Lord’s Prayer
Preacher: Rev. Adam Frieberg
Preached on: July 25th, 2010
Audio:
No recordingScripture Text:
Luke 11:1-13 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Sermon:
This past week I counseled high school church camp in Iowa. It was my fifth camp with high schoolers and every single camp has been different.
In some camps, the contemplative and introverted kids are the norm. And in other camps, such as this week’s, the emotionally ecstatic, socially-uncensored kids are the norm. Year after year, however, the kids still re-define the stereotypes and also affirm the biases I bring to high school church camp.
So I imagine there are many youth ministers facing a similar dilemma this week:
Do I use my camp experiences to preach about the reading from Hosea or the Gospel reading? I mean, what kind of scripture can relate to the stories of 65 hormonally- charged teenagers? The Hosea reading about whoredom and condemnation — OR — the reading with the Lord’s Prayer?
It’s not even close! The Lord’s Prayer fits their situation perfectly.
High school campers are needy — they are almost adults, but not quite. Some of them want to move out of their parents’ homes, but not quite. High school campers know how to extend love and companionship, but not quite. They’ve experienced what it means to be excluded, but not quite.
High school campers are still dependent — and they have needs, just like the rest of us. The Lord’s Prayer fits them well.
Friday night at the camp we had a “consecration” worship service. In my tradition, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), camps have a lot of flexibility with worship.
The first night of camp, we celebrated communion using Goldfish crackers and grape juice. None of the worship services look the same — and part of that is because the kids design the services earlier in the afternoon. Each service is tailor-made … it is the sum of the desires on the kids’ hearts — with the occasional censorship by the counselors.
So the consecration service on Friday night was quite an experience. For 15 minutes of the service, the youth were invited to pray.
And this is when it happened — this is when the Lord’s Prayer applied so perfectly. … You see, earlier in the evening, all of the campers joined in a last hoorah for the week – a banquet and a dance. 65 teenagers dancing the night away in a 1200 square-foot room without proper ventilation.
So imagine this: the last night of camp and several of the campers realize this is their last chance to ever see this group of newly-discovered friends. Like a anxiously- expected thunderstorm of lightning, the emotions spiked and the tears flowed. For some of the campers, that was the culmination of their week at camp.
But then came the consecration service. They were led into a time of prayer and asked to pray silently in their seats — OR — if they wanted, to find one of the counselors of their choosing to pray with them. At that time, all of us counselors stood around the edge of the room and waited.
Slowly the first camper stood up and walked over to her youth minister. As they prayed, at least 10 more campers stood up, most of them with tears flowing down their cheeks, and they picked their counselors.
One of the campers named Wesley came up to me. I asked him what he wanted us to pray about. He said, “I don’t have any idea; I just know this is what I need to do …” … Wes didn’t know what to pray, but he knew he needed to.
This is exactly why the Lord’s Prayer applies so well here. In our scripture reading, the Lord’s Prayer is taught after the disciples have seen Jesus praying on his own and they ask him to teach them. They want to mimic him. They want him to be their mentor and their guide. They haven’t been told they HAVE to pray, nor have they felt it was a rule that they were seeking — they weren’t trying to create a new law for themselves. They felt that they NEEDED it, however, and they wanted to learn.
The gospel story continues and goes into a cul-de-sac sort of parable. Jesus leads them into a far-fetched story of a social taboo that probably wouldn’t happen. A neighbor goes next door and asks to borrow a cup of sugar, only to not have the door opened and to be told off without ever being able to see the friend. The story turns around as quickly as we entered it — the friend who acquiesced transforms into God- the-Father who showers gifts upon the children who ask.
Jesus’s point in this parable is that a friend would ALWAYS help you, and, even more, so will God. We cannot be separated from God’s love; God is with us no matter what. But nothing we say, do, or be, will change how much God loves us.
And while we can try as much as we can to believe that, at the same time, Jesus points out that we are evil. Human beings have something about us that is wrong.
We ask to see God’s image in ourselves, and yet we don’t quite receive it. We seek true worship of God instead of idols, but we don’t quite find it. We knock on God’s door with our prayers, and yet we’re not quite sure it’s open.
To be human means to be needy, to be dependent, to be limited.
The Lord’s prayer asks for our needs to be met. We confess that God is holy. We want God as a ruler rather than ourselves. We want our continual hunger needs met. We want forgiveness, because we know we need it from God. And that God’s forgiveness stokes our wanting to forgive others continually. We want to be safe, especially from trauma – and other ways we can be broken.
This prayer what Jesus teaches his disciples — this prayer is not a command. It is not even the Lord’s prayer … because calling it the Lord’s Prayer assumes Jesus owns it or that we’re praying it to him. It is our prayer — it is one that teaches us how explain our wants. This is a laundry-list of our needs — and we pray it to God as completely dependent humans.
– Which brings me back to Wesley. The Lord’s Prayer would have been perfect in that moment, but I didn’t think of it. I didn’t suspect he NEEDED that prayer, even though it definitely fit. We prayed for guidance in the transition back to his home life; we prayed thanksgivings for the many ways campers showed God’s love to each other through the week; we even prayed for a good night’s sleep as the worship service neared 11:30 at night and the morning would come quickly. But we didn’t pray for this laundry list of needs that every human being shares.
But that list is what we need. And it becomes our prayer when it’s not a command we’re following, and not a prompt we’re repeating – instead it becomes our prayer when we feel those needs. When we have those desires on our hearts – then – it is our prayer. And Wesley’s words might be the perfect lead-in: “I don’t have any idea; I just know this is what I need to do …”
Amen.
