Marty Haugen's Now The Feast and Celebration was our liturgy of the day with Debbie, Kristin, Andrew, Matt and me leading the congregation. I felt, as we were performing, the music and lyrics communicated a quiet strength that is central and present at this liturgy's heart.
Also included in the service's music was Haugen's Choose to Hope. For me this opened another perspective on the Gospel passage, Luke 11:1-13 which focuses on Jesus teaching the disciples about prayer. Pastor Ray's sermon detailed, in part, the different ways that there are to pray, and how we need not pray passively by requesting silently or in words and simply waiting for a response. There can be a more active posture we can take in prayer. Choose to Hope shows one way of not waiting passively for God's response. The first words of the song "Hope is born when we choose to believe that love is stronger than hatred" illustrates a posture where persistent prayer may help us in a practical way by bringing us hope. We know as Christians that love is stronger than hatred yet sometimes what we see in our everyday world may appear to contradict this. This dichotomy calls to my mind how Jesus opened his ministry in Galilee when he quoted Isaiah,
"'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.' And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’"
We can choose to believe the Isaiah scripture has been fulfilled, in the time of Isaiah, with Jesus and now. Yet we are deceived by the world as we experience it. We seem to live in a time where hatred triumphs over love. We currently feel this dynamic in our lives and in the headlines. like everyone who has ever lived has felt. We may, however, personally and persistently choose to hope and still believe that love is stronger than hatred. That is the good news the story of Jesus, through the Gospel, spreads. This sounds like a dichotomy but, for Christians, it may work as Walt Whitman wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." Individually we may falter in faith but the impact that can be made when we choose to hope as the body of Christ cannot be overstated.
Pastor Ray felt an element of the Gospel verses the congregation should understand is that the Greek word anaideia, is not accurately translated as persistent. There is some ambiguity but anaideia, can also, and more appropriately be translated as shameless. Translators may have imported the persistent translation because of Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8).
Shameless is a good word that captures something about the Lord's Prayer (that Jesus teaches the disciples in this passage). Addressing God as abba, daddy, definitely lacks decorum. The familiarity of the Lord's Prayer is unseemly. We rarely pray the prayer using the word daddy as a result. Shameless can also describe how we confess and pray every week in worship to similar sins and constantly ask God to forgive us, even as we know we are forgiven.
Lastly shameless, as a word, captures the bold spirit of choosing to believe that lave is stronger than hatred. There are many who may try to label this a Pollyanna banality instead of the challenge that comes from knowing the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
This challenge to recognize where true power lies is captured in a novel Ken Kesey wrote called One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The story turns into a power struggle between the nurse of a mental facility and R.P. McMurphy, an inmate.
Their ultimate battle comes down to a fight about watching the World Series. The nurse challenges McMurphy win with all the intimidated inmates voting. The odds are stacked against him because the nurse is intimidating with her power but he finally wins over all those who can vote. She then reveals she counts those who are in a mental state where they never participate in the facility's votes.
He finally overcomes even this by inspiring one of them to actually vote. Triumphantly he turns the TV on and, because she is in control of the power, she turns the power to the TV off. He stares at the blank screen. Inspired, he slowly starts to announce as if he were watching a game. The inmates all respond as his announcing becomes more animated.
At this moment the nurse loses her power to control these inmates as she controlled them in the past. Collectively they move into a new world where they can hope that would not have been possible without the faith, vision, and power of the group response.
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