26,27 Feb -- Some Radical Teaching
Readings for Mon 26 & Tues 27 Feb are: Gen 15:7-17:27; Ps 6:1-5; Pro 1:20-23; Mt 6:5-24.
In today's reading from Matthew we have the Lord's Prayer (or The Disciples' Prayer as Selwyn Hughes points out). It includes the challenging words: "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." No doubt sensing the difficulties here for disciples, Jesus' first words after the prayer elaborate on precisely this aspect. Compare with these words from the weekend's Psalm reading. David prays: "Punish them, God; let them fall by their own schemes. Drive them out..." (5:10)
What a radical change of thinking Jesus calls for in his teaching!
Other readings over the last few days have also graphically highlighted this. Take the Beatitudes. Blessed are the gentle..." "Blessed are the merciful..." "Blessed are the peacemakers..." "Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you..." (Bytheway, thanks Susan for your inspiring comments on the Beatitudes and the Kingdom on Sunday morning.) And on the same day that we were reading in Genesis about Abram getting an army to attack the 4 kings and their armies, we were reading these words from Jesus in Matthew --
"You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, don't resist an evildoer. On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also."
"You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But, I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
The Law and human nature and common practice said one thing. Jesus said another. So radically different! (So radical we still struggle to apply it.) A new era was dawning. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Jesus said he hadn't come to abolish the Law but to fulfil it.
Labels: prayer
posted by Ps John @ 3:18 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
I'd like to echo John's appreciation of Susan's (and Greta's) talk on Sunday. Now a couple of thoughts on today's passages:
I've always found a slight contradiction in our recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Perhaps not a contradiction, but it has always made me sit up and take notice. Jesus tells them not to pray hypocritically (similarly in Matthew 23:14ff) and then gives them an example prayer. I guess it has always seemed to me that in praying this as a sort of template or formula we can be guilty of just what Jesus is warning against. The words are familiar, the brain switches off, the recital is automatic. Are we praying or just making noise?
The second thing I noticed was both Proverbs and Matthew mentioned standing on street corners and calling out. In Proverbs it is Wisdom waiting for the fools to get a clue. In Matthew it is the hypocrites (also fools) who are big-noting themselves in their self-righteousness. I suppose the only other thing that (somewhat tangentially) occurred to me is that, like piety, wisdom and knowledge can also be used to feed our pride. I've seen Christians whose attitude is that they are better than "those fools who don't believe", which strikes me as a pretty bad way to show Christ's love to someone.
Re: The Lord's Prayer
I half agree with you, but it's not just the Lord's Prayer (or the model of it) that can be pure recital; it's ANY prayer. No offence to all of you who pray out loud (since I don't have the guts to), but don't you think that almost every prayer you hear in church and bible studies and the like are just a recital of cliches and catch-phrases? The prayers always sound the same - same words, same phrases - to the extent that some of the ppl that are my age at our church are afraid to pray out loud because they don't know how to speak in cliches. I'm sure I would get pretty strange looks if I ever prayed in church "Hey God; you're such a dude!" instead of "Dear Heavenly Father. You are exalted in the highest" even though the former actually means something to me whereas the latter doesn't mean a thing. I don't know how ppl pray silently, but it seems to me that when we pray out loud it is just a recital of phrases that the rest of the church are expecting to hear.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong in the Lord's Prayer being a model, so long as you know what you're praying. Den and Sue gave me this DVD of this guy, Ian McCormack, who was stung by a box jelly-fish and sort of died. He was a non-christian and the only prayer he had ever heard was his mother reciting the Lord's Prayer to him. On his death bed, he went through that prayer line per line as a last hope: confessing his wrongs when he got to "Forgive us our sins", forgiving the taxi driver who left him for dead when he didn't have enough money to pay for the cab to the hospital when he got to "as we forgive those who sin against us", etc. Well, he died, went through Hell for a minute or two, got brought up into Heaven, had a chat with God, and God basically told him he was saved because he prayed that prayer, and then gave him the choice to stay or go back to Earth (he chose the latter obviously). So there he was, saved, just because he recited the Lord's Prayer and meant it ...
Mind you, what's even funnier is when the prayer points in the bulletin have been Googled, copied, pasted, and slightly edited so that it has the names of our church members in place of whoever's names where on the originals ...
No, I do agree with you. Grace is another example, which is why I stopped reciting the formula grace I learnt as a child and started actually praying to thnk God at dinner (interestingly, so have my parents). Even then, it can become repetitive (how many ways are there to thank God for food, etc) but least I feel like I'm involved in expressing my thanks.
As for corporate prayer (i.e. praying aloud), it's a bit of a funny one. It does have a dual purpose, I think. It is a challenge to pray to God and not to the people in the group/church by making sure you include enough flowery phrases. It would be good to hear another opinion on that one. Interestingly, Philip Yancey's Prayer didn't specifically mention corporate prayer in any depth. I guess the main point of the book was that prayer is spending time with God, and if you work on that basis you can't go far wrong.
Anyway, I think we've monopolised this day enough. Time to read the next passages.
Don't worry about "monopolising", Callum. Thanks for your insightful comments on prayer (and also on Wisdom and hypocrites both calling out on street corners -- I missed that.) Thanks to you too Lisa for some more refreshingly honest comments.
As someone who does a lot of public praying... it is tricky. Yes, the cliches abound -- "place your healing hand upon them"; "may they be used for the extension of your Kingdom"; "we commit this service to you" etc. etc. Even though I try to avoid them, I still find them popping out at times. One difficulty (as Callum says) is that there are only so many ways of expressing the same idea. Another contributing factor is that in our tradition, we usually tend to pray extemporaneously. Familiar expressions are the ones that come most readily to mind. The alternative of using a "Prayer Book" with written prayers has the danger you mentioned of recitation without engagement. Perhaps the way to go is more preparation of public prayers (even writing them out as some do). But then that can lose spontaneity and freshness.
Another issue I find tricky -- who the public pray-er is talking to. To God, obviously, but it's not quite that simple. The public pray-er has the responsibility to take the congregation with him/her, so they feel prayer has been offered on their behalf and they can say "Amen". Otherwise it's not corporate prayer and it may as well be silent. So there must also be an awareness of communication with the congregation as well as (primarily) God. But it's not announcement time with God as the onlooker ("onhearer"?) eg "We pray for the working bee which is this Saturday starting at 8am and we hope, Father, that everyone can make it." or "We pray Lord for Mr D who has severe pain in his right hip and will be in Concord Hospital for tests until at least Tuesday. Amen."
I've found using the Bible in prayer can be helpful. I'm glad we're working through the Psalms at the same time as the OT & NT because these are prayers we can learn from. (Many were sung/said corporately in Jewish worship.) Can expand vocab and ideas eg ways of referring to God, other than Father and Lord. (But of course, even Biblical expressions can become cliches.) A couple of Sunday mornings ago Ken Monro prayed using the Lord's Prayer as a basis and I found that quite helpful.
My mother told me once that when she was a young girl in the Dubbo Baptist Church, there was an old guy who would invariably pray: "Give me an 'earing hear and a hunderstanding 'eart." I guess the bottom line is to keep praying authentically and to try and help each other develop our prayer life.
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