praying forgiveness

Within the span of a week I've had two opportunities to share some insights on the Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:9-13). Here's what I've found:

The prayer defines its addressee in the first line, "Our Father, the one who is in the heavens".  While it may seem obvious to some Christians that we would address God in prayer, the fact that Jesus specifies only God as the recipient of our prayers cuts against the grain of some traditions in which other spiritual authorities are also invoked.  Within the Lord's Prayer there is no mention of the saints or ancestors of human religion/culture.

The prayer features seven verbs.  The first three verbs are pleas for the Father to do something for the Father's own sake.  These accompany nouns with possessive pronouns in the second person singular.  I call this "a pattern of possession or belonging to the second person" who is, in this case, God.    The three verb-noun combinations then are:

May it be kept holy/sanctified--your name
May it come--your kingdom
May it be done--your will

All are pleas pertaining to God.  Disciples pray, as Jesus taught us, for God to guard/protect/keep God's own prerogatives as the creator of the world.  While human beings can participate in the glorifying of God's name, the coming of God's kingdom, and the doing of God's will, all are ultimately the work of the Father himself.  Only the Father can protect his name, kingdom, and will from the humans who inevitably fail to honor God.  Our shortcomings simply expose the need to pray to the Creator, and reveal why we should begin in prayer with pleas that pertain to God for God's sake.  It is upon God's heavenly name, kingdom, and will that the same might be established on earth, and so we address the only One who can bring about these realities.  We plea to God not to give up on the establishment of God's name, kingdom, and will upon the earth in the face of our sin.

After we have put first things first, the things upon which everything else is founded, then we begin to pray to God about the things that belong uniquely to us as frail human beings.  Here come the next four verb-noun combinations.

Give us today--our daily bread
Forgive us--our debts
Do not bring--us into temptation
Deliver--us from the evil one

If in the "pattern of possession or belonging to the second person", that is, "to God", the pronoun was "your", the final four verbs pertain to "our" or "us".  In other words, the second set of verb-noun combinations forms a "pattern of possession or belonging to the first person plural", "to us".  After we have asked God to do some things for God's own sake, upon which our own survival also depends, now we begin to plea for God to do some things for us.  Give us daily bread.  Forgive us our debts.  Do not bring us into temptation.  Deliver us from the evil one.  All four pleas refer to situations unique to the human condition.  We are the ones in need of bread--not God.  We are the ones who have debts (or sins or trespasses)--God has none.  We are tempted--God is not.  We must be delivered--Satan poses no threat to God.  All of these predicaments are truly ours.  And thus, as before, we speak to the only One who can help us.

Now, regardless of whether the pattern is "your" (to God) or "our" (to us), each verb is a plea for God to do something.  God is the subject of doing, whether it be for God's own sake or for ours.  That is the case--with one exception.  Only one verb of the seven appears twice--to "forgive."  If we have prayed for God to forgive us our sins, we must also pray that "we forgive those who sin against us".  If we have prayed for God to forgive our debts, we also pray that "we forgive our debtors".  The two, in fact, are dependent one upon the other.  It is in the act of forgiveness alone that our agency and God's overlap.  God forgives us as we forgive one another.  We express our "godliness", our "god-likeness", through forgiveness.  We "are perfect as our heavenly father is perfect" (Mt 5:48) in no other way but as we extend love without condition to our fellow human beings.  We "complete" the love of an already "complete" God as "we love one another" (1 Jn 4:12).

If therefore we do, as Jesus commanded, "pray then in this way", forgiveness will be the spirituality of our lives; reconciliation its fruit; and peace the kingdom come--"on earth as it is in heaven".

-Joe

God’s justice, humans’ faith

For Wednesday’s discipleship class we studied Luke 18:1-8, often called the parable of “the persistent widow.”

The message of the text advances through four statements which may be divided into two sets of two. The first set is the repetition of the description of the “unjust judge”, the judge “in a certain city who neither feared God nor had respect for humans.” In its first appearance, the description is in the voice of Jesus the Narrator; in its second, it is the voice of the judge through Jesus the Actor (as Jesus plays the part of the judge). In both, the description is of a judge “who neither fears God nor has respect for humans” (vv. 2, 4). This is the characterization of the judge that we are not supposed to miss: no respect for God or humans; in short, he is, as Jesus calls him, “unjust” (v.6).

If the first set of repetitions is about the unjust judge, the second set of two is about the just judge, God. The first statement of the second set comes as Jesus’ question to his disciples: “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” (v. 7). The second statement, which repeats the critical information of the first, is Jesus’ emphatic answer to his own question: “I tell you, [God] will quickly grant justice to them” (v. 8). This, then, is the critical characterization of God: God grants justice—and “quickly” (v. 8).

Between the four statements of two sets lies the action on which the text turns—the action of “a widow” (vv. 3, 5). Because she kept “bothering” the unjust judge “for justice against [her] opponent”, the judge granted her justice. The unjust judge himself described the situation:

“ ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for humans, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming’” (v. 5).

The text continues, “And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them” (vv. 6-8).

There is an implicit comparison here in Jesus’ words between the widow and God’s “chosen ones who cry to him day and night” (v. 7). Though the widow was no one’s chosen, most certainly not that of the unjust judge to whom she continually cried, she received justice from the judge. How much more, then, will those whom the Judge loves receive justice? In fact, if God the Just is so predisposed towards his “chosen ones”, the absence of justice in human relationships must be a thing dependent upon the disposition of human beings—especially, as the parable seems to indicate, those humans who have been the victims of injustice. Though the widow, for example, may not have been responsible for the initial act of injustice that befell her, her incapacity to plead for justice is the cause of injustice’s continued reign. On the other hand, as the text teaches, her capacity to plead for justice—her perseverance through injustice—is that which restores to her her justice. Her perseverance is that which wins her respect precisely from a judge who does not “respect humans.” Though the unjust judge “for a while” did not have “a will” to grant the widow her justice, God has always a will to do so “quickly” (v. 4, 8). If, therefore, the lack of will is not God’s, the tarrying of justice in the lives of God’s people must owe to their own. God is looking for a people who care about justice enough to tell him about it. God is looking for a people with faith enough not to give up in the face of injustices.

And so, Jesus wants to know, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (v. 8)

-Joe