Jan 27 2008 "The Lord's Prayer, a call to discipleship"

5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. What does this mean? It means that prayer is not an obvious or natural activity. (we talked about the temptation to use prayer to try to get things from God last Sunday, as if He’s a giant cosmic vending machine; we are tempted to use prayer to manipulate others (give example), we use prayer to change the reality around us to make it look like we want it to look like).

One could say (I think accurately) that human beings engage in a form of prayer naturally. The things we value, we long for, the things that bring us happiness; we’re willing to do whatever necessary to get those things; even go through a significant amount of short-term pain for the long-term benefit of having the thing that we most desire.

And the reality is that in our materially dominated society, we often long for material things. Let’s say I want to become a CEO of a company. If I really want that position, I must be willing to do what is necessary, including working so hard and long that my relationships will likely suffer around me, I must have an ambition that seeks to dominate those who would stand in my way, I must have a focused attitude, etc etc. And you could say that my consistent “prayer” each day is that I would take on more traits of a “successful” persons in order to become a CEO. I order my life and change what is necessary to fit what I want to achieve.

The same would apply if I want to be sure that I’m sure that I’m sure that I will be financially secure in retirement until the day that I die. To achieve that goal, I will be willing to work overtime, or two or even three jobs, and spend less, and focus on achieving more and more cash that I can save, so I can achieve the goal of absolute financial security at some point in the future. I order my life and change what is necessary to fit what I want to achieve.

Genuine prayer, though, is God-centered and humbles ourselves and our wills to say “Change us to reflect what you want and to reflect who you are” before prayer makes the move to ask for God to act on our behalf. Because of this, it should never be about self-display, whether before God, ourselves, or other people. The way we pray shows our growing or diminishing character and maturity. It is the opposite of self-display. When we pray, we are literally wanting to be swallowed up in what God is doing in the world.

And so Jesus says in verse 9 "This, then, is how you should pray: "Our Father in heaven, 

Reminder: Our Father, not My Father. The call of Jesus does not create a bunch of individual Christians, it takes fragmented people and binds them together into a community.

hallowed be your name,

We talked about this last Sunday, but it’s good to review. When we talk about keeping God’s name holy, we’re not centrally talking about whether we say “God” or “Jesus” when we hit our thumb with a hammer (though that does say something about our respect for God).

God’s “name” means “the fullness of who God is,” God’s character, God’s desires, God’s dreams, God’s expectations. Everything God cares about is wrapped up in His name. God chose a people in Israel to display the glory of his name, and today works most directly through his church, expecting us to show the world the strength and honor and beauty of his name. And God is jealous for the purity of his name. (Matthew 7)

To hallow God’s name is at the heart of what it means to be called to holiness. To hallow God’s name is to lead lives that glorify God

10 your kingdom come, 


In Jesus, a disruption of what people thought was “normal life” broke in on earth, a disruption we call the kingdom of God that continues to expand, even in the midst of deep brokenness. We have seen Satan crushed and the powers of this world, sin, and death broken. And yet, the citizens of the kingdom are still walking through suffering and strife. And our prayer is that God’s kingdom would grow among us and spill out into the world.
Jesus teaches us to pray for an end to the kingdoms of this world who rule by sin, by fear, and by death.

your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

I think it’s safe to say that a massive part of the problem with the way things are in this world today is because instead of seeking God’s will for the way things should be, we allow our wills to dominate. Our will, the will of the world, is what nailed Jesus to the cross. He came to teach and exemplify what life as humanity was meant to be, and that life seemed so outrageous that we eliminated him.

But by praying that God’s will be done, and doing our best to lay our wills down, we’re taking a big step toward “reversing the curse,” if you will. (Remember what God said to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 28: blessings follow faithfulness, curses follow willful disobedience)

The problem is that the evil will is still alive in us, it still seeks to cut us off from fellowship with Him, and that is why we must pray that the will of God will prevail more and more in our hearts every day and break down our defiance and fear. God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will is the primary object of Christian prayer. It’s a constant commitment to conversion, asking God, “What would you teach me today about how life is meant to be? I bow before you in humility, listening to what you might say.”

11 Give us today our daily bread.

Again, the prayer here is not Give me today my daily bread, but Give US today OUR daily bread.

This section of the prayer should cause a situation from the history of Israel to pop up in our heads (story of the manna in the desert). We do not ask for enough bread for us to freeze it and eat it when we see fit, but are called to be satisfied with what God gives us every day.

Concept of Umbuntu:
Ubuntu is a word from the Bantu language of South Africa and refers to the interconnectedness and interdependence of all people, great or small. Literally it means "humanity towards others," or "I am because we are," or "A person 'becomes human' through other persons," or also, "A person is a person because of other persons." It talks about how we as people are inexorably intertwined with the rest of humanity, and that the well being of the entirity of mankind reflects on our personal humanity. Tutu puts it this way:

…It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanise them.

And also: You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.

This is especially relevant for all of us sitting in the room today.

There are massive numbers of people starving to death in the world from lack of food while our culture gets fatter and fatter at a ridiculous pace as we stuff our faces with food. While other cultures are dying to eat, we’re eating so much we’re killing ourselves. People who study such things (we should be sickened by this trend)

4% overweight 1982 | 16% overweight 1994 28% overweight 2001 33% in 2005

Without being transformed by Jesus to look at the world in a completely different way, being transformed to live in community with one another here at Middle River, we are tempted to hoard our possessions, to store up resources for ourselves, to find safety and security in what we can provide for ourselves, and let the community have the scraps we might have left over, whether it be money or time.

We might think living in this way makes sense, and it seems so tough to imagine that it could be different, that we truly could depend on one another, that we would be willing to sacrifice some creature comfort for the sake of a brother or sister having their needs met, that we would sacrifice some of our financial security so others could financially survive, that we would sacrifice our time so others could know they are cared for. But this is exactly what Jesus was talking about. We pray for our daily bread (nothing more, nothing less), and we make steps to live in such a way that we don’t hide from each other or pretend that if we’re in comfort and our brother is not that things are ok.

We are called to invest in deep relationship with one another because in pursuing that goal we tell the world that this is part of God’s original intention for his creation.

Story of Austin Gutwein: Kid in Phoenix, an eighth grader who loves the game of basketball.

One day when he was in fifth grade, this kid, Austin Gutwein, heard Saddleback Valley Community Church pastor Rick Warren preach on Genesis 12, where God tells Abram that he has been “blessed not to keep it to himself, but to be a blessing.” After this sermon, Austin and his father decided to sponsor a child through World Vision. After watching the video that World Vision sends to sponsors that shows the way of life in the society of the child they sponsor, Austin decided he wanted to do something more.

“I heard a few people talk about this growing problem of HIV/AIDS,” Austin said. “It just seemed so distant from me, but at the same time, I realized that these kids aren’t any different from me. They’re just kids who are suffering, and I wanted to do something to help.”

So he got together with a World Vision employee and decided that on World AIDS day 2004, he would shoot 2,057 free throws to represent the 2,057 children who would be orphaned by AIDS in one school day. People sponsored him, sort of like with jogathons and walkathons. The first year he raised 3,000 dollars. Austin started planning for the 2005 event a month after his first event, and one day he announced to his dad that his new goal was to get 1,000 kids to join him in what he now called “Hoops of Hope” – 1,000 kids shooting 1,000 free throws to help thousands of kids orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

“My reaction was ‘okay, that’s a God-size goal,’” his dad shared. “To be honest, I was shocked that people would give almost $3,000 for a kid shooting baskets the year before. I guess [1,000 kids] was a shock, too, but I saw God just blow us away the first year, and you know, why not? Why not see what God can do?” He got 1,000 kids to join, and they raised 30,000 that went directly to AIDS orphans.

As a seventh grader last year, Austin decided he wanted to build a school in Zambia, and they raised over a hundred thousand dollars and built that school. On Dec 1st of this year, this eighth grader took his jump shot and raised almost a 150000 dollars and built a medical clinic in Zambia.

Listen to what his father said; “Kids have a bigger heart than adults – period,” Dan said. “That’s what I found in Austin, and that’s what Austin’s finding in all these other kids, too. If you give them an opportunity, they’re jumping at a chance to help.”

You know, while getting older holds the potential for us to get wiser and more mature (I said potential, mind you), it also can make us cynical about dreaming that things can be different in our world. We see giant issues like “poverty” and “AIDS” and “hunger” and think that things will never change; it’s just flat out scary to see how huge the problems are. And if cynicism is the approach we take, things never will change. But if we give ourselves room to dream, bite off what we can chew, and act with hope and faithfulness in our world, things can change. And that sort of relationship level, small change, is the only lasting change this world has ever seen.

Austin said: “We might not be able to stop the world from coming to an end or anything, but we can turn the tide against AIDS, and that’s what I want to do.” I can imagine that Jesus looks at Austin and says, “You get it! You’re taking your passion, your heart, your dream, and you’re using it to bless others.”

God’s asking people to wonder, “Wouldn’t this world look better if we all had enough to eat? Wouldn’t this world be a little more special if we all had enough bread?”

“The categories of optimism and pessimism don't exist for me...I am a prisoner of hope. I am going to die full of hope."
Cornell West