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9th Sunday after Pentecost

The Good News Written

Psalm 85.6-8 (NRSV)

⁶Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you? ⁷Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. ⁸Let me hear what God… will speak, for [God] will speak peace to [the] people, to [the] faithful, to those who turn to [God] in their hearts.

From the Wisdom of Charles & Cora Fillmore

“We see logically that there cannot be any separation in spirit between the Creator and the created, but the created has the power to think of itself as separate from its source, and this thought makes a mental vacuum in which there is a total absence of spiritual attributes. The human family on this planet has set up this sort of a mental void, and unless we train our mind to think the truth, we find ourselves talking to God as if [God] were in the next room or in some far away heaven in the skies.”

Luke 11.1-4, 9-13 (NRSV)

¹[Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” ²Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say: Abba, hallowed be your name. Your dominion come. ³Give us each day our daily bread. ⁴And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” ⁹“I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? ¹³If you then… know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will God give the holy Spirit to those who ask!”

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Michael A. Diaz at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, July 25, 2010.

Our gospel lesson from Luke this week picks up right where we left off last week. If you recall, Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins challenged us last week to compare the characters of Martha and Mary and encouraged us to be a bunch of Mary’s (queer Mary’s we are!). In this week’s episode, as you and I can surely relate, after dealing with a bunch of Mary’s, Jesus suddenly feels the need to pray. Sometimes even the best people around you, your own family or friends, will bug you and make you want to pray. My grandfather, who passed away earlier this year, grew up in a small South Texas town called Taft, TX. Taft has had a history of racial tension, and it was a segregated town when my grandfather was growing up. On one side of the railroad tracks lived the whites and on the other side lived the Latinos. Growing up in such an environment, there was always this mistrust my grandfather had of white people. Well, I remember in high school I was dating a cheerleader who happened to be white and I brought her home one day. Well after she left, my grandfather furiously came up and told me, “Mikito (little Mike), listen to me. Please don’t ever bring another white girl to this house.” And I immediately thought to myself, “Oh no, no, no. I have got to pray for this man. Help him God! Help him!” Well, I did pray and years later, I returned to my grandfather’s house. This time I brought a white boy home, and just like that, race was no longer an issue. My grandfather didn’t have a thing to say, but I have a strong suspicion that he felt the need to pray in that moment.

Do you ever find yourself in those moments when all of sudden, you urgently feel the need to pray? Moments when a tropical storm forms on your front porch and you have no time to prepare? Moments when that unexpected bill shows up in the mail? Moments when you receive news that your friend has just been rushed to the emergency room? Do you ever find yourself in those moments when all those around you just don’t understand the challenges you are going through? Moments when your back is against the wall and you feel as if you’re all alone? Do you ever feel the need to pray, but you have no clue what to say?

In our Gospel passage today, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Now, we must remind ourselves that the disciples are not novices when it comes to religiosity and spirituality. Like most of us, they have grown up with a certain knowledge of how and what to pray. They’ve already been taught specific ways of praying according to their tradition, but because of the impact Jesus has had on their lives, they desire to go deeper with their spirituality and “try on” the way that Jesus prays.

What Jesus shares with his disciples has come to be traditionally known as the Lord’s Prayer, but our version today in the Gospel of Luke (written in the 90s CE) is noticeably different than the version in the Gospel of Matthew (written around the year 80 CE). We have three possible explanations as to why Luke’s version is different than Matthew’s: either Luke’s version is the earliest and Matthew made additions to it or Matthew’s version is the earliest and Luke made some cuts or there was an earlier version that both Matthew and Luke changed. In any case, changes were made by the gospel writers according to the needs of their specific communities. And let’s be clear in realizing that the changes/differences between Luke and Matthew are much more than changing a word or two. We’re not talking about a minor redaction like substituting Creator for Abba. Oh no! Imagine Luke taking the prayer that Matthew used a decade earlier (at least) and deciding there are some lines he just doesn’t like. Luke omits lines such as who art in heaven, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and but deliver us from evil.

Why does Luke leave out these lines from the prayer that Jesus teaches us? What can we learn from Luke’s cross-outs of Jesus’ prayer that will aid us in our own prayer lives? I am focusing on two of Luke’s redactions today.

Number one: Maybe Luke omits the line who art in heaven because God does not live in a far away heaven in the sky. How many times do we find ourselves praying to God as if God lives in a far away heaven in the sky? God is all around us and within us, but so often when we’re in need, our first impulse is to look outside of ourselves for help. Even though we’re taught when we’re young that the light of God shines brightly within us, as we grow older we seem to lose sight of this inner light. Because of our own perceived inadequacies, because we do not consider ourselves good enough, because we have lost confidence in the Divine spark within us, we begin to believe the lie that a cosmic gulf exists, that there is a separation between the Divine and humanity. The irony is that it is not God who has separated us from all that is Divine, but we have separated ourselves from God or at least we’ve tried to think so. What do we say when someone messes up or makes a mistake? Well, you’re only human. In Acts 17:28, Paul says it is in the Divine in which we live and move and have our being. We are not only human; we are more than human. If only we could realize the indwelling potential of our own divinity, how much more powerful would our prayers be? You want to pray more effectively? Then, remember that God is not in the next room or on a throne in heaven way up in the sky, but right where you are.

Number Two: Maybe Luke omits the line deliver us from evil because we focus too much on negativity as it is. How often do we become so concerned with the negative and with what’s evil that we forget all about the positive and a good God? There was a time in my young life when I spent quite a few years focused on evil. At this time I was attending church 3 to 4 nights a week. When I wasn’t at church, I could be found praying with people and passing out religious tracts at the downtown bus terminal, on a missions trip, or even at Mardi Gras. Wherever I went, I told people and believed they were going to hell because the power of evil was just so strong in the world. The majority of my prayers at this time were spent on praying against things and evil spirits, but then one day something clicked in my head. I suddenly realized that instead of communicating with God, all this time I was actually ignoring God and focusing my attention on my fears and what I really feared was a boogeyman named the devil. When we’re little kids, we’re scared of the boogeyman under the bed, and as we grow older, instead of ridding ourselves of this figure which is created out of our own fears, we transfer the boogeyman image to our faith and spirituality. How is it that as we grow older we let go of the positive images and fight to keep the negative images? We stop believing in a good Santa Clause, but we retain our belief in the evil boogeyman? Why?!

Why do we have any use for evil or a boogeyman in our prayer lives? Why do we focus on what hinders us and what scares us instead of focusing on what empowers us? Instead of giving power to the boogeyman and to our problems, why don’t we provide a space for our problems to become possibilities?

Doing so does not mean we have to ignore the many things that seem to represent the appearance of evil in our society? Absolutely not. When a gay teen is kicked out on the streets by his parents because of homophobia, when people living with HIV don’t have affordable access to their medications, when a lesbian is treated as less-than because of sexism on the part of both straight and queer men, and  when a transgender widow in Texas is denied her husband’s benefits because of transphobia, we will intercede with them, we will stand with them, and we will fight alongside them because we know a good deed for justice is always the best form of prayer.

But whether in contemplative prayer or prayerful action, we must make sure our motivations stem from hope and not fear. When I first entered the ordination process for MCC, I underwent a psychological assessment as is required of all candidates for ordination. One of the most revelatory moments in the testing process came when the team of counselors and psychologists affirmed my longstanding passion for social justice. The tests revealed such, but they also revealed that my motivations for engaging in social justice were coming from a pessimistic outlook. It was a gloom and doom perspective of the world that was driving me to stand for justice and inclusion. My passion for God was rooted in a lack of confidence in humanity. Instead of looking at the potential in humanity and allowing what’s good to drive me, I was looking at what was wrong with humanity. The problem was that if I continued to rely on this well of fear to drive me, they told me that I would be headed for a breakdown and burn-out. “Letting your fears run your life,” they told me, “will never lead to inner peace.” How often do we allow our fears to run our prayer lives? You want to pray more effectively? Then don’t allow evil or negativity to be the focus of your communication with God.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus teaches his followers a prayer that is progressive, positive, and practical. Jesus shows us that a big part of wanting to pray properly is to think properly. So the next time we have the sudden need to pray, let’s focus on the possibilities instead of the problems, on our potential instead of our lack, and on our source which is God right here within us, not God somewhere separate from us.  The good news is God is good and God is forever with us. Amen.

The Good News Affirmed

God is right here with me.

God is moving through me.

I affirm my divine potential.

I focus on the possibilities in my life today.

Good things are happening now! Amen.

The Good News Repeated

“Jesus emphasizes that even prayer is no sanctuary from the responsibility of right thinking.” – Eric Butterworth

Audio readings and sermon (http://sunshinecathedral.org/sermons/audio/20100725_1.mp3)