21st Sunday after Pentecost

I want to begin this morning with Sigmund Freud. According to Freud the human psyche has three components: the id, the ego, and the superego. According to Freud, the id is the primitive and instinctive part of the mind, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. Freud once said that an infant is nothing more than a bundle of id. In other words, an infant is all about its instinctive needs. Food, rest, human contact. Now that, of course, is an oversimplification of the complexity of Freud’s theories, but you get the idea. And he’s not entirely wrong. A baby is all about its needs and if those needs aren’t met, he or she will let you know in no uncertain terms. One researcher in Japan even discovered that by 11 months some babies will fake crying in order to get attention. But all kids are like that. It’s part of a child’s psychological make-up. They are their own world. Everything orbits around them and is interpreted through their needs. I can very clearly remember the year I got a Christmas present for my grandmother. I must have been five or six years old. I got her a toy train. Not because that’s what she wanted, but because it’s what I would have wanted. I interpreted her need through my want. If you’ve ever had any serious interaction with a toddler, you know what I’m talking about. What happens the first time you introduce the concept of sharing to a toddler? It’s not always easy, is it? There can be a plethora of toys available, but inevitably two of them will want the same one! Luckily, we outgrow that kind of selfishness. Well, most of us do. Most of the time.

The Lord’s prayer is a curious thing to me. It’s called the Lord’s prayer because Jesus, our Lord, gave it to us. We have two different versions of it in our Bibles. In Matthew’s version it’s simply part of the sermon on the mount. It’s part of the long list of instructions he gives following what we usually call the Beatitudes. In Luke’s version, however, it’s the result of a request by Jesus’ disciples. They say, “Hey, Jesus. John taught his disciples how to pray. Can you teach us how to pray, too?” Now, Jesus prays a lot, especially in the Gospel of Luke, starting with his baptism, the beginning of his earthly ministry. By this point, Jesus and the disciples have been hanging out for 6 chapters and you would think that they would have picked up a few prayer pointers along the way, but they clearly haven’t. That’s because prayer isn’t something that just happens. It’s something that’s taught. Many of you will remember Miss Marie Pickett. She was one of our senior members who lived up at Carroll Lutheran village. But did you know that she was a prolific prayer writer? Pastor Anke asked her once how she got into that and she said, “Because my pastor taught us how to pray during confirmation.” So, the disciples, like Miss Marie, need to be taught and Jesus gives them this model prayer. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give me this day my daily bread. And forgive me my debts, as I should probably forgive our debtors. And do not bring me to the time of trial, but rescue me from the evil one.

Hold on! That’s not the prayer that Jesus gave us, is it? No! Of course not! But isn’t that how we tend to understand it? We say the right words, of course, but internally, the way we understand it? We really understand it to be about us. I say, “us”, but I mean “me”. Give me this day my daily bread. Or maybe my immediate family if I’m feeling generous. Close friends if I’m in a particularly expansive mood? A lot of times, we’re not as far removed from that self-centered, self-preserving toddler as we think we are. In part, it’s our ego. In part it’s cultural reinforcement. But we forget the truly communal nature of this prayer. Give us! Forgive us! We understand it, however, as “give me… forgive me”.

Any time Jesus gives instructions to the disciples or the apostles, it’s never just for them. It’s always for us, too. So, Jesus gives us this model prayer, but of course it’s also much more than just a model. It is a communal prayer that connects us to the church. The whole church! It’s a universal prayer. “Give us this day our daily bread” is as much a prayer for those who throw bread away without thinking twice about it as it is for the breadless. When our hand is hovering over the trash can, this prayer forces us to realize that there are, indeed, those who would not hesitate to take that bread from our hand and eat it themselves, because they otherwise have nothing for themselves, or their children.

Because this prayer comes from Jesus himself, it’s more than just a divine to-do list. “Hey God, you’re great! We hope everyone thinks you’re as great as we do… Help us not to starve… Please be nice to us, and we’ll be nice to everyone else… And don’t let anything bad happen to us. And save us from the devil.”

Because this prayer comes for Jesus to the church and for the church, it’s much more than instruction in prayer. It’s a declaration to the church, about the nature of the church and how we are called to see ourselves as the church. It calls us to honest expression about our shared human condition. It calls us to identify with the need, sorrow, sin, and death that we see throughout the world. It’s a collective crying out of our need for the “reign of God,” for the day to come when God’s life-giving intention for all things is openly enacted, for justice and an end to weeping and suffering. This prayer calls us to stand with all humanity, in its need and in its fear. This expression of our human need before God is one of our most fundamental practices of faith in Jesus.

With the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus doesn’t just teach us how to pray. He connects us to the universal church, with all of humanity, in all of its joy and need. We have been gifted this prayer. We are immersed in it through Holy Baptism.  We are nourished by it in its repeating during Holy Communion. And it invites us to stand with humanity – indeed, with all things – where Christ is amid loss and fear, joy and triumph.

We gather together here as ordinary people. We, ourselves, are in need of all that the Lord’s Prayer asks, but by this prayer we also make ourselves people who are willing to stand with others in their need. But we’re also more than that. Because we are also the community which, by the power of the Spirit and the presence of the risen Christ, is given now, as an earnest gift of all that God intends for the world. We’re not simply an expression of God’s gift for the world. We are God’s gift for the world. We are the bread and forgiveness that the world needs. We are called to put into practice the word of forgiveness and the meal of resurrection.

I know that’s a lot, so let me try and give you a handle on all of it. I admit that I am not the best at praying this prayer. Because when I use it its usually within the context of leading worship, and so there’s part of me that’s automatically thinking ahead to what’s coming next and there’s the other part of me that realizes I’m thinking ahead and hopes that I don’t freeze up! So, I’m not really thinking about what I’m praying. And in fact, I haven’t really thought about this prayer to this degree since the last time I preached on it, when we all worked through the small catechism together six years ago.

So, I’d like to issue a challenge to all of us, myself included. Over the next couple of weeks, I would like to ask you to pray this prayer at least once per day. But I don’t want you to simply pray it. Ahead of time, I want you to pick one of two people or groups of people. Either the person or people who are most in need of what this prayer asks for (daily bread, the mercy of forgiveness, protection from evil), or, and this is only if you really want to stretch yourself emotionally and spiritually, the person or people who you think are least deserving of those things. Now if you’re going to do the latter, you’re going to have to mean it. I don’t want you praying for somebody just to spite them!!

And I want you to keep track of what happens. But I’m not talking primarily about the person or people you’re praying for. There might be some outward sign of that prayer being answered, but also maybe not. We don’t always know how God answers prayer. What I want you to track, however, is going to be easy for you to see. I want you to keep track of how praying the Lord’s prayer on behalf of someone else changes you.

Jesus came into the world so that the world might be transformed by him. And Jesus is still at work transforming the world through people like you and me. When we say this prayer with all our heart, bearing up to God not just ourselves but those in the world around us, we become an integral part of that transformation by being changed ourselves. Allowing this prayer to teach us true faith, true humility, and true love? We can’t help but be spurred to holy faithful action. And that is how we change the world, because through it we proclaim God’s reign of salvation, we feed the world, we embody peace and reconciliation, and we bear comfort to the afflicted. And it all begins with six little words: Hey, Jesus! Teach us to pray.

AMEN