Everyone knows the Lord’s Prayer. I wonder if that’s still true, in fact; still, I’m sure most people do. But because we know this prayer so well and can just reel it off, perhaps we don’t realise just how radical these words really are. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, like John the Baptist had taught his disciples, they were asking him to do something quite subversive. The response Jesus gave was what we call the Lord’s Prayer: a prayer that sums up within itself all the things prayer needs to contain; a prayer that makes the radical and subversive statement that we - ordinary people, every man or every woman - we don’t need temples and cathedrals, or priests and prelates, in order to speak to God. We can speak to him direct, and we can speak to him anywhere; and a prayer that begins with the one title for God that means more for Christians than any other: Father, our Father.
Everything else Jesus says in this morning’s Gospel reading builds out of those great opening words of his prayer; he promises that, like the most excellent Father we can imagine, God will hear us and respond, so that we can pray to him with confidence and trust, and out of a relationship of love. This is radical; you could even say that it’s the end of religion. Imagine: people think of Jesus as the founder of a religion, when in reality he came to end religion.
Or perhaps to set religion right. If I’m asked to say what’s distinct about Christianity, as compared to, say, its closest relatives, Islam and Judaism, my answer would have to include two fundamental things about being a Christian: firstly, that every Christian is a priest - more about that in a minute, but the Bible speaks very clearly about the priesthood of all believers; and secondly, that being a Christian isn’t about being good enough for heaven. Heaven is God’s gift to us, a gift of grace; and the Christian life is a thank offering to God for what he has freely given.
And that has to distil down to those two words that begin the prayer Jesus taught us: “Our Father”. We don’t have to placate our God or to be fearful in our praying, even if some of our prayers may feel as if they do that, you know, things like “Almighty and most wonderful God, we do beseech thee.” It’s good I’m sure to remind ourselves of the God is so great and so full of majesty, but he is not unapproachable; he makes himself available to us. We can call him our Father.
Now you may very well be saying, or thinking anyway, that Church feels in practice a lot like other religions. It has hierarchies of ministry, and titles like Reverend and Venerable and Very Reverend, Right Reverend, Most Reverend; It has its rules and customs and expectations, feasts and fasts, days of obligation, canon law - not to mention any number of arguments and divisions about matters of belief and doctrine and practice. I’d want to say this: Jesus came to bring us to faith; so what’s the relationship between religion and faith? The role of religion I think is to be the servant of faith, to be the means by which faith is tested and channelled, and to enable people of faith to work and worship and witness as God is calling them. If those things aren’t happening, then faith and religion are not in balance. And sometimes they’re not.
So while I love the Church, I hope I won’t ever be an easy or docile or uncritical churchman. Jesus calls us to be sheep, but not I think to be sheepish. For every one of the sheep of the Church is also called to be a shepherd - not only to follow, but also to take responsibility for one another; not only to learn but also to guide, not only to be supported but to be a support and a friend, not only to be prayed for but also to pray. And we all share a responsibility to do mission, to invite and bring others into the flock. So none of us are pew fodder, consumers of packaged religion; each and every Christian can pray on his or her own, calling God “Our Father” - for we are all also priests: Church is a kingdom of priests.
So what exactly is a priest? Well, you can say this about the role of a priest: a priest is someone who stands between - who stands between the people and God, God and the people. So at the time of Jesus, people went up to the Temple so the priests there could make on their behalf the sacrifices and prayers that they weren’t able or competent to make for themselves. The Lord’s Prayer releases us not to have to do that any more; now we can speak to God direct.
That doesn’t make priests redundant; but it makes us all priests. All Christians share a priestly task of speaking God’s word in the world, and taking in prayer the needs of the world to God. The call to prayer, to mission and to service, is not restricted to some Christians but shared by all Christians, and that means the work of God only happens as it should when everyone gets involved. In practice the Church places limits on who can and cannot do certain things, for example the celebration of Holy Communion, and that’s something done for good purpose - it ensure orthodoxy and agreement on what’s believed and taught and required of churchfolk. But - sticking my neck out a bit - for me that’s a matter of Church order rather than of God’s ordinance, and not something that should lead us into too high a view of ordained priesthood. The Church is greatly weakened if it fails to take seriously what it means to be a priesthood of all believers.
When you read the Acts of the Apostles, you see again and again the Holy Spirit falling on people, all kinds of people, not always the expected people. Jesus speaks of the gift of the Spirit in this morning’s Gospel. It’s the Father’s gift to his children, and it’s freely given to all who ask him. Not all our prayers are answered as we would want; and bad and sad things continue to happen to good people, and there’s another sermon to be preached on that I think. But Jesus does firmly promise this: that the Father will give us his Spirit. And that what we ask for according to the Father’s mind and in order to do his will, he will give.
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