T HE LORD’S PRAYER. We include it in worship most every Sunday. Sometimes we sing it. Today, after the offering, we’re singing a West Indies version. The Lord’s Prayer tags are the backpack gift today.
In Luke’s version the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. In Matthew, Jesus is teaching the crowds and first teaches how not to pray:
● Don’t pray like hypocrites — just to be heard.
● Don’t babble like pagans — going on forever with meaningless words.
He then teaches the crowd and us to pray like this: “Our Father ….” With this prayer, we join our voices with the chorus of Christians living and dead from across 2000 years. The very prayer that Jesus taught his disciples is a prayer that unites us and reminds us of who God is, and who we’re called to be.
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FOR THE SERMON, WE FOCUS on “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What is the kingdom for which we pray? Within the context of the Matthew’s gospel we read some passages where the kingdom is spoken of as something imminent, about to happen. Other places, Jesus speaks of the kingdom as already present. In this prayer, Jesus teaches to pray that the kingdom of God will come in a way that it has not yet come. Near, already here, but not in its fullness.
When we pray for the kingdom to come we proclaim that God is Lord of the world. He is the king and creation is his kingdom. In all time and space and place God is the ruler.
The kingdom we pray for is hard to define, hard to visualize. Jesus tries to help us understand through kingdom parables.
● The kingdom is like a mustard seed.
● The kingdom is like a treasure hidden in the field, like a pearl of great price.
● The kingdom is like a dragnet cast into the sea.
● The kingdom is like a man entrusting his possessions to his servants.
● The kingdom is like a man settling his accounts with his slaves.
● The kingdom is like a landowner who hires workers a different times but pays the same.
● The kingdom is like a wedding feast.
The kingdom is like all those things, but is more than all those things. When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we pray for the continued extension of God’s reign on earth. We pray for God to convert the hearts of His enemies. We pray for God to bring all people to confess Jesus as Lord. We pray for the coming of the day when all evil, all sin, and all rebellion against God is finally eradicated.
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THE PRAYER IN ITS ORIGINAL GREEK reads more like this: Let your name be holy. Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done. Those three statements go together. The kingdom is where God is recognized as holy and where God’s will is done. The kingdom is all of that, not pick and choose. In the kingdom God is glorified. In the kingdom God’s decrees are fulfilled. In the kingdom God’s commands are followed and his words are lived. In a sense what we pray for is heaven on earth.
We must also understand, however, that when we pray for God’s kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, that this begins with each one of us. If we pray the way our Lord instructed, we must live in the way our Lord instructed:
● To pray for the kingdom is to work against hatred.
● To pray for the kingdom to come is to live against racism.
● To pray for the kingdom is to live as if the peaceable kingdom of God has already come.
● To pray for the kingdom is to stand against violence.
● To pray for the kingdom is to march against the idea of racial superiority.
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TO PRAY FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD to come on earth is to also ask God to make us able and willing to accept God’s will in all things, and to do our part in bringing about God’s purpose:
● To speak against injustice.
● To live in humility before God.
● To do justice.
● To love mercy.
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MAYBE A FEW STORIES CAN HELP US to see glimpses of the kingdom in our world:
▪ A little girl sets up a lemonade stand to help support a school in Africa that she heard about in Sunday school.
▪ A boy practices his reading skills by reading to his blind elderly neighbor.
▪ People of faith march against hatred and bigotry.
▪ A Christian congregation welcomes its Jewish friends to use their church after the synagogue is vandalized.
▪ A congregation supports missionaries and their medical work in remote regions.
▪ A church feeds breakfast daily to the homeless.
▪ A church posts a “Welcome, Neighbors” sign on the lawn when an Islamic community center opens next door.
▪ Christian people live and work against poverty, injustice and gross inequality.
▪ Children of sworn enemies play soccer together.
This is not the kingdom in its fullness, but it is a glimpse of the kingdom for which we pray. God, let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
— Keith Cardwell
