In teaching his disciples “The Lord’s Prayer,” Jesus reveals the relational vision of forgiveness; as an opportunity.
For Sunday
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 12C
Collect
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 11:1-13
“And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”
Reflection
The part of the Lord’s Prayer I think we have the hardest time with is the sins part. When we pray it on Sunday, we say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Or if you’re more into the “traditional” language, we say “forgive us our trespasses”(which always makes me think about walking on somebodies yard—which isn’t the worst image for it).
I suppose that, because we say this prayer all the time, this part doesn’t have the deepest resonance with us. It sounds exactly like Jesus’s response about the greatest commandment: love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
So, forgive them, and they forgive you. What goes around comes around. Love everybody.
But here, Jesus uses a word that we might find far more jarring.
He says to pray that God forgive our sins just as “we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”
We prefer the language of sin because that’s about morals and behavior. Or we like trespasses, because it is relational. But talking about debt opens up a can of worms we just do not like to talk about.
Our indebting others is sin.
Of course it is complicated. But so is sin. All of this is complicated!
What Jesus is describing in this prayer is about freedom in God and our part in helping free each other. From sin. Debt. Burden. Hatred. Conflict. Broken relationship.
And one of the most consistent words throughout scripture and in the teachings of Jesus is about economic exploitation: gaining wealth on the backs of the poor. So when we pray about being forgiven our sin as we have forgiven those indebted to us, we are rightly acknowledge how big our ask of God is. Because we have a hard time letting go of income.
This prayer reminds us, not of how balanced we think the world is, but how generous be believe God is. And how generous we are called to be in light of the world we pray will be.
Problem in the Text
This week’s video deals with that problem: is Jesus really asking us to pray harder?