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.

Wrestling With God

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 32:22-31:

Names are important things and convey things about a person. They can give some connection to heritage or family or culture, or perhaps the name means something specific that is supposed to be conveyed. There is also a certain type of person that we associate with some names. So, if I say Cindy of Jennifer, we have an idea of who that person is, or we make a preconceived notion based on other Cindys and Jennifers we have known. And I’m sure you’ve probably met someone and they told you there name, and you wanted to say “No” because they name didn’t match them. And then there is the idea that not naming someone or not using their name is a way of negating them, as we talked about in the story of Hagar in Abraham and Sarah refusing to use her name. That’s why the black lives matter movement has the emphasis of using say their names in order to give identity and belonging and purpose. Names are important things. When Linda was pregnant with our first child Samantha, we already had a girl’s name picked out, But, we didn’t have a boy’s name. So I suggested that we consider using the name of the first Yankee who hit a homerun at the next Yankee game we attended, and Linda was on board.

It happened to be that we were going to see the Yankees play the Cubs, at Yankee stadium. Early in the game, almost everyone in the stadium thought that Gary Sheffield had hit a homer down the left field line, and we thought “well, Gary’s not a bad name.” But, as I said, it was almost everyone, but the one person who didn’t think that was the only one who mattered, which was the third base umpire who called it fair, and this was before instant replay was allowed. Later in the game, Derek Jeter, the Yankee captain, came up with the bases loaded. Jeter had never hit a grand slam in his career, and we thought, this is it. And what was great is you had two options of using either Derek or Jeter, but Jeter flied out, although he did hit his first grand slam the next day. Then in the seventh inning our hard hitting left fielder Hideki Matsui came up, and, of course, he corked one, and Linda immediately turned to me and said “we are not naming our son Hideki,” although Matsui could have worked as well. But, in the end it didn’t matter because we had all girls, and so never got to use our boy name, which was cooper by the way, for Cooperstown, New York. Names are important things, and they matter, and we see that in scripture as well.

What's In A Name?

A recent story in the Boston Globe Magazine, Karen Tuttle wrote about her son calling her husband by his first name. This was a new trend, and they figured it would pass, but her husband was still concerned about it because, in his family children did not address adults by their first names. She attributed this concern to his African-American background in which an informality in regards to names was a way that whites could, in her words, "demean and diminish" African-Americans. I certainly cannot discount that, but I also wonder about some generational differences that are taking place.

I recently saw Precious for the first time, and would highly recommend it, but during the commentary the director said something interesting. In one of the early scenes at school, a teacher says "boys, let's settle down," to a group of African-American youth. One of the students responds that he is not a "boy." The director said in shooting this scene he had to explain to the actors why a white man using the term "boy" would be considered derogatory to them. They simply did not have them context or history and so did not understand why they would respond the way the script said or why they would be upset. This, of course, is good to hear that this derogatory language is no longer part of their experience.

But, Tuttle's article got me to wondering about what's in a name and the names we use or prefer to have others call us?

One day during worship I inadvertently told the children to go with someone, and referred to her by her first name. She quickly corrected me that she was Mrs. X. I was a little taken aback with the stridency with which she voiced her dissent, but she is of a different generation then I am in which there are certain expectations about these things. There is another member of the congregation who always refers to me as pastor. She could be my mother, but refuses to call me by my first name out of respect for my position. Even Joel insists on being called Pastor Joel, and almost always uses that term even when writing informally.

I, however, would prefer people to just call me John, and this is true even for the youth. People will either respect me or they won't, and I don't think a title will make much of a difference to that reality. I know this is a generational difference. I want to earn people's respect not have it given to me simply because of the seat I sit in on Sunday morning.

There is also a power issue at play, that I think simply doesn't matter to my generation, for many of the same reasons I just stipulated. If you are competent then you will gain respect, regardless of position, and if you are incompetent then you will not be given respect, again regardless of position. (You will be treated with respect, but simply because that is how you treat people not because of position.) Your position might gain you an initial hearing, but that's as far as it will go. If you can't gain my respect through ability and competence, then position will get you nowhere.

I cannot speak for the entirety of my generation, or for those younger, but I find this to be generally true, and so I'm wondering how to reconcile these differences or can I?