Treat the People’s Needs as Holy
Luke 11:1-4, Matthew 6:9-13
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
January 26, 2024
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGeB7LBnNIk
Dr. Molly Marshall was my theology professor. I took a lot of notes in her classes, but one thing she said was so troubling to me that I used to turn back to it. She said that prayer was the purest form of theology, that whether we pray or not and how we pray is the most accurate reflection of what we really believe.
Jesus’ disciples say “Lord, teach us to pray.” The faithful Jewish person of that time prayed three times a day and Jesus’ disciples were in that category. They were quite familiar with prayer already. What they wanted to know was what to pray for. Just as John the Baptist had taught his disciples a distinctive prayer, Jesus disciples wanted to know what they were asking God to help them accomplish under Jesus’ leadership.
We have two versions of the prayer that Jesus taught. The variations between Luke and Matthew may imply he shared different version on different occasions. It most likely reflects something they heard him pray often, rather than being a one-time delivery. We should note that the language of the prayer is “our” or “us” or “we” not “me” and “mine”. This is not a private prayer, but corporate. An individual might pray in this way, and should, but this is not strictly personal prayer.
The prayer of Jesus has a simple structure. There are two petitions that focus on God and three petitions about human need.
The English word “hallow” means to make holy, to make sacred, to set someone or something apart. Roman state religions required that only Casear’s name be hallowed, but this prayer affirms the holiness of God above Casear. When put combination with “your kingdom come, your will be done” the person praying is pleading with God to hallow God’s own status as God. It is a prayer that God will demonstrate God’s holiness, by revealing himself to be sovereign by manifesting judgment or mercy.
By law, only Casear’s name is to be honored like this. But Jesus’ only allegiance is to God. Only God is sovereign. Keep in mind that the early Christians would have prayed like this in the ruins of the Temple not just during occupation but outright war with Rome. To have been overheard would have been treasonous. Later manuscripts of Matthew’s gospel include the ending “thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” This is a very dangerous, political prayer.
Friends, full disclosure, today and for the next few Sundays, I am intentionally looking at Jesus’ words and actions through a political lens. If you’ve been paying attention for the last 14 years, you know that’s not a new thing for me. But right now, in the midst of incredible turmoil and division, at a time when our new jerk responses are often framed by which political party we adhere to and who we voted for, it seems most appropriate that we ground ourselves in the politics of Jesus. It is helpful to me to remember that Jesus did not live in a representative democracy. Neither did first disciples nor many generations of the first Christians. They did not enjoy freedom of religion or a way to compel their government to act with justice. But still, they lived faithfully, seeking to be part of God’s kingdom on earth. Regardless of what is happening around us, to believe that God is sovereign and that we can be a demonstration plot for God’s reign here and now, is still an option available to us.
Back to the prayer. It continues with three petitions for human needs – for bread, for forgiveness, for escape from trial.
Daily bread – Bread was the staple of the diet. Every meal included bread. Jesus fed people and urged others to do the same. Daily bread recalls manna in the wilderness, where every person’s need for food was met in the same way regardless of their finances or social standing. This petition is also a prayer against the injustice of the day where the haves get more without regard for the needs of those who are hungry. For some of us, who are not at any risk of starving, this prayer could mean: Help us to let go of fear about not having enough. Help us to be satisfied with what is sufficient for today. Help us to share out of our abundance and our need.
The second petition is very interesting. Matthew records “forgive us our debts” while Luke seeks forgiveness of sins. In Aramaic, there is one word which means both debts and sins. That word does not exist in Greek, so in translating, Matthew chose debts and Luke chose sins.
The cycle of debt in first century Israel was devastating to the people. When the Romans conquered the region, they claimed they owned all the land and promptly started charging people rent. People who had been farming their own land found themselves burdened with debt. Debt was a way in which the conquerors continued to afflict the conquered. [1]
Forgiving the debts of others also meant refusing to participate in the ways of the conqueror. It is consistent with Jesus’ declaration of his mission in light of the practices of Jubilee when debts were forgiven and slaves set free and land returned to the original owners. Both Matthew and Luke use the same word for forgiveness. It also means release. It is the same word we heard last week when Jesus read from Isaiah about release to the captives and setting free the oppressed. Release us from our debts as we release others from what they owe us. It is a petition for release from the obligation of monetary debt and other kinds of captivity or enslavement, even captivity to sin.
And do not bring us to the time of trial. How you interpret this may depend on your theology, whether you believe that
God sets up tests for human beings to pass. I don’t believe that. In the original context, it is probably a prayer that the community would be spared trials before various secular authorities in which some Christians were being imprisoned or executed for their faith. It is a prayer for strength to resist the temptation to serve Caesar out of fear or expediency, and that temptation is just as present in our context as it was then.
I’m using Obery Hendricks’ book, The Politics of Jesus, as a primary resource for this sermon series. He writes, “Jesus treated the people and their needs as holy by healing their bodies, their souls and their psyches . . . . He traveled incessantly to raise the people’s consciousness that the present order sinned against the justice of God because it sinned against their well-being.”[2]
Prayer is the purest form of theology, my professor said. How we pray, what we pray for, reveals what we believe about God. I have also come to believe that praying in the same ways over time shapes us. Jesus taught us to pray that everyone has enough to eat every day. That everyone is free from economic exploitation and violence. That everyone is delivered from whatever captivity they are in whether from unjust government or addiction or poverty or systemic oppression or their own sin. If we pray this and mean it, it will shape our actions. It will form in us the sense of “we” and “us” and “our” until we recognize the holiness of all human need, not just our own. It will remind us that we serve God best by loving each other.
Those who live with more awareness of their dependence on G od often understand this in ways that those of us with means do not. There are so many instances of this. Here’s just one example. There is a slum on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda. Those fortunate enough to have a job perform the back-breaking work of strip-mining rocks for construction. The men mine large boulders and rocks, while the women break the rocks into gravel using hand-held tools. In 2005, these women earned $1.20 per day. That was the year that Hurricane Katrina wrought such destruction. These women heard about that. Two hundred of them broke rocks for weeks and then donated $900 of their wages to help people displaced by Katrina. One of them said that those who are suffering “belong to us. They are our people. Their problems are our problems. Their children are like our children.” [3]
This is what it means to treat all the people’s real needs as holy.
I cannot end this sermon without mentioning what we all bore witness to this week. At a prayer service for the unity of the nation, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington Marianne Budde lifted up the needs of real people. https://youtu.be/xwwaEuDeqM8?si=PeE32A4fGUI45z7K
She was asking for mercy from the Empire. The Empire does not hallow the name of God and is not inclined to mercy. The stark contrast between the ways of Jesus and the ways of Empire are on full display once again. May we be found faithful to the one God who is sovereign over all.
This week, I discovered a version of Jesus’ prayer from a Christian community in Central America. Let me close with it:
Our Father who is in us here on earth.
Holy is your name in the hungry
who share their bread and their song.
Your kingdom come which is a generous land
which flows with milk and honey.
Let us do your will standing up
when all are sitting down
and raising our voice when all are silent.
You’re giving us our daily bread
in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn.
Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice
and for burying our dreams,
for not sharing bread and wine,
love and the land, among us, now.
Don’t let us fall into the temptation
of shutting the door through fear,
of resigning ourselves to hunger and injustice,
of taking up the same arms as the enemy,
but deliver us from evil.
Give us the perseverance and the solidarity
to look for love,
even if the path has not yet been trodden,
even if we fall.
So we shall have known your kingdom,
which is being built forever and forever.[4]
Amen.
[1] https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2010/07/lectionary-blogging-luke-11111.html
[2] Obery Hendricks, The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They have Been Corrupted, (New York: Doubleday, 2006), p. 108
[3] https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/2494/Women-In-Uganda-Sent-900-To-Katrina-Victims-In-2005-They-Earned-1-20-A-Day
[4] Janet Morley, Bread of Tomorrow: Praying with the World’s Poor, (London: SPCK Publishing, 1992).