THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​Sometimes I find myself in a gathering where someone else is the host. If the
gathering includes a meal, someone will say it’s time to say grace. Everyone gets quiet,
waiting for the prayer—not the words—the pray-er, which usually means they’re
probably waiting for the professional to speak up.

Not wanting to intrude on the host, and also a bit curious about how others pray,
I stay quiet, and then that person will say a few halting words, or ask if I would offer a
prayer. Sometimes I wish they had asked, because someone has prepared a prayer so
long that the turkey gets cold and the jello salad begins to lose its shape. Admit it.
You’ve been there.

Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them to pray. Two versions of what we call
“The Lord’s Prayer” can be found in scripture. Today we get Luke’s version; the other
is in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Neither of these are exactly what we use in our
liturgies, and if you’ve attended services in other denominations, you’ll hear some
differences there as well.

Some say trespasses, others say debts. The International Commission on English
in the Liturgy, formed in the renewal movement of the sixties when Roman Catholics
moved from using only Latin, came up with the words we’ve recently been saying.
This has resulted in a bit of controversy, both theological and from the “thou shalt not
change” folks. In one parish, a person objected because he said, “only God can forgive
sins.” I referred him to Peter’s first letter and to Jesus’ own words near the end of
John’s gospel. Then there’s the thought that when we say “I forgive you” it’s actually
God at work through us. Another sermon, another time.

Let’s take a look at Luke’s words, starting at the beginning. The Greek word is
pater. Father, we say, in a way sounding like a very formal, even timid approach. Jesus
isn’t that formal. And in case you haven’t noticed, he’s not timid, either. The Aramaic
word is abba, and doesn’t mean the Swedish singing group. “Papa,” he says. Our more
familiar word might be similar to what a former co-worker taught her daughters to say
when they wanted their father to grant a particular request. “Don’t use the regular
word ‘Dad.’ Instead, say ‘Daddy’ and say it like the little girl he wants you to keep
being.” And yes, they’re still married.

Imagine wanting to ask your own father something, or just wanting a
conversation. You don’t use his formal name, and you don’t approach in fear or
apprehension. You know you are loved, and that he wants only your benefit. Imagine
that, even if it wasn’t or isn’t true in real life. What you ask may not be to your benefit
1and he may deny it, but you are still loved. Prayer, after all, is not a business
transaction.

This is not two friends greeting each other, although friendship may have some
of the same qualities. This is about a more intimate relationship. Abba. Papa. Daddy.
You don’t use a name, because that name is special, or as Luke and Matthew remind us,
holy. Remember rule number 3.

I once visited a parishioner who entered the hospital due to a problem that led to
a more threatening diagnosis. She was a busy professional who worked as a lobbyist,
and the legislature was due to begin its annual session. All the things she had on her
list were named, and after listening for a bit, I reminded her that getting well needed to
be at the top of that list. “What do you need just for today?” I asked. “After all, that is
what we pray for when we say ‘give us today our daily bread.’”

She stopped and thought about it, and then began to name those who could
shoulder some of her load while she focused on treatment and recovery. That would be
important in the long run, as treatment went on, but recovery did not. Having said
that, healing did occur in a few different ways, including making sure her relationships
with friends and family were the best they could be in the time she had left. And when
a very expensive treatment was found to be ineffective and state law said it must be
discarded, she used her professional abilities to change that law so that others might
benefit from what was left, the changed law now bearing her name.

I wonder if believing, and living, those words “give us today our daily bread”
would help us in our anxious times if we said instead “give us what we need for today
and we’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here.”

Luke pulls the old switcheroo on us when we stop to think about his words
regarding forgiveness. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those indebted to us.” Part
of the law of Moses required that every seven years every loan, every debt, was to be
forgiven. Not after seven years had elapsed, but say, if next year was the appointed
seventh year, then the slate is wiped clean for a loan made this year just as it would be if
the debt was incurred five years ago. There would be quite a rush on mortgages and
car loans at the point of year 6.5. Of course, in today’s economy the interest rate would
be about 500%, unless the part of the law of Moses that forbids charging or receiving
interest is also remembered. There seems to be no rush to carve that one in granite and
place it on the courthouse lawn.

It’s not easy to forgive. It’s nearly impossible to forget. Consider what we could
face if the one we call Abba, Papa, our Father, remembers how long we’re able to hold a
grudge. Again, Scooby Doo. Ruh roh.

Jesus’ disciples, and indeed the writers of the Gospels, thought that the return of
Christ was imminent and that God’s reign would be established during their own
lifetime. Before that arrival, though, there would be many struggles for power and
control. By the time of Luke’s Gospel, near the end of the first century, much of this
2was taking place. Jerusalem is destroyed, its inhabitants scattered. Roman occupation
ruled with a heavy fist and iron boot, with burning crosses lighting the highways.
Those crosses weren’t just wood. The bodies of those crucified would be covered
with tar and set alight. It didn’t matter if they were still alive.
​
“Do not bring us to the time of trial” is a way of saying “save us from the evil
around us, help us to remember who, and whose we are.” In other words, help us to
not give in to the fear others use to make us capitulate to their demands. Keep us from
bowing to the god of prosperity and greed that demands we forsake those in need
among us. That takes us back to our beginning words, to the very reason why we can
pray in confidence. Abba. Papa. We converse not in fear, but with the very source of
our life, a life founded and lived in love. Because of that, we can live in love, pray in
mutual love and then, as our familiar words remind us, “walk in love as Christ loved us
and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.”

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

Take a moment, if you will, and think about the last person you expect to meet in
heaven. Or maybe it will be the person you really don’t want to meet there. Go ahead,
go with your gut, your first response.

Got it? Now think about your response when you hear Jesus tell you that this
person is your neighbor, and, to borrow the label given to today’s parable, “good.”
Luke tells us that Samaritans and Jews do not hold things in common. That is
the understatement of the year whenever it’s read. After the death of Solomon, two of
his sons set up rival kingdoms—one based in Jerusalem, called Judah, and one known
as the northern kingdom in Samaria, called Israel. The northern kingdom is the location
of Jacob’s well, and to those who live there, a central place of worship equal in
significance to the Temple in Jerusalem.

About eight centuries before the time of Jesus, prophets such as Amos, Micah,
Hosea, and the first one named Isaiah warned the northern kingdom, Israel of the error
of its ways. Those errors included neglect of the poor, mistreatment of the aliens living
there, and assorted manifestations of idolatry. Hold the writings of those prophets
alongside today’s daily news.

The Assyrian army attacked Israel and destroyed the kingdom before heading
toward Judah. Judah was spared that time, but those left in the ruins of Israel were
forced to intermarry outside their faith. So, in the eyes of the Judeans, they were not a
pure race of people according to the law of Moses. Unlike Judah after the Babylonian
exile a few centuries later, the northern kingdom was not rebuilt.

The two groups—Samaritans and Judeans, now known as Jews—became not
only rivals, but bitter enemies. I’ve been told by one rabbi that in the first century, if one
met the other on the road, they were each sworn to try to kill the other.
So, when a young lawyer meets Jesus and professes his obedience to the law, he
lays a trap for Jesus. Little does he know that Jesus knows a trap when he sees it. When
Jesus defines the word “neighbor” as a culturally sworn enemy, and, therefore, as one
whom the lawyer is commanded to love by the same law he proudly confesses to keep,
he finds himself caught in his own trap.

Consider that as you imagine another scene. You’re standing in the hot sun on a
desolate hillside when you hear the words “Father, forgive them.” You look up and see
eyes focused on someone holding a hammer, another a few extra iron spikes. Then they
move and focus on you. And me. And on that person we least expect to see in heaven
or really don’t want to meet while on earth.

Many of us live in or have lived in neighborhoods where those living around us
looked and spoke just like us. In some cases, neighborhoods were designed and
marketed as suitable for those who looked and talked alike, ensuring some that their
definition of neighbor would be comfortable and self-assuring.

Now those distinctions, those divisions might be more along lines of economic
status, as housing costs and property values are often designed to make those
differences evident to any who might otherwise hope to live nearby. Homeowners’
associations help enforce some of these distinctions, because property values are more
important in our culture than truthfully answering the question “who is my neighbor”
with the reply, “everyone Jesus died for.” Everyone is the only real answer to that
question.

So, to turn the familiar Fred Rogers question to the flip side, we might go ahead
and ask “will you be my neighbor?” At the same time we ask it, though, we must also
ask “may I be your neighbor?” And no matter what the answer is to either form of the
question, continue to show mercy, offer healing and consolation, even share the
uncertainty that new relationships bring to our lives. Listen to the stories new
neighbors have to tell, and share your own. Most of all, let the story of the merciful love
and grace of God be the foundation of it all.

The world has its fill of how to make enemies. The lawyer testing Jesus asks
“who is my neighbor.” Jesus’ response at the end of the parable tells him to go and be a
neighbor to find the answer to his own question. The Body of Christ, the followers of
the living God, exists to make neighbors so that everyone might share in the identity
Jesus offers to all. That identity? Friends.

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

Recent studies have revealed what many of us already knew. Church attendance
is down—way down. In our diocese, we gathered just a few weeks ago as a
congregation met one last time for worship in its familiar building. At our recent clergy
conference we were told about one that closed a few years ago who gathered for the
deconsecration of the building two days before its sale was final.

Some of you here remember a time when pews were comfortably filled, even
when they weren’t cooled to an accepted temperature. There may be some who also
remember wearing suits and hats and gloves on those occasions. Many continue to look
around and ask “where is everyone?”

That doesn’t seem to be a question that Jesus cares to answer. Instead, Jesus
might ask a question that gets more to the point. But then, he probably wouldn’t even
ask the question. He would just make a statement.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, ask the Lord of the
harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We just sang a hymn that echoes what we
call “The Great Commission.” Matthew puts it this way: Go and make disciples. Luke’s
version is a bit more subtle while also getting down to business. Go on your way.
Don’t worry about what you will take or what you will need. Those who welcome you
will take care of that.

But . . .? But what? What if they don’t? Where will we eat or sleep? Don’t
worry about that, Jesus says. If they don’t welcome you, they’re really rejecting me, and
what’s more, they’re rejecting God. Let God handle that. Just know that when they
welcome you, they welcome me, and they welcome God. Tell the story. Do my work.
Heal the sick, send a few demons packing.

Do you understand what Jesus’ words mean? When we’re doing God’s work,
telling the story of grace and forgiveness in whatever form we use, it’s not just us doing
the work. God is with us, God is there. This also means that our work is not about us.
It’s about God. Otherwise, we substitute ourselves for God, and violate rule number
one.

We—all of us, not just the ordained—are laborers whom God sends into the
harvest. We walk into some fields that are plowed and ready for planting, and some
that are rocky and overgrown from years of neglect.

A few weeks ago I said to a couple of our members that I thought it was time that
we started collecting dust to form into human shapes. Some might call that getting back
to basics, to the beginning. My comment was that the more traditional method of
forming human beings didn’t seem to be working as well as it used to.

The baby boom many of us grew up in was an unusual time. Birth rates grew at
an astounding pace. Jobs seemed to be created out of raw firmament and houses and
schools sprang up on what was once mostly farmland. The house I now live in is in one
such development that sprang up in the mid-1980s. Then, the second wave of births
was expected as baby boomers married and had children.

That was how congregations grew. But birth rates declined, and many opted to
not have children at all, even if they got married. It seems we need to find a different
way of creating children.

You might think that strange, but what I mean is that we need to rediscover what
it means to create children of God, or, to use Matthew’s words, make disciples. So-
called church growth programs don’t really work, and I believe God turns away from
them because they focus on the wrong thing. We aren’t laborers for a harvest to gather
bodies into our empty pews. We don’t make disciples of budgets.

Instead, we are called to live our lives as a revelation of God’s presence with us.
The name chosen for this place, Immanuel, is so much more than a sign on the corner.
It is our reason for being, our purpose. Our task is to live in such a way that the Spirit
of God that wafted over the waters at creation, that gave and continues to give life, is
our invitation to join in the community of believers. We are created in human flesh,
then re-created (Paul uses the word “adoption”) in the waters of baptism. Perhaps,
when we come to the full revelation of who we are as children of God, we will finally
understand what it means to be both created and begotten.

We are sent into a harvest to tell the story of a God who appears in human form,
and in some way to be the evidence of God’s presence, the revelation of the risen Christ.
This is the same God who calls life into being and sustains that life by being part of it.
The presence we carry, that really carries us into the harvest field is that of a Creator
who gives life where sickness and death threaten to take it away. It is a story of One
whose presence stands firm in faith in the face of cruelty and oppression. It is an
acclamation that, even when it seems all is lost, God shakes new life out of the death-
dealing ways of the world.

We don’t have to fight evil, except when it tries to take control of our own lives.
We can stand in the strength of the risen Christ and announce that God has already
overcome sin and death, standing with the faith of Jesus that holds true to this day. The
adversary, Satan, Jesus calls it, wants chaos to overshadow that truth. And when we
give in to chaos and its fuel, anxiety, we risk doing Satan’s work and not the work of the
new day Christ gives us.

Because this day is the day of the new age declared on a lonely hill outside
Jerusalem. It is the day where the strange fruit on a desolate tree blossomed into new
life. It is the day when evil itself remains fallen, overcome by the unending power of
the life of the living God.

Laborers for this day are still needed. Are you ready to sign up for the work
given for us to do? The joy of new life for us and for all who welcome the story that is
ours to tell depends on your answering “yes.”