Living the Questions, Part 1

Ephesians 3:16-18

During June I solicited questions from all of you.  This week and next I’ll spend time responding to those questions.  I know what some of you may be thinking . . . “Question and Answer with the Pastor” –- are you just trying to get out of writing a sermon?  Nope.  I still wrote a sermon – and writing this and next week’s sermon required being in deliberate conversation with your questions. 

 

Others of you might be thinking, “Who do you think you are, Jared?  Do you really think you know the answers to all of our questions?”  No, I don’t think I know all the answers.  In fact, the older I get (and the longer I’m a pastor) the less interested I become in what I once thought; the less impressed I become with my own ways of understanding the world.  So I reserve the right to change my mind, and I hope you do too! 

To be honest, in my own religious upbringing there wasn’t much space for asking questions – especially questions that challenged established assumptions.  I was never encouraged to ask questions.  And when I did, I felt like our conversations often dodged things that really mattered.  There was a fear of saying, “I don’t know.” 

And so my transition to the Presbyterian Church had a lot to do with the fact that Presbyterians, generally speaking, are open to all kinds of questions.  Even the kind that don’t have answers.  The questions raised and the way I answer them may not be exactly what you need right now.  But I will tell you that there are a lot of people sitting in pews in all kinds of churches just dying for some honest conversation about the questions that weigh on our hearts.

Ok, so I asked for questions and I got some.  Thank you.  Let me tell you the range of questions I received.  And we’ll deal with some today and save some for next week.

The first three we’ll take on this week:

·      “Why do Presbyterians use ‘debts’ and ‘debtors’ instead of ‘trespasses’ in the Lord’s Prayer?”

·      “Why doesn’t God fix our problems when we pray?”

·      “Does God have my life planned out before I am born, including when and how I will die?”

These last two we’ll save for next week:

·      “What does the Bible say about people who are transgender?”

·      “Why are there so many different religions, and even different forms of Christianity?  Where did religion come from?”

OK, so let’s take a look at this week’s questions.

“Why do Presbyterians use ‘debts’ and ‘debtors’ instead of ‘trespasses’ in the Lord’s Prayer?”

I often officiate funerals in which many different church traditions are represented. Presbyterians pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  Catholics, Episcopalians, and Methodists pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  And still others pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”  And these prayers have worked their way deep into our lives.  They wear a groove in our hearts.  So even when I prompt those gathered to use “debts and debtors,” it doesn’t matter.  The trespassers and the sinners will just go ahead and say it like they’ve learned it!

This is a great question about different rhythms and forms of prayer.  Most Presbyterian churches are liturgical.  That is, we live by traditions of worship that follow the same movements each week.  So do Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists.  One of those weekly rhythms is praying the Lord’s Prayer.  Now some of you may find this repetitive sameness predictable and boring.  And it can be.  But it’s also a way of practicing a way of prayer, a life of prayer.  We pray the Lord’s Prayer every week so that this prayer can become the primary prayer of your life, and the primary shape of our passion and desire. 

           

So why do Presbyterians use the “debts” version of the Lord’s Prayer?  Both Matthew’s gospel (ch. 6) and Luke’s gospel (ch. 11) record versions of the prayer that Jesus teaches the disciples.  Matthew’s gospel places it within the Sermon on the Mount.  Luke’s gospel places it during a different part of Jesus’ ministry.  Of course, it is likely that Jesus taught the disciples how to pray on multiple occasions and that the prayer sometimes varied in its wording.

These gospel accounts use the Greek word for “debts,” but also the generic word of “sins.”  And it is closely connected to teaching about “trespasses.”  So there isn’t any right or wrong.  We’re all debtors, sinners, and trespassers, so take your pick!  (I will add that I do rather like the Presbyterian habit, as it reminds me that my expression of forgiveness and sacrifice may take financial form, as in a literal monetary “debt”).

“Why doesn’t God fix our problems when we pray?”

All of us have lived with some version of this question.  We have come up against something painful or frightening, some tragic loss.  And we have prayed for God to take it away, or to protect us from it, or to get us through it.

It’s true that God doesn’t always fix our problems when we pray.  And this has caused some people to lose confidence in God’s love, to drift away from faith and the fellowship and worship of the church.

So it’s a serious question.  Let me say a couple of things in response.  First, God isn’t primarily a “fixer of our problems.”  God isn’t a cosmic bellhop.  God isn’t your servant or mine.  God isn’t in the business of guarding us from pain and protecting us from despair and frustration.  Sometimes we pray as if God owes us magical solutions to our problems.  But when we pray that way, we are not approaching the gracious God who welcomes us like a caring parent. 

God is the loving source of all that is.  God is the gracious mystery that supports us and sustains us as we grow in our ability to see the world and ourselves more clearly.  God is the beautiful energy of attraction and persuasion that draws us deeper and deeper into our own baptisms; deeper into a life that takes the shape of Jesus’ life; deeper into the courage and wisdom to love our neighbors as ourselves. 

Second, prayer that asks God to fix our problems is only one kind of prayer.  It is normal for us to pray when we’re afraid, anxious, worried, frustrated or in pain.  I find this to be one of the treasures of the life of faith – that we can come to God with complete honesty.  But if we are only praying when we want God to fix something, we are only at the very beginning of a life of prayer.  To ask God to do this or that for us can become a troubling attempt to control God and to control our own lives.  And prayer isn’t about control; it’s about trust.

When we pray with trust, we can certainly bring before God whatever might be troubling our soul.  But we will begin to follow every prayer for God to fix something with another prayer for courage and endurance if it turns out that we will have to learn to live in a difficult situation.  And when we pray with trust, our prayers for help will be accompanied by prayers expressing things like “wow,” “that’s beautiful,” and “thank you.”

“Does God have my life planned out before I am born, including when and how I will die?”

The person who asked this question added another line: “Some people talk about ‘his/her number’ being called up.”  So does God assign to each of us a life-span and plan for how and when we will die?  I hope not, and let me tell you why. 

God knows everything.  God holds past, future, and present together in love for the world.  So you might say that God is never “surprised.”  That’s why Jesus can say, “Not a sparrow can fall from the sky; and not a hair can fall from your head without God knowing it.”  When we confess that God is all-knowing, we are simply praising God for God’s glorious and wise way of being God.

But it’s important to add that God doesn’t script our lives.  God doesn’t plan out the details of our lives.  God doesn’t force us into any particular path.  God doesn’t program us or control us.  So that means that God does not plan for when and how we die.  Some Christians believe that it honors God to claim that God is in complete control.  But to me, that simply makes God a monster.  If God ordains the lynching of black slaves, the suffering of children, the mass killing of Jews in the holocaust – or if God orchestrates the terrible things that can happen to us and to our loved ones, then God more an evil monster than the loving healer as the gospel stories insist.

Remember, God the creator is a lover.  God brings all of reality into existence for one reason only: to share with the world the love that circulates between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  So God wants a world of creatures that can reflect, in some small way, the way God loves.  God wants a world of free and responsible actors, creatures who can organize their lives and desires towards loving God and neighbor.  So if God were a puppeteer, controlling us, this would defeat God’s purposes in creating a world full of free and responsible agents who are learning to love one another. 

To be a Christian means really only one thing: we believe that Jesus Christ shows us what God is like.  So what is God like?  God is a merciful, compassionate, non-violent healer.  God sides with the poor and the outcast.  God sides with women, and children, and refugees.  God fights on behalf of those in prison, those hungry, those in pain.  God is the one who is crucified with us, sharing our pain, bearing our loss and confusion.  God is the quiet light that makes our lives meaningful and joyful, despite how difficult life can be.

Let me conclude with a few words of praise for a life of curiosity and a faith full of questions.

The questions we need answered may be the wrong questions, but we never find that out until we ask them with all our heart.

 - Ann Ulanov

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

- Rainer Maria Rilke