This is the conclusion reached by Eugene Lowry, a preaching professor in Kansas City. He has said that Jesus parables provide a good example. Jesus will start a story, get people hooked, have them expecting a certain ending, then-bam-he’ll turn the tables. The hearer will suddenly realize the story is about him or her.

Last week we discovered that this is not just true of Jesus’ parables. It goes for the prayer he taught us as well. In exploring the first three parts of the Lord’s Prayer as we find it in Luke, we discovered that Jesus taught us to say more than we sometimes mean. In the words "Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come" Jesus sneaks in on us not just an understanding of God’s parental character but also a commitment to mission and to justice. If you weren’t here last week but are interested in knowing more there are a few copies of that sermon on the table in the narthex.

Today we turn to the final three petitions in the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Luke. These too challenge us. 

Let’s begin with "Give us each day our daily bread." Joseph Fitzmyer suggests that a better translation would be: "Give us each day our bread for subsistence." Either way, the focus of this petition is on what is essential, what is the bare minimum needed to survive. It is a prayer asking God only for that which one really needs for life.

Now I’m sure that prayer brought great comfort to the earliest followers of Jesus. After all, most were poor and marginalized. They didn’t know where their next meal might come from. To have confidence that God would provide for the basics of life meant a lot to them.

But that is hardly our prayer, is it?

C. David Yeager points out that we are not people comfortable with mere basics. Instead, we work to surround ourselves with all the creature comforts-nice homes, good cars, plenty of toys and lines of credit. We have become attached to the extras of life.

In fact, do you know what one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States is? It’s the storage business. Investors can’t seem to build enough of those mini-storage places. In Corpus Christi there are more than four dozen. Two new ones have been built in the last two years on Weber Road alone.

Far from praying for daily bread, we are like the rich man of which Jesus spoke. Our crops are so large, our homes so full, that we have to find bigger and bigger barns in which to store them.

What this prayer challenges us to do is re-evaluate our lifestyle. It challenges us to ask whether we are concerned with what we want or with what we need? Is our trust in the God who provides or do we instead trust that which we possess? Are we praying for daily bread or for more and more baubles?

In their book Lord, Teach Us, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon recount a scene from the evening news. You might recall that shortly after the first verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial, South-Central Los Angeles erupted in violence. During that riot, a truck driver named Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck and severely beaten by a rampaging gang. After a long and difficult recovery, Denny met with his attackers. He greeted each, shook hands and, there before the TV cameras, forgave them. But it was what happened next that Hauerwas and Willimon recall. After witnessing what had taken place, the reporter turned to the camera and commented: "It is said that Mr. Denny is suffering from brain damage."

Do you get it? That was his way of saying that to forgive is crazy, that only someone "suffering from brain damage" would forgive as Denny forgave.

We live in a culture where forgiveness is outrageous-where might makes right; where everyone plays the role of the victim; where decades long, even century-old, injustices still fester. Yet we pray not only asking God to "forgive us our sins" but we make it contingent on our willingness to "forgive everyone indebted to us." We say to God, forgive us only to the extent we forgive others. A scary prospect, isn’t it?

Robert Louis Stevenson understood this part of the Lord’s Prayer. In the introduction to a collection of his prayers, Stevenson’s wife told of a night in which they were gathered in the company of other Christians for worship. It was a hard night because Stevenson had only recently learned that a trusted friend has betrayed him. But as the people prepared to pray the Lord’s Prayer, Stevenson couldn’t do it. He left the room and later told his wife that he was not yet fit to pray, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Are we? Or are there people we haven’t forgiven? Are there people for whom we still hold a grudge? How much grace will God give us if it is equal to that which we offer to those who have sinned against us? 

The final phrase of the Lord’s Prayer as found in Luke is, "and do not bring us to the time of trial." Of course, we are more familiar with "lead us not into temptation." Yet both forms raise for many of us the same question: "Does God really lead people into temptation?" That is not an idea we easily embrace. For centuries now the church has said that God wills good for people but only allows bad to happen. We would never consider the possibility that God would lead us into struggle. But Jesus was Jewish, and he thought as the Hebrew people thought. And that means he believed God was at the root of everything, even the challenges we face.

While that question is one we must ponder, the greater problem we have with this petition is the difficulty of imagining that our faith would get us into trouble. The early followers of Jesus challenged the powers and principalities that ruled the world.

They refused to worship the gods other people worshipped. They refused to fight the wars of kings. They were good citizens of whatever earthly realm only to the extent that it did not violate their faith in Christ. Such a stand was unpopular. The pressure on Christians was great. They were often arrested and given the choice of renouncing Christ or being fed to the lions, of recanting their confession of faith or being burned at the stake. When they prayed "do not bring us to the time of trial," they were asking God for the strength to remain faithful in the face of trouble, to resist the temptation of apostasy.

I sometimes think that today we have so partnered with the powers and principalities that we can’t even recognize how they try us, test, tempt us to renounce Christ. Do we see the dangers of that power called "the economy," where the pursuit of more and more leads us to trust ourselves rather than our Lord? Do we see the dangers of that principality called "the state," which demands absolute allegiance and questions anyone, even followers of Christ, who refuse to offer it? Do we see the danger of that power called "race," which seeks to divide people, even Christians, one from another? Do we see the danger of that power called "the media," which tempts us and our children by bombarding us with messages that say lying is better than the truth, that marriage vows are meaningless and that vengeance not peace is the way of the world.

To pray "do not bring us to the time of trial" assumes that we will recognize the forces that seek to separate us from Christ and that we want the strength to be faithful even in the face of them.

It is a simple prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. Luke’s version has only six lines. But don’t be fooled. As we have heard, there is more here than meets the ear. To pray the Lord’s Prayer is to suddenly realize, Jesus is talking about us--talking about us loving the Father, sharing the good news, living the kingdom life. He’s talking about us living with confidence in him, forgiving as God forgives, remaining faithful in the face of our many trials and temptations.

He’s teaching us more than how to pray. He’s teaching us in this prayer how to live. May that which we pray be that which we are. Amen.