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“An Uninterrupted Clause”
On Palm Sunday 1985, Julie and I were in London, England. Her dad had enjoyed a sabbatical at the British Museum where they have some of the most ancient parchments of the New Testament. We were due in West Africa the Tuesday after Palm Sunday and decided to leave a little early and visit her parents while we were on the east side of the Atlantic. That meant that we had the opportunity to worship at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Palm Sunday. I have to admit that I was a little self-conscious. Here I was a North Carolina redneck whose southern diphthongs would certainly stand out among all those erudite British accents when we repeated the liturgy. Of most concern to me was how I’d do when we repeated the “Lord’s Prayer.” Would they say “trespass” or “debts” when they got to that point? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I decided to drop out for that word when the prayer came along, just to see what they’d say. Then when it came time to repeat the word, I’d say it like them. You know what? They didn’t say either. They didn’t say debts and they didn’t say TRESpass. They said, “tres-puss.” I’m afraid that a North Carolina redneck can’t say “tres-puss” and sound authentic. So I just mumbled syllables and no one noticed – I think. But one thing they did exactly like we always do it in the United States. They said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done – [pause, take a breath] – on earth as it is in heaven.” Sometimes I think this pause results from a subconscious honesty we possess. If we were to make a special effort to take out that pause, the statement would bear a much more blatant indictment of the sorry nature of our discipleship. “Thy kingdom come, they will be done ON EARTH, as it is in heaven.” Oh, deep down inside we know, this faith thing isn’t just about pie in the sky, bye and bye. Deep down, we know that there’s something real cheap about doing religion just so we can cheat death in the end. There’s something fake about a person who accepts Jesus because doing so guarantees eternal life. Sure, every human being wants to escape the apparent terrifying finality of death, and when we discover that in Christ, death has no sting, no final word, naturally we give ourselves over to this Christ, eternally grateful for the love of God shown in Christ. I’ll never forget an editorial that appeared in the Richmond paper a few years back. The editors were upset that a certain religious figure had advocated certain governmental policies on the basis of his religious faith. The editors opined that religion’s purpose is to get mankind ready for the next world. It has no voice in determining the course of politics in this world. The editors of the Times- But there it is: “Thy kingdom come ON EARTH. Thy will be done ON EARTH.” And not just that, the criteria we use to determine what God’s will becoming real on earth would look like is what God’s will looks like in heaven. What does God’s will look like in heaven? “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” That’s how our familiar repetition goes. The God in Heaven, though, doesn’t refer to a deity separate from the earth who has a literal throne room somewhere out there. After all, where would it be? Deep in the core of our galaxy? Somewhere beyond the Crab Nebula? No, none of us really thinks like that after we’ve grown past literal childhood. We know what this means. “Our Father in Heaven” refers to the Creator God, the one who called everything, including this planet with you and me on it, into existence. This is the Creator who has a purpose, an intent, a dream for this creation, and a guiding notion as to how all the intelligent creatures in creation should conduct themselves. Some of you have heard the story about the seminary student pastor who was leading a children’s sermon one time. He had just had a class on all the Hebrew names for God and he repeated them to the kids. “He’s called El Shadai, Yahweh, the Mighty One, the Merciful One, but really, none of us can really say his name.” “I can,” piped up one little boy. “Oh,” said the bemused pastor, “And what is that?” “Howard. That’s God’s name,” said the little boy with a nod of his head. When the pastor looked confused, the boy quoted: “Our father which art in heaven, Howard be thy name.” When we say next, “Hallowed be thy name,” we’re referring to the character of the Creator revealed in the life of Jesus, not the label we use to refer to God in speech. “Hallowed be thy name” doesn’t mean that we say the English word for the Creator (God) with a special, tremulous accent, like some preachers I’ve heard. Hallowing God’s character means that we dedicate our lives to live as Jesus lived. The prayer carries an immediate example of how that character plays out. It says – and we say – “May we trust you utterly for our daily sustenance and may we forgive with the same completeness with which you have forgiven us.” It’s interesting to me how our culture holds up as ideal that person who has built the biggest barns and accumulated the greatest riches when Jesus told a story in which the central character who does that is called – by Jesus – a fool. No, this prayer we pray says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” God is under no obligation to insure our luxuries. According to this prayer, it is wise to trust God for daily sustenance. And then, there’s that tremendously troublesome line about forgiving as God forgives. It calls to mind Jesus’ command to love even our enemies, to bless those who curse us. Does that apply to Al Qaida? It was interesting to note that our national leadership – and the rest of us who badly wanted to lash out after 9/11 – never made reference to forgiving as God forgives. Even now, most of us don’t believe that forgiving as God forgives would work. This is one line of scripture we desperately don’t want to apply. We don’t believe God will honor it in any concrete way. Maybe that’s a subtle reason why we separate the kingdom and the will in our speech from its connection with the earth on which we live. If we made the connection too closely, it would require of us greater risk than we’re willing to take. I wonder why that is when this prayer, in Luke AND in Matthew, carries a guarantee. If you ask, you will receive. If you seek, you will find. If you knock, the door will be opened. Look, if your child asks you for something he or she needs, you don’t shrug your shoulders in indifference: you do your best to do the right thing. Keep in mind that you do that even though you’re a flawed human being. How much more will our perfect heavenly father provide for us when we ask for what we need? When I was a sophomore in high school, my father drove a 1956 Chevrolet. Now, this was no ordinary '56 Chevy. It looked ordinary, sure. But inside, it had the stuff that could conquer any back county quarter mile, and be gone before the state troopers arrived. My father had taken his '56 to a friend of his who built super speedway stock cars. And the man had done a masterful job of turning a perfectly domestic looking '56 Belair into a monster. He had taken out the 283 power glide and replaced it with a 409 four-in-the-floor and a Holly four barrel carburetor. My father left the mufflers on the thing since he hated noise and left on the domestic looking white walled tires. I thought that was a pity. With an engine like that, I could've sounded like an earthquake cruising through the high school parking lot. But that was of little consequence, really. With all that horsepower I could still nearly turn the thing over just by gunning the engine. I loved that car. I helped my father wash and wax it ‑‑ not because I wanted to help my father, but because I would soon be turning sixteen and I fancied myself driving that thing to school. I would put a couple of glass packs on the exhaust system so you could hear me coming. I'd put black walled, wide track tires and chrome reverse wheels in place of those granny hubcaps. And my heart beat faster when I imagined the first day I drove it to school. Nothing would be more satisfying than pulling up beside Eddie Young in his GTO and watching his eyes bug out when he heard the sound of my 409 growling like a caged lion beneath the hood. His girlfriend, Donna Whitley, homecoming queen, would slide just a little away from him on the seat to get a better look at me and my '56. And she'd want to be sitting beside me in my car. I'd be admired. Folks would finally see what I longed for them to see. Ol' skinny Drexel was tougher than they ever imagined. One day, my father picked me up from school in the '56, and we were pulling out of the parking lot when a red GTO zoomed up on our bumper. Real close. It was Eddie Young, looking smug with his left arm out the window, his blond hair blowing in the breeze, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth almost vertical, and his right arm around Donna Whitley who was trying to fuse her shoulder with his. Eddie was about to engage in one of the rituals of high school drivers: blast around the slow moving, domestic looking, unimpressive car. That shows the superiority of your car and proves your manhood to your girlfriend. Now, my father hates tailgaters with a righteous hatred. As Eddie weaved back and forth behind us jockeying for his opportunity to zip past when the curve straightened out, I could see my father's face turning red. I could see his jaw bones working as he chewed his unlit stogey. "Son, this mama's boy behind us is gettin' me HOT." I could tell by the way he bit out the word "hot" that my dad was indeed hot. That's when it happened. I heard the baritone crescendo of Eddie's car as he whipped out to pass us. He glided up rather easily beside us and I saw Donna looking at us sort of sideways as she tossed a little hair back and sat a little straighter in the seat. Eddie had sucked in his chin and was reaching up for his cigarette, a designed move to emphasize that he was cool. Their rear bumper was just about even with the front tires when my father "stood on it." We had been going about 40 mile per hour, but blue smoke suddenly erupted from around our rear tires with a sound of a military jet going into a power dive. I felt myself pressed deeply back into the seat cushion as a low growl vibrated from the other side of the fire wall. Trees, mailboxes, paper boxes, telephone poles, all nearly blurred as the shot by the window in an accelerating haze. My hair blew straight back. I don't know how many seconds it took for us to reach 95, but when I finally looked back to see where Eddie was, he was a red blotch down the road behind us. I was elated! I looked at my father, "I can't believe you did that. Man, that was cool!" My father's shoulders were shaking, he was laughing so hard. "I couldn't resist it. I just couldn't resist it." He slowed the car down to the speed limit, then gave me a real stern look. "Not a word to your mother, you hear?" "O, no sir! No sir!" Of course not. This was a conspiracy just between us men: us macho, fast flying, risk taking men. And then I said, "I can't wait to get my hands on this baby." My dad wasn't saying anything at the time, but it still seemed to grow quieter in the car. I turned 16 on April 8, 1970. A week before, my father sold the '56 Chevy. That stung! How could he do such a thing!? Did he not know what that car meant to me? Did he not know that without a least a half way decent car, you weren't anything at Independence High School? There was a lot at stake for me. Now I would be the only guy riding to and from school with my parents, or car pooling with the nerds next door. And I couldn't take a date out in the 1963 Chevy II station wagon four cylinder, in line that sounded like a hamster running in a cage! Didn't he understand that no girl would want to be seen riding around in one of those things!? For the first time in my life, I was going to be able to stand out with something, and not be plain ol' Drexel, the wimp. I was going to have something I could be proud of. I was going to be part of the in-crowd with that car. But now, it'd be business as usual. And everyone would ask me, "What happened to your great car? Couldn't handle it? Your own father didn't even trust you with it! What a wimp!" My dreams were down the tube. I had asked for a fish my father could have easily given me ‑‑ and he just didn't understand! He had given me a scorpion and boy, did it sting! It was about a month later I was looking in the B-section of the Charlotte Observer looking at the baseball box scores. On the other page, a little headline caught my eye. A 16-year old kid had been killed drag racing on Albemarle Road. I read further and the story said the kid was driving a 1956 Chevrolet Bel-Air. A shock went through me. I didn’t recognize the name of the kid who died, but I was sure of two things. You don’t race a standard ’56. You race a ’56 with a 409 under the hood. And second, that kid was just like me. He had wanted the same car I had wanted for the same reasons. He had driven the car the way I wanted to drive it. But there was one major difference: his dad let him have it. You see, even though I thought I was asking my dad for a fish in that '56, he knew if he granted my request, he'd be handing me a scorpion. My father had to endure a lot of dumb things from his son because of his decision to get rid of that car ‑‑ but my father valued my life and my well being more than my looking cool in front of my friends. “Give us this day our daily bread. . .” Oh, he’ll give us our daily bread. He might not be that quick to deliver us the winning lottery number, or any other hot vehicle, for that matter, but it’ll be because he doesn’t want us to kill ourselves. He’s not going to hand us a scorpion. No, it’s our daily bread he guarantees. He’ll give us whatever we need to strengthen us in order to see to it that his kingdom is as real on earth as it is in heaven.
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