Thy Kingdom Come
“ 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 in this way:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
We have been working our way through the Lord’s Prayer and the same text around it for the past 2 weeks as we look at it alongside the 5 habits of the heart that Parker Palmer encourages us to in his book, Healing the Heart of Democracy. We have talked about our shared humanity and journey in “We’re all in this together,” and last week we explored the strength of our difference in “Value the other.’”
Today we come to “Beyond either/or to both/and.” And the phrase of the Lord’s Prayer we are meditating on is “Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
When we experience the kingdom of God, we experience a both/and moment. The mystics throughout the ages, those who have really experienced God, report over and over that the deeper they go in to the experience of God, the more they see reality as both/and, not either/or. They see that in the kingdom of God there is space for endless creativity, boundless abundance and continuous grace. The law of the land in the kingdom of God is both/and, non-dualistic, abundant reality.
This is such a simple concept but as I’ve thought about it this week, I’ve realized that it resides most deeply in our experience and is hard to get at words. Language in and of itself is a binary experience – we like to compare and make a point. Both/and reality transcends language. BUT. The order of service says there is a message at this point in the service and so I ask for your grace as I struggle to put words to this inexpressible reality today.
Praying in public
“The hypocrites 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 you… 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.”
Praying in public is a funny thing for most of us. I happen to have to do it as part of my job but most of us don’t have to and many people prefer not to.
In my first year here, in the pace of a new job and a new town and adjusting to working full time as a mom, I decided that I couldn’t pray in public… at least not in the centering prayer groups at church. 30 minutes of silence with all that transition and busyness in my life was a recipe for me to fall asleep. And it just didn’t seem right that the pastor would be snoring or worse, falling out of her chair in centering prayer. So, I had to limit my silent prayer to the privacy of my own home. I had the opposite problem of praying in public than the hypocrites Jesus mentions here even though my concern was still for how I would look in public.
The Bible is far from a scientific textbook. Sometimes it seems so primitive and removed from modern sophistication. But other times, it can really surprise you with its insight into human nature and reality.
In this text Jesus paints a picture of people who are showing off their spirituality. Their prayer life is about how spiritual they can appear to others so they pray regularly in public. “They have received their reward.” Research shows us this is actually true.
In 1997, social scientists once did a research project with college students at a prestigious university. They brought the non-Jewish students to take a basic intelligence test. When they brought the results back to the students, they gave them two different results, no matter of their actual score. One group was told that they were incredibly bright and their scores reflected their intelligence. This group was praised and their self-esteem soared. The other group was told they had scored poorly. They were told things like, “It’s a wonder you can be at this school with a score like this. As you might expect, the second group’s self-esteem plummeted. After this, both groups were asked to evaluate the behavior of an ingroup, non-Jewish woman or a outgroup Jewish woman.
Researchers found that the participants who had received positive feedback on their intelligence test evaluated both the non-Jewish and Jewish women equally highly. The participants who received negative feedback on their intelligence test evaluated the non-Jewish woman positively but the Jewish woman negatively.
And here’s what’s amazing – when they gave the Jewish woman negative feedback, their self-esteem went back up.
Christena Cleveland, social scientist and professor at Duke University, who shared this study in her book Disunity in Christ, surmises that we critique others and separate ourselves and judge because it actually, scientifically makes us feel better about ourselves.
Isn't that sick?
But it puts Jesus’ comments into a whole new light when he says that the people who stand on the street corners and pray with one eye closed in “prayer” and one eye open to see who’s looking at them. That open eye is an eye of judgment – giving them an immediate reward of self-esteem boost. They are boosting their self-esteem and sense of identity by being better than others.
It’s like my golden retriever who used to surf our kitchen counters for food. No amount of scolding or punishment could convince her not to surf the counters. The reward of all that yummy food was totally worth anything we could do to her!
It’s about our sense of identity and belonging
I truly believe it is this lack of knowing that we are loved and accepted that keeps us in either/or thinking. As long as we don’t think we are enough, we have to make someone else worse than we are to feel better about ourselves. AND we actually get a psychological high off of making someone else worse than us. The hit is strong an immediate has has become a habit for most of us. Truly, “they have received their reward.”
Now, we know this is not a permanent condition. We know that the high of feeling good about ourselves at the expense of others lasts only until our fragile self-esteem is threatened again. It’s just a pacifier for us.
Pacification or Nourishment
Recently, I’ve been working on the practice of only eating when I am sitting down and not eating in front of screens. Wow. Have you tried that? It is so hard. When I was speaking with a friend about this, she said, “It’s the difference between pacifying yourself and nourishing yourself.” And when I pay attention, I realized that I often eat to pacify myself rather than feed myself. Oh gosh, that is hard to admit. I mean pacifiers are for infants. But whether it is food, spiritual practice, or how we view the world, we often settle for pacification rather than true nourishment.
So, Jesus says, you aren’t going to find your identity out in the world of comparison. You’ve got to go into the door of your own soul, dig deep and connect with God there to find the reward, to find the nourishment.
What is the kingdom?
And that is where this prayer that we are so familiar with comes from. It is less about words we say than a way of being in this world that is not about pacification but nourishment.
And the kingdom of God, the kingdom that we pray to come on earth as it is in heaven is the nourishment our souls long for, the nourishment our world is hungry for.
Kingdom is a weird word for us in 2016. It seems so antiquated. When Jesus used it, there were really kings who had doms – domains and they were a big threat. They defined almost everything in your life – who was in and who was out, who wins and who loses. In kingdoms, you were either “with us or against us.” If ever there was an either/or world, it was a kingdom.
It’s less literal for us today but the kingdoms of today are pervasive and the atmosphere many of us breathe.
The kingdom of consumerism that says your happiness depend on whether OR not you have the most toys, the biggest house, the fastest cars. Boy, does that kingdom offer to pacify us! You can measure your worth by your bank account. Or just buy this one thing and you will be happy, you will feel better. . . Until the next thing you want comes along.
The kingdom of nationalism or tribalism demands that we think of our own interests before the interests of others. That our nation or tribe must be on top. If your identity is wrapped up in nationalism, you stop seeing people and start seeing those who don’t share your national identity as enemies. This kingdom boosts our feeling of being right and numbs us to the realities of others.
The kingdom of security is another kingdom we are hardly aware of but it has become very evident in the United States since 9/11. Security is not a bad thing. It is an important goal to seek. But it can also become king over other values. The kingdom of security tells us we need to choose between being safe or being compassionate. The kingdom of security blinds us with our own fear into an either/or perspective.
When Jesus said, “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven,” it was a radically political statement. In the Roman empire, there was no other kingdom. To ask for another kingdom was an act of rebellion.
Theologians and preachers struggle with the word “kingdom” and its patriarchal connotations. But it is hard to understand what Jesus was really saying here without using it. He was declaring a different world order, a completely alternative way of being. He is inviting us in this prayer to change our allegiance.
The kingdom of God
And that allegiance is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself even as you are willing to leave your mother and father for a greater purpose.
It is “abundant life” and a place where “those who lose their lives will find it.” It is a place where “the yoke is easy and the burden is light” at the same time that we enter through the narrow gate.
It is a place of particular worship of the God revealed in Christ even as nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
It is a place of paradox, of both/and, of the spaciousness we find when we refuse to be pacified and seek only the nourishment of God’s life within us.
The kingdom of God is a place of possibilities and creativity that can only be possible in the space that is formed when we hold two seeming opposites together.
The kingdom of God is non-dualistic. The kingdom of God is either/or.
The kingdom of God is refusing to be pacified and insisting on nourishment.
So what a powerful prayer to pray. Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Both/and may seem innocuous and easy but it is radical.
It refuses to buy what they have to sell.
It refuses to settle for easy answers.
It refuses to make enemies.
It refuses to say one life is more valuable than another.
If you think both/and is easy, then I daresay, you haven’t really tried it.
Chester Wenger
I want to close with a story that touched me this week as I was listening to a podcast from the author Malcolm Gladwell. He told the story of a Mennonite missionary and pastor named Chester Wenger who had started the largest Mennonite church in the world in Ethiopia, who had been a pastor and leader in his denomination here in the U.S. Chester’s church did not allow women to be ordained for many years but Chester found a way to include women’s voices in the church by asking them to preach regularly. Chester was faithful to the church but mostly faithful to God.
When Chester’s son, Phil was in college, he came to him and told him that he was attracted to men. In his relatively sheltered and secluded religious community, Chester had never even considered such a thing. He thought Phil would outgrow it but he didn’t. In time, Phil was excommunicated from the Mennonite church and Chester and his wife Sarah Jane wept at the loss of faith that his son suffered as a result. They wept with joy some years later when his son found the Episcopal church that embraced all of him and he returned to faith.
Faith in God, Scripture, Christian community and his family mean everything to Chester Wenger, but they were rip stretched at the seams, forcing him into a seeming position of either/or. When it became legally possible for Phil and his partner to marry, he asked his dad to officiate at his wedding. Without hesitation, Chester said yes even though he knew it would cost him his ordination in the church that he loved. And so at 96, after 68 years being an ordained minister in the Mennonite church, his ordination was revoked.
Chester then wrote “an open letter to my beloved church” filled with Scripture, filled with love to the church who had raised him and given him a place to live out his community, filled with respect for those who disagree with him and filled with love for his son. He shared his journey of reading Scripture over and over for 35 years, of listening to the stories of his son and other gay friends and of at last deciding that his faith had led him to break church policy and officiate at his son’s wedding.
His letter ends like this:
My dear companion of 70 years and I declare our enduring love for Lancaster Mennonite Conference, for the Mennonite Church… and for all God’s people. We carry no bitterness or regret for our actions. Our hearts are filled with love for all.
We pray that our love in family and Church will bind us together in God’s family even when our understandings of God’s will may differ. Christ’s prayer for oneness in John 17 can be attained!
Chester Wenger is a man who was firmly rooted in his allegiance to the Kingdom of God. More important than the decision he made is the allegiance that led him there which allowed him to say I love God AND I love the Bible AND I love my son AND I love my church AND I refuse to live in an either/or kingdom.
May we also be so faithful and find that the kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven.