Our Father Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were Exodus 3:1-15 and Matthew 6:5-13:

Most of you know by now the importance that I place on prayer, including our expectation that everyone will engage in prayer at least once a day, although doing it even more than that is even better. That expectation is based not just on our membership vows that we will pray, but also that we have said that prayer is one of our core values as a congregation. Richard Rohr, who is a Franciscan priest and author, takes it a bit farther and has said that “The church that does not teach its people to pray has virtually lost its reason for existence.” And so when I recently asked for ideas that I might preach about, it wasn’t surprising that I had some people ask me to talk about prayer. Indeed, that is a perennial request from people, because although it appears to be easy to do, the fact is that praying can be hard. Now some of that, I think, is because we sometimes make prayer harder than it needs to be, or, worse, we compare our prayer lives or what we say against others and we find ourselves lacking. But, that’s nothing new, because the disciples have the same problem. And so in the gospel of Luke, we have an account in the 11th chapter that Jesus has gone off to pray, and when he is done, the disciples say to him “Lord, teach us to pray.” Apparently what they are doing in prayer doesn’t look like what Jesus is doing, and the result of that question is Jesus giving what has become known as the Lord’s prayer. And so we are going to be spending the next six weeks looking at the Lord’s prayer and what it teaches us not just about prayer, but also about God and what we are called to as disciples.

The Lord’s Prayer appears only in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and we are going to be primarily using Matthew’s version because it is closer to the prayer that we say at least once a week. In Matthew’s version, as we just heard, it is part of the Sermon on the Mount which is sort of a summation of Jesus’ teachings as well as instruction about the Kingdom of God, which, of course, plays a role in what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. And because it’s only found in Matthew and Luke, and not included in Mark and John, scholars believe that this prayer was originally recorded in a source known as Q, from the first letter of the German word for source, which is a document that we no longer have but which Matthew and Luke had access to. And because Matthew and Luke give different settings for where the Lord’s Prayer was taught, we don’t know how and where Jesus originally taught the prayer, and perhaps he even taught it multiple times in multiple places.

Blinded

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The scripture was Genesis 27:1-29:

One of the common ways that God is referred to in scripture, especially in the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible is as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Some have argued, however, that God might be better referred to as the God of Abraham, Rebekah and Jacob, as Rebekah plays a much bigger role in scripture than does Isaac. Although we might also use all the matriarchs names in there as well. Last week we heard the story of Abraham getting Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife, in which Isaac is not involved until the end, and Rebekah is one of the primary actors throughout that entire story. And then we have today’s story, in which while Isaac is involved, but, again, Rebekah is the mover and driver of the story. In fact, especially in comparison to Abraham or Jacob or even Rebekah, we know very little about Isaac or his life, and have few stories about him as a character.

But what we do know is that after they marry, Rebekah remains without a child, just like Sarah, which obviously endangers the promise God has made to Abraham and to Isaac that they will have descendants more numerous than the stars. And so we are told that Isaac prays to God for assistance, and after twenty years of marriage, Rebekah gets pregnant with twins. But, they are wrestling and struggling with each other in the womb, which also presages next week’s passage of Jacob and God, and so Rebekah goes to seek guidance from God, and God tells her that there are two nations struggling within her, and “one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” It is striking that this oracle is given to Rebekah and not to Jacob, and it also appears that perhaps she does not tell Jacob that she has received this bit of information, because we are told that while Rebekah loves Jacob, who is the second born, that Isaac loves Esau.

Then He Raised The Knife

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 22:1-19

There are many debates amongst scholars about who wrote particular books or passages of the Bible, with some scholars looking for clues that might indicate that one of the authors may have been a woman.  I think that we can unquestionably solve the debate about today’s passage.  This story could have only been written by a man, simply for the fact, as my wife often says to me, the author is not giving enough information.  He is a masterful storyteller, there is no question about that, but even as a man at the end of this story I want to ask questions in order to get more information.  Was Abraham’s conversation with God really that short?  Did he not ask more questions?  What did Sarah say?  Did she even know?  What were the servants thinking when Abraham and Isaac went up on the mountain?  Did Isaac really just go along with no resistance?  Did Abraham have no doubts whatsoever about carrying out this request out?

So right at the start we are told two things. The first is that we are told this happened after these things had happened, although it’s not clear what these things actually are. Is it the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael and then making covenant with Abimelech? Or is farther back? Is it everything that has happened? We don’t really know. But after whatever these things are we are then told that God decides to test Abraham. And so we are now in the know as it were, as is God, but Abraham doesn’t know this is a test. For him this is deadly serious, because if he knew it was a test, then it wouldn’t actually be a test.  And honestly we might see everything that had happened in Abraham’s life up to this point as a test of his faith and his faithfulness. But, God shouts Abraham’s name for some reason, and Abraham answers “Here I am” an important phrase, and then God says “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”