Tools of Faith
Text: Luke 11:1-13
Since the dawn of time, people have been searching for tools they could use to help them through life. Tools like money, success, and power, have been seen as the keys to joy, and happiness. The problem is, we’ve failed to realize that there are other ‘tools’ besides these things. We’ve forgotten that God has given each of us many ‘tools’ to help us life our lives to the fullest. We’ve become so focussed on pursuing things like money, success, and power, that we overlook the wonderful gifts that God has given to us.
One of the many ‘tools’ we are all given is the ability to pray. In particular, God has given us the ‘tool’ which we call the Lord’s Prayer. This piece of scripture has brought a great deal of comfort, insight, guidance, and a sense of God’s love to millions of people. The Lord’s Prayer is a ‘tool’ in that it is meant to be used - it is a set of words that are meant to be read, thought about, and discussed. The Lord’s Prayer is an instrument through which the voice of God can be heard, and then followed. It is indeed a tool of faith.
The Lord’s Prayer is also a tool of life. My Dad says that I get most of my technological aptitude from my grandfather on my mother’s side. Working in the mills of Stelco all his life, he was a man who loved all sorts of tools, including everything from gadgets, soapbox cars toys, and power tools. Grampa loved buying new tools, and kept a very well equipped shop in the garage. He had a habit of taking things apart, tinkering with them, and then putting them back together again - he called it ‘fixing things’, although I was never told if they worked afterwards! I think most He was a man who loved to tinker, and to use tools, and he used them well.
There is a poem that my wife Sarah mentioned to me this week that seemed to fit with this theme of “tools.”
“To each is given a bag of tools,
an hour-glass and a book of rules;
and each must build, ‘ere time is flown,
a stumbling block or a stepping stone.”
The sad part is that there are some people who do not realize that they have been given this ‘bag of tools’. Whatever the reason is for their lack of recognition, there are folks who simply do not know the treasures that God has already given them. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. It is possible that at this point in their walk with Jesus, they do not realize that they have already been given the ‘tool’ of prayer to talk with God. They want to know what to say, and how to say it. And so, the disciples ask Jesus for a model, a formula if you will, for them to follow.
The model of prayer that Jesus shares with them is what we call the Lord’s Prayer. The words are familiar to most of us here - we say them from memory, rolling them off our tongues. I remember hearing it at an early age, but it wasn’t until I attended our first Presbyterian Church in Niagara Falls that I was able to remember it. It’s because Stamford Presbyterian Church used “debts” instead of “trespasses” --as is the custom of most Presbyterian Churches... For a while I thought that was the only thing that made Presbyterians different... Since then I’ve learned versions of the Lord’s Prayer that Trespass, that Debt, and that Sin... I’ve memorized all three, but I need to keep notes in front of me as to which version I am using at the time... otherwise I find that I am much more likely to stumble over the words. It happened to me once while leading a service as a student, and I’ve had a printed copy ever since!
Yet reciting the words of the Lord’s Prayer verbatim wasn’t the original intent of what Jesus taught. I don’t think Jesus ever meant for his disciples, or for those who followed, including us, to use these words as ‘the’ only way to pray. If it was, I don’t think that there would be two different versions of this prayer within the Bible, one in Matthew, which we use every Sunday, and the version in Luke which we heard this morning... much less multiple translations and versions. Instead, Jesus gave them, and gave us, this prayer as a ‘tool’, a method for structuring our prayers to God.
The words of the Lord’s Prayer from the gospel of Luke are less familiar to the majority of us here. For one thing, Luke’s version is much shorter than what we are used to. These words aren’t the ones we know - they aren’t the ones that just flow off of our tongues without thinking. But perhaps because they are different, they give us as readers, as a people of prayer, enough of a pause to really reflect on the things that Jesus suggested that we pray for.
So let’s do just that for a moment - let’s look at each of the four petitions individually - pausing long enough with Luke’s version of this prayer to really let the words sink in. Let’s think about how this prayer can be a model, a tool to help us to pray.
The first petition is “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” This phrase, quite simply, is praise of God. When we talk to God, and with God, we need to recognize, remember, and acknowledge the awesomeness, the power, the majesty, and the sovereignty of God. Pausing to praise God is what worship is - when we include this thankfulness in our prayers, we are remembering that God deserves our praise. This petition also address God as a person - a father - our heavenly parent. There is an intimacy to this - a closeness of relationship that is conveyed. God is as close as breath, ever-present with us, and loves us as a parent loves their children.
The second petition is “Give us each day our daily bread.” This phrase asks God to provide us with daily sustenance. It is a request for enough to see us through the day - not an excess, just enough to feed our bodies and our souls. This petition also recognizes that we depend on God for our food and for all we have. That’s not to say that we don’t work for what we have - we do - but more importantly, what this phrase does is acknowledge our dependence on God. It recognizes God as the ultimate Creator and Sustainer of all of life.
The third petition is “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Asking God to forgive us of the things we’ve done that are wrong, to forgive us for the things we have not done, is extremely important. Forgiveness wipes the slate clean - it puts us back on the right track again. Forgiveness sets us free to be the kind of people that God wants us to be. But asking for our own forgiveness is not enough. We have heard the Golden Rule all our lives: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In all truthfulness, we want others to forgive us when we sin against them. Therefore, we should forgive them too.
The fourth and final petition is “Do not bring us into the time of trial.” This phrase is sometimes rendered as a request to keep us from temptation. Jesus seems to say that this is all we need. We sin enough without being tempted further, without being led into times of great testing. It is better if we can avoid these times of temptation altogether. But if we can’t, we should rely on the master, and turn to God for help.
For it is in prayer - in conversation with God - that we best hear the word of God and receive that which we need to do the word - that which we need to live as children of God. What we are given in today’s New Testament lesson is a model of Jesus at prayer. He gives his disciples, and us, a tool which we can use to draw closer to God.
I think this desire to be in relationship to God is the likely reason behind the disciples question. Jesus was a person who knew what the ‘tools’ of life are. He was not one who needed to go out searching for lost treasures. Instead, Jesus recognized that we are given things like food, shelter, work, love and friends to help us along life’s way. He also knew that we are blessed with the ability to have a relationship to God, and to talk to and with God in prayer. Jesus was one of the many folk that realize that God gives all people a ‘bag of tools’, and that these ‘tools’, including prayer, are meant to be used. He was also a man who used the ‘tools’ he had been given to ‘build’ stepping stones for others. Jesus was a living example of the use of this ‘tool’ called prayer.
The magic of this ‘tool’ called prayer - if we can call it that - is not in the particular words we use. It isn’t even the particular things that we pray about, but rather the relationship we enter into when we pray to God in all things and about all things. When we present everything that concerns us and everything that delights us to God, we are sharing with God who we are and what we are. The time we spend in prayer builds a sense of intimacy, a closeness between God and ourselves.
The Lord’s Prayer is a ‘tool’ in that it is meant to be used - it helps point us in the right direction when we aren’t sure what words to pray. It is also a ‘tool’ in that it is a model for us to follow - the four petitions in Luke’s version of this prayer, which include praise, a request for daily bread, asking for forgiveness, and help in times of trial - give us a simple format with which we can earnestly bring all our concerns to God. But most importantly, the Lord’s Prayer is a tool in that it can help us to build a stepping stone, a foundation if you will, in our relationship to and with God - this prayer is an instrument through which the voice of God can be heard, and then followed. It is indeed a tool of faith. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Note: Original text by Rev. Sarah Fanning - July 29, 2001;
modified and adapted by the Rev. John Crowdis “in conversation” with the text for July 29th, 2007.
Since the dawn of time, people have been searching for tools they could use to help them through life. Tools like money, success, and power, have been seen as the keys to joy, and happiness. The problem is, we’ve failed to realize that there are other ‘tools’ besides these things. We’ve forgotten that God has given each of us many ‘tools’ to help us life our lives to the fullest. We’ve become so focussed on pursuing things like money, success, and power, that we overlook the wonderful gifts that God has given to us.
One of the many ‘tools’ we are all given is the ability to pray. In particular, God has given us the ‘tool’ which we call the Lord’s Prayer. This piece of scripture has brought a great deal of comfort, insight, guidance, and a sense of God’s love to millions of people. The Lord’s Prayer is a ‘tool’ in that it is meant to be used - it is a set of words that are meant to be read, thought about, and discussed. The Lord’s Prayer is an instrument through which the voice of God can be heard, and then followed. It is indeed a tool of faith.
The Lord’s Prayer is also a tool of life. My Dad says that I get most of my technological aptitude from my grandfather on my mother’s side. Working in the mills of Stelco all his life, he was a man who loved all sorts of tools, including everything from gadgets, soapbox cars toys, and power tools. Grampa loved buying new tools, and kept a very well equipped shop in the garage. He had a habit of taking things apart, tinkering with them, and then putting them back together again - he called it ‘fixing things’, although I was never told if they worked afterwards! I think most He was a man who loved to tinker, and to use tools, and he used them well.
There is a poem that my wife Sarah mentioned to me this week that seemed to fit with this theme of “tools.”
“To each is given a bag of tools,
an hour-glass and a book of rules;
and each must build, ‘ere time is flown,
a stumbling block or a stepping stone.”
The sad part is that there are some people who do not realize that they have been given this ‘bag of tools’. Whatever the reason is for their lack of recognition, there are folks who simply do not know the treasures that God has already given them. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. It is possible that at this point in their walk with Jesus, they do not realize that they have already been given the ‘tool’ of prayer to talk with God. They want to know what to say, and how to say it. And so, the disciples ask Jesus for a model, a formula if you will, for them to follow.
The model of prayer that Jesus shares with them is what we call the Lord’s Prayer. The words are familiar to most of us here - we say them from memory, rolling them off our tongues. I remember hearing it at an early age, but it wasn’t until I attended our first Presbyterian Church in Niagara Falls that I was able to remember it. It’s because Stamford Presbyterian Church used “debts” instead of “trespasses” --as is the custom of most Presbyterian Churches... For a while I thought that was the only thing that made Presbyterians different... Since then I’ve learned versions of the Lord’s Prayer that Trespass, that Debt, and that Sin... I’ve memorized all three, but I need to keep notes in front of me as to which version I am using at the time... otherwise I find that I am much more likely to stumble over the words. It happened to me once while leading a service as a student, and I’ve had a printed copy ever since!
Yet reciting the words of the Lord’s Prayer verbatim wasn’t the original intent of what Jesus taught. I don’t think Jesus ever meant for his disciples, or for those who followed, including us, to use these words as ‘the’ only way to pray. If it was, I don’t think that there would be two different versions of this prayer within the Bible, one in Matthew, which we use every Sunday, and the version in Luke which we heard this morning... much less multiple translations and versions. Instead, Jesus gave them, and gave us, this prayer as a ‘tool’, a method for structuring our prayers to God.
The words of the Lord’s Prayer from the gospel of Luke are less familiar to the majority of us here. For one thing, Luke’s version is much shorter than what we are used to. These words aren’t the ones we know - they aren’t the ones that just flow off of our tongues without thinking. But perhaps because they are different, they give us as readers, as a people of prayer, enough of a pause to really reflect on the things that Jesus suggested that we pray for.
So let’s do just that for a moment - let’s look at each of the four petitions individually - pausing long enough with Luke’s version of this prayer to really let the words sink in. Let’s think about how this prayer can be a model, a tool to help us to pray.
The first petition is “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” This phrase, quite simply, is praise of God. When we talk to God, and with God, we need to recognize, remember, and acknowledge the awesomeness, the power, the majesty, and the sovereignty of God. Pausing to praise God is what worship is - when we include this thankfulness in our prayers, we are remembering that God deserves our praise. This petition also address God as a person - a father - our heavenly parent. There is an intimacy to this - a closeness of relationship that is conveyed. God is as close as breath, ever-present with us, and loves us as a parent loves their children.
The second petition is “Give us each day our daily bread.” This phrase asks God to provide us with daily sustenance. It is a request for enough to see us through the day - not an excess, just enough to feed our bodies and our souls. This petition also recognizes that we depend on God for our food and for all we have. That’s not to say that we don’t work for what we have - we do - but more importantly, what this phrase does is acknowledge our dependence on God. It recognizes God as the ultimate Creator and Sustainer of all of life.
The third petition is “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Asking God to forgive us of the things we’ve done that are wrong, to forgive us for the things we have not done, is extremely important. Forgiveness wipes the slate clean - it puts us back on the right track again. Forgiveness sets us free to be the kind of people that God wants us to be. But asking for our own forgiveness is not enough. We have heard the Golden Rule all our lives: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In all truthfulness, we want others to forgive us when we sin against them. Therefore, we should forgive them too.
The fourth and final petition is “Do not bring us into the time of trial.” This phrase is sometimes rendered as a request to keep us from temptation. Jesus seems to say that this is all we need. We sin enough without being tempted further, without being led into times of great testing. It is better if we can avoid these times of temptation altogether. But if we can’t, we should rely on the master, and turn to God for help.
For it is in prayer - in conversation with God - that we best hear the word of God and receive that which we need to do the word - that which we need to live as children of God. What we are given in today’s New Testament lesson is a model of Jesus at prayer. He gives his disciples, and us, a tool which we can use to draw closer to God.
I think this desire to be in relationship to God is the likely reason behind the disciples question. Jesus was a person who knew what the ‘tools’ of life are. He was not one who needed to go out searching for lost treasures. Instead, Jesus recognized that we are given things like food, shelter, work, love and friends to help us along life’s way. He also knew that we are blessed with the ability to have a relationship to God, and to talk to and with God in prayer. Jesus was one of the many folk that realize that God gives all people a ‘bag of tools’, and that these ‘tools’, including prayer, are meant to be used. He was also a man who used the ‘tools’ he had been given to ‘build’ stepping stones for others. Jesus was a living example of the use of this ‘tool’ called prayer.
The magic of this ‘tool’ called prayer - if we can call it that - is not in the particular words we use. It isn’t even the particular things that we pray about, but rather the relationship we enter into when we pray to God in all things and about all things. When we present everything that concerns us and everything that delights us to God, we are sharing with God who we are and what we are. The time we spend in prayer builds a sense of intimacy, a closeness between God and ourselves.
The Lord’s Prayer is a ‘tool’ in that it is meant to be used - it helps point us in the right direction when we aren’t sure what words to pray. It is also a ‘tool’ in that it is a model for us to follow - the four petitions in Luke’s version of this prayer, which include praise, a request for daily bread, asking for forgiveness, and help in times of trial - give us a simple format with which we can earnestly bring all our concerns to God. But most importantly, the Lord’s Prayer is a tool in that it can help us to build a stepping stone, a foundation if you will, in our relationship to and with God - this prayer is an instrument through which the voice of God can be heard, and then followed. It is indeed a tool of faith. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Note: Original text by Rev. Sarah Fanning - July 29, 2001;
modified and adapted by the Rev. John Crowdis “in conversation” with the text for July 29th, 2007.
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