This is my sermon for the Seventh Sunday after the Pentecost, Year C. You can find the lectionary here.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asked by one of his disciples to teach them how to pray.  And in what seems like an uncharacteristic response given that Jesus often responds to questions with yet more questions, Jesus teaches a prayer.  And it is a prayer that we pray together every Sunday and which many of us pray daily.

If we were to outline this prayer, it might look something like this:

1. Praise God’s name.
2. Pray that everyone gets what they need.
3. Commit to a way of living in community and discipleship.

As I read this prayer in Luke’s Gospel with the parable, which Dr. Amy-Jill Levine calls, “The Parable of the Pushy Pal,” I realize that, as familiar as this prayer is, as commonly prayed as it is, I am not sure that we always understand what it actually means.   

I also find it somewhat ironic that a parable – parables being known, perhaps being notorious for raising more questions, causing more confusion – acts as a commentary, an explanation, of a prayer that is known and prayed fervently throughout Christendom.

The Lord’s Prayer, as it is commonly known, is far more radical and counter-cultural than we may realize.  It is rooted in the ancient Jewish tradition of praying daily for what you need to shape your so that you are able to live righteously, and that is “faith” as a verb, what we often refer to here as “living our faith.”  It is that kind of faith that we hope to shape. It is something of a roadmap to living our days as God would have us live them to achieve God’s dream on earth.

Jesus is giving this prayer to the disciples, to us, at a time  of political conflict, at a time in which he is working day in and day out to all attention to social, political, and economic injustice, to ensure that everybody gets what they need to thrive. It is offered at a time in which the institutions and religious legalism make it really difficult to reconcile the way people are forced to live with Jesus’ mission of mercy, justice, compassion, and hope.

The prayer starts with a command.  We are to praise God’s name.  We are to ground everything we say and do in an awareness of the sacredness and mystery of God’s holy name, the sacredness and mystery of the Divine.  We are to acknowledge that God is God and we are not.  And that leads to everything we pray after that.

We ask that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Note that there is an immediacy to this.  In asking that God’s will be done her on earth, we are asking that it be done now, not at some future time when earth is not more.

What we may not understand is that this request is a bit dangerous, at least for those of us who fear the kind of change that is necessary to realizing God’s dream now.  This is a prayer that is all about “us,” all of us, all of God’s children, all of God’s creation, and not about “I.”  Though we pray it personally, we always pray it “give us.”  It’s about building community.

We ask God to give us – all of us – what we need to live each day, no more and no less.  Coupled with the immediacy of asking that God’s will be done on earth, that means that we are praying that all of God’s people get what they need now, as as soon as they need it, not when it’s more comfortable or more convenient for us to do our part. 

This is the choice that the “pushy pal” in the parable is making.  He chooses to disturb his sleeping neighbor because it is the only way he can feed his unexpected and hungry guest.  This man chooses to risk his status as a  good neighbor to ensure that he extends the radical hospitality that Jesus would have him extend.

In doing this, he reminds us that God’s will is not magically achieved.  We are Christ’s Body in the world.  We are Christ’s hands and feet.  We do the work, the on-the-ground work, of ensuring that everyone has what they need.

We then acknowledge that we don’t always get this right.  We ask God to forgive us for our failures and misdeeds.  And we ask this knowing that part of the work God has given us to do is to forgive others for the ways in which they, too, need forgiveness, for the ways they have hurt us and other people. 

Seeking God’s forgiveness while forgiving others is part of the whole.  We need both if we are to be part of the realization of God’s will being done here on earth now.

And then, because we know that in our brokenness we need reassurance that we can praise God’s holy name in all that we are and all that we do, every single day, we ask God to help us stay the course.

This Gospel gives me hope that as people of faith we can make a difference in God’s world now.  I heard this week a description of prayer that brought this home:

Prayer is powerful…Are we living with the understanding that when we pray, God enters into the situation about which we’re praying and uses the work of the Spirit to create real change. [This is my aside:  That is the Spirit who works in and through us.]…

Prayers are aspirational.  They are speaking into existence things that we hope will happen, but do we actually trust that they will?”  (The Rev. Will Ed Green)

I would add to that the question of whether we are willing to risk the kind of change that embodying Jesus’s radical love and hospitality requires.  The Lord’s Prayer is a call to action, which brings with it certain risk that we have to let go of some things we hold dear, some of the ways of living and being with which we are so very comfortable in order to ensure that everyone has what they need.

I am reminded of the adage, “Be careful what you ask for.”  And I pray that God gives each of us the strength and the courage to be a part of changing the world from the nightmare it is for so many, into the dream that God has for it (to paraphrase Presiding Bishop Michael Curry).   Amen.

Copyright 2022 The Rev. Paula J. Toland

This is my sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, preached on July 3, 2022. The lectionary is here.

In October of 2020, seven months of living in a deadly global pandemic in a year that also saw an escalation of deadly racial violence and an intensification of truly frightening political maneuvering around such issues as how to care for infants and children caught up in the debate about immigration, I was weary.  I was so weary that I wrote a newsletter message about being weary.  Although it may be the height of hubris to quote one’s own writing, I share that message with you now:

“Beloved Community,

Are you as weary as I am?  Weary of the constant influx of news that reminds you of how broken the world is?  With the seemingly never ending tide of news about war, about conflict? About an almost unimaginable array of ways we fail to love one another as Jesus calls us to do?  About our apparent creative genius in finding new ways to ignore the call to respect the dignity and worth of every human being and the world? 

Even in the midst of a life that is full and rich and good, on this journey deeper into the heart of God with all of you in this amazing community, this week I have been feeling weary.  I have found myself wondering why it is I think I can make any difference at all to address problems that are far beyond my resources and capacity.

And then, as she so often does, the Holy Spirit (“wild and free” as my former bishop says) reminded me that the call to me simply is to be a faithful disciple, to live my life in such a way that whatever I do, small or not, is done with love for God’s people and creation.  It is not up to me to solve the problems, but it is up to me to be a part of the solution.  And that shifted my thinking, lifting the burden of weariness, at least for now.

I hope this message, from the Talmud, speaks to you as it does to me:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

“Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.”

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

Peace & Blessings,

Paula+”

You may be wondering why this journey into the newsletter archives. Or perhaps you get it without explanation.  The world seems even more broken today than it did then.  I find myself just as weary, though now often without an awareness of the energy or resources to do the work that needs to be done, even as I understand that work as a call on my discipleship just as strongly as I ever have.

As I’ve rallied for sensible gun laws on the national mall, listened to a man yell, “I’ve got a gun!” and witnessed hundreds of terrified people stampede to escape the threat, I’ve grown weary.

As I’ve watched the January 6^th hearings and read the news from the Supreme Court, with decisions that strip the rights of women to control their own bodies; Miranda rights, gun safety laws, and climate change regulations diluted, I’ve grown wearier.

As I’ve talked to my young adult daughter about how scared and despairing she is about the future ahead of her, it’s impossible to believe but I’ve grown even wearier. 

And when I’ve thought about how many times we’ve fought these same fights over the years, I’ve wondered if it is even remotely possible to make the kind of difference that needs to be made. 

I’ve been angry. I’ve been afraid. And I have been wearier, more exhausted than I ever remember being.  There are days I feel as if I am looking up at the bottom of my hope, trying to see a glimmer of light to motivate me to do the work that I’ve been doing since I developed a social consciousness, some 50 years ago, all over again as if for the first time.

And then I read today’s lectionary.  That wily Holy Spirit got me again. This line from Galatians seemed to jump off the page:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

It was as if the Holy Spirit was speaking directly to the weariness of my heart, reminding me of what I know to be true:  the call to people of faith is to persevere.  Working for the good of all whenever we have the opportunity is an essential element of Christian discipleship.    

It doesn’t matter that the work that needs doing now is work that has already been done.  We work for the good of all.

It doesn’t matter that the resources of a seemingly unstoppable minority of privileged, powerful people can wreak havoc on the lives of a majority of the rest of us.  We work for the good of all.

We advocate for the rights of women and children, immigrants and the poor, people of color and all whose voice is not heard and whose basic humanity is often denied, and for God’s creation.  We grab onto our hope, even if our grasp feels tenuous, less full of hope than it has in the past. 

We do not let the enormity of the world’s grief or our own weariness overtake our faith in the promises that God has made to us and to all people.  Those promises are faithful and true. We follow Jesus, no matter what the rest of the world seems to be doing or not doing. We invite the Holy Spirit to work in and through us, reflecting God’s love and God’s light in all that we are and all that we do. We do this because it is the work we have been given to do. We live our faith.  We persevere. We show God’s love for all people all of the time. Full stop. 

Copyright 2022 The Rev. Paula J. Toland