To Be Close to the LORD

Hosea 1:2-10   Colossians 1:15-28    Luke 10:38-42

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, "Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord."

Today’s first lesson, from the very beginning of the scroll of the prophet Hosea, is shocking. Were you not shocked?  Modern listeners might tend to be more confused than shocked.  We tend to look at things very differently from ancient peoples. We might even be inclined to consider how fortunate Gomar, with her reputation, is to find a husband.  But people who lived in the 8^th century BC, hearing that Hosea had married a prostitute, would have been scandalized. A Jewish man of that time wanted a pure and innocent wife, a virgin who would find favour with his family and friends, and raise a good and acceptable family for him. Gomar meets none of these qualifications – but this is what God has commanded, and Hosea complies.

And God doesn’t stop there.  Each child born into Hosea’s marriage will have a prophetic name connected to a place or situation where God’s anger has been focused and His wrath is soon to fall. Why is God doing this?

There is the old saying, that to truly know someone, you must walk a mile in their shoes. God wants Hosea to understand what is happening between God and God’s Chosen People. God has a covenant with them. Through the prophet Jermiah He has told the Children if Israel, “You will be my people, and I shall be your God.” But they have turned away from their promises and their responsibilities to God. In his marriage covenant with Gomar, a prostitute, Hosea will experience the sense of betrayal and pain that God is experiencing.

This is a very close and very personal relationship. Hosea will understand God’s anger.  And we, who hear this reading this morning, are to understand that to forsake our covenant with God is fatal, and final.

It is the ease with which we do, so often, break our covenant with Jesus, that concerns Paul. He encourages the Colossians, and us, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving”. And what is most likely to lead us astray? Paul continues, See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe.

The great temptation we face is to drift into the appealing – whatever there is to tempt us away from our covenant, made at our baptism, with God.  In my youth, one lure was Eastern religions. Just think, we were told, one could levitate, or achieve nirvana during eastern meditation. There was something so appealing for some about wearing yellow robes, or going to India to sit with a guru. Perhaps the biggest draw with all the faiths and theologies that became so popular back then was that they offered us something we could do ourselves, could achieve right here and now.  No possible suffering mentioned, no sacrifice required.

Eastern religions were the popular trend, the temptation, of decades ago, but today in their place, we hear about personal empowerment, the setting of our boundaries, the growth in self-awareness, the taking control of our lives.  And then there are political ideologies, that for some begin to resemble religion.  No matter the generation, we like philosophies that tell us we can do it, we can become rich, or successful, or both. We have the power and the control.  It seems the only thing lacking is God.

Mother Teresa once said that God did not call her to be successful, He called her to be faithful.  Paul knows of what he speaks when he instructs the Colossians to live your lives in Christ Jesus, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith. The temptation against which Paul warns us, is the temptation to abandon our covenant with God under the assumption we don’t need all that “hocus pocus” – because we can do it on our own.

But as Christians, our faith is based on our very personal relationship with God, so personal, in fact, He came down to dwell among us, to get to know us and understand us better by living as one of us, by walking a mile in our shoes. That personal, close bond, may have been easier for the disciples who lived with Jesus and walked the dusty roads with Him, experienced the miracles, and personally heard Him teach, but we are meant to also have a deep closeness with Him, a strong bond that keeps us on the path.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ disciples are asking for something fairly traditional in their time. The Pharisees have noted that the followers of John the Baptist fast and pray, and it is a not uncommon practice for rabbis to give their followers a basic prayer, and this is what the disciples are asking of Jesus. They want a way to increase the depth of their relationship with God. They are already closer to God than they realize, but nonetheless Jesus gives them the prayer for which they ask.

Scholars tell us it is in Luke’s Gospel we find the most accurate version of what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Its purpose, like the longer version we say from Matthew, is to deepen and increase our closeness, our personal relationship and friendship with our Lord and God.

Father.

Though, sadly, in this day and age some people, with good reason, have difficulty with the father image, in the ancient world, the father was the most important person in the family.  It was he who protected and provided for the wife and children. And Jesus meant for this image to be both one of safety and protection, as well as of deep caring and deepest love. How amazing to be praying to a God who is also a loving parent.

…hallowed be your name.

In ancient times, on a deep a mystical level a name was all powerful. We must not forget, as we call God “Father”, we are addressing the Holy of Holies, the all-sacred One, the great Mystery we cannot understand.  We are reminded immediately by Jesus that when we address God, we are in the Presence of mystery and Holiness.

Your kingdom come.

The Kingdom of God where justice prevails, where Love conquers.  The Kingdom of God where everyone is of equal value in God’s sight. May this kingdom come and end the world in which we now live, a world filled with hate and cruelty, hunger and pestilence, discrimination and violence.  Let this world end, and Your world come.

This is the first portion of the prayer as it appears in Luke: God is our Father and Holy of Holies, and we ask for God’s rule of peace and justice and love.

The second part is a simple request for what sustains life.  Give us each day our daily bread.  Bread was the food staple of the ancient world.  Having bread meant one was not hungry.  Not having bread meant starvation.  “Give us the necessities for living.”

“And forgive us our sins.” This can be difficult for some, because it requires that we truly see ourselves as sinners. That’s not easy for us, because we tend to excuse the “little” sins, telling ourselves that God won’t mind, “just this once”. It’s hard for us to see these “tiny infractions” as a breaking of our covenant. Hard to accept how they hurt, and separate us from, our Lord.

The plea to be forgiven is followed by the most surprising element of this prayer:

“. . . for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”  And here, for those who want to “do it ourselves” may be the closest we come to that chance.  God’s forgiveness is dependent on our ability and willingness to forgive, on our willingness to give up being “right”.  Without the grace to forgive our fellow human beings, we cannot recognize, or even accept, God’s forgiveness of our own sins.

“Those who are indebted to us,” may also be taken literally.  In the ancient world, as in our own time, being indebted financially was very serious.  Many times it meant life or death.  Jesus knew that Mammon was a powerful idol, as it still is today, and that those who cannot forgive debts because they worship money cannot possibly be first forgiven by God. 

“Do not bring us to the time of trial.” We pray to be shielded from trials, but no one is spared this, and when they do come, they must be faced. They will come, like all of those theologies, and philosophies against which Paul warns the Colossians. They will come like all temptations that are so appealing. Think about materialism – and all it entails, from desire for things, to desire for money, power, and success. Materialism is a temptation that assails all of us on an almost daily basis.

Jesus follows giving this prayer to His friends with examples of how being persistent with loved ones can glean for us what we need to be His closet and dearest friends. The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer to be said daily, to be meditated on, to, if you will, use to draw us close to the source of all Love and Light. And Jesus assures us of the outcome if we are constant.

"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Later in this morning’s service we will sing Matthew’s version of our Lord’s prayer.  But for now, let us pray as He taught us to do in Luke’s Gospel:

Father, hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come.Give us each day our daily bread.And forgive us our sins,for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.And do not bring us to the time of trial."

Amen.