“Deliberately Diverse” represents the individual thoughts and opinions of a group of Taylor friends who almost never completely agree about anything but are gratified by the opportunity to stimulate deliberately diverse discussions in our beloved community. Today’s column represents the thoughts and opinions of Reverend Terry Pierce, vicar of St. James’ Episcopal Church the Taylor Press.
In the biblical gospel of Luke, we are told how the disciples said to Jesus, “Teach us to pray.”
Before I learned to pray, I had to learn to be quiet.
I actually learned to be quiet in a group. It is much easier that way: to have someone to imitate and to know that, even if I was bored out of my mind, it was important to be quiet for other people’s prayers if I couldn’t be quiet for my own.
Jesus doesn’t say that’s the way to start, but I am thinking he never had to spend 10 minutes of silence in my head.
Thomas Keating reminds us that prayer is about making an intimate relationship with God and part of the necessity for intimacy is silence.So, that is where we start.
“Father, hallowed be your name.”
Father is the language Jesus used. He wasn’t talking about my father or my stepfather or your father or any of our lack of a father. He wasn’t talking about father creator separated from mother creator. He was talking about something different.
The next word, hallowed, in Hebrew means to make clean, to consecrate. So, let us pray in the intimacy of what created us and let us make holy the name of that which created us – not male or female, but some mixture of intimacy and power that is, at most times, beyond ordinary comprehension.
“Your kingdom come.” Our work is to bring the Kingdom of God, not at some future time but now. In Luke’s gospel, the reign of God is here, our work is to open our eyes to see, open our ears to hear it, and open our hands to work within its harvest.”
“Give us each day our daily bread.”
That might also be translated “Give us the bread we need.”It is a difficult phrase to translate from Greek into English. According to my Bishop Andrew Doyle, “Most every scholar agrees it does not mean supernatural bread… It is daily bread, future bread, and necessary bread. It is bread that is received as gift and it is bread that is given.”
I have sat down with friends at table, …While I may not know exactly what it means I know it comes down to this. “God, you are a God of providence, you give me all that I have and all that I am, do not stop your giving.”
Please join me next time to talk about the ending of the Lord’s prayer – forgiveness and the time of trial.
