GCC Programs-Adult Ministries

Matthew 6:1‑18
2 Corinthians 5:16‑21

Our knowledge and ability to communicate almost instantly with any place on the globe increase every day and in a sense the world shrinks a bit each day. The reduction in communication barriers, however, has not reduced the tensions in the world. Actually, we seem to feel greater tension and the possibility of the tension erupting into permanent division and destruction is a constant concern.

There are many things that divide the world: ideologies, economics, politics, culture and religion. Symbols of the world's division are or have been evident in numerous places on the globe: the Great Wall of China, the wall built on part of the border between the United States and Mexico, and the walls in Israel separating the settlements from Palestinian territory. We live in a divided world. People who claim to worship the same God have been responsible for a large portion of the division in the world. Too often we have attempted to get a corner on the truth and then wanted to hold the truth captive, demanding that others view life like we do and perceive being servants of God like we perceive it.

During the first half of the first century there probably was no more cosmopolitan city than Corinth. There certainly was no more divided congregation than the church at Corinth to which Paul addressed at least two letters contained in the New Testament. At least part of the reason for the division in Corinth or division anywhere is the criteria used to compare people. Whenever we judge anyone by using human standards there are those who rank superior and those who rank inferior according to the standards that are being used. However, as Paul points out when people have been joined to Christ, have begun to see life as Christ saw it, have been willing to receive the love and grace of God that is offered to them, they become changed, new, different people. A wall is torn down, a dividing line is erased and these people become the friends of God and have the task of being partners with God in making all people everywhere friends of God. The followers of Christ in Corinth and the followers of Christ in Glenview are ambassadors for Christ. We are God's representatives in the world. We are one in the bond of the love of God demonstrated in the life of Jesus. We like Jesus are called to be the best human beings we can be and the way we accomplish that is to follow the guidance of God to love God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

While the world gets smaller because of technology, the same technology enlarges our neighborhood. I was attending a conference some time ago. We were introducing ourselves and telling from where we had come to the conference. One woman gave her name and said, “I’m from Singapore, just on the other side of the world from here.” Our neighbors are the people who live next door to us and the people who live just on the other side of the world from us. Our neighbors are anybody and everybody, but nothing is real until it is local. We love God and we love our neighbors when we put our talking heads and our flailing arms together and hug the people around us by accepting and loving them for who they are, people created by God, our brothers and sisters in the human community.    The words of Edwin Markham's poem, "Outwitted," expresses well what needs to take place through love.
     He drew a circle that shut me out‑
     Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
     But Love and I had the wit to win:
     We drew a circle that took him in!

One of the results of this bond of love which holds us and supports us is that it affects our eyes. Our ability to see is greatly improved by the bond of the love of God. We begin to see people where we once saw objects or problems or barriers or division. We begin to see the world or at least part of it like God sees it. With our new vision we are able to see the daily needs of the world.

The world's daily needs are outlined for us in the Lord’s Prayer, a model or learner’s prayer that Jesus offered in teaching his disciples to pray. They had requested instruction in praying and Jesus gave them an example. In his model prayer, Jesus enumerated three daily needs: physical nourishment, forgiveness, and deliverance from doing evil. Perhaps when Jesus gave this example of a prayer, he gave the disciples a phrase at a time for them to think about and roll over in their minds. After some thought and discussion on one phrase, perhaps Jesus gave another phrase. Just as Jesus probably did not give all of the Sermon on the Mount at one time, perhaps he did not give the learner’s prayer all at once but a phrase at a time.

The latter half of the Lord’s Prayer could be identified as the "us" section of the prayer and is dominated by verbs in the imperative mood. The imperative mood is one of commanding another in what to do. Three verbs dominate this section: give, forgive, and deliver. These three verbs clearly indicate the awareness that God is the Creator and Sustainer of life. I wish we had a recording of Jesus saying this prayer. Somehow I don't think the routine, matter-of-fact way that we often repeat this prayer is the way Jesus suggested that his disciples pray.

Have you ever thought of praying like Jesus as telling God what to do? Have you ever told God what to do? We have told God what we think of the world and what we think of what is happening to us. We have told God to do something about it. So, we have told God what to do.
The “us” section of this prayer points out our daily needs. This section of the prayer helps us get clarity on our lives. We know what we need to survive and we know who the source is for what we need.

Everybody needs food daily for survival. Perhaps Jesus was especially sensitive to the needs of the day laborers whose pay at the end of the day enabled their families to eat the following day. Maybe when he referred to daily bread, he was remembering his need for food during his wilderness experience. Maybe when he referred to daily bread, he recalled the history of his people in the wilderness when manna was their daily food. There was enough manna for each day, but any attempt to take more than the daily need resulted in spoilage.

We need to be reminded continually that this portion of the Learner’s Prayer is an "Us" section and not a "Me" section. Jesus encourages us to pray in the plural. The prayer is not "Give me my daily bread." It is, "Give us our daily bread." I cannot pray like Jesus and pray only for myself. Concern for daily nourishment is not just concern for me and mine. Concern for daily nourishment is for all people. There is an appropriateness in the order of things in this prayer. Abraham Maslow pointed out many years ago that there is a hierarchy of need. The Learner’s Prayer expresses that. Once our physical needs for nourishment are met, there is a spiritual and emotional level of need. We need forgiveness daily so that we can be renewed spiritually and emotionally. Was Jesus saying in the Learner's Prayer that we cannot live by bread alone, we must have forgiveness?

Sin means to do wrong, to miss the mark, the intent, or purpose of a relationship. When this happens the relationship is ruptured and needs repair. Only forgiveness can restore the relationship. Not only do individuals sin against individuals, but we also join others in wrongdoing. The debilitating power of sin is portrayed by calling sin "debt." "This usage represents the troubled existence of an economic underclass, for which sin before God is held to be as debilitating as debt to a creditor. . . . God's transcendence is available in prayer to release us from the unbearable debt of sin." Often it is through daily confessional prayers that we may become aware of how we have teamed up with others to do wrong. Once again it is not a "me" prayer but an "us" prayer. Forgive us.
Jesus suggested that the ability to experience forgiveness is related directly to the willingness to forgive. This is troublesome. Sometimes I want to harbor grudges or hang on to resentments. I have been wronged and I want the one who wronged me to pay by feeling the heat of my resentment. Part of my resentment may be tied up with someone who is a repeat offender. Jesus questioned whether forgiveness had occurred if we found it necessary to keep score. Jesus said we experience forgiveness in proportion to our willingness to forgive. Daily we need to be forgiven. Daily we need to forgive.

Having asked for forgiveness, we then need deliverance. We need to be delivered from doing evil. If we have not forgiven and received forgiveness, then, we are much more likely to do evil. We need forgiveness and deliverance.

The troubling parallel petition says, "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." Does God lead us into temptation? Does God test us to determine the strength of our moral fiber? Is God some kind of heavenly psychologist who has designed the human experiment to measure how people respond to the options before them and why?

The English usage of the verb, to tempt, has a consistently negative meaning‑‑to entice, to do wrong, to seek to seduce a person into sin, or to attempt to persuade a person to take the wrong route. If the only word we had about temptation were, "Lead us not into temptation . . .," then many would conclude that God does the tempting. If God does the tempting, then that at least makes God an accessory to the crime. We cannot be held totally responsible for the crime if God enticed us to sin.

It is correct that testing is a part of life. It is incorrect to say that testing is what God does to find out how strong or how weak we are. To hold that testing occurs to educate God flies in the face of fact that God already knows about us. Surely the one who knows the number of hairs on our heads also knows the pressure points of our emotional stability. Some have altered this testing interpretation to suggest that testing occurs so we can know our strengths and weaknesses. However, even this interpretation turns God into a manipulator. If God sets up the testing for our education, then, God is seen as maneuvering events around in our lives to try to teach us our strengths and weaknesses while running the risk of destroying us during the experiment. What if we don’t learn what God is seeking to teach us? The tests we experience in life are part of the natural consequences of living.
It was Jesus' brother, James, who later gave a clear and unprecedented statement about God not expressed elsewhere in the Bible.

Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full‑grown brings forth death (James. 1:12‑15).

Life is filled with temptations, tests, and trials. We cannot avoid them. To live life is to be confronted with choices. Temptations do not come from God so God can know the stuff of which we are made. Temptations afford us opportunities to grow or chances to regress depending upon our decisions. We must determine the direction we need to move in order to be faithful and consistent in our commitment to God.

The final part of the prayer is "Deliver us from evil." Here is a prayer for salvation. To be saved means to have enough space to get away from doing evil. Is there any more urgent need or prayer or order to give God than to demand that God give us enough space to get away from doing evil? Is there anything God would rather give us than to love us enough to give us the space we need to get away from doing evil?

Deliverance from the biblical perspective is like the work of an obstetrician or midwife at the birth of a child. The midwife cannot keep the mother from experiencing pain, but she can journey with the mother in the birthing, delivery process. The possibility is very real that we will make choices and decisions that are destructive. We need to rely on God to guide us through those times so that, when confronted with hard choices and difficult decisions, we will not give in to evil. "Lead us not into temptation" is the negative way of saying, "Deliver us from evil." Whether stated positively or negatively, or both, one of our daily needs is to be guided away from doing evil.

A startling dimension to the Learner's Prayer is how demanding it is, giving orders to God. If, perhaps, as I have suggested, Jesus suggested only a phrase at a time for his disciples to mull over and soak themselves in, then, what is captured here is really a pattern for us to pray our lives. Of course, this model for us of praying our lives is based on the premise that we will have an intimate relationship with God who is portrayed as our closest friend. With the closest friend, we can be open direct, specific, honest. That is how we need to communicate with God every day. When we do that we will be praying like Jesus.

To pray the Learner's Prayer with an open mind, as an act of humble discipleship, results in experiencing the prayer as powerful and even dangerous. To pray this prayer is to ask God to lead us down some risky and unfamiliar paths. It is to desire the realm of God to be realized on earth. To make such a request is to pledge ourselves to turn the world upside down, to reverse the social order. It is asking for a revolution. Whenever the Learner's Prayer is prayed, it is demanding and life-changing--and maybe downright offensive. To pray the Lord’s Prayer is asking God to change us from the inside out so that we may be partners with God and each other in changing the world for the better by loving the world for God’s sake.


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THE DAILY NEEDS OF THE WORLD
Matthew 6:1‑18 2 Corinthians 5:16‑21 Our knowledge and ability to communicate almost instantly with any place on the globe increase every day and in a sense the world shrinks a bit each day. The reduction in communication barriers, however, has not reduced the tensions in the world. Actually, we seem to feel greater tension and the possibility of the tension erupting into permanent division and destruction is a constant concern. There are many things that divide the world: ideologies, economics, politics, culture and religion. Symbols of the world's division are or have been evident in numerous places on the globe: the Great Wall of China, the wall built on part of the border between the United States and Mexico, and the walls in Israel separating the settlements from Palestinian territory. We live in a divided world. People who claim to worship the same God have been responsible for a large portion of the division in the world. Too often we have attempted to get a corner on the truth and then wanted to hold the truth captive, demanding that others view life like we do and perceive being servants of God like we perceive it. During the first half of the first century there probably was no more cosmopolitan city than Corinth. There certainly was no more divided congregation than the church at Corinth to which Paul addressed at least two letters contained in the New Testament. At least part of the reason for the division in Corinth or division anywhere is the criteria used to compare people. Whenever we judge anyone by using human standards there are those who rank superior and those who rank inferior according to the standards that are being used. However, as Paul points out when people have been joined to Christ, have begun to see life as Christ saw it, have been willing to receive the love and grace of God that is offered to them, they become changed, new, different people. A wall is torn down, a dividing line is erased and these people become the friends of God and have the task of being partners with God in making all people everywhere friends of God. The followers of Christ in Corinth and the followers of Christ in Glenview are ambassadors for Christ. We are God's representatives in the world. We are one in the bond of the love of God demonstrated in the life of Jesus. We like Jesus are called to be the best human beings we can be and the way we accomplish that is to follow the guidance of God to love God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our neighbors as ourselves. While the world gets smaller because of technology, the same technology enlarges our neighborhood. I was attending a conference some time ago. We were introducing ourselves and telling from where we had come to the conference. One woman gave her name and said, “I’m from Singapore, just on the other side of the world from here.” Our neighbors are the people who live next door to us and the people who live just on the other side of the world from us. Our neighbors are anybody and everybody, but nothing is real until it is local. We love God and we love our neighbors when we put our talking heads and our flailing arms together and hug the people around us by accepting and loving them for who they are, people created by God, our brothers and sisters in the human community. The words of Edwin Markham's poem, "Outwitted," expresses well what needs to take place through love. He drew a circle that shut me out‑ Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in! One of the results of this bond of love which holds us and supports us is that it affects our eyes. Our ability to see is greatly improved by the bond of the love of God. We begin to see people where we once saw objects or problems or barriers or division. We begin to see the world or at least part of it like God sees it. With our new vision we are able to see the daily needs of the world. The world's daily needs are outlined for us in the Lord’s Prayer, a model or learner’s prayer that Jesus offered in teaching his disciples to pray. They had requested instruction in praying and Jesus gave them an example. In his model prayer, Jesus enumerated three daily needs: physical nourishment, forgiveness, and deliverance from doing evil. Perhaps when Jesus gave this example of a prayer, he gave the disciples a phrase at a time for them to think about and roll over in their minds. After some thought and discussion on one phrase, perhaps Jesus gave another phrase. Just as Jesus probably did not give all of the Sermon on the Mount at one time, perhaps he did not give the learner’s prayer all at once but a phrase at a time. The latter half of the Lord’s Prayer could be identified as the "us" section of the prayer and is dominated by verbs in the imperative mood. The imperative mood is one of commanding another in what to do. Three verbs dominate this section: give, forgive, and deliver. These three verbs clearly indicate the awareness that God is the Creator and Sustainer of life. I wish we had a recording of Jesus saying this prayer. Somehow I don't think the routine, matter-of-fact way that we often repeat this prayer is the way Jesus suggested that his disciples pray. Have you ever thought of praying like Jesus as telling God what to do? Have you ever told God what to do? We have told God what we think of the world and what we think of what is happening to us. We have told God to do something about it. So, we have told God what to do. The “us” section of this prayer points out our daily needs. This section of the prayer helps us get clarity on our lives. We know what we need to survive and we know who the source is for what we need. Everybody needs food daily for survival. Perhaps Jesus was especially sensitive to the needs of the day laborers whose pay at the end of the day enabled their families to eat the following day. Maybe when he referred to daily bread, he was remembering his need for food during his wilderness experience. Maybe when he referred to daily bread, he recalled the history of his people in the wilderness when manna was their daily food. There was enough manna for each day, but any attempt to take more than the daily need resulted in spoilage. We need to be reminded continually that this portion of the Learner’s Prayer is an "Us" section and not a "Me" section. Jesus encourages us to pray in the plural. The prayer is not "Give me my daily bread." It is, "Give us our daily bread." I cannot pray like Jesus and pray only for myself. Concern for daily nourishment is not just concern for me and mine. Concern for daily nourishment is for all people. There is an appropriateness in the order of things in this prayer. Abraham Maslow pointed out many years ago that there is a hierarchy of need. The Learner’s Prayer expresses that. Once our physical needs for nourishment are met, there is a spiritual and emotional level of need. We need forgiveness daily so that we can be renewed spiritually and emotionally. Was Jesus saying in the Learner's Prayer that we cannot live by bread alone, we must have forgiveness? Sin means to do wrong, to miss the mark, the intent, or purpose of a relationship. When this happens the relationship is ruptured and needs repair. Only forgiveness can restore the relationship. Not only do individuals sin against individuals, but we also join others in wrongdoing. The debilitating power of sin is portrayed by calling sin "debt." "This usage represents the troubled existence of an economic underclass, for which sin before God is held to be as debilitating as debt to a creditor. . . . God's transcendence is available in prayer to release us from the unbearable debt of sin." Often it is through daily confessional prayers that we may become aware of how we have teamed up with others to do wrong. Once again it is not a "me" prayer but an "us" prayer. Forgive us. Jesus suggested that the ability to experience forgiveness is related directly to the willingness to forgive. This is troublesome. Sometimes I want to harbor grudges or hang on to resentments. I have been wronged and I want the one who wronged me to pay by feeling the heat of my resentment. Part of my resentment may be tied up with someone who is a repeat offender. Jesus questioned whether forgiveness had occurred if we found it necessary to keep score. Jesus said we experience forgiveness in proportion to our willingness to forgive. Daily we need to be forgiven. Daily we need to forgive. Having asked for forgiveness, we then need deliverance. We need to be delivered from doing evil. If we have not forgiven and received forgiveness, then, we are much more likely to do evil. We need forgiveness and deliverance. The troubling parallel petition says, "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." Does God lead us into temptation? Does God test us to determine the strength of our moral fiber? Is God some kind of heavenly psychologist who has designed the human experiment to measure how people respond to the options before them and why? The English usage of the verb, to tempt, has a consistently negative meaning‑‑to entice, to do wrong, to seek to seduce a person into sin, or to attempt to persuade a person to take the wrong route. If the only word we had about temptation were, "Lead us not into temptation . . .," then many would conclude that God does the tempting. If God does the tempting, then that at least makes God an accessory to the crime. We cannot be held totally responsible for the crime if God enticed us to sin. It is correct that testing is a part of life. It is incorrect to say that testing is what God does to find out how strong or how weak we are. To hold that testing occurs to educate God flies in the face of fact that God already knows about us. Surely the one who knows the number of hairs on our heads also knows the pressure points of our emotional stability. Some have altered this testing interpretation to suggest that testing occurs so we can know our strengths and weaknesses. However, even this interpretation turns God into a manipulator. If God sets up the testing for our education, then, God is seen as maneuvering events around in our lives to try to teach us our strengths and weaknesses while running the risk of destroying us during the experiment. What if we don’t learn what God is seeking to teach us? The tests we experience in life are part of the natural consequences of living. It was Jesus' brother, James, who later gave a clear and unprecedented statement about God not expressed elsewhere in the Bible. Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full‑grown brings forth death (James. 1:12‑15). Life is filled with temptations, tests, and trials. We cannot avoid them. To live life is to be confronted with choices. Temptations do not come from God so God can know the stuff of which we are made. Temptations afford us opportunities to grow or chances to regress depending upon our decisions. We must determine the direction we need to move in order to be faithful and consistent in our commitment to God. The final part of the prayer is "Deliver us from evil." Here is a prayer for salvation. To be saved means to have enough space to get away from doing evil. Is there any more urgent need or prayer or order to give God than to demand that God give us enough space to get away from doing evil? Is there anything God would rather give us than to love us enough to give us the space we need to get away from doing evil? Deliverance from the biblical perspective is like the work of an obstetrician or midwife at the birth of a child. The midwife cannot keep the mother from experiencing pain, but she can journey with the mother in the birthing, delivery process. The possibility is very real that we will make choices and decisions that are destructive. We need to rely on God to guide us through those times so that, when confronted with hard choices and difficult decisions, we will not give in to evil. "Lead us not into temptation" is the negative way of saying, "Deliver us from evil." Whether stated positively or negatively, or both, one of our daily needs is to be guided away from doing evil. A startling dimension to the Learner's Prayer is how demanding it is, giving orders to God. If, perhaps, as I have suggested, Jesus suggested only a phrase at a time for his disciples to mull over and soak themselves in, then, what is captured here is really a pattern for us to pray our lives. Of course, this model for us of praying our lives is based on the premise that we will have an intimate relationship with God who is portrayed as our closest friend. With the closest friend, we can be open direct, specific, honest. That is how we need to communicate with God every day. When we do that we will be praying like Jesus. To pray the Learner's Prayer with an open mind, as an act of humble discipleship, results in experiencing the prayer as powerful and even dangerous. To pray this prayer is to ask God to lead us down some risky and unfamiliar paths. It is to desire the realm of God to be realized on earth. To make such a request is to pledge ourselves to turn the world upside down, to reverse the social order. It is asking for a revolution. Whenever the Learner's Prayer is prayed, it is demanding and life-changing--and maybe downright offensive. To pray the Lord’s Prayer is asking God to change us from the inside out so that we may be partners with God and each other in changing the world for the better by loving the world for God’s sake.
Glenview Community Church • 1000 Elm Street • Glenview, Illinois 60025 • 847.724.2210