Like a Child(27March2011)

Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus M8 (11 03 27)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Like a Child
Text: Mark 10:13-16
BIG IDEA: Jesus calls us to bless children and those who cannot repay us.
As a 10 year old—even though I was underage—I talked my way into getting a paper route with the Vancouver Sun… I was told by the paper shack manager I was too young… I responded by saying, “Sir, I’ve wanted to be a paper boy ever since I was five years old… how many of your other carriers can claim, they’ve been wanting to do their job for half of their life? I may be small, but come rain, snow, sleet or hail… I shall deliver…”
At least that’s what I remember… probably what I really said… “Come on… please give me the job!” I don’t remember how many papers I had on my route. I do remember in the front of my BMX, I had an ET style paper rack bolted to front my handle bars, filled with so many papers my bike ended up steering itself. Sometimes, I also had two paper bags one slung over each shoulder—like a Mexican gun fighter with really big guns and sometimes I wore one Sherpa style on my back with a strap over my forehead.
I know we don’t get many white Christmases here, but one year here in the Lower Mainland there was a big snow fall… too much snow for me to ride my bike… even too much snow for someone to drive a car… I remember looking out the window and dreading the fact that I would have to walk my entire route dragging my load behind me…
My mom tried to cheer me up by saying… “I can see how anxious you are, don’t worry… In the garage, there’s a sled… and I’ll help you pull…” At the age of 10 I didn’t know who God was, but looking there in snow, I had chance to see “God with some skin… wearing with mittens.”
This morning we're going to see a text which shows us how much God loves children. We see his love for children in the face of Jesus Christ who the Scriptures affirm is God with some skin – God in human flesh. As Dale Bruner has said all that God wants to show us about himself – he shows us in his Son Jesus Christ.

If you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark 10, verse 13:
13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.
We read in the text how people were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them and bless them, but Jesus’ disciples rebuked them. At this time Jesus’ students are hoping that Jesus will set up a kind of political kingdom where he will free the Jews from under the oppressive fist of Rome. So Jesus’ students naturally feel that Jesus should not be wasting his time with little children who do not wield political power, who can do nothing to advance their campaign, so they begin to hover around Jesus like over-scrupulous secret service agents with sun glasses and earphones and shoo away parents who want to bring their children to Jesus and have him bless them.
But Jesus is irate and he says, “Let the children come to me. Anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter in.” Then we read that he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them, and blessed them.
In Jesus’ day children were socially powerless. In his day, because many people were impoverished and living day to day, children would often die before reaching adolescence. In the poorest places like Egypt, scholars estimate that perhaps one-half of those born died by the age of twelve. Though this was not true of the Jews, poor families of some other cultures in the Roman world had a practice of discarding their babies if they thought they would be unable to support them. So many people in Jesus day didn’t feel children were necessarily a good long term investment.
Jesus again flips the values of the world upside down. He treats people--who are considered unimportant by the world--as precious.
Though there are many differences between Jesus’ first century world and our own, and there are many things that are still the same. In Jesus’ world, as in ours, people valued those with money, power, and beauty. That is certainly true of our world. Before becoming a parent, I travelled more often and most years I would achieve some kind of special elite status with Air Canada. I (unlike now) was regularly upgraded to executive class. When I discovered that I was going to get a free upgrade to executive class, I would feel happy. I thought if I fly today, the flight attendants will be nice to me. They will be attentive. I am not going to get treated like I am a nuisance (unless, of course, I act like one). I have never bought an executive class ticket. I can’t see myself ever buying one of those. They are so expensive. But when I have flown executive class, flight attendants assumed I must have money or be someone special. I got treated that way.
Jesus flips this value upside down. He treats people without money, without power, without prestige like they are passengers in first class. As we follow him, we are called to do the same. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to be a counter-cultural community. One of the ways we do that is by treating children, our elders (who in our time—unlike the ancient world—often feel invisible as they age), people of minority groups who have been discriminated against in our society (like the First nations people who have likely experienced more injustice than any other group in Canada)… like they are first class passengers…like they are really precious to God…because they are. It is very subtle and often unconscious, but we human beings, like those first disciples of Jesus, are drawn to treat people with money, power, beauty, status more favourably because we think they can advance us in some way.
Some days I do a morning workout at one of the near-by gyms. There is a young woman at one of the gyms I work out at who is very athletic. She’s attractive. And I notice that the guys in the gym are eager to talk to her, eager to spot her when she is lifting weights. The other day she did a countless number of reverse pull-ups. I was impressed (for the 3rd service. As I was working out with Antonio one time, I was getting prepared for a chin-up in my workout. I was able to do 26 in his presence motivated by the fear of not wanting to be humiliated in the presence of our boot camp instructor.) But she did a countless number that morning. I was curious and wanted to walk up to her and ask, “How many pull-ups have done thus far?” If you are attractive and athletic, you are just going to get more attention in the gym and in other social contexts.
What if we followed Jesus and adopted his upside values and treated people like they were precious, like they were first class passengers, like they were beautiful, as all people are in God’s sight, regardless of whether they had money, power, status or beauty as defined by the advertising industry? If we followed Jesus and really loved kids and our elders, those who are poor, and those who aren’t conventionally a beauty as defined by the advertising industry, those who cannot advance us in a worldly way our community would have a unique air in Vancouver. We would be different.
Here in the passage, we see that Jesus welcomed the children. He took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them. Here we see Jesus offering children, these powerless little people his time, his touch, his voice, his prayers.
Some of you may know Max and Esther Depree. They have a granddaughter named Zoe, the Greek word for life. Max said, “She was born prematurely and weighed one pound, seven ounces, so small that my wedding ring could slide up her arm to her shoulder. The doctor who first examined her told us that she had a 5 to 10 percent chance of living three days.” When Max and Esther scrubbed up for their first visit and saw Zoe lying in her clear plastic incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit, she had two IVs in her navel, one in her foot, a monitor on each side of her chest, and a respirator tube and a feeding tube in her mouth.
Max continues, “To complicate matters, Zoe's biological father had jumped ship the month before Zoe was born. Realizing this, a wise and caring nurse named Ruth gave me my instructions.”
"For the next several months, at least, you're the surrogate father. I want you to come to the hospital every day to visit Zoe, and when you come, I want you to rub her body and her legs and arms with the tip of your finger. While you're caressing her, you should tell her over and over how much you love her, because she has to be able to connect your voice to your touch."
(Zoe miraculously survived and thrived.)
Children, our elders, and the forgotten people of the world need God’s voice and touch and so he gave us not only Jesus Christ, but wants to bring his voice and touch through us. Saint Teresa of Avila has said, “Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”
(BTW, we never quite out grow our need for God’s voice and touch. Henri Nouwen perceptively observes: Success, popularity, and power are great temptations, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. We pursue success, popularity, power—but what we really want is the love and respect that come from these.)
But our text today is primarily about loving children and the young—and by offer children our time, touch (I know this is a sensitive word—but I obviously mean appropriate and not boundary violating touch), our voice and prayers.
A survey taken recently here in Canada shows that for young people today, family and friends, people in their faith community have greater impact as role models than celebrities: Taylor Lautner (in the Twilight Movies) or Miley Cyrus, or Justin Bieber.

A poll taken this year asked teenagers in US identify the person they admired most as a role model, other than their parents. More than two out of three of the teenagers said that their role models are the people they know best: a relative, a teacher, a coach, someone in their faith community, friends. (The survey also demonstrated that for most teenagers their primary role model was not a celebrity, a singer, an actor, an athlete, a politician.)
And like Jesus as we welcome children and offer them our time, touch, voice and prayers we never know the impact that we will make. Usually in the short-term we have no idea.
Forty years ago a Philadelphia congregation watched as three 9-year-old boys were baptized and joined the church. Not long after, unable to continue with its dwindling membership, the church sold the building and disbanded.
One of those boys was Dr. Tony Campolo, author and Christian sociologist at Eastern College, Pennsylvania. Several years ago he preached here at Tenth.
Tony Campolo remembers:
“Years later when I was doing research in the archives of our denominations, I decided to look up the church report for the year of my baptism. There was my name, and Dick White's. Dick now a missionary. Bert Newman, now a professor of theology at an African seminary, was also there. Then I read the church report for 'my' year: "It has not been a good year for our church. We have lost 27 members. Three joined, and they were only children."
We simply don’t know the impact we can have when we offer a child or a young person the gifts of our time, touch, voice, and prayers.
In this our passage we’re looking at today we see that ministry to children is very close to Jesus’ heart and therefore very close to God’s heart. If you are a parent one of your most important ministries is your family.
Mother Teresa was once approached by a woman named Colleen Evans. Colleen had just heard about Mother Teresa’s work among the poor in Calcutta, India. Colleen was inspired. She wanted to do something significant for the kingdom of God. She approached Mother Teresa and asked, “Mother, you are doing something great for God. I want to do something great for God. Can you give me some word of counsel?” Mother Teresa looked at her and said, “Are you married?” Colleen said, “Yes.” She said, “If you want to something great, go home and love your husband. Do you have children?” “Yes.” “Go home and love your children.”
Many women and men, of course, will have a vocation that is broader than simply the immediate family. We can be called to another occupation, perhaps a ministry beyond our family. But if we are parents, one of the greatest ministries we will ever have, and likely one of the least glamorous, is to serve as a pastor to our own children—to offer them our time, touch, voice, and prayers. Whether we do or do not have children of our own, we can love children.
As a number of people have observed, it’s often someone other than a parent who has the greatest spiritual impact on a young person life because the parent-child relationship can become so complicated. So, if don’t have children don’t think you can’t have an impact on a child. Your very presence in someone’s life can make an impact—even when they seem not that interested.
When I was single, I used to spend time with a few kids. One of the kids was about 10 years old. One afternoon when I was at his house, I saw that he had a football in the garage and picked it up. “Do you like football?” I asked. “I really don’t know how to play football,” Ethan replied. (One of the reasons, he may not have known how to play football was that his dad died when he was a younger boy.) It had been a long time since I had played football, but I grabbed the ball and showed Ethan how to how to spread his fingers across the laces, cock the ball behind his ear, and release it and snap his wrist counter clockwise. We spent part of the afternoon throwing the football back and forth. He didn’t seem that interested, but it was a way to pass the time. A few weeks later, his mom told me that he keeps telling her, “Mom, this is how you throw a ball.” He took the ball with him wherever he went--including tagging along with his mother on a grocery store errand.
Sometimes, kids may not seem that interested when we’re them. Sometimes they may seem a little bored, but the impact can be greater than we are aware at the time.
Why do we have all kinds of ministries to children? It’s because children are precious to Jesus and the kingdom of God belongs to people with childlike qualities:
We are starting a new ministry called LiveWire (show poster) in May, and we are hoping that many kids in Grades 6 and 7 will come to the church after school, 3 days a week, to hang out.
Alvin Ram (show photo) will serve as the ministry leader. Alvin is from Vancouver, and has been involved in youth ministry at his church in Victoria (where he has been living while completing his BA at UVic) and through the Youth Custody system where he has been helping troubled youth make life and faith choices. He loves to use basketball as a way to reach out to youth. Our hope and prayer is that through sports, art, cooking, and other fun activities, Alvin and his team will build mentoring relationships with kids from grade 6 and 7 in our neighbourhood.
We want to impact these kids before they reach high school, to help them envision their future as a good place where they can make a positive difference in the world. We will encourage them to become part of the Tenth community, and respond to God’s love for them and his good plan for their lives. If you are interested in getting involved, offering some your time, touch, voice and prayers please contact our children’s ministry pastor Catherine at Catherine@tenth.ca
Another way that we can touch a child’s life is through sponsorship.
Moses Pulei Massai is a man I know from Kenya. Moses grew up a Massai in a home made of cow dung and sticks, and as an adolescent had to kill a lion with his hands as part of his ritual toward manhood. He started school late because his dad doubted it was possible to hold a spear and knife in one hand and books in the other. But his mom really wanted him to get an education, so about age 9 with the sponsorship of World Vision he was able to attend school and also had access to medicine that his family otherwise could not afford when he was sick. During his final year in high school, Moses became a follower of Jesus at a World Vision sponsored youth camp in my senior year of high school. He was eventually able to come to North America and got a PhD in theology. He now teaches theology in both North America and Africa.
Later on in this service you are going to have an opportunity to hear about an opportunity to sponsor World Vision children—many of you are already sponsoring a child through World Vision, or Compassion, or through International China Concern, or through some other ministry organization. If you are not in the practice of sponsoring a child, and you would like to, there is no pressure, this is simply an opportunity to serve a child.
Before that, how do we become people who welcome children, who welcome people who do not have power, status or beauty in the worldly sense (who have an open heart toward our elders)? How do we follow Jesus and become counter-cultural? How do we become his hands, his feet, his eyes, his heart in our world?
In our passage, Jesus says that the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Jesus looked at the children, welcomed them, and said, “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Jesus doesn’t say the Kingdom of God belongs to these children, but to such as these. Jesus is saying that in order to receive the gift of God’s kingdom and of God’s life, we must become like children.
Jesus says, Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.
Unless we become as a little child, we will never enter the kingdom of God.
This is, of course, a metaphor. Jesus here is not romantizing children. Jesus had many younger siblings, so he knew first hand that children can be irritating. They can be annoying. They can be selfish. He is not idealizing children. He not saying “become childish.” He is saying become childlike.
In what ways?
A young child is completely dependent on a parent or a caregiver for their existence. Our 2 1/2 year old son Joey is completely dependent on us as parents. His favorite expression “Mommies—apple juice… Mommy… hungry.”
Joey cannot make macaroni and cheese for himself or even cut an apple for himself. He is dependent on us – and especially on his mommy.
Young children can't negotiate (slightly older children can be very persuasive negotiators).
In the same way, if we are to receive the kingdom of God, if we are to experience life with God, then we need to be utterly dependent on him. Like a young child we can’t negotiate. We can’t say “I have accomplished this and that, therefore you must accept me.” Like a child we come to God utterly dependent, acknowledging there is nothing we can do to scrub away our sins. We acknowledge that we are completely relying on Christ’s sacrificial death for us on the cross for our sins in order to be forgiven. We are wholly relying on the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life to guide us into the way of God.
In order to receive the kingdom we must become childlike in our dependence on God.
There is also another quality of childlikeness that comes to mind. Again, one of the things that I am observing about our 2 ½ year old son Joey is that he lives with an air of confidence that he will be loved by everyone. When he talks, even though most of his talk is gibberish, he expects people to listen and find him interesting. There is a part of me that is fully aware that he will be rudely awakened by the reality of the world at some point. He will be rejected. He will be hurt by someone. But as a little child he expects that people will love him.
And that is the way we are to relate to God—utterly dependent, but also confident of his love for us. As we grasp how deep his love for us is, we will become people who are able to love children, our elders, people without money power status, or worldly beauty.
As I have shared with some of you before, when I was a teenager in high school, I was incredibly insecure. I know most teenagers are insecure, but I was far more insecure than most. I made it my goal to become part of the popular crowd, to become part of the “in” crowd, to be part of the bad boy athlete crowd. I worked really hard and I made it in…just barely, but I did make it in.
One of the things that irked me most was when some kid, some nerd, some loser would try to sit in proximity to our group. I made a point of trying to shoo them away or saying to my friends “we just can’t let people like that sit close to us or our image is going to tank. What will people think?”
Then I met Jesus Christ and my life began to change. One of the kids in my high school who was considered uncool, a nerd, someone who we actually shooed away from the part of the hallway that we “owned,” gave his life to Christ and started coming to my church and our youth group. I started having lunch with him in the school cafeteria. A couple of people started coming up to me and to my sister, too, who started going to the school, would whisper, “Why is it that you are not hanging out with the cool crowd anymore and you are hanging out with this guy?” I thought, “Here is a great irony. I was part of this really popular group and feeling so insecure, but because now that I have this deep sense that God loves me, for the first time in a very, very long time, I am feeling secure and good about myself.” So I had the freedom to connect with this person who is not doing anything for my social image, but I want to connect with because he is my brother in Christ.
It is as we meet Jesus Christ, as our hearts are filled with a sense of his love for us, as we come to Jesus like a little child, and let him bless us, then we can turn and offer our time, our touch, voice and prayers and our blessing to children, to elders, and people who are on the margins of our life. We can give kids and others our time, touch, voice and prayers to people who can do nothing to advance us – because in Christ we have already been advanced – in Christ we've already been offered everything that matters.
(Jay Calder and World Vision Video)

Living for Christ When Dying Is Gain(13Mar2011)

Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus M6 (11 03 13)
Speaker : Ken Shigematsu
Title: Living for Christ When Dying Is Gain
Text: Luke 9:18-27
BIG IDEA: In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for
When I was at a new follower of Jesus Christ at age about 15 or 16 years old and living in North Surrey, I remember watching a film at our church based on a true story called The Cross and the Switchblade. I remember how a young pastor named David Wilkerson from the countryside had read an article in LIFE Magazine about how a teenage gang in New York City had brutally murdered an innocent adolescent. Though he didn't want to go, David sensed God was calling him to work with those troubled teens in New York City and share the love of Christ with them. I don't remember all the details of the movie, but I recall how in one scene David was interacting with a group of gang members and one of them sneered at him and said something like, "You got shoes. I don’t got no shoes.” David then took off his own shoes and gave them to this teenager. David was eventually accepted by gang members in New York City and began a ministry called Teen Challenge.
At the end of the movie, I heard that there was a branch of David's ministry Teen Challenge on Granville Street downtown not far from the Vogue Theatre. On Friday evenings I began volunteering for Teen Challenge. I remember one of the first conversations I had on the streets downtown. It was dark and I was with a man who had long black hair, tattoos on his arms. While I don't remember all the details of the conversation I do remember this vividly. Several times in our conversation he kept asking me, "Have you ever seen someone killed?” “No--I can't say I have.” "I have. I’ve killed someone." My heart began to beat faster, and I tried to appear as calm as possible, but I was intimidated, I was scared. I know this sounds irrational, but I wondered, "Is my life going to end tonight?” While volunteering for Teen Challenge, I got to know people that I would have never become acquainted with otherwise. From time to time, I had the opportunity to talk about the difference that Christ had made in my life or to help refer a young person struggling with drugs or to teen challenges halfway home in Richmond.
Through trial and lots of error, I was learning to engage people whose backgrounds were different from my own, I was learning to share my faith when the opportunity came up, I was keenly aware of how dependent on God I was, and I felt like I was growing spiritually through this experience. As a student leader in my church's youth group, I started inviting my peers to head downtown to Granville Street near the Vogue Theatre to engage other young people… Sometimes it was scary, but it was also exciting too and our faith was becoming alive to us in new ways. But… some parents expressed concern –to me through their children. I remember peers saying to me, "My parents don't want me going downtown on Friday nights--they think it's too dangerous."
I said to my peers: “It's actually more dangerous for you spiritually to be hanging out in the shopping malls on a Friday night or playing video games at home than it is for you to be engaging other young people with a love of Christ downtown.”
One of the paradoxes of the spiritual life is that sometimes choosing what seems safe is actually dangerous for the soul. And sometimes choosing what seems dangerous is actually safer for our spiritual life.
If we overprotect our children or ourselves, ironically we may be exposing ourselves to real danger.
On the first Sunday in January I cited a study from the New York University (NYU Child Study Centre) which reported that educators and research scientists have found that financially-privileged adolescents (defined as coming from households with incomes from $75,000 to $160, 000) are showing growing rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. In the last thirty years adolescent suicide in this group has doubled. The irony is that parents who are only committed to giving their children privilege and safety may be raising children that will become bored, have a sense of entitlement, and look for adventure in the wrong places.
Jesus, on the other hand, invites us into a place of adventure, risk, and danger, in the best sense. He gives us something worth dying for and therefore worth living for.
We’re in a series in what it means to follow the way of Jesus.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Luke 9:18-27.
18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
19 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. 22 And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self? 26 If any of you are ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
27 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is praying in private with his disciples. He looks up and asks the question: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” One of his students replied, “Some say John the Baptist. Another said, “Elijah.” Someone else said, “People say you are a prophet from long ago who has come back to life.” And Jesus looked at them and said, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the Son of the Living God.”
Eight days later (as we saw a few Sundays ago), Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Tabor. His appearance became as bright as a flash of lightning. Moses (who lived 1400 years before that time), and Elijah (who lived 900 years before that time), miraculously appear. And yet God says of Jesus. “This is my beloved Son. This is the One I have chosen. Listen to him.”
Gifted commentator Dale Bruner says that God is saying to us here and in Jesus’ baptism, “All I want to say, I will say through Jesus, all I want to show you about me I will show you through Jesus. If you want to get to know me, get together with Jesus.”
If Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of the world, as God the Father affirms and as Christ himself claims, then in Christ we have someone to live for and someone to die for. If we have something for which to die, then we have something for which to truly live. Perhaps the reason why so many people feel like they have nothing to live for, perhaps part of the reason that suicide rates are so high among privileged young adults, perhaps part of the reason, not all, but part of the reason why so many people of all ages in North America are depressed (some are depressed for biochemical reasons) is because they have nothing to die for, and therefore have nothing to live for.
Jesus Christ gives us something to live for and something to die for. He says, “ Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
If anyone other than Jesus Christ was saying this, this would sound incredibly arrogant. If I as a Christian minister were to say, "If you want to learn from me, you must daily sit in your electric chair ready to die for me”– you would need to dismiss me as a crazy megalomaniac. If Christ were only a good teacher or only a great prophet we too would have to dismiss him as a nutty, megalomaniac because he is calling his followers to die for him. Because Jesus said be willing to die for me, because he said things like "I saw Satan fall from heaven" we can't say that he was simply a good teacher or a prophet. He was either less than these things or he was more than these things. He was either a lunatic or he was who he claimed to be – the unique son of the Living God. And if he is the unique son of the Living God, if he is in fact God in human flesh, the Messiah the Savior of the world, then he has the right to call us to lay down our lives for him. And this is precisely what he's calling us to do.
The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t, as some preachers suggest, a path through which you will be assured of material success or perfect physical health. That message is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about self-improvement. It is not about becoming your best self right now. The gospel, according to Jesus, is “take up your cross and follow me.” As a German pastor, Dietrich Boenhoffer, who laid down his own life as he led an underground resistance movement against Hitler, said, “It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for.
Yes, there is a cost in following Jesus Christ. It will cost you your life, but there is also a much greater cost in not following Jesus Christ. There is a greater cost in non-discipleship. In not following him, you will lose your only opportunity for true life in this world and in the age to come.
Jesus said,
. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?
What good is it, Jesus says, if a person gains the whole world and yet forfeits their very self. Here he is referring to our true self, that inner part of us, the core of who we are that lasts forever. I recently watched the BBC documentary called “Big Silence,” which follows 5 ordinary people taking time out of their daily lives to go on an 11-day silent retreat with a monk. One of the people is a guy named Jon, who is a very successful entrepreneur about 50 years old, drives a black Mercedes, and doesn’t believe in God. He is an agnostic. But he says, “All of my life I have wanted to get money and power and now I have lots of both… I’ve been married twice… I have kids. But something is missing in my life. I haven’t found satisfaction.” So he goes on this silent retreat with a Benedictine monk, hoping to find an answer.
As Jesus says, what good is it if a man or a woman gains a whole world, and forfeits their soul in this world and in the age to come?
What does Jesus mean when he says, “Take up your cross”? As of this past Wednesday, we have been in Lent and I don’t want to in any way belittle people who sincerely observe Lent. I do so myself and find it helpful. When Jesus says, “Take up your cross,” he is not referring to giving up chocolate or wine for the 40 days of Lent. When he says, “Take up your cross,” he is not referring to enduring the snoring of your spouse or your roommate, or the anxiety you are experiencing because your aunt has Alzheimer’s. I am not saying those are not difficult experiences, but that’s not what Jesus means when he says, “Take up your cross.”
When Jesus said, “Take up your cross,” in his context it meant being willing to take up an instrument of violent execution (use the cross as prop and put on your shoulder). It wouldn’t mean to put on your shoulder a horizontal beam, an instrument of violent and painful execution and carry it to a site of public execution, usually past a jeering mob. Jesus is saying, “If you want to follow me, you must be ready to face literal scorn as you walk to your death.” Voluntarily picking up a cross means you are willing to deny yourself and lay your life down,
For some of our brothers and sisters, it will literally mean actual death.
Michael Ramsden who is from Saudi Arabia, shared this story at a conference in Capetown, South Africa that I had been invited to, but could not attend. I saw to his message online.
“A man and his wife were driving through a remote part of a certain country that Michael is not free to name. As they stopped to buy water, the wife looked and saw a man with a long beard with a machine gun leaning against the wall. She turned to her husband and said, ‘You need to give that man a Bible.’ The husband looked at the bearded man with the gun and said, ‘No, I don’t think it is right.’ She said, ‘No, I am sure it is right. Go over there and give him a Bible.’ She put a Bible in her husband’s pocket, and said, ‘Make sure you give this to him.’ The man went into the shop and bought the water. The man with long beard with the gun followed him into the shop. The husband came out of the shop carrying bags with bottles of water. The man with the gun came out of the shop, and then leaned against the wall again. As they drove away, the wife said to the husband, ‘You didn’t give him the Bible, did you?’ He said, ‘I prayed about. It’s not right thing to do.’ ‘You should have.’ ‘No, I shouldn’t have.’ They had a fight. She bowed her head in car and prayed out loud, ‘O LORD, on the Day of Judgment may that man’s blood be on my husband’s head, and not mine. He was the one who want not give away the Bible.’
At this point the husband stopped the car. They had a friendly marital discussion. With that, the husband said, ‘If you want me to die, I will.’ They drove back into town. He walked up to the man with the gun and presented him with the Bible. The man took it, kissed it on both sides, and said, ‘I do not live here. Three days ago I had a dream in which I was told to wait here for someone to give me a book, the Book of Life. Thank you for giving me this book.’ Five years later that man was martyred for his faith.”
Jesus Christ demands everything … He says, “Me… My gospel is something worth living. It is something worth dying for.”
Taking up our cross may mean we expose ourselves to danger in serving others.

In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for.
A little closer to home, what does is it mean for us to take up our cross and follow him? In a parallel passage in Matthew 10, Jesus talks about how anyone who wants to follow him must take up their cross and follow him. He says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” These words would have sounded shocking to most of Jesus’ hearers--loving family members, especially their parents, was one of the highest duties in Judaism. Family loyalties were much stronger in Jesus’ day than in ours. Jesus makes it clear that in order to follow him he must become more important than our relationships with our mother, father, son, daughter and even our spouse. You have probably heard stories of people who decided to follow Christ in other parts of the world. Stories in North America are not as dramatic—there can be a cost here too.
I hear the stories of young people who say their parents would rather have them partying, having recreational sex and using recreational drugs than have them become a follower of Jesus Christ. I know someone who gave his life to Jesus Christ when he was in high school. One day he brought a Bible home. His dad became so angry with him that he started shouting at him and picked up his Bible and threw it down the hallway. For some young people, the greatest act of rebellion they can commit against their own families is to follow Jesus. But Jesus says, “I must be more important than your family.” He says, “Yes, of course, love your family. Honour your parents. But if you have to make a choice between honouring your parents, your spouse, your children and me…choose me.”
If you are a parent or become a parent, part of what it means to put Jesus first means that Jesus, and not your child, is the most important priority in your life. If your child is the absolute highest priority in your life, the irony is that is not going to be best for your child, as the NYU study suggests. A mentor of mine has said, “The best thing you can do for your spouse is love God. The best thing you can do for your children is to love your spouse.” If you put God first, then you are going to love your spouse and your kids. “The irony is that for your kids—it is best for them not to put them first.
Taking up the cross means that Jesus comes before your family. Taking up your cross means that Jesus comes before your career. It might mean living with integrity in your workplace in a way that is going to cost you something…
This past week I came across the story of Christian woman named Jana, an experienced nurse, who had recently switched jobs. Her first evening as a nurse a young mother came with her 18-month-old son. He needed his final shot for a routine immunization.
Jana gave the boy his shot when Jana went to record the vaccination on the boy's chart, she noticed that the seal on the vial inside her lab coat was unbroken. Quickly Jana realized that she had given the boy the wrong vaccine.
She had given him a shot from a different vial—a routine vaccination for children, but the boy had already completed that series of shots months earlier.
Jana told said she gasped when she realized her mistake and then went into shock… Here is the sequence of her thoughts, according to what she told me later:
"No one will ever know. No harm done."
"This is my first day on the job."
"I can't tell the doctor."
"The doctor will think I'm incompetent."
"It can't hurt him, can it?"
"It doesn't hurt to be immunized twice for the same thing."
"What will the mother say?"
"But I will always know, and so will God."
Jana weakly paced outside the room.
When the doctor appeared, Jana told him her mistake, almost vomiting her confession. "Let me think about this for a moment," he said. After a few moments, he walked back into the room, told the mother what happened, and asked her to schedule another time for her child's immunization.
There's a part of Jana, like there is a part of me and you, that wants to make a good impression, that wants to appear competent in our work – especially on our first day on a new job. Jana as a Christian decided to die to that particular desire, she took up the cross, and she followed Jesus in that position.
In Christ, even in the small things of our lives we have something to die for and something to live for.
For a student who may not have begun their career yet, picking up your cross might be sharing your faith in Jesus Christ with your friends when the opportunity naturally comes up – much like you talk about music you like or anything else in your life that is important to you. And if you're a young person, chances are what is most important in your world is your friendships and whether you are accepted by your peers – that was certainly the case for me. So part of what it might mean for you to take up your cross is to be willing to share your faith in Jesus Christ when that opportunity naturally presents itself when you feel that God has opened the door for you.
And you die to that desire to need to be accepted, the need to be cool, the need to not be different.
You have something to die for and something to live for.
Taking up your cross, might mean adopting a simpler lifestyle so that you have more to give to God and the world. You can die to that part of you that once desired creature comforts, so you can make more of a difference for God and others.
If we love Christ more than life itself, we will live as if we have nothing to lose. If we love Christ we a treasure in him that we can never lose.
You have something to die for and something to live for.
I want you to now see the story of an 18-year-old girl named Kyung Ju from North Korea who spoke at the Cape Town Conference.
(DVD: TESTIMONY: NORTH KOREAN GIRL)
Kyung Ju’s dad was willing to lay down his life for Christ, and she is willing to lay down her life for Christ, not only because they know that in laying down their lives for Christ they will find them in the end, but also because they know that the one they follow laid down his life for them.
We don't become people who are able to take up our cross because we psyche ourselves up. We become people who are able to lay down our lives when we look into the face of the one who laid down his life for us. We look into the face of Jesus Christ and see how on the cross he offered his life as a sacrifice for our sin so that we might be forgiven, so that we might discover our true life here on earth and in eternity. As we look into the face of the one who died for us, we recognize that in Christ we have someone to die for and someone to live for.

A Prayer for All Time(06Mar2011)

Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus M5 (11 03 06)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: A Prayer for All Time
Text: Matthew 6:1-15
BIG IDEA: The Lord’s Prayer can become a pattern for our prayer.
When I was about to meet my future parents-in-law for the first time in Japan, I was nervous, I didn’t know what to say. I asked my parents who were born and raised in Japan, what I should I say when I’m with them. They said, “Say nothing. Remember silence is golden in Japan.”
I remember someone I know who grew up in a time when going on actual dates as a teenager was more common—a time when young people still watched the Oscars—and she said I was petrified before going on a date because I was so shy and didn’t know what I might say to keep conversation going. My mom gave me a few simple questions to ask my date and that made it a lot easier…
Sometimes we don’t know what to say in a conversation with people. Sometimes we don’t know what to say in a conversation with God. Today Jesus helps us know what to say in prayer.
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve talking about prayer. Last Sunday we looked at the story of Mary and Martha and considered how we can discern how to give Jesus a gift he really wants and can actually use (if you were snowed in, you are welcome download the message from our website). Today we’re going to look at a prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray. His disciples according to the Luke version of the prayer ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Prayer certainly can be spontaneous. You don’t need a university degree in prayer to pray, but we can also learn to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is more accurately “The Disciples’ Prayer.” It is the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray and it is the prayer that teaches us how to pray.
This prayer can either be prayed word for word, but also as pattern for our prayers.
Here is Jesus’ teaching. If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 6:5:
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.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’
14 For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
In verses 5-6 Jesus says, “When you pray don’t pray to impress other people, but pray in private to your Father who is unseen.” Jesus was not condemning public prayer. He himself prayed publicly. But in a culture where people admired pious, religious people, in a way that it is not true today, people would sometimes pray to impress other people. Jesus is saying here that the motive for prayer is not to impress other people but to know God more deeply.
Jesus said in verse 7, “When you pray, don’t keep on babbling like the pagans.” In Jesus’ day, for example, Greeks would pile up as many titles of the deity as possible, hoping to secure his or her attention. Pagan prayers typically reminded the deity of the favours or the sacrifices they had offered in an attempt to get a response from the god on some contractual ground. Jesus says, “Don’t do this.”
Prayers do not have to be long prayers. For some people, several brief times of prayer throughout the day work better than a half-hour block of prayer. If you find yourself constantly thinking about when your prayer will end, it may be time to pause and move on to something else. Part of the gift of this prayer is that it can be prayed briefly. It can be stretched out over an hour or several hours. It can be prayed literally over an entire lifetime. But the Lord’s Prayer can also be prayed briefly. I find that after a swim when I sit in the sauna for 3 or 4 minutes I often recite the Lord’s Prayer in silence.
Martin Luther says, “How many people have prayed the Lord’s Prayer a thousand times? If they were to pray the Lord’s Prayer a thousand more times or ten thousand more times, they wouldn’t really have prayed or tasted it at all. They don’t get comfort or joy from its proper use.”
Martin Luther is saying the Lord’s Prayer is incredibly rich but people run by it like a mine with jewels in it--gold, diamonds, rubies--but no one seems to know how to mine its treasure.
Today, I hope we can gain four windows into the Lord’s Prayer: Abba, Adore, Accept, Ask 2x.
First, Abba:
The prayer begins with the words “Our Father in heaven…” Commentator Dale Bruner says, “The greatest gift of the Lord’s Prayer is the simple phrase, ‘Our Father’.” I have heard some people say that you should not encourage people to say “Our Father,” because some people have such a terrible image of their earthly father that they have no idea what a good father is. But even if your earthly father was terrible, you are able to intuit what an ideal father would be like. In fact, the only way you could know that your earthly father was bad was if you had some ideal in your mind that you were comparing your earthly father to. Whether our fathers were great or terrible or something in between, we can imagine an ideal father.
The New Testament was originally written in Greek, but Jesus spoke in Aramaic, a dialect of Hebrew. The consensus among modern scholars is that the Lord’s Prayer begins with the Aramaic word “Abba,” and that Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Aramaic, rather than in classical Hebrew. As you may know, the word “Abba” is a very personal word—less like father actually and more like daddy or poppa. It’s the kind of word that is so personal that you can only use it to refer to your own daddy, not if you are speaking about someone else’s father. It is a personal intimate word that you can use when referring to your own daddy, but could not presume using when referring to someone else’s dad. You then have to use a more formal term.
God is a king, as we saw a few weeks ago, a king with a kingdom. In modern language we might say he is a prime minister (if we think of our Canadian context or a president). In order to have access to a king or a prime minister or a president, you have to have accomplished something great or have something amazing to offer. The Vancouver Canucks are on a roll this year. If they win the Stanley Cup, the coach might get a phone call from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The team might get an invitation to 24 Sussex Drive. Or I am guessing that is more likely to happen if the Calgary Flames were to win the Stanley Cup. But you have to have done something or be someone great to come before a prime minister, a president, or a king. The exception would be if you are a son or a daughter of that person. The image that comes to mind is the picture of John Kennedy, Jr. behind the desk in the Oval Office of President Kennedy.



Before John, Jr. achieved anything he had access to the President; he had access to the Oval Office; he had access to the President because he was the son. The same would have been true for Caroline, of course. If we are sons and daughters of God, we have been adopted into his family because we have received the forgiveness Christ offers us and the invitation to become part of his family. We have access.
We pray “Our Father in heaven…” When Jesus prays “our Father in heaven” he refers to God’s position as King, not just president of the United States or Prime Minister of Canada, but Lord of over all the universe, but he is also our loving Father, our Abba, and so we have access. So when you pray “Hallowed be your name…” or when you pray “Our Father…” remember that he is your Father. You have access to him, not because of something you have done, but because of something that Christ has done on your behalf. He died on the cross so that you could be a son or a daughter. You have access as a child.
Abba
Adoration
We pray “Hallowed be your name…” The word “hallowed” literally means “to make holy” or “to set apart.” There is a sense in which God’s name is already holy. It is already set apart—it is already exalted. So praying that God’s name would be made holy, as Ken Bailey says, is a bit like praying for wood to become solid or fire to become hot, when wood is already solid and fire is already hot…and God’s name is already holy.
Even though God is holy, many people don’t recognize God’s holiness, so we pray God will manifest his holiness before people. This is why in Scripture in places like Ezekiel 20, God says, “I will manifest my holiness among you.” So when we pray “Hallowed be your name…” we are praying that God would manifest his holiness to people and that his name which refers to his person would be recognized as holy.
In the film version of Babette’s Feast a renowned opera singer from Paris named Papin visits a remote Danish coastal town. He enters a church service and hears Philippa singing in the pew as a member of the congregation in her extraordinary voice. He wants to teach her how to sing and bring her to Paris to sing for the opera, but Philippa feels like she is unable to move from her small Danish town to Paris. The renowned French singer Papin tells Philippa, “In paradise you will be the great artist God intended you to be. How you will enchant the angels!”
Have you ever known someone who had great talents or great virtue, but for whatever reason their life circumstances would likely never be recognized for all they are? We have a yearning for them to be discovered and recognized. When we pray “Hallowed be your name…” we are praying that God’s name would be discovered as holy…as great. It is a prayer that people would recognize how amazing God is.
I’ve been in conversation with someone who wants to cultivate an experience of more spiritual reality in her life—but says, “I am not so sure about Jesus.” There’s a yearning in my heart that she will one come to discover how amazing God is through the face of Jesus. Jesus is the visible image of God.
We started with Abba, moved to Adoration, and now we move to Acceptance.
Then we pray “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”
The phrase “Thy will be done…” is reminiscent of Jesus’ own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane who in his humanity did not want to go to the cross, but prayed “not my will but thy will be done.” It is a prayer that let’s go of our will on a particular matter and asks God to take over. In this part of the prayer we don’t always recognize what God’s will is for us and what is best for us.
If you are a parent, or become a parent, you will understand there are times when a young child wants something that is not necessarily in their interest. Our two-year-old son hates to be physically restrained in any way. There is a park not far from our house with a wooden bridge for kids. When I walk over it holding his hand, he wants to break free and run across it all by himself. One time when he was in one of those moods where he really wanted to walk it by himself, I let him walk over the bridge by himself as I stood under the bridge. He ran right off the bridge, falling head first—7 feet high. Thankfully, I caught him before his head hit the ground. (A woman walking by said, “Nice catch.”)
If you give a young child whatever they want, they can end up in the hospital and maybe dead. The gap between a parent and a young child is far closer than the gap between us and God. Someone has said that God gives us what we would give ourselves if we knew all the facts, if we had the perspective of all eternity in mind. Like Jesus, we pray, “Thy will be done.”
The reason we can pray “thy will be done” is because Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane—when in his humanity he didn’t want to face a gruesome death on a cross and bearing the sin of the world in himself… but he did—for us, so we could be forgiven and freed from our sin—so we could call God Abba. When we recognize God is Abba and in Christ died for us—when we recognize how deeply we are loved, we can say thy will be done—we can accept.
It’s a prayer not just for us to accept God’s will in our lives, but prayer for the world too. It’s a prayer for his will—for his justice, peace, and love accepted among the people of Libya and Egypt and in Christchurch, New Zealand… for people to accept God’s will so that there is economic justice, racial equality, women’s rights, for the well being of refugees.
Abba, Adoration, Acceptance, and Ask.
Ask
Nearly half the prayer focuses on God, but then the prayer shifts as Jesus ask Abba to provide for your needs.
And so we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread…” The first part of the prayer is focused on the character of God and the will of God. The second half of the prayer focuses on our needs: “Give us this day our daily bread…” We cannot serve God without food. It’s hard to get food without work. So this prayer is for food, work, clothing, shelter. It is not a prayer for cake…it is a prayer for life’s basic necessities. “Give us this day our daily bread…” There is not consensus on what the Greek word translated “daily” means. It can be translated “give us today our food for the day,” or “give us today our food for tomorrow.” Perhaps it is best translated “give us today the food we need.”
In the ancient world this was a very relevant prayer as people by the standards of today were impoverished, so they were praying either give us our food for today or give us today our food for tomorrow or give the food we need.
Remember, it says “our daily bread.” This may be surprising to us because we live in such an individualistic culture, but nowhere in the Lord’s Prayer does Jesus say “pray I…” It is okay to pray I, but he teaches us to pray “our.” So we pray “our daily bread…” It is not just a prayer where my need for bread would be provided, but our need for bread would be provided—a prayer for our neighbours who are in financial need and for people around the world.
Ken Bailey who spent 40 years living and teaching the New Testament in places like Egypt, Lebanon and Jerusalem and whose cultural insights I’ve drawn from for this sermon tells this story about Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa writes: “I will never forget the night an old gentleman came to our house and said there was a family with eight children and they had not eaten, and could we do something for them. So I took some rice and went there. The mother took the rice from my hands, then she divided it into two and went out. I could see the faces of the children shining with hunger. When she came back I asked where she had gone. She gave me a very simple answer: ‘They are hungry also.’ And ‘they’ were the family next door, and she knew they were hungry. I was not surprised that she gave, but I was surprised that she knew….I didn’t have the courage to ask her how long her family hadn’t eaten, but I am sure it must have been a long time, and yet she knew—in her terrible bodily suffering—she knew that people next door were hungry, also.”
This woman, Ken Bailey says, with the eight children may not have known the Lord’s Prayer, but there was only ‘our rice’ and not ‘my rice’ even when her children were hungry. The prayer for our bread includes the neighbours. There is our Father and our bread. The Father is not our personal saviour. He is the Saviour of the world, and it’s not our bread we pray for, but bread for the world.
This prayer also seems to assume that we are truly dependent on God for our material needs. For those of us who are wealthy, and we may not think of ourselves as wealthy, but if our income is $25,000 a year, we are wealthier than approximately 90% of the world’s population. If our income is $50,000 a year, we are wealthier than 99% of the world. Remember almost half the people of the world live on than $2 a day or less. If you don’t feel wealthy, it is because you are comparing yourself with people who are in the 99th percentile of wealth.
What it means to be able to pray this prayer from our heart if we are wealthy, frankly, is to be giving our money to God and to the poor at such a rate that we are actually dependent on God.
It doesn’t mean that we never save, but it means that we actually trust God with our money. There is a tension between responsible saving and living by faith—I don’t claim to have the answer, but I know if God is our Abba we are called to trust him and take a risk.
When I was working for a large corporation in Tokyo as a single person, even though the cost of living in Tokyo was extremely high, I was making far more money than I needed to live on. So I was giving away considerably more than a tithe. My Japanese pastor came to me one day and said, “Ken, I know you are thinking about going into the pastoral ministry one day and you are planning on going to seminary to prepare. Don’t feel like you have to tithe, because you will need the money for seminary and you are probably wanting to be saving your money for that.” I appreciated his concern for me, but my response was, “Look, if I can’t trust God with a simple tithe now, first of all, I have no business going into the Christian ministry. If I can’t live by faith, I have no business calling others to live by faith either.” I ended up giving God substantially more than a standard tithe…. As I look back, it was a gift to me because the money I gave away seemed to miraculously come back. God provided all that I needed for my seminary education, and just all that I needed.
Let me give a example a little more current. My wife and I are more liberal arts people than math people. We are not quantitative enough or organized enough, so our charitable giving is driven by a tax return calculus. But, partly because there have been substantial needs at our home church and around the world, we have received a significant tax refund (relative to our income) for the last several years. There’s a part of us that wants to sock that away for a rainy day, but there’s also a part of us that feels it’s a rainy day for someone else in the world, and we are putting away some money for our son’s education (we’re Japanese, after all). So nothing close to heroic, but there’s a part of us that says there is a rainy day for some else. God’s been so faithful to us… let’s have a little bit and give most of this away. Every New Year, my wife looks back across and the year and writes the things for which we were most grateful. My wife said, “Because of our tax we were able to give a gift to a project for kids in a certain part of the world.” I said, “Oh yeah, that’s great. I’ll add that to my list, too”.
The assumption of this prayer is, if we are wealthy by world standards, give at a rate where we actually having to trust God for our money.
And we pray, “Forgive us our debts….” Debts are a metaphor for sins. As we are forgiven, we forgive those who sin against us. In Jewish rabbinic tradition it was thought that every sin accumulated is a kind of debt before God. This is a prayer to ask God to remove our debts from him. We thank God that because of the work of Jesus Christ paying off our debts through his death on the cross for our sins, God is much more willing to forgive our debts than Visa or Master Card.
PAUSE: Is there anything for which we need forgiveness? TAKE A MOMENT.
We pray that God would forgive our sins. Just as we need food for the health of our body, so we need forgiveness from God for the health of our soul. As we receive forgiveness, we in turn forgive those who have sinned against us.
The great reformer Martin Luther says: “This is not so much a precondition for forgiveness as it recognition that we, in fact, have been forgiven.” We are forgiven, and so we forgive others.
Remember five years ago--the morning of October 2, 2006, a troubled man named Charles Carl Roberts barricaded himself inside the West Nickel Mine Amish School, ultimately murdering five young girls and wounding six others. Roberts committed suicide when police arrived on the scene. It was a dark day for the Amish community of West Nickel Mines, but it was also a dark day for Marie Roberts—the wife of the gunman—and her two young children.
But on the following Saturday, Marie experienced something truly amazing while attending her husband's funeral. That day, she and her children watched as Amish families——came and stood alongside them in the midst of their own blinding grief. Despite the crime the man had perpetrated against, the Amish came to mourn Charles Carl Roberts—a husband and father and to comfort this family.
Donald Kraybill is an expert on the Amish tradition. He teaches at Elizabethtown College, near Nickel Mines. In an interview, he explained how forgiveness, in the biblical sense, is love letting go when wrong has been suffered. "To a person, the Amish would argue that forgiveness is the central teaching of Jesus. They will take you to the Lord's Prayer—where we affirm that we forgive others—even as we ourselves have been forgiven…”
As we pray for forgiveness, we pray to be delivered from the sin that caused us to need forgiveness in the first place.
The prayer “Lead us not into temptation…” can perhaps be better translated as “do not permit us to go into temptation.”
In the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus goes to the cross, Jesus says to his sleepy student Peter, “Watch out and pray that you don’t fall into temptation”(Mark 14:38). This petition of the Lord’s Prayer is a request to God to help us avoid this self-destructive tendency. John Calvin wrote: “It is a prayer where we are conscious of our weakness and ask to be defended by God’s protection so that we have strength to prevail against the forces of darkness and our soul from Satan.” As a mentor of mine says, “A ton of suffering may not hurt us, but one ounce of sin can destroy us.” A ton of suffering may not hurt us eternally—it may refine us, but one ounce of sin can destroy us. My professor Haddon Robinson prays: “When I am given the opportunity to sin, take away my desire to sin. And when I have the desire to sin, take away the opportunity.”
Ask for our bread, bread for the world, and forgiveness.
The postscript “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” was probably not in the original manuscript of the gospel. It was probably added by a scribe later. It is actually an illusion to David’s prayer (1 Chronicles 29:11) where David prays: “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom.” It was likely a prayer that was used in the early church and added by a scribe to some of the New Testament manuscripts.
When we reflect on how great God is--that he is Abba, worthy of Adoration, trustworthy to Accept his will, and asks us to Ask for what we need and when we recognize all that he has provided for us, what else can we see say except: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”
Take time to pray the Lord’s Prayer, petition by petition.
(Lord’s Prayer on the powerpoint)
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’
“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”