A, Midweek Lent 3 - Matthew 6:9-13 "The Lord's Prayer - Will I be Saved?"
How do I know if I am going to heaven or not? Will I really be saved? Am I doing the right thing? Have I been chosen by God, if so much in my life seems to be going wrong? What if I haven’t done the right thing? Is there more I should be doing? So many are leaving the church these days, should I bother continuing to come? Is heaven really out there? Does hell really exist?
Anyone who has every asked these questions or pondered the relevance of church, is encouraged to take another look at the Lord’s Prayer and in particular the pair of petitions, Your kingdom come… Lead us not into temptation.
When you examine your inner being, away from having to impress others with a glitzy exterior, what do you really see?
Allowing ourselves the time to be still and see the cauldron of darkness within is a testing thing to do. In fact many gather around themselves so many distractions in a bid to stop any opportunity for this type of reflection.
However, for those who can’t avoid this bubbling blackness inside themselves will struggle with the key questions of life and salvation. Is there a God? Will I be saved? Am I missing the boat, and how do I get into it before it’s too late?
Judas Iscariot saw his darkness after betraying Jesus into the hands of the authorities, seeking to return the blood money, and then seeing no way out of this darkness hung himself.
When we pray to God, your kingdom to come, we are saying that we need his kingdom, and we can’t get it by ourselves. We acknowledge that the darkness within, doesn’t want to know the light of his kingdom, nor trust in his power. We honestly say to God that the power of our darkness is robbing him of his power within us. And because this is so, our darkness, this old Adam within makes a mockery of God’s omnipresence and omnipotence. It despises God from its dark hiding place, saying, “you are not an ever-present all-powerful God, you are not here in me, therefore God you are not omnipotent and omnipresent but rather you are just another impotent good for nothing god”.
This is the darkness that Judas saw, and it’s the self centred hopelessness that tempts every person into not believing the
Now we may or may not go the way of immediate suicide to where Judas went. But frightened by this darkness, we often seek to usher in the kingdom by trying to foster in ourselves the benefits that God’s kingdom promises. Or we seek to tirelessly work to buy the
If one works to burn off the darkness and buy the kingdom, they might do lots of charity, donate multiple things to the church, or they might think they have to run off and do some extraordinary mission in an exotic place or take a career in a seemingly holier vocation.
If it’s not work then perhaps the poison of desire is to surround one’s self with the ideals of heaven, namely – peace, joy, and love. Unfortunately what happens is human-invented happiness, and it’s usually implemented through the means of pleasure, honour, or wealth.
Surely if we’re to believe Scripture, we’re to seek his kingdom and his righteousness first, all these other things will be perfectly received once we get there. However, we seek these other solutions first because of fear of eternal failure, as we all look and see the reality of our darkness within.
Before Jesus went to the cross, he taught us how to pray, addressing the reality of our darkened old Adam, the sinful human nature. And now that Christ has been to the cross, to death and back for us, we have been given access to his Father, so we might pray our Father, and receiving all the holiness of his name in us. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are reassured that his kingdom has come to us, is coming to us, and will come to us, despite what we see inside of us.
So how do we know? How does this happen? Luther tells us in the explanation to the second petition, God's kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe his holy Word and live a godly life on earth now and in heaven for ever.
But we don’t just rely on what Luther says here, we see that in these words he is pointing us to the one true authority on issues of salvation and reality, namely God’s written word. One only needs to read the ‘Kingdom of heaven’ texts from Matthew’s Gospel, and the ‘Kingdom of God’ texts elsewhere, to know God’s kingdom comes by God’s efforts and on its coming God wills us to believe this reality.
One text we can ponder is from Luke chapter seventeen: Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the
This last verse can also be read that the
So the reality is this: The kingdom comes to those who hear the word. But in those who hear the word also lives the kingdom of darkness. Therefore, in this life there will be misery and suffering as these two realities fight against each other. But the kingdom of darkness is being slaughtered every time we hear the forgiveness of sins proclaimed and when we receive it in absolution and Holy Communion.
The person who seeks to dismiss this reality is like a soldier who in the face of war, acts as if there is no attack, and then when attacked does not want to defend himself or fight for his kingdom. He soon finds himself engaging in shameful conduct that will only get himself killed for insurrection against his king and country, or killed as an enemy of the invading army.
Therefore, when we pray to God for his kingdom to come, we also pray lead us not into temptation. Not because God will lead us into temptation, but because the reality of trials and suffering in this life might lead us to turn away from the hidden reality of his word and the ever-present reality of our sinful darkness. We pray to be lead from temptation towards the hope of God’s kingdom come, so we don’t seek to substitute other things in place of God’s way in order to gain his kingdom.
We live in two realities. The battle between good and evil is real. Where is this battle fought? The battle is fought in us, and we know it because we recognise we live in two realities. Moving the way of the cross means we experience pain, suffering, trials and temptation, but in these things we know the victory is ours in Christ. And if the victory is ours in Christ, then too, the kingdom is ours in Christ.
When we fight the good fight of faith, allowing the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection to remain in us, there is hope, and there will be perfect peace and love for us in God’s kingdom. As Luther says, we pray that God would watch over us and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final victory.
As Christ is winning the victory in us, we who are honest about the battle of the two realities within, can then encourage others to hold onto the victory Christ has already won despite the battle raging within them too.
Let us stand shoulder to shoulder and support each other as our leader marches out ahead having won the victory over your darkness and the darkness of those standing next to you. Amen.
