Sermon for March 11th

It’s one thing to have faith, to believe in God. It’s quite another thing to believe that this God you believe in actually cares for you and died for you. It’s one thing to pray that God’s will is done. It’s quite another thing to pray that God’s will is done through you—using you, your gifts and your life.

There was a magazine article I was told about in seminary that said that most young people today think of God as being far off, looking at the Earth from a distance, deciding on right and wrong up in heaven, up in space somewhere, and then rewarding or punishing us at the end of life. But this is NOT the God that the scriptures witness to. The God who loves you says this, through his Son Jesus Christ, “I will not leave you orphaned I am coming to you.” He is not a far off God. He is an up-close God.

And we pray that God always stays close. This is why we often sing, on Sunday mornings, “Create in me a clean heart oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.” This presumes a couple of things: first that you are in God’s presence already or else you could not be cast out of it. And second, that God has given you his Holy Spirit or else it could not be taken from you.

Throughout the next several weeks, we are going to go through the Lord’s prayer and try to understand what kind of a God you have and what praying to him means for your life. In the Lord’s Prayer, you pray that God always stays close. But not only that, you pray that he stays close to you . . . and, that you might realize it and believe it. You pray that God is not just some noun, a person, place or thing, up in heaven, far off, like a star. You pray that God is a verb in your life, that he is active and working, and you pray that he creates faith in your heart not just today but every day after that as well. You pray not only that his Will is done in the world, but that he comes close and gets his will done through you, in your life.

When you pray, you call on God’s name, your Daddy in heaven, and ask him to be God for you, to be holy, to be a powerful creator for you, his creature. Next, you ask for faith. “Thy kingdom come.” When the time comes for prayer, it’s time to ask for the faith to finish the prayer--to believe that your words are being whispered right into God’s ears and not just floating off into outer space. You pray for the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to believe that your prayers are listened to and heard and answered. Not by some far away God, but by an up-close and personal God.

Martin Luther wrote that God’s kingdom would come whether we liked it or not, but in our prayers, we pray that God’s kingdom would come to us. God is still God whether we pray to him or not. But we pray that God would give us the faith to believe that we are his beloved children. That he’s working with us in mind. Jesus promised, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

I’ve been told by several people that all they pray is, “Thy Will be done.” They argue that to say anything more would be pushing their will onto God and that would not be right. Well, to be honest, God’s will is done with or without your prayers. In the Lord’s Prayer, you are asking that just as God gives you faith in your heart, you pray that this faith becomes a living and active faith, overflowing with God’s good works done through you: your body, your mind, your mouth and your heart.

When you pray, “Thy will be done”. You are praying that once you are given faith, that you do not compromise that faith in your life, but that God’s will is done here on Earth through you. Remember when Jesus prayed in the garden of Gesthemane? He prayed that God might take away the path of suffering he was destined for. But then Jesus said, “But not my will, but thy will be done.” This wasn’t a fatalistic statement saying, “But oh well, you’ll do whatever you want anyway.” This was a radical statement. Jesus wasn’t just telling his Father to “Do his thing.” But to “Do your thing, dear father, through me.” Or, as Saint Augustine put it later in his famous prayer to God, “Let me be an instrument of thy peace.”

Your God is an up close and personal God. He comes to make a home with you. He comes to place faith within your heart. And when you pray this Lent, especially when you pray the Lord’s Prayer, understand that you are not just praying to some heavenly being somewhere out there, but to your heavenly Father who has made your heart his kingdom and intends on working HIS will on this Earth through you. Amen.