From the Daily Lectionary for Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Easter
Matthew 6:7-15
‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
‘Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
I don’t know if I thought it up, or if I borrowed it from someone, but I still think an apt definition of prayer is, “the art of paying attention.” In this passage from Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is telling the crowds gathered on the mountainside how to pray. He warns them against “heaping up empty phrases,” which I suspect means, asking for ‘stuff.’ In other words, he is telling his audience that prayer is not about one’s own needs and wants, but that prayer is about being attentive to God’s mission in the world: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
That is a stunning revelation. Jesus is saying that the ways of heaven are meant for our lives on earth; that eternal life is not some utopian future, certainly not reserved for an afterlife, but a present possibility, a possibility in which we are participants. So the question then becomes, what are the ways of heaven? What is God’s will for us in our short sojourn in earth? The grand theme in Matthew, of course, is justice, but here Jesus gives a concrete example of what justice looks like. The example is debt forgiveness. This is not a spiritualized depiction of what debt may mean symbolically. Jesus is talking about monetary debt. It was an ancient, tried and true tradition in Judaism that every seven years debts were forgiven, written off. If after seven years a debt wasn’t paid, odds were that it would never be paid anyway; and for the sake of community, its mutual dignity, debts were wiped clean, and thus the community reconciled. So indebtedness was never a permanent estate for the people of Israel. We find that concept hard to fathom in our modern capitalistic culture, but the truth of the matter is that indebtedness in our system chokes the life blood out of it. Debt collection and bankruptcy are expensive propositions for lender and debtor alike; and moreover our banking system favors the elite, the wealthy, and further disadvantages the poor.
Jesus is arguing, rearticulating Jewish custom and practice, that generosity and forbearance govern our common life; that the abundance of God’s creation is to be shared in radical mutuality. Such is the will of God. And God’s will, as we have been taught, manifests in other ways as well: healing the sick, advocating for the imprisoned, welcoming the stranger, including in our common life the outcast, tending to the needs of our neighbor. Our ‘go-to’ prayer has to do with our neighbor and not ourselves. Reconciliation is at its heart.
And, when we pray, we ask, or perhaps more to the point, acknowledge, God’s presence with us in the trials of life; that in our vocation of bearing God’s vision to the world, we are not alone. We are called into life’s rigor in the company of God’s people bound by the Spirit of truth, Love, in short, which only knows courageous possibility. There are no dead ends in the life of faith when one is paying attention.
When we pray, we are aligning ourselves with God’s purposes in the world. This, The Lord’s Prayer, is testimony that we serve the good of our neighbor first and foremost. It is a means of paying attention to the fact that we are here for the beloved of God and not ourselves. Counter-cultural to be sure, but this prayer is our touchstone to all that is good and true, lest we lose sight of it.
Finally, prayer leads us into practice. It is for us to bring about the ways of God on earth. To be sure, the way ahead is riddled with detours and distractions, so pay attention, good people. Give yourself over to a prayerful life; the well-being and dignity of God’s people depend upon it.
A Prayer attributed to St. Francis (BCP p. 833)
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
