theological grounding, others
with none at all, some with great pain, others with gifts of
healing, all with God-given talents. We are welcoming. We are
giving. We are a community center. We are a community in prayer.
We are a safe, nurturing and loving place for children to grow
in the mystery of God’s love. We are a place of spiritual
and intellectual formation, blessed with outstanding adult formation.
But there is more about who we are, and going deeper is hard
work. When a newcomer walks into our church and is able to know
who we are, we will be getting there. When the wider community
is hearing about St. Mark’s as a place of exciting mission
and strong identity, then we will be getting there. This can’t
be done by a vestry or strategic planning committee. This is
the work for every member of St. Mark’s.
The shift from Epiphany to Lent is subtle, crossing from one
revelation to another. Lent is also a time of Epiphany –
or showing. In the season of Epiphany, the good news of God’s
plan is made known to the world. In Lent, we discover and reclaim
our identity in a wilderness setting and during a time of temptation.
In the process we are able to answer the question “who
are we?” as we pray, fast and give of ourselves to one
another and the wider community. Jesus has taught us how to
do this with the Lord’s Prayer, where we face the temptations
of materialism, desire for advantage over others, and the wish
to control God – all things that distort, deny and destroy
not only the church but the entire human family and all of creation.
Remember the Lord’s Prayer. Pray it every day. As our
worship continues, we will sing it and say it as we give thanks
to the Lord our God. May its message and power sustain us and
guide us always.
Amen.
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