Luke 11:1-13 – The Lord’s Prayer
One day, Joe, Bob and Dave were hiking in a wilderness area when they came upon a large, raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do so.
Joe prayed to God, saying, “Please God, give me the strength to cross this river.”
Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours, although he almost drowned a couple of times.
Seeing this, Dave prayed to God, saying, “Please God, give me the strength and the tools to cross this river.”
Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times.
Bob had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, “Please God, give me the strength and the tools, and the intelligence, to cross this river.”
Poof! God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, then walked across the bridge.
I grew up in the Presbyterian(US) church and eventually became a minister in the Presbyterian church (PCUSA). We are the people who confuse everybody else by making our forgiveness petition about debt, while everybody else is talking about trespasses. To put it lightly, we are talking about financial transactions while everybody else is talking about sneaking into somebody’s yard. The modern ecumenical approach is to make the petiton about sin, while I would often find myslef saying debtpass. I think Luke would appreciate the word construction.
But what is truly interesting is that we want it balanced: debt for debt, trespass for trespass, sin for sin, and debtpass for debtpass. The petition in Luke is not balanced. (forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors.) Redemption is not balanced, at least not by us!
Have a great week! – Laurin
Lectionary Musings and Amusings 