Matthew 6:9-13
I imagine many people covet being the talk of the town around Los Angeles, California. So when I wanted to read some tips for how to create speech that is persuasive, it made total sense that I happened upon an online article by a College of Business professor from an L.A. based university. Steve Iman, of Cal Poly Pomona, doesn’t describe himself as a “professor” but rather as a “manager of highly engaged learning communities.”[i] I knew as soon as I read this creative self-identification, I was in the presence of someone who walks the walk when it comes to talk! I want to share a few of his comments about persuasive speech in order to set the table for our consideration this morning on the Lord’s Prayer.
This form of speech leads and evokes an audience to commitment. This can be commitment to personal action (such as going on a mission trip) or to passive agreement (such as accepting the value of the mission trip). Mr. Manager of Highly Engaged Learning Communities suggests starting with a quote, some humor, a question … whatever it takes to get people’s direct attention. You’ll often hear this in preaching, too. Then he stresses the need for the speaker to promptly establish personal credibility before carrying on with a preview of main points. We won’t listen to someone who we consider clearly unqualified and lacking authority. Once the overview is made, the speaker should create cognitive dissonance – that is, he or she should get the audience to feel involved in a problem they can help solve. Thought provoking questions, great enthusiasm, logical presentation, and a memorable summary all follow in turn.[ii]
Anyone who has ever had to make a sales pitch or teach a lesson on any subject knows all of this. If one person wants to get another person’s firm attention in order to get them to buy a product or buy into facts and philosophies, they need to use persuasive speech. Now let’s consider form of communication in the context of our faith. Do our prayers to God need to be full of persuasive speech? When going to God in prayer, do we need to quickly grab God’s attention, establish our credibility, set forth some logic, and sum up our request in memorable fashion?
Long ago, pagan prayers had to be persuasive like this. By “pagan prayers” I mean petitions to a god or set of gods other than the singular Jewish and Christian God of our biblical faith. Pagan prayers supposed that a person “must impress or gain the attention of the deity or use a correct formula to ensure the effectiveness of the prayer.” This prayer was intended to be manipulative and self-serving. The “heaped up empty phrases” and “many words” that Matthew’s Gospel speaks of in chapter six is referring to this sort of praying.[iii]
When going to God in prayer, do you feel the need to be impressive? To use a certain correct formula? When I attend a committee meeting, Bible study, or special time of fellowship, it’s commonly expected that I’ll be the one offering up a prayer. And so it’s always curious to me when I opt out and suggest it be offered by someone else in the room. Quite often, an awkward silence follows. Heads furtively scan the space, stealthily willing someone else to speak. This tells me there is a considerable amount of discomfort in praying – at least publically. I do believe, though, that beyond fearing embarrassing oneself in front of others by speaking awkwardly or irreverently, it most likely rises from an unconfident internal space. It can indeed feel like quite an awesome invitation to approach Almighty God with our finite human speech!
Matthew’s Gospel teaches us that Jesus – solid Jewish Rabbi that he was – offered a different approach to speaking to God than using persuasive pagan prayer speech. It is a model for prayer, but not to be confused with some correct formula intended to persuade our God into acting on our behalf. It is found in our lesson, Matthew 6:9-13, and I rather agree that it should be referred to as the “Disciples’ Prayer” instead of the “Lord’s Prayer” as I once upon a time heard it called. Jesus intended for it to teach us disciples how to pray, and specifically how to do so over and against prayer as persuasive speech. We always have God’s attention and our petitions are not persuasions. We pray instead to align ourselves in trust with what God already knows we need.
The words found in Matthew have been amended in translation and expanded through the centuries to meet specific needs of the Church. In one form or another, believe just about all of us knows the Lord’s Prayer by heart. I also believe we land in a spiritual bunker when we recite it more or less mechanically. So revisiting what Jesus intended it to be should help keep it on the green and feeling relevant and fresh for us every time if falls or flies out of our mouths. I speak about this today because the Lord’s Prayer is what we’ll be teaching all this week during our Vacation Bible School. Appreciating the biblical meaning of is helping to energize me for the week ahead, and I hope it will for all our teachers and for all of you too! So let’s look at it more closely.
Jesus taught that every time we approach God in prayer it should be deeply personal. We are not to address God as some high and remote supernatural being whose attention we need to get. No fancy, majestic sounding address is required. We are encouraged to approach God in the very same manner Jesus did – as family. So we can begin by addressing God as “Father.” This is traditional, but we are also free to use other biblical, metaphoric wording such as when Jesus referred to himself, and thus also to God, as a “mother hen” (Matt. 23:27; Luke 13:34). What’s most important is to make it as personal as when addressing your parent. Prayer is not a portal to another dimension where God exists – it’s a personal port with the heart of the One who created and unconditionally loves you!
While personal, notice that Jesus also taught that prayer is at the same time communal. Do not pray to God as if you are an only child. Every human being living on the surface of this precious planet – a number that can only be estimated in the billions – is a unique offspring made in the image of our Creator. So your prayers are received personally for sure, but at the same time they also commune with the chorus of all humanity.
This personal-universal dynamic should be kept in mind when praying two key petitions of the Lord’s – or Disciple’s -- Prayer. We petition to be forgiven of our debts and for our daily bread. Understanding these two petitions as the foundation for our everyday prayers is worth addressing the rest of my blessed time in the pulpit this morning.
Trespasses. I learned the word “trespasses” before ever hearing “debts.” I became most familiar with this wording of the Lord’s Prayer when I attended support group meetings for teenage children of alcoholics back in tenth grade. It’s how we closed every Alateen meeting, which, it’s worth mentioning, were held at my hometown Presbyterian church. All these years later, I still hear quite a good many people use “trespasses” instead of “debts” or “sins.” So let me state for the record, the Aramaic word (the dialect Jesus spoke in) we find in our lesson from Matthew is best translated as “debts.” More on this in a moment, but want to know when it became “trespasses” and why it can also be “sins”?
Regarding “trespasses,” this was the word of choice way back in 1380 by an English Bible translator named John Wycliffe. It then carried over as the standard for both the Tyndale translation in 1526 and the Coverdale translation in 1535. It remains the common word of choice today in the Roman Catholic tradition. Focusing in on and honoring the biblical root word best translated as “debts” became the primary Protestant choice following publication of the King James version in 1611. As usual, historical footnotes help us better understand our present practices!
As for why we can also say “sins” … this is super quick to answer. It’s the correct translation of an ancient Greek word used by Luke in his Gospel record of the prayer Jesus taught us to be found praying. That can be found in Luke 11:4.
What exactly does forgive us our debts mean? To give you a thumbnail answer it means every human being owes our Creator a life of love, trust, and righteousness. We are in debt to God for bringing and blessing us into being. It also affirms the faithful fact that every human being sins. We are not capable, therefore, of fully living as we ought to in the presence of our loving God. How then do break free from this massive indebtedness? We do so only through our faith in the forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ, who paid our debt personally and in full. When we truly believe this with all our heart, mind and spirit, we can then know what it means to forgive others who have offended us and who “owe” us mutual love and respect.
The second key petition for daily prayer is for bread. The central ingredient of this bread is academically identified as “eschatological hope.” Eschatology is a formal word for the study of all things concerning the end of time. You may be more familiar with the variant word, “eschaton.” Speaking less academically, this is to say that the central ingredient of our daily bread is what you and I hope will happen when Jesus comes again in glory.
We name this future hope by reviewing the Gospels to see what hope Jesus gave while on earth. His mission in ministry was to give tangible hope to all who were outcast – all living in sin against God and especially all who were poor, oppressed, struggling for survival every single day. He gave them daily hope by offering food, healing, unconditional and loving acceptance. We, through the Holy Spirit, continue this hopeful work as His Body on earth, as the Church. And we will do so until the day He returns in glory and there will no longer be such realities as hunger, poverty, social oppression, injustice, and enmity with our Creator. This ultimate hope is partaken of and shared in daily morsels; it is our daily bread.
I know we covered a good deal of study rather succinctly and quickly. For such a short prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is quite comprehensive! Please remember that these sermons are always available to you for review – online or by asking me for a copy. And, always, I am happy to have more conversation with you.
For the moment, I can hope you all have been further persuaded in that last fifteen minutes to even more greatly appreciate and abide by the prayer Jesus taught us to be found praying every day. It’s so personal, so universal, so powerful! When we live by it, we faithfully work against all manipulation and self-serving habits. By it, we glorify God and grow to more deeply trust that God, our Creator, our Heavenly Host, truly does know us, love us, forgive us, greet us, and meet our needs 24-7, forever and ever, Amen.
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