Sermon At Murray Christian Church / Remembrance / A Wedding & New Beginnings

Yesterday, Gail and Maddie and I had the pleasure of spending the morning with the good people of the Murray Christian Church..  I led the service and delivered the message to them and after the service we stayed, and enjoyed a time of fellowship with them during their monthly Fellowship Potluck.  There were far too many attractive looking desserts laid out to select from, which made the always difficult 'dessert discernment' all the more challenging.  But, I caved in and tried two of the desserts presented and both were very good.

Gail and Maddie once again had trouble with the camcorder, it seems there is an issue with the memory card even though Maddie had deleted everything off of it the card still was not working properly.  So once again rather that posting up fragments of the sermon I will just post the manuscript.

The sermon seemed to be very well received, and a great many folks complimented me about it so I was pleased.  I am going to have to go over to Office Depot and pick up a new memory card before my next preaching engagement.

Before I gave my sermon one of the members at Murray, a wonderful gentleman named Millard gave me a pen that he had made.  He makes these pens for the youth of the Church and was so kind as to give one to me as a present for coming to worship with them.  I was very surprised and extremely pleased.  I immediately put it to good use in recording the various names for the prayer requests.  Thanks again Millard, you are a true gem.

This coming Sunday I will be back to Benson Baptist and leading the Sunday School Class for the 2nd to 4th grade students.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all again, they are just a delight to work with and it's always refreshing to one's spirit.

Saturday was both a very somber and a very joyful day.  It marked the 3rd anniversary of the death by suicide of the child of one of my oldest friends.  I did not call him on Saturday or Sunday but I will today, I'm sure the family was there for him on the actual anniversary date.  Today I want to make sure he's holding up afterwards.  These are wounds that of course never heal and we always need to be in prayer for those that we know have suffered such a terrible blow in their lives.

On a joyful note however, on Saturday morning I attended the wedding of my friend and Mentor the Reverend Robert Molby.  Bob married a woman that he has known for many, many years.  Her name is Marcie and she was I believe a member in the first congregation that Bob led so many years ago.  In fact Bob conducted the service for Marcie and her first husband's wedding.  Marcie has to my understanding, lost two husbands to cancer through the years.

It's a wonderful thing to see two people in their 80's being so positive about life that they are still searching for companionship and new beginnings.  I prayerfully wish Bob and Marcie all the very best, and pray God will grace them with a goodly number of years of life together.  God Bless them both.

Marcie Wetzel and Rev. Bob Molby
married 10/11/14 at Sunset Hills Baptist Church in Omaha, NE
Rev. Ron French Presiding
WmRoy Karlen photo

Well, I need to get back to work now so with that, I'll just attach a copy of the sermon from yesterday.

May you all have a richly blessed and joyful week, God's love and abundance to you all.

In Christ,

Roy

Manuscript for Sermon at Murray Christian Church - October 12th, 2014:

Good Morning, it's great to be here again on this fall morning. My name is Roy Karlen and my wife Gail and my daughter Maddie and I are all very happy to be here to worship with you good people, and even more importantly we're excited to be here with you for your monthly pot-luck. You'll never go wrong visiting a Church when they are having a potluck dinner.

Before you go any further though, let's go before the Lord in Prayer.

Be pleased, Heavenly Father, to come in your Holy Spirit to this gathering of your people and grant that as we look up to thee in penitence and praise, you will look down on us in pardon and grace. Prepare our hearts and minds to grow closer to you dear Lord. Amen

Today, we're going to take a look at a bit of scripture that we all know by heart. In fact we've all already recited it here today. Or at least we've recited a revision of this particular piece of scripture. It is of course known as “The Lord's Prayer”. The prayer that Jesus himself taught to the disciples.

We find “The Lord's Prayer” in two of the three synoptic Gospels. The verses in Matthew that we read just a few minutes ago and also a more abbreviated form in Luke's Gospel. What most people do not realize however, is that the prayer is found in a third location. It is found in the 8^th Chapter of a non-canonical document known as the 'Didache' which is also known as 'The Teaching of the Twelve'. When we say a book or writing is or isn't canonical, what we mean is that it is or isn't in the Bible. Of course what is considered canonical depends on whether you are looking at a Catholic, a Protestant, or one of the various forms of Orthodox Christianities Bibles, there are differences in the numbers of books in the various 'official' canons. 'The Teaching of the Twelve' or the 'Didache' is a Christian document that likely dates to the middle of the First Century, though there is, as there is with nearly all of the Canonical and Non-canonical documents, disagreement among scholars as to it's exact age and origin. Some date at least portions of the document to being as early as any of the books found in the Canon. Early Church tradition held that the 'Didache' was written by the Twelve Apostles themselves, though this is considered highly unlikely today. There are some who believe that the Didache arose from the same community as the author of the Gospel of Matthew, which very well may explain the similarity of the Lord's Prayer found within the two.

So let's take a closer look at this prayer that we all have memorized. First we'll take a look at 'The Lord's Prayer' as found in Luke:

Luke 11:1-4 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Lord’s Prayer

1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.3 Give us each day our daily bread.4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

A much more abbreviated form of the Prayer for certain.

Now let's look at this Prayer as found in the Didache.

Didache 8:2
Neither pray ye as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel, thus pray ye:
Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done,
as in heaven, so also on earth;
give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our debt,
as we forgive our debtors;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one;
for Thine is the power and the glory for ever and ever.

8:3
Three times in the day pray ye so.

This certainly, sounds much more like the Prayer we're used to reciting. It's actually very nearly the same, did you catch that last verse though? “Three times in the day, pray ye so”. For many years the base of my prayer life was to recite the Lord's Prayer throughout the day. To be honest, I am not at all certain that this isn't what we are supposed to do. Certainly, it serves as a great reminder and it is significant that the Didache, which is basically a how to manual, tells us to repeat this prayer three times daily.

Let's look at the verses in Matthew again.

Matthew 6:7-15 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 “Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.11 Give us this day our daily bread.12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;

15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

And finally, let's look at the Lord's Prayer as nearly all of us recite it today. We're going to break this down bit by bit as we go along.

Our Father who art in Heaven,

First off we address God here. We are calling out to God in his name. 'Our Father in Heaven', no earthly parent here but our Father God. Now the Lord's Prayer isn't the most 'gender inclusive' Prayer that we have. So please forgive me if you are sensitive to the issue of inclusive language. The fact remains that Jesus himself referred to God as God the Father. In fact, generally Jesus referred to God as 'Abba'. Which basically translates as Daddy. For Jesus there is both a sense of reverence and familiarity in addressing his God. God the Father who art in Heaven, and Abba, Daddy. I think it serves us well to retain these competing natures of our God.

Hallowed be thy name;

God's name is sacred. He is Holy, he is set apart from all other God's, he is the one and only true God. His name is so sacred that the ancient Jews and many orthodox Jews today will not say or even spell out his name. I have a friend on-line who writes God's name as G-d. This isn't uncommon to be honest. God's name is Holy and we say it with a sense of reverence, even when we address him as Abba.

Thy kingdom come;

Note that it doesn't say we're going to your Kingdom, rather God's Kingdom is coming here.

Thy will be done

Not my will or any other humans will, but God's will. Here we are pledging to be God's hands and feet. We are to aid him in establishing his will.

On earth as it is in heaven.

And that will is not only in Heaven, but here on this earth. We've already addressed that his Kingdom is coming and that it's his will that we are to be concerned with.

Give us this day our daily bread;

It seems that we've made a change here rather suddenly. We've gone from caring about God's work and will to petitioning for our own needs. The key word here is the word that is translated as 'daily'. It is the Greek work 'epiousios', and we'll come back to this word in just a minute. Let's finish the prayer first.

And forgive us our debts, (or trespasses / sins)

As we forgive our debtors; (or those that trespass or sin against us)

Here we have this desire for grace and forgiveness. Just as we talked about the last time I was with you all, God's desire for reconciliation. A desire for reconciliation not only between us and God but between all of us here.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

Matthew urges that this grace between us is so crucial that God's grace towards us even hinges upon it.

14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;

15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

God please keep us away from temptation. For we know that we are weak. Lead us away from temptation. Do not lead us toward the time of trial or temptation, and rescue us from evil or the evil one. All too often, that evil one is our own ego and pride.

For thine is the kingdom

And the power

And the glory,

Forever.

Amen

This last part is known as the 'Doxology' and did you happen to notice that only one of the pieces we looked at contains the Doxology. I am not aware of any manuscripts of Luke that contain the Doxology and the earliest and best manuscripts of Matthew do not contain it either, though it is in many later manuscripts. One has to wonder if the Doxology for the Lord's Prayer didn't come to us from the Didache itself. It seems fairly obvious that it was not part of the original text of Matthew.

Let's back-up just a bit and go back to that line:

Give us this day our daily bread;

As I pointed out it seems that we've made a change here, we've gone from caring about God's work and will to petitioning for our own personal needs. And as I said here the key word is the word translated as 'daily' the Greek word 'epiousios'.

Epiousios is a very, very interesting word. The only real problem is that we don't actually know what the word means. You see this word exists in exactly three places, it is only found in these three readings of the “Lord's Prayer”. And since for many, many years the Didache was lost, for much of Christian History we have only had two sources for this unknown word, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Now since we find this prayer in only Matthew and Luke, and not in Mark's Gospel, it is highly likely that it originated in that undiscovered but hypothesized Document known as 'Q' or 'The Source'.

At one time a fragment of papyrus was discovered that reportedly contained the word Epiousios upon it. This fragment appeared to be a 'shopping list', with words in Greek such as beans, or rice, or cat litter or such, and after each word there was the word Epiousios. Based on this the scholar that translated the document hypothesized that Epiousios meant something along the lines of 'enough for tomorrow'. Which made sense in a culture that didn't have storage or refrigeration and where one typically goes to the market each day. There was only one problem... after the papyrus was examined by this scholar, and this scholar only... it was misplaced within the collection of the museum that held it. For a very long time it remained lost again, until it was found not long ago and additional Greek Scholars were able to finally look at it.

Well unfortunately for us the word that followed each item such as beans, rice or cat litter wasn't Epiousios at all. Rather it was a word that translates to 'oil'. So what we have here is of no use to us as an aid in discernment of the meaning behind the Lord's Prayer but one that is interesting none the less. For you see I have a theory about this papyrus. I believe that a wife back in that time sent her husband to the market to get oil. As all of us husbands have done at one time or another, this poor soul came home with all kinds of things but no oil. Well the next time he's sent to the market, his loving wife wrote the list as... beans – OIL, rice – OIL, cat litter – OIL... and so on. It's interesting that in all these many centuries some dynamics of marital life have remained the same. But that's just my theory of course.

But, back to just what does Epiousios mean and how did it come to be translated as daily. Well in the fourth century St. Jerome was commissioned by the Pope to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. This was the first translation of the Bible in it's entirety into Latin. When Jerome came to Epiousios he was uncertain just what to do so in Luke he translated it one way as 'Daily' and in Matthew he translated it differently. In our modern Bibles only the translation from Luke the word 'Daily' remains and the meaning assigned by Jerome in Matthew has been largely forgotten.

If we break down the word Epiousios we find that 'epi' means 'above', 'beyond' or 'super', 'ousios' means substance, essence or necessity. We come up with the word that Jerome used when translating the Gospel of Matthew, 'Supersubstantial'. Above substantial, super essential, beyond necessity... these all give us a considerable different meaning than 'daily'.

Now we no longer have 'daily' bread but 'supersubstantial' bread, 'super essential' bread, bread that is 'beyond that what is necessary for mere survival'. When we consider that Christ used bread as a metaphor, we have, well the Eucharist, we have Communion, we have the bread of life, we have Christ himself...

We no longer have feed us for we are hungry, but feed us for we hunger. We hunger for that relationship with God that comes through the celebration of the Lord's Supper, through the ceremonial celebration of communion. This point is particularly poignant to you all as members of the Disciples of Christ Church. The DOC places such great emphasis on the celebration of communion that it is celebrated not once a month as most Christian denominations do but weekly, as you all well know.

It is important that we remember that when Christ taught this prayer to his Disciples, he almost certainly did not teach it to them in Greek. Rather he almost certainly taught it to them in Aramaic. We are left wondering what word or words did he use here that forced the writer of 'Q' to have to create a new word in Greek in order to try and grasp the depth of the meaning. It would seem unlikely that it was a word as mundane as daily. A word which can be rendered by at least 20 different ancient Greek words none of which is epiousios.

Let's look at the Lord's Prayer again with this idea of the bread being 'Christ' foremost in our minds.

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 a relationship with Christ;

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors;

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom

And the power

And the glory,

Forever.

Amen

Suddenly, that prayer takes on a whole new meaning. A new deep theological meaning that honestly my modest preaching and teaching skills fail to adequately convey. But be that as it may, perhaps now you'll think about the Lord's Prayer just a bit differently whenever you pray it. Which by the way is supposed to be three times a day.

And here's just a little challenge from the pulpit, let's all try and pray this prayer at least three times a day for the next week. Thinking about this alternate and different meaning as we do so, let's see if it has any impact on our lives and our relationship with Christ.

Let's end this sermon on prayer with a prayer.

God above, Father, Abba

Holy, Sacred and Revered Lord.

We pledge our hands, our feet, our hearts and our spirits

to you Oh Lord, to fashion this world as you

would desire.

Let us ever be your emissaries of Love,

Charity, Grace and Forgiveness in this world.

Let us follow the model that you have given us, of Jesus who is the Christ, as we pursue your perfect example of grace and love to this broken world.

Allow us Oh Lord to come into communion and relationship with you. Give us the strength of body, mind and spirit that we require to serve you.

We pray for your protection from those that would oppose and harm us, and from our own sinful and selfish egos.

Oh Lord guide us steadfastly down your path of Forgiveness, Grace, Charity and Love onto this world.

For yours alone Oh Lord, is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory, until the very end of all time.

Amen