Your kingdom come (Isaiah 52:1-12, Luke 11:1-4)
Isaiah 52:1 Awake, awake,
put on your strength, O Zion!
Put on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city;
for the uncircumcised and the unclean
shall enter you no more.
2 Shake yourself from the dust, rise up,
O captive Jerusalem;
loose the bonds from your neck,
O captive daughter Zion!
3 For thus says the Lord: You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money. 4 For thus says the Lord God: Long ago, my people went down into Egypt to reside there as aliens; the Assyrian, too, has oppressed them without cause. 5 Now therefore what am I doing here, says the Lord, seeing that my people are taken away without cause? Their rulers howl, says the Lord, and continually, all day long, my name is despised. 6 Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here am I.
7 How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
8 Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see
the return of the Lord to Zion.
9 Break forth together into singing,
you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the Lord has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The Lord has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.
11 Depart, depart, go out from there!
Touch no unclean thing;
go out from the midst of it, purify yourselves,
you who carry the vessels of the Lord.
12 For you shall not go out in haste,
and you shall not go in flight;
for the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
Luke 11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
–Isaiah 52:1-12, Luke 11:1-4 (NRSV)
August 14, 2016 Sermon Notes
During the Nazi occupation of France in the Second World War ordinary citizens were faced with extremely difficult choices. After their nation had been over overrun people had to decide how they were going to relate to their foreign occupiers. In many ways, how they behaved was a direct reflection of what they thought was going to happen at the end of the war. Those who believed that the Germans were there to stay often became collaborators with the Nazi government. Those who thought that the Allies were going to eventually liberate the continent often became members of the resistance. The vast majority of people, however, did not know what to think and simply kept their heads down and tried to get on with life as best they could.
In many ways, this is same kind of decisions that we have to make in our world today. The sad fact of the matter is that the current state of affairs is a far cry from the kind of existence that God intended for us. We are living in a world that is overrun with sin, violence, and injustice. We claim that the kingdom of God is real, but we are not living in the freedom of the Gospel. We are occupied with the concerns of this world, and our actions often unconsciously reveals what we truly believe about which side is going to win the spiritual battle.
It is to people like us that the Prophet Isaiah spoke. During his ministry the people of Israel were under foreign occupation. They had been conquered by the Babylonians and when Isaiah spoke beauty of the messenger that comes bringing the news of liberation, every person in his audience could understand what he meant. For years they had hoped for freedom and the restoration of their kingdom. That hope is what kept them going through the darkest stages of the exile.
This is the very kind of hope we seek when we pray the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus’ disciples were also living in a period of foreign occupation. They needed to be reminded of the fact that God’s kingdom was still real even when all signs pointed to the permanency of the Roman Empire and the disappearance of God from their daily lives. In fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, Jesus himself was the messenger proclaiming liberation and he was asking his disciples to trust in something that they could not yet fully see.
Biblical scholar, and the former Anglican Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright describes it this way:
In Jesus himself, I suggest, we see the biblical portrait of YHWH come to life: the loving God, rolling up his sleeves (Is 52:10) to do in person the job that no one else could do; the creator God, giving new life; the God who works through his created world and supremely through his human creatures; the faithful God, dwelling in the midst of his people; the stern and tender God, relentlessly opposed to all that destroys or distorts the good creation and especially human beings, but recklessly loving all those in need and distress. “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall carry the lambs in his arms; and gently lead those that are with young” (Is 40:11). It is the Old Testament portrait of YHWH, but it fits Jesus like a glove.
—The Challenge of Jesus, p. 121
In essence, because we proclaim that Jesus Christ is the liberator bringing in a new sort of kingdom, praying the Lord’s Prayer is a protest against the world as it currently is. When we ask God’s kingdom to burst in we are expressing our dissatisfaction with sin, violence, and injustice. It serves a reminder to ourselves to not give up hope for something better. In the Greek it is also written as an imperative. This petition is not fatalism or mere wishful thinking. It is a demand we make of God. In trust, we state our expectation that God will live up to the promises that Christ and the prophets made on our behalf.
Hearing again from N.T. Wright:
I used to think of this clause simply as a prayer of resignation. “Thy will be done,” with a shrug of the shoulders: what I want doesn’t matter too much; if God really wants to do something I suppose I can put up with it. That might do if God were a remote, detached God. It won’t do for Isaiah’s God; it won’t do for our Jesus; and it won’t do for those who break bread and drink wine to remember Jesus and pray for the kingdom. No: this is a risky, crazy prayer of submission and commission, or, if you like, the prayer of subversion and conversion. It is the way we sign on, in our turn, for the work of the kingdom. It is the way we take the medicine ourselves, so that we may be strong enough to administer it to others. It is the way retune our instruments, to play God’s oratorio for the world to sing.
—The Lord and His Prayer, p. 32-33
The liberation of France was not completed on the beaches of Normandy. That was merely the beginning of months of struggle and difficulty. In the same way, the kingdom of God arrives bit by bit. It begins to show forth wherever love, forgiveness, and peace are found. Christ has called us to be part of making disciples in all nations. When we pray this prayer we are making a protest and a proclamation of faith. We know that the kingdom of God is coming into our world. We are signing up to be a part of the process.
