A Lenten Sermon Series 1/6
Matthew 6: 1-13
by Rev. Carson Overstreet
Van Wyck Presbyterian Church
February 18, 2018
The season of Lent is spiritual journey. It is a time of 40 days and 6 Sundays to gaze inward upon the condition of our hearts. During our Ash Wednesday service on February 14, I asked each of us to consider what is blocking your spirit and mine from giving our whole heart to God?
It is a weighty question because as we look inward, we are also looking upward to the cross as God poured out his whole heart through Jesus’ compassionate ministry, death, and resurrection. What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
And so we are called to walk with Jesus as disciples on this journey to the cross. With each step we prayerfully reflect upon this gift of faith and Jesus’ costly grace.
Take in Jesus’ instruction to all those who gathered for the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6: 1-13……
‘Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Concerning Prayer
‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
‘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. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
‘Pray then in this way:
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
Jesus teaches that this gift of faith has long been used for pretense. He cautions us to pay attention to practicing our faith as if it were a performance. When faith is more like an act then we are mere pretenders; our hearts are insincere, and our actions are hollow.
Pretense is something that blocks us from giving our whole heart to God. The other side of pretense is being too full…allowing busyness, schedules, and obligations to get in the way.
Henry Nouwen says, “So often we receive nothing from our spiritual practices because we have not created any open spaces in our lives. We are too full. We may want to receive, but we certainly do not want anything to be taken away.”[1]
Jesus teaches that this gift of faith is to be opened for genuine relationships with God and one another. It is a treasure that is to keep our hearts pliable like Playdo, teachable to keep learning God’s newest thing, and humble for no student is higher than their teacher. And yet it can be a scary thing for our hearts to be open because it requires us to let our guards down in order to be vulnerable – or be real with God.
Jesus teaches how we are to keep our faith honest, especially in this season of personal and communal reflection. We keep our faith honest through prayer. And if we are to keep our eyes on our Teacher and walk in the steps of our Savior then Jesus shows us to pray as he did.
We say the Lord’s prayer every week. And yet how often do we think about the full measure of the words we are saying? The Lord’s Prayer so easily becomes rote, but Jesus offers some bold words that connect us to God, connect us more deeply with ourselves, and to others, as well as opening our eyes daily to see God at work. These next 6 weeks of Lent we will break down the Lord’s Prayer.
I love how Jesus begins his prayer: “Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9b). Four words that seem so simple but the way Jesus orders them makes all the difference.
Jesus’ first words spill out with a sense of child-like wonder for who God is. God is like a loving parent who is trustworthy, filled with goodness, and cares deeply for us. That intimacy is primary for Jesus. Jesus knew how deep and wide God’s love is for Creation and humanity since the beginning; Jesus is equal to God and also grew up in God’s wisdom from that babe lying in a manger as God’s only Son.
God destined us for adoption as God’s children through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5). We are created to live in relationship with the One who knit us in our mothers’ womb, the One who is acquainted with all our ways, the One who leads us, and holds us fast (Psalm 139: 13, 3, 10).
And yet this divine and loving parent who will never fail us is the same God who stretched out the heavens like a blanket of stars and spins the whirling planets. As the Psalmist says, “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4).
We behold the sheer wonder of God’s love to name in this human experience and yet we are limited to fully comprehend the majesty and glory of God. Jesus’ prayer, “Our Father in heaven” captures the biblical imagination about the nearness and distance of God.
It is within these two extremes that our hearts open to praise God’s name. To praise God is to remember that God is set apart or “hallowed.” God is revealed through the Word made flesh and connects us to the story of God’s steadfast love; shapes our identities; and gives our lives purpose in a fearful and broken world.
Just as God put on human skin and became vulnerable in the person of Jesus Christ, God lives in solidarity with us still. God weeps with us in our sufferings and pain. God’s love pumps through the veins of our faith to be our brother’s keeper so that we might see God’s compassion in one another.
God is also revealed in the world around us: the sun rises and sets in a different brushstroke of God’s blazing colors daily; the constellations are like tracing God’s creative shapes in the night sky; and the eclipse we most recently saw was a glimpse of God’s almighty power to govern the heaven and earth.
To pray to our Father in heaven is to open ourselves to learn who God rightly is and to enjoy the mystery of God’s love forever. Jesus implies that when we pray using his words as our guide, God is continuing to bring about the good work in us that God began for the sake of God’s purposes – even in the most trying of times.
Praying to our Father in heaven is to affirm the importance of God’s relationship to tether us to God and one another. It is a treasure that we carry in our hearts to order our whole lives in thought, word, and deed so that we may give God the glory that God alone deserves.
I love the way 15 year-old Katrina Troyer shares her prayer of what God means to her:
You turned my darkness into light,
You made everything all right.
You picked me up when I was down,
You turned my life around.
If I didn’t have you, what would I be?
A blessing is what you are to me.
When I needed you the most, you were there,
Even if it seemed like you didn’t care.
When I didn’t think I could make it another day,
You chased all my doubts away.
If I didn’t have you, what would I be?
A treasure it what you are to me. [2]
May we open our hearts to behold the treasure of God’s love. This treasure is not something we just store away and look at from time to time. But it is a treasure that is to be given away as Christ did so graciously for us.
In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sources Referenced:
Artwork "Our Father," painted by Jen Norton
[1] Charles Ringma, “Dare to Journey with Henri Nouwen” (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2000), Reflection 13.
[2] “Listen for a Whisper: Prayers, Poems, and Reflections by Girls” (Winona: Saint Mary’s Press & Christian Bothers Publications, 2001), p. 66 What You Mean to Me, by Katrina Troyer.
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