July 29, 2007                           I Kings 19:9b-13a        Luke 11:1-4

 

            The voice of the Lord came to the prophet Elijah in a still, small voice.  Jesus taught us to pray with a simple, small prayer.  Creative tension is the watchword for the day.  If these two words, creative and tension, are separated, they have no common ground.  Creative: that part of our being that is free, inspired, not self-conscious, imaginative, finds truth in story and poetry and music and art.  Tension: that part of us that gets all knotted up when things don’t go quite right, when we feel we are losing control.  But creative tension together is a part of our faith journey.  Creative tension holds together a faith filled with paradoxes.

 

The end of July is traditionally a time of low attendance.  The kids have been out of school, it’s vacation times.  Those of you in attendance today are here because you tend to be faithful to your church and to your spiritual walk, so I’m going to attempt to push us a little deeper into prayer today

 

            “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place.  When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’”  Now the disciples were famous for asking questions.  They asked questions such as “Show us God,” or “save me,” or “Lord, where are you going?” or “Who among us will be the greatest?”  But Jesus didn’t always answer them, probably because they weren’t asking the right questions.  It’s a great achievement to ask the right question.  So it is important that Jesus did teach them how to pray.  The disciples had finally asked the right question.

 

            But Christianity isn’t so much about getting the answers right.  No one of us ever becomes so faithful in our discipleship that we become experts in being Christian.  Here’s where creative tension begins invading and guiding our life of faith.  Christianity is not so much a set of beliefs as a life-long journey.  And Christianity is a journey in which we have to die to reach our destination.  But what a journey. 

 

            Back in the fall of ’95, my former wife and I went to Washington State to see some friends.  And we drove.  It was quite a journey.  Two people spending ten days in a Honda Civic driving across country.  It was the first time I had ever crossed the Mississippi River.  We went through Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and eventually arrived at the Grand Canyon.  The salt plains of Utah, the slot machines and red canyons of Nevada, the deserts of Eastern Oregon and a landscape that got greener the closer we got to the ocean.  Our car broke down in Seaside, Oregon and we spent three unplanned days at the beach.  The journey was quite an experience.  Seeing our friends was fun, but what I most remember is the journey, what we did along the way.

 

            Along the way, along the journey of discipleship, Jesus taught them to pray.  “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come.  Give us each day our daily bread.  Forgive us our sins.  For we also forgive everyone who sins against us.  And lead us not into temptation.”  That’s it.  The gospel of Matthew adds a little bit to this, but really doesn’t say anything else.  In the Episcopal Church, the priest introduces the Lord’s Prayer with these words, “Now, as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to pray…”  In our own United Methodist communion service, we introduce the Lord’s Prayer with these words, “And now, with the confidence of the children of God, let us pray…”  Bold, confidence.  This is where creative tension comes in, because to approach God in prayer takes genuine humility along with a healthy dose of boldness.

 

            Creative tension is illustrated in the paradoxes of life.  We all experience creative tension in our daily lives.  I prefer to listen to two kinds of music, classical and bluegrass, at the same time.  I have one of those CD players that plays multiple CDs and will randomly switch between them.  I like nothing better than to put in a Beethoven symphony or Mozart piano concerto with a Bill Monroe or Flatt & Scruggs bluegrass CD and throw in a ‘70’s classic rock CD and hit the random button.  A movement of a symphony and a couple of hard-driving banjo tunes with a dose of electric guitar.  That’s creative tension.  Get the idea?  Think for a moment about creative tension in your life, things that seem to contradict one another, but are really a part of who you are.

 

            Divorce was one of the greatest learning experiences I have ever had.  It hurt badly, but in the midst of that hurt I discovered a greater depth and consistency to God’s love shared by people.  That’s creative tension.  Sacred and secular is another.  We do an excellent job in our society of separating our faith from our everyday lives, at least on the surface.  But in reality, our faith goes with us wherever we are, and we express our faith more powerfully through our actions than through our words. 

 

            Perhaps the greatest example of creative tension comes from an event we’ll never fully understand.  The cross and the resurrection.  The Easter miracle.  How the death of Jesus leads to new life with God through Jesus’ resurrection.  Creative tension is accepting on faith without proof that God loves us unconditionally and that God shows that love through the cross and resurrection.

 

            Creative tension.  In humility we are bold to pray…  By praying the Lord’s prayer, we are made into a people on a journey, a journey to show the world that God has not abandoned the world but is present with us on our journey of life.  In ancient times, the church taught new Christians about the Christian faith by teaching them this prayer.  Perhaps the best answer to the question, “Who is a Christian?” is “One who is learning to pray the Lord’s Prayer.”

 

            Most of us know the Lord’s Prayer by heart.  We have prayed it so often in church that the words are second nature.  We can easily gloss over them on Sunday morning without a second glance.  And that’s good.  Most things we do in life we do out of habit.  We eat, sleep, breathe, shake hands, respect others, hug our children out of habit.  Some things in life are too important to be left up to chance, so we do them “out of habit.”  So in church, we prayer the Lord’s Prayer over and over again out of habit.

 

            Now some people complain that this makes church boring.  While I’m not defending boredom, which is a sin against the joyful adventure of following Jesus, I am saying that developing good habits are important.  Good habits are important because Christian faith goes against human nature and Christian faith is at odds with many of the practices of our culture.  Prayer bends our will toward God.  Developing a good habit of prayer makes that easier.

            And prayer isn’t that hard.  When the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray,” he didn’t tell them to go off and sit quietly until a spiritual revelation came to them.  He didn’t tell them to make a prayer journal.  He didn’t ask them, “Well how do you feel about God?”  He said, “Pray like this.  ‘Our Father,’”

 

            This prayer is a gift.  In humility we are bold to pray, we are bold to open our sinful hearts to God because Jesus has shown us the way.  Left to our own devices, we either stumble around in prayer or start using prayer as a strategy to get what we want.  But with this prayer, we first address God and offer God praise for who God is and what God does.  “Father, holy is your name.  Your kingdom come.”  We are asking God to be God.  We are asking God to do not what we want but what God wants.  We are asking God to make visible the awesome holiness that is now mostly invisible, revealed only for a moment in the pain of the cross and the joy of the resurrection.  We are asking God to set free the eternal power and holiness that is now held back.  And if God’s kingdom did come on earth as it is in heaven, if God’s will was done on earth as it is in heaven, what then? 

Frederick Buechner asks in response to this phrase: “If that happened, God’s will be done, what would stand and what would fall?  Who would be welcomed in and who would be thrown out?  Which if any of our most precious visions of what God is and of what human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would turn out to be phony as three-dollar bills?”  It takes boldness to ask for God to come to us in full force, and it takes humility to ask for God’s will to take precedence over our own.

 

            And it takes boldness and humility to pray the second half of the Lord’s prayer as well.  God give us, forgive us, lead us, don’t tempt us, deliver us.  If it takes boldness to face the power that is God’s, it takes humility to accept our own powerlessness.  We can do nothing without God.  Without God, we are nothing.  But with God, we are God’s people, loved by God, forgiven by God, accepted by God, not because of what we do or who we are, but because of who God is. 

 

            Because we are children of God, listen to these words that we proclaim with the creative tension of boldness and humility:… Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.  Forever.  Amen.