Jan 19th: Our Father: Community, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
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Our Father: Community with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: The Jesus Prayer: 7 Spiritual Practices for the New Year A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Matthew 6.9-13; 18.3.
Join us this Sunday, either online or in-person, as we dive deeper into the powerful message about community, connection, and living out the Lord’s Prayer.
Transcript:
Steven: I met Rupert at a previous church, and Rupert was an extremely successful lawyer in Chicago. When Rupert retired, he could have spent his time traveling the world in comfort. Instead, he chose to spend three days a week volunteering at the Y on the south side as a mentor for youth in one of the most underserved, dangerous neighborhoods in the city, Rupert would hang out at the playground where the youth played basketball, you know, just hoping to make connections. You know, people would say, Rupert, it’s so dangerous. Why are you risking your life? Those Those kids are laughing at you. Rupert would say, I can’t measure my own success, separate from these kids having an opportunity to succeed and and flourish. I mean, his words echoed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, who said, We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly, I cannot be who I ought to be until you are who you ought to be. In other words, no one really wins until everyone wins. Can you imagine if we played by those rules? Rupert would say, you know, if I wasn’t here, God would have one less option to let these kids know that their lives matter. Rupert mentored many of these kids, helping them graduate from high school, helping them get jobs. I was blessed with the sacred privilege to sit with Rupert’s family as they said their farewells before he died. We were holding hands praying now Rupert hadn’t been awake or communicative for three days, we gave thanks for the goodness of his life, the seeds of goodness that he planted in in so many people’s lives. We reminded Rupert that that he was loved with a love from which he can never be separated, that he had nothing to fear, but there was no obvious sign that he heard us. So when we finished, I invited Rupert’s family to to say the Lord’s prayer with me, a prayer that Rupert prayed 1000 times in his life. And as we began praying the Lord’s Prayer, I couldn’t believe it. Rupert. Opened his eyes. He hadn’t opened his eyes or talked in three days, and he proceeded to say every word clearly of the Lord’s Prayer, as if that prayer actually lived somewhere deep in his heart. I mean, everyone was stunned, including me. We finished the prayer, and Rupert closed his eyes, and there was an indescribable peace in that room. And Rupert transitioned from this life to more life. Later that same day, at the service celebrating Rupert’s life, several of the youth that he had mentored, they spoke about how this old white guy treated them as if their lives mattered, as if they were his his own sons. You know the prayer that Jesus taught, what prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer, begins in a revolutionary way, two simple words, our father, notice, not mine, not yours, not theirs, but our father. In God’s heart, there is no other in God’s heart, there’s there’s only us. There’s no them, there is only we. There are no walls, there are no boundaries. There’s one table where everyone belongs. Everyone has a seat at that table. We belong to God, and in belonging to God, we actually belong to each other. Mother Teresa said, the violence in this world stems from the fact that that we have forgotten that we belong to one another. Now Rupert seemed to understand this at a deep level. He didn’t simply pray the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer shaped. It shaped his heart in such a way that Rupert lived the prayer. And you know, I suspect that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said to his disciples, pray this way. He wasn’t teaching a prayer to recite as he was teaching an orientation of the heart, as he was teaching a way of being and living in the world. So over the next several weeks, we’re going to take a look, a close look, line by line, at the prayer that Jesus taught. Here it is, here’s the Lord’s Prayer as it’s found in the Gospel of Matthew chapter six. Jesus said, This is how you pray Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Did you notice Jesus begins the prayer with two simple words, our father, again, not mine, not yours, not not theirs, but our father. You know, we live in a world of me and mine. We live in a world of us and them, us versus them, us against them. Imagine what might change if the word our became our lens, our Oh, you are. That’s a really small word, but I think it actually holds the key to the healing of the world. Everything we’re learning from astrophysics and cellular biology, about the essential nature of life, the essential nature of our interdependence and unity, makes absolutely clear that me and mine and us versus them, is actually a violation of creation, our very survival depends on tribalism becoming transformed into community. I mean, the devastating fires in Los Angeles reveal to us once again that that that our survival is not dependent on the individual, our survival is dependent on recognizing how connected we are. You know, I’ve watched as firefighters arrive from all over the world to risk their lives to save heirlooms, photos, scrapbooks, pets, willing to do absolutely anything they can to help people they have never met. I mean, neighbors are opening their doors. Strangers are buying food and supplies for those who have lost absolutely everything, and no one asked, who did you vote for? How do you pray? You know a friend of mine who lives in Long, Long Beach, he called the Los Angeles YMCA to see if the they needed any more volunteers for the shelter they set up. And my friend was told not at this time because they are overwhelmed with people wanting to help. It’s not their crisis over there. It’s our crisis. We don’t pray My Father, we pray Our Father. Just imagine for a moment what might change in the world if we really understood there’s no such thing as other people’s children. They are all our children. A six year old was watching TV with his mother, and there’s a news story about a mother and her six year old, her six year old son, walking 1000 miles fleeing violence. Uh, hoping, hoping, hoping, upon hope, to find a safe place and a refuge to call home the little boy watching this story and seeing the eyes looking into the eyes of the other little boy on television. This little boy not having learned fear and hate and prejudice, yet, he turned to his mom and said, Mommy, can they live with us? They can be part of our family. Intuitively, this little boy’s Circle of Love had no boundaries, and he said, they can be part of our family. You know, maybe that’s why Jesus said, unless you become like a child, you cannot see the ways of God. Jesus, in this prayer is teaching us to envision and to aspire to what Dr King called the beloved community, a community in which the well being of all is the concern of each, and the well being and flourishing of each is the goal of all I absolutely love the story Palestinian poet Naomi shaybnai tells about Gate Four a she writes, wandering around Albuquerque airport terminal after Learning my flight had been delayed. I heard an announcement. If anyone in the vicinity of Gate Four understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well, one pauses these days, but Gate Four a was my own gate. So, so I went there an older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. The gate agent said, Can you please help? Can you talk to her? We told her that her flight was delayed and and she did this, I stooped and put my arm around the woman, and I spoke to her haltingly, Shuda shubita Stan Shui, mini fad lick, the minute she heard some words that she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. Now she thought her flight had been canceled entirely, and she needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day, I said, you’re fine. You’ll get there. Who is picking you up. Let’s call him. So he called her son, and I spoke to him in English. It was Southwest Airlines, so, so I said that I would stay with his mother until we got on the plane and and that I would sit next to her. And she then talk to him. Then we called my dad, and he and she, they spoke in Arabic, and they found out, of course, that they had 10 shared friends. She was laughing a lot by then, telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamul cookies, you know, little powdered sugar, sugar mounds stuffed with dates and nuts out of her bag, and she began offering these cookies to to all the people at the gate. To my amazement, not a single person declined one. You know, it was like a sacrament, the business traveler from Argentina, the single mom from California, the lovely lady from Laredo. Laredo, we were all covered with the same powdered sugar and smiling. There is no better cookie. And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers, and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice, and they too were covered with powdered sugar. And I looked around the gate of late and weary, weary travelers, and I thought, Now this, this is the world I want to live in, the shared world. Not a single person in this gate once the crying of confusion stopped, not a single person seemed apprehensive. A fearful, resentful of any other person. They took the cookies I wanted to hug all of them. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. Friends, the phrase you know, the phrase we’re in this together. That phrase is not just a cliche. It’s actually a divine truth, a truth we need to embody and live. Now more than ever, Jesus taught us. Jesus taught us to pray. Our Father, reminding us that we belong to God, and in belonging to God, we belong to each other, inviting us not just to pray those words, but like Rupert, live them. So I invite you this week to contemplate that simple word hour. Let that simple word be your lens this week and observe what happens. Hour. It’s a small word, but it can change the world. May it be so? I.
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