Last week, as we looked at the first phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, we mentioned three things. First, we mentioned that we are not God. We can only pray this Prayer when we realize that we are not ultimately in control and cannot bring about our own salvation. Second, we mentioned that God has drawn us into a parent-child relationship with himself. We are now not orphans, but children of God. Finally, as children, we are apprentices who are to be about learning how to become like our Father. Now, onto the next phrase, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The World Isn't as it Should Be:
It doesn't take much imagination to realize that the world isn't in the kind of shape that anybody wants it to be in. You don't have to be a Christian to know that this blue sphere of gas, water and dirt is out of shape. One only has to watch the news to see and hear tragic stories of death, pain, injustice, and suffering. Everything, everybody, and every nation on this globe has problems. If we are honest, and if we are serious about praying this Prayer, we must realize that we can't fix these problems.
Realizing that the world is not as anyone would have it be does not leave us without hope. Deep in Israel's consciousness is the understanding that, even though they were God's people, things were not right. Yet, they dared to hope that one day, in a very real way, God would be King in Jerusalem.
Sprinkled throughout Israel's prophetic writings, in places like Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Isaiah, Israel expresses its hopes for a King who would set things right. By the time of Jesus, Israel has been ruled by a host of kings who were anything but good. Israel is a captive people and evil seems to triumph over good all too often. God is not King in Israel.
But, God does become King in Israel. Jesus comes doing all of the things that Israel has hoped he would do; he set free those who were captive to all sorts of things – sickness that placed them on the outside of society, oppressive and legalistic religious laws, and ultimately death. But many people, including the religious leaders of the day, failed to have eyes to see that what Jesus was doing was really bringing God's Kingdom to earth. They failed to realize that in doing these things, in the way that he did them; Jesus came proclaiming that God's Kingdom has come, and that he himself is the King for which they had been waiting. The coming Kingdom of God can be hard to see.
Learning to See:
The subtitle of this study is "Learning to See and Pray." To pray this part of the Prayer is to begin to learn to see the places and ways in which the Kingdom of God is here and the ways in which it is still coming. We all know where the Kingdom of God is not, but it takes practice to see where the Kingdom is. When we see where God’s kingdom is already at work, then we must jump on board with what God is already doing and do it alongside him. This is what it means to be apprentice sons and daughters.
At the same time, we must also see where God’s Kingdom is not and then seek to be the bearers of the Kingdom into those places, the places of pain, hurt, brokenness, and death. If it takes learning to see where God’s Kingdom is already at work, it takes equal practice to be able to see how we might help bring God’s Kingdom to the dark and death filled situations of our world.
God's Kingdom and God's will here on earth are not just individual mandates. To pray "Thy Kingdom come..." has a very corporate dimension to it. We can't pray this Prayer and fully mean it in isolation as individuals. We must pray it as a church, as the gathered up body of believers that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. It's only then that we get to fully participate in God's restoration of creation.
N.T. Wright, who has been one of our guides as we have sought to study and pray this Prayer, describes it like this: Jesus is like the medical genius who has discovered some medicine which will heal a pernicious sickness. He has given us the cure, and we ourselves have received that medicine and have been and are being cured from the disease. And now it is our job, as apprentice doctors, to help administer the cure that we have received.
To pray this part of the Lord's Prayer is to know that the cure for all that haunts the world is already here but has yet to be fully applied. It is also to realize that our position as apprentice sons and daughters means that we are in the business of learning to administer the Kingdom of God.
So let us pray, for ourselves, for our families, for our church: "Lord, may your Kingdom come fully, may your will be done fully, on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, grant us new eyes to see what you are doing so that we might join you in bringing healing to a very broken world." Amen.
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