"Deliver Us from Evil" (The Lord's Prayer, Part 6)

This is the final part in my series on Jesus' prayer in Matthew 6 (a.k.a., "The Lord's Prayer").

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

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As Jesus wraps up his iconic prayer in Matthew 6, the last thing he says is this:

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13).

The final word of Jesus’ prayer—how Jesus advises his followers to pray—has to do with being led and delivered.

It seems that this is where Jesus’ prayer has been headed all along. Each of us is on a path, and that path could lead toward something dark and destruction (“temptation”/”the evil one”), or it could lead toward some kind of deliverance.

If you track back through all of the phrases in this prayer, you will find this kind of trajectory: Jesus prays that 1) God’s reputation would be beloved, 2) the reality of this beloved God would collide with our world, 3) that we—all people—would have our daily needs met, and 4) that people would be reconciled with one another. And what happens if all of these things come to pass? We will find ourselves on a better kind of path—the kind of path that leads to deliverance and resurrection.

Every day, in a thousand different ways, we make choices that inform our paths. When I choose to be generous or kind or hopeful, I am choosing a path. Likewise, when I choose to be entitled, childish, self-centered, or greedy, I am choosing a different path.

Jesus’ prayer acknowledges that we are all on a path. There is the path that we were created to travel—the path that leads to life and joy and love and hope. And then there is another path that leads to something darker and more destructive.

One path is full of life, and the other path is littered with death.

So Jesus invites us to pray that we would find the better path. We are invited to choose a path in which we (in the words of the apostle Paul) “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

So may our prayers hone our desires to find our true paths.

May we overcome evil with good.

"Forgive Us Our Debts" (The Lord's Prayer, Part 5)

This post is the fifth part of an ongoing series on The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6. 

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

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I think forgiveness is one of the most challenging concepts we find in the Bible (or anywhere else, for that matter). When I forgive someone, it feels like I’m letting them off the hook for something they should be held accountable for or excusing the behavior. To forgive can feel like ignoring something that should not be ignored.

Last year I wrote a two-part blog series on what forgiveness is and is not, so I won’t revisit all of that material again. However, the idea itself demands to be discussed, if only because it shows up in Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 6.

After Jesus prays that God will “give us today our daily bread,” he goes on to say, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).

There is an episode of the TV show Louie starring Louis C.K. in which Louie is harassed and bullied by some teenagers in a pizza place. He feels angry and humiliated, and he does something that lots of people have probably fantasized about doing: He follows one of the teenagers back to his house to confront him.  Louie knocks on the door, and the teen’s father answers. Louie tells the father what his son had done to him earlier that night, and the father is furious. He calls his son into the living room, who emerges a second later, shocked to see Louie in his house. Suddenly, the father harshly slaps his teenage son across the face and begins to loudly berate the boy. All of a sudden, the teenager—who earlier had been the bully—was now the victim. It now becomes apparent that the son is simply growing up to be like his father.

In the course of an hour, this teenager was both the aggressor and the victim.

When it comes to forgiveness, there are moments when we need to forgive others as well as moments when we need to be forgiven, and sometimes those moments sit right next to each other.

When Jesus prays, he says, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Jesus invites us to realize how hard it is to forgive and to realize how hard it is to know that we need to ask for forgiveness.

Perhaps Jesus is pointing out that forgiveness is like a conduit—it travels to us and from us on the same highway. And if we block forgiveness from one direction (either by refusing to forgive someone or by refusing to acknowledge that we need forgiveness), we block it from the other direction as well. If my soul is open to the idea of forgiveness, I have to be aware of both sides of it.

Like I’ve said before, forgiveness is not pretending that someone else’s actions didn’t affect you the way that they did, and forgiveness certainly is not always reconciling and pretending that everything is okay. Forgiveness is not allowing ourselves to be placed in harm’s way over and over again at the mercy of a toxic person. You don’t have to give someone permission to hurt you again.

Rather, forgiveness is the act of releasing the other person from our anger and our need to see them feel the same pain that they caused us.

It is choosing to not allow the anger and pain to win and to free ourselves from the burden of thinking about our offender as a monster or a villain in our own story.

I need to do this for other people, and I need other people to do this for me.

There have been times when I needed to forgive people, and there have been times when I have needed forgiveness. This is true of every human being. Nobody is always the offender or the offended. We switch roles all the time. The highway runs in both directions.

So may we forgive, and may we understand our own need to be forgiven.

May you remember the humanity of others, and may they remember yours as well.

"Our Daily Bread" (The Lord's Prayer, Part 4)

This post is the fourth part in an ongoing series on The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

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A few years ago, there was a massive earthquake in Haiti that made national news for weeks. The body count continued to rise, people were homeless, and families had been torn apart. Practically every international aide organization in the world was coming to lend a hand.

But then there were a few Christian groups who started raising money so that they could airdrop cases of Bibles into Haiti.

Don’t get me wrong; I like Bibles just as much as anybody. I certainly own plenty of them. But the people of Haiti—in that moment—did not need Bibles. They needed food.

Of course, raising this point to the people who were spending thousands of dollars to airdrop the Bibles didn’t see it that way. They would argue that the spiritual needs of people always supersede the physical needs. Why give bread to someone when they really need a Bible?

In Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 6—“the Lord’s Prayer”—Jesus spends the first half engaged in talk about what we might categorize as “spiritual” issues. Jesus prays that God’s reputation will become more well-known in the world and that God’s kingdom would somehow crash into this realm. In the first part of this prayer, there are lots of things that represent big ideas—things way beyond human comprehension.

But then, in verse 11, Jesus prays, “Give us today our daily bread.”

Bread is physical. It doesn’t belong in the same category as those big theological ideas about kingdoms and the name of God. It has to do with where a person’s next meal will come from.

So just to reiterate: Jesus’ prayer begins by dealing with big, spiritual language about things that are so big they could never be measured in a lab. But then it gets very basic and physical: he prays that they would receive their daily bread.

Jesus transitions out of these giant ideas down into whether or not we will receive another meal.

Which takes us back to what the people of Haiti really needed after the earthquake.

Do we need to be aware of the bigger questions of existence and eternity and purpose and the massiveness of all reality? Yes. Jesus prays, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Do we also need to be aware of the smaller, physical, detail-oriented parts of everyday life? Yes. Jesus prays, “Give us today our daily bread.”

So is it good to offer Bibles to people?

Yes.

If they are starving, is it better to offer them food first?

Yes.

Does God care about the big and the small alike?

Yes.

There are moments in our lives when the big questions must be asked, and we believe that God is present in those moments. We also believe that Go is interested in the daily details of everyday life.

There is more to life—the eternal, the massive, that which is beyond comprehension. And then there are the details of life—our next meal, our next doctor’s appointment, our next serious phone call. Is God interested in the big stuff or the little stuff?

Yes.

There is something sacred within the everyday, physical dimensions of life.

When Jesus prays for daily bread, he is acknowledging the sacredness of the small and the physical.

May we do the same.

"On Earth as it is in Heaven" (Lord's Prayer, Part 3)

This post is Part 3 in an ongoing series on Jesus' prayer in Matthew 6 (a.k.a., "The Lord's Prayer"). Part 1.  Part 2.  

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I recently saw someone on Facebook post the trailer for the new Left Behind movie and wrote, “Pay attention, people! This is going to happen one day!”

What she means, of course, is that she believes that one day all of the true believing Christians will mysteriously disappear and leave this earth to burn at the hands of lowly sinners.

This is reflective of what a lot of people call “Evacuation Theology,” which basically talks about the earth as a place that we need to get away from as fast as possible. In this view, heaven is a good place, and the earth is a bad place.

Here’s the problem with that: Jesus never talks about the earth as a place we need to escape from. Instead, when Jesus prays in Matthew 6, he says (to God), “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Jesus does not pray, “Get us off of this crazy thing and take us to heaven as fast as possible.” Instead, he prays that earth would become more like heaven.

In the ancient world, most people possessed a three-tiered view of reality: There was earth (where humans live), there were “the heavens” (where the gods lived; this was generally thought to be up in the sky), and “below the earth” (where the dead existed). And in the Hebrew mind, each realm was ruled by a particular force. The heavens—or “heaven”—was governed by the will of God. All things in heaven are as God intended them to be. Earth, on the other hand, was governed by many “wills.”

One Hebrew poet says it this way-

“The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind” (Psalm 115:16, emphasis mine).

So the realm that is governed by God has one kingdom; the realm that is governed by humans has billions of kingdoms.

If I want something that somebody else has and I decide to go to war in order to get that thing, I am pitting my kingdom against someone else’s. Two kingdoms are coming into conflict with one another.

Every single conflict in the history of humanity can be traced back to a tension between multiple kingdoms.

But when Jesus prays, he prays that God’s kingdom would come on earth as it already has in heaven.

Jesus is praying that earth would become more like heaven.

So we have all of these people who keep talking about all of the humans getting out of here and going up to heaven, which is somewhere else. But at the same time, we have Jesus praying to God that heaven would come down into this realm and that the world we inhabit would look more like God intended it to be.

What is Jesus praying for?

He is praying that each of us would help make this world look more like God intended it to be.

The psalmist says that God has given the earth to humanity. Perhaps Jesus is praying that humanity would give it back.

Perhaps this is what it means to be part of a redemptive movement: We are in the process of making this world more and more as it was always meant to be.

Read Part 4

"Hallowed Be Your Reputation" (The Lord's Prayer, Part 2)

This post is Part 2 in an ongoing series on Jesus' prayer in Matthew 6 (a.k.a., "The Lord's Prayer"). Read Part 1.

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A few weeks ago, my wife and I hired a company to come to our house and clean the carpets. They did a good job, and when they were done, one of the guys came over to me and said, “You know, if you go onto Facebook and give us a good review, we’ll give you a twenty percent discount” (and of course, I did just that).

Why does a carpet cleaning company care if I write a good review on Facebook?

Because they understand that good reviews on social media websites will generate more business. Every good review contributes to their overall reputation, and in this world of online sharing and opinion giving, a reputation can make or break a small company. Before the Internet, the general understanding was that if you received good (or bad) service from a company, you would tell two friends (and they would tell two friends, and they would tell two friends, etc.). But now, with the click of a button, a person can tell every single other person that they know. A company’s reputation can be made or destroyed over the course of a busy afternoon.

In the ancient world, they didn’t use the word “reputation.” They used the word “name.”

A name was not merely a word you would use to talk about someone; a person’s name was their very essence in the world—it was who they were and how other people perceived them.

There are places in the New Testament where followers of Jesus are talking about their work and travel, and they will say something like, “We do all of these things in the name of Christ Jesus.” They are not merely saying that they throw around the name of Jesus whenever they do something, as if it were a catchphrase. They are saying that they are engaging the world with someone else’s reputation in mind.

In this series, we’re looking at Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 6 (The Lord’s Prayer). Jesus begins his prayer by saying, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

“Hallowed be God’s name” was a common Hebrew expression: Kiddush Hashem.

Kiddush Hashem means to interact with other people in such a way that they would love God even if they don’t know God.

Lois Tverberg writes this:

"The rabbis described [Kiddush Hashem] as one of three things: to live a life of integrity; to do some heroic deed, like risking one’s life to save another; or even to be martyred to honor God” (Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus. 87.)

The whole idea is for people to perform good deeds with God’s reputation in mind.

So when Jesus prays “hallowed be your name,” he is praying that God’s reputation would be beloved all over the earth and that the people who know God would be the agents of that sentiment.

Conversely, there were ways that people were known for profaning the name of God. Basically, if you publicly did something evil and associated God with it, you were profaning God’s name.

So if someone has ever told you that God hates someone, they are profaning God’s name.

If someone has ever used the name of God to leverage their position of power to manipulate, control, or abuse other people, they are profaning God’s name.

Jesus begins his prayer by acknowledging how much power humanity has regarding God’s reputation.

Jesus is not saying, “May we say the name of God as often as possible and with as much self-righteousness as we can muster.” Rather, he is saying, “May we live in such a way that will make people see how loving, beautiful, and redemptive this God really is.”

So what do we do?

We think of others when we want to think of ourselves.

We give when we want to take.

We stop trying to control other people and simply allow them to engage their own journeys.

We seek to make the world a better place.

As we perform these acts, we are praying with our bodies, "Kiddush Hashem."

Go to Part 3

"Our Father?" (The Lord's Prayer Series, Part 1)

This post is the first part in a series on Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 6, also known as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

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I grew up hearing that God was my “father.” I mean, I already had a father, but God was also my father.

This metaphor about God being “our father” has always been pretty easy for me to connect with. I have a great dad, and we have always been close. So when Sunday school teachers and pastors would tell me that God was like my father, I was cool with it. It made me think of God as a strong, safe, loving presence in my life.

The “God-as-father” language is not quite so accessible for everybody. I’ve even met a few people who say they stopped believing in God because of this very metaphor. “If God is like my father, I don’t want to be anywhere near him,” they say. For some people, the idea of a father reminds them of some of their most fearful, tragic, and unhappy memories.

Not unlike many things in the realm of faith, the language about God being our father serves as a kind of Rorschach test—everyone sees something different when they encounter it.

A major reason we use this language about God is because Jesus used it when he prayed. In Matthew 6, when Jesus teaches his followers how to pray, he begins by saying, “Our Father in heaven…” (Matthew 6:9).

When Jesus prays, he calls God “Father.”

(This is not the only time Jesus does this. He also prays to God as Father in Matthew 11 and John 17)

In calling God Father, Jesus is connecting to two dimension of how we are invited to think about God: Legacy and Intimacy.

Dimension #1: Legacy

In ancient language, the idea of “father” was not limited to the person who helped conceive you. It was much bigger than that.

In the book of Deuteronomy, there is a specific offering that people are instructed to give. Before presenting the offering, they are told to pray a specific prayer. This prayer begins with the phrase “My father was wandering Aramean” and proceeds to briefly tell the story of how the people of Israel became slaves in Egypt before being liberated by God. The story begins hundreds of years before the prayer is given, and yet every person who prays the prayer is told to say “My father was a wandering Aramean.” Of course, the prayer is not telling these two million people that they all have the same biological father and that he is over five hundred years old. No, the word “father” here refers to their common ancestor and the origin of their story.

In the book of John, Jesus gets into a debate with some religious people, and they begin to argue over the notion of “father.”

I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

“Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things” (John 8:38-40, emphasis mine).

When Jesus and these religious people talk about Abraham (the ancestor of all Hebrew people), they call him their father. Jesus argues that Abraham is not, in fact, their father because they don’t act as if they were Abraham’s “children.”

When Jesus talks about the idea of “father” he speaks in terms of the legacy we have inherited and the story we are participating in.

So perhaps people struggle to identify with God as Father because they have been given a crappy story. Or perhaps people struggle with this language because they don’t feel as if they are connected to something bigger and more profound than themselves.

Jesus calls God Father because he knows his place within the larger story. He is connected to something rich and powerful, and he is drawing from a very deep well.

Dimension #2: Intimacy

When most people talk about God as Father, they are speaking in terms of intimacy. They are pointing out that they feel close to God. I think this is also reflected in Jesus’ prayers.

When Jesus is terrified and in agony, he cries out to God using the Aramaic word Abba, which is a very intimate term for a father. Abba is not merely a word that refers to an ancient ancestor—it is a term of closeness and personal connection. When Jesus calls God Abba, he is expressing that God feels near, or at least that he desperately wants God to feel near.

Later on, when a writer named Paul would try and describe how God interacts with humanity, he would write this:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (Romans 8:14-16).

When Paul talks about God as father, he uses this same intimate word—Abba. He talks about how we are adopted, which was a sacred, irrevocable practice in his world. For Paul, we are God’s children, not merely in the sense that God created us, but that God is aware of us, accepts us, and loves us. For both Jesus and Paul, there is an intimacy to God’s father-ness.

So when Jesus prays to “Our Father in heaven,” he is tapping into something that is at once both enormous in scope and intimate in practice. He is reaching deep into his own story and connecting it to a much larger story while also making a personal connection with God.

Perhaps you feel disconnected from any kind of story or legacy. Perhaps the absence of a father has caused you to ask lots of questions about your own value and significance. If that is your story, Jesus’ prayer reminds us that we are invited to participate in something much larger than we ever thought possible.

When Jesus prays, he prays with an awareness of both legacy and intimacy.

May we find our place in the larger story.

May we draw closer to this God who invites us to call him Father.

Read Part 2.

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Note: If you want to read more about the idea of God as Father, I recommend the following books:

Father Fiction by Donald Miller

Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen