RCL Year C (Proper 12) - July 25, 2010

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Church - Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (Proper 12) - July 25, 2010

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
Luke 11:1-13

When was it when you first learned how to pray??…

I can remember one of the first prayers I ever learned…

“Now I lay me, down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…
If I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…
God Bless (and then I inserted everyone and everything from my next door neighbors to the cat)…. Amen!”

Now, I bet those of you that were paying attention to the readings this morning thought that I was going to tell you about “the Lord’s prayer” that Jesus taught his followers…

In due time… in due time…

Like you probably did, I learned the “Now I lay me” prayer at a very young age…

I may not have totally understood what I was doing, but I knew I was praying – and that something existed that was bigger than me, bigger than my mom and dad, or even bigger than my Pop (who was the biggest guy I knew at the time).

This was my first formational experience with prayer…

You probably can remember your parents or someone significant in your life teaching you how to pray in a very similar way…

The church teaches that prayer is “responding to God – with or without words”… So our prayers are the response to our recognition of God in our lives…

I can remember, one of the things that I learned many years ago in Sunday School about prayer… Some of you probably remember this too… It’s called ACTS A – C – T – S…

A stands for Adoration (or love of God)

C for Confession (or confessing to God – and release from the guilt of sin)

T for Thanksgiving (or giving thanks to God)

And S for Supplication (or prayers that we say on behalf of someone else)

We would put these letters on our fingers A C T S --- then the thumb was always pointing back at me… Then I was supposed to remember to pray for myself…
Today, we heard the lesson, from the Gospel according to Luke, of Jesus teaching his followers what we have come to know as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

One of them said “Lord, teach us to pray…” Teach us to pray!
They were reaching out for a deeper understanding of what it meant to pray to God.

They were asking Jesus, “Teach us that connection that you have to God… Teach us how to respond to God, with or without words!”

Jesus didn’t make them put letters on their fingers, nor did he sit patiently on the edge of their bed and have them kneel there night after night.

He didn’t go through all the resource books that he acquired in seminary and pull off the one off the shelf called “Prayer for Dummies…”

But very elegantly, like so many other things Jesus did, He took the opportunity to remind them that they already knew how to respond to God…

After all, most of his followers were faithful Jews, and they had been praying to God since they could talk.

But his disciples recognized a special connection between Jesus and God and they wanted in on that secret… They thought that he was doing something different from what they had learned as children…

So Jesus reminded them, “when you pray say: Father, hallowed be your name…”

Wow… what a sentence… Within one swoop, Jesus converts a menagerie of thought and images about God and who they thought God to be into very simple and direct language…

He calls God “Abba” or Father with a familiar intimacy – teaching them that God is approachable, but yet remains set apart from the ordinary (therefore holy or hallowed)…

Jesus’ teaching continues…

Your kingdom come – Calling for immediate order to the chaos here on earth this echoes Jesus’ announcement throughout the Gospels for the coming of the kingdom of God. This statement implies an urgency for this announcement, similar to the story we heard a couple of weeks ago where we heard that we are to proclaim to others that the kingdom of God has come near…

Give us or daily bread – the vital necessities that we need to sustain our bodies…
Bread back then, as it is today, the difference for some folks between living and starving to death. If we dig deeper into the original language of the Greek text, the word doesn’t necessarily mean “give,” but quite literally translated it means, “keep on giving.”
So this portion of the prayer in today’s language could actually mean “continue sustaining us, providing for our daily needs like you did for the Israelites in the wilderness, we fully rely on You – Our GOD – to do that for us.”

He goes on…

Forgive us our sins – Jesus knows that all human kind is sinful, and that we miss the mark from time to time when living out our daily lives. He reminds us in our prayers to acknowledge our wrongfulness and ask for relief from the burdens of sin that only God can give us.

and Do not bring us to the time of trial – ask God to keep us out of the trouble of temptation and own desires that bog us down…

Jesus uses the simple rhythm of what we know as “the Lord’s Prayer” to remind us how we should pray. How to connect to God and how to respond to God with or without words…

Many folks criticize the Episcopal Church for the multitude of written prayers that we have in our prayer book. Some of them say, you don’t know how to pray – you have them all written down for you… prayer needs to be spontaneous…

I don’t know about you, but when I am confronted with this, I say… “The book is great!
Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to express myself with words that the true expression gets lost in the search for proper articulation… I am very thankful that I have learned and read some of the beautiful expressions of prayer that have lasted over the centuries.”

But the only prayer I really need is the one our savior Jesus has taught to remind his disciples, it is for me the foundational reminder of how we are to respond to God with our lives… Of how we relate to God and how we depend on God for our needs, our forgiveness and direction”

Whether we learned “the Lord’s Prayer” from our parents or from the church… We still say it every Sunday…

It is foundational and takes a central position in our liturgy… It is the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to help them remember how they should respond to God…

I know some folks with dementia or a diminished mental capacity because of a stroke or some other problem that cannot remember how to form simple sentences in a discussion. But, they still remember how to pray the Lord’s prayer…

We respond to God with or without words in prayer… and when we use words, we don’t need a bunch of flowery ones to help us talk to Our Father in heaven…

It doesn’t matter what denomination the Christian claims, most all of us know “the Lord’s prayer,” It may have not been the first one that we learned, but for those that grew up in a Christian home, it was taught to us at a very young age…

And we all know it very well… Pray it with me…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven… Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory… For ever and ever… Amen!

RCL Year C (Proper 10) - July 11, 2010

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Church
Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (Proper 10) - July 11, 2010

Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

I would venture to guess that most of you know what a “plumb-line” is? For those of you that don’t know, a plumb-line (or plumb-bob). It is a weight, usually with a pointed tip, that can be used as a vertical reference line. It has been in use for thousands of years, even before anyone knew anything about gravity. The way it works is: The builder or craftsman, would dangle the weighted string from up above, and use it as a reference to make sure that whatever they were building was in “plumb” or truly vertical.

I built houses for many years, so this imagery from the Old Testament lesson sort of jumped out at me. But, little did the prophet Amos know that the plumb line that God was setting in the midst of God’s people, was none other than Our Lord Jesus Christ. By the virtues and witness of Christ, are we all measured by God…

Our readings today, as familiar as they may seem to us, say something very profound about who and how we should be. The Lawyer (or Scribe) that questions Jesus about eternal life made a distinct choice to frame his question trying to trick Jesus…

He asked him a question related directly to the Mosaic law (of which he is considered an expert!). Jesus answers the question with a question and the Lawyer, who is the resident expert in the law, responds with the summary of the law…

“Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and strength… and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Then the Lawyer tries to backstroke, knowing that Jesus had outsmarted him, and “justifies” himself by asking Jesus to define neighbor. Jesus, as he does though-out his ministry, chooses to use a parable to explain things…

We know the parable well, probably because it is one of the first that we learn as a child in Sunday School… The parable of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus presents his parable story, but St. Luke doesn’t explain to the reader why some of the characters involved, did what they did… Maybe because the folks Jesus was talking to already understood the roles of the characters involved, and the predicaments that they were in. But today, if we don’t understand who these characters are, it becomes pretty easy to place a lot of blame on the two guys that made the choice to ignore the injured man.

We need to step back a second and look at examine the scene more closely… to dangle a plumb-bob in their midst and measure their actions. Looking at the parable this way allows us to gain some understanding about why the characters in Jesus’ parable did some of the things they did.

Let’s look first at the priest and the Levite… we can understand why it’s pretty easy to let these guys catch all the blame… They seems pretty arrogant as they trot by on the other side of the road.

But what we sometimes overlook is that the priest and Levite rank pretty high on the purity list. According to Mosaic law, they had to remain pure, that means that they were to avoid, at all cost, ANY contact with a naked body, especially one that was bleeding and was possibly dead or dying. So contact with the naked body of the injured man on the road was not an option for them. So they decided to remain pure rather then help the man… To remain pure – true to their office and maintain their religious purity according to mosaic law – and pass by on the other side of the road, to avoid any contact with the naked bleeding body. As far as they were concerned, they had no other choice…

The Samaritan, on the other hand, didn’t even rank on the purity list… they were despised by the Jews… This particular Samaritan was traveling back and forth on the road, from Jerusalem to Jericho and carried with him oil, and wine and what seemed to be considerable funds. Some of the Biblical scholars suggest that he was probably a trader.

And a trader of goods at that time was a despised profession, because they were thought to have gotten rich at the expense of others. But this Samaritan trader decides to stop… to stop, and to help the poor man that was injured, bleeding, and lying in the road…

Using the wares that he carries with him… He cleans, anoints, and dresses the injured man’s wounds… and goes beyond the call of duty, and loads him on his own donkey and takes him to an inn.

So we have Jesus’ parable told a group of listeners that understand the characters in the story and they also understand what a “predicament” Jesus presents to the Lawyer.

And although we learned this story as a child, we may not have seen it this way… On the surface, the story seems pretty simple… but Jesus gives the lawyer a clear reference point… a “plumb-line,” from which to measure…

He puts care for a fellow human being ahead of any of the “Mosaic purity laws”… And therefore explains the true sense of the law – “to love your neighbor” without the need of worrying about who your neighbor is…

It kind of makes us mad today, that the priest and the Levite ignored the injured man… But Jesus understood the folks he was talking to… He knew that the folks wouldn’t think anything of a priest or a Levite deciding to pass by on the other side of the road.

The people understood the role of the two men and why they did what they did, as they used the “plumb-line” of the law… Jesus even knew that the group would be completely “outraged” because he used the Samaritan in the story to show mercy to the man… and be the one who became the neighbor… to be the new standard by which to act…

In our lives, and our walk as Christians, we always feel as if we are measured by this or that… trying to figure out how “in-line” we are… But, if we focus on moving forward in our daily lives and use Christ as our plumb-line then we don’t need to worry about how the world measures us. We are doing exactly what Jesus wants us to do!

As we approach the holy table this morning, and receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ… It becomes for us our food for our journey through our Christian lives… As we receive it, we are reminded of our salvation, that we have through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ…

In response to our salvation, it is our responsibility to make decisions in our life guided by the Holy Spirit… It is our call from Jesus to Go Forth and Do Likewise.