Lent 2009: The Lord's Prayer
Session 5 : Thy will be done
Perhaps no other words flow so freely from the lips of well-intentioned people as the phrase "the will of God." God is blamed for so much!
This phrase, "the will of God," harbours much ambiguity. What is the will of God? Can we recognize it, identify it and be sure of it? Can we separate it from our desires, our vested interests? Does the will of God happen? Has it happened? Can we make it happen? What does it mean?
Very early in my ministry, just a few days after my ordination, I was called to the Charing Cross hospital to see a young man in his late twenties who was dying as a consequence of a brain tumour. Whilst I was there he died surrounded by his family, mother, father and twin sons of eight.
To heighten the tragedy, I learned that this man and his new wife had separated about three weeks previously and she had moved away, leaving the boys with their father. The boys had thus suffered the trauma of losing their mother by separation and their father by death in the space of less than a month.
When I arrived at the family home, the resources of the community were already being gathered. A couple of days later I went to visit them all in their home. I first met the father, who was wearing the mask of manly composure. Then I went back to the bedroom to meet the boys. They were in the clutches of a well-meaning, devout Christian lady who was doing her best to bring comfort. Tears were streaming down their faces. I entered just in time to hear the lady tell them that God wanted his daddy to come to heaven to be with him, that his death was God's will. To that statement one of the boys looked up and replied, "Well, damn God!" The lady was horrified. For all I know, she has not stopped shaking yet. She looked as though she expected a lightning bolt to strike all of them dead.
I thought about that response for a long time after that. Any god who is so incomplete that he needs to rob little boys of their fathers is a demon who deserves the condemnation, which was so brazenly spoke. I think it is the best response I have ever heard to the confused statements of people who equate whatever happens with the will of God, as if God's will were passive toward the event and a pat explanation for anything that might happen.
But what do we mean when we pray, "Thy will be done"? Can we repeat these words with meaning? What is the will of the biblical God whom we meet in life, and what does it mean to pray for his will to be done? These are the questions for us to answer.
Strangely enough, as we have found in weeks previous, reference to the will of God is almost nonexistent in the Old Testament. Among the Hebrew people, the Law was considered to be the revealed will of God; hence reference was always to the Law, seldom to God's will.
In the New Testament, the phrase "the will of God" is used sparingly. When Paul uses the phrase, he almost always means "destiny" by it. He refers to himself as destined to be an apostle "by the will of God" (1 Corinthians 1:1), or he speaks of visiting a particular church "if it be God's will" (Romans 1: 10). When we investigate the gospels, we find that only Matthew and John use the phrase "the will of God" with any regularity. Even more unusual is the realization that the Lord's Prayer is given us only in Matthew and Luke, and Luke's version specifically omits the clause "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Only Matthew records these words in the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:10).
So in order to find the meaning of this phrase, I believe we have to analyze its meaning to Matthew, the author of the first Gospel.
To Matthew "the will of God" is always an active phrase. The one who does the will of God is like a tree bearing good fruit. The fruit of your life-love, joy, peace-announces the obedience, or lack of it, to the will of God. On one occasion in Matthew's story, Jesus' mother and his brothers, somewhat embarrassed at the public spectacle of his ministry, come to take him away. Jesus declines to go and disclaims the tie of his own family by announcing, "Who is my mother and who are my brothers? The ones who do the will of God are my kinsmen" (Matthew 12:46). It is not in verbal declarations, but in the active doing of God's will that Matthew places Jesus' emphasis.
The same note is struck in a parable which only Matthew records. It is the story of two brothers. To one the father said, "Son, go work in the vineyard today," to which the son answered, "I will not." But afterward he was sorry about this response, and so he went and worked faithfully. To the second son the father made the same request. The second son answered immediately, "I go, sir." But he did not go. Which, Jesus asks, did the will of the father? (Matthew 21:28) Again and again Matthew drives home Jesus' point: The will of God is seen in what we do, rather than in what we say.
Finally, the phrase "the will of God" is the key to the episode of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the moment of crucifixion is unavoidably near, Jesus prays, "Not my will but thine be done" (Matthew 26:2gff.). "If this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done." Jesus saw his life and his death as a deliberate living-out of the will of God. It was a life of giving, loving, and caring. It was a life in which his words found expression in his deeds, and his deeds were the acting out of his words. It was a life that possessed the courage to be what he was, whether responding to popularity or persecution. To do the will of God was to call people to life, the life which he possessed in abundance.
His life was the one life in which God fulfilled his purpose of love. It was the power of love that healed the sick. It was the power of love that reconciled the estranged, which reached out to the stranger. It was the power of love that raised the dead and called us to life. It was the power of love that gave peace and joy and united the scattered children into one body.
Perfect love in action reveals the will of God. It was this life, this man who lived this way, who taught us to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." It is also this man who gives us our marching orders: "As my Father has sent me to do this work of love, so send I you" (John 20:21).
To do the will of God in our time, to put perfect love into action, this is our task. To pray, "Thy will be done," and then to do nothing is to broadcast hypocrisy. It is to allow our words and our lives to be in visible disagreement. It is to sacrifice our authenticity. It is to live a lie.
The will of God is life, wholeness and love for all of his people. Can these words be anything but a cruel joke to those who live in the despair of poverty? If this world has the ability to feed its population, yet people die of starvation, can God's will be done? If people go to bed hungry and malnourished in the cities o£ this affluent land, can we still pray the Lord's Prayer?
The will of God is love for all of his people. Can love be real where discrimination continues to exist? If the colour of my skin bars me from any privilege, any neighbourhood, or any activity another man may have, can love be true? So long as discrimination and prejudice exist in our world, in our lives, can we continue to pray the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done"? Are we not in danger of being like the brother in the parable who says with his lips, "Yes, I'll go and work in the vineyard," and yet he never goes? God's work is here to be done. When will we do it?
God's will is also for peace and life, not war and death. Yet the history of our world is a history of warfare as the means of settling disputes. Great world struggles and limited but frightfully brutal wars dot the pages of our recent history: Iraq, Vietnam, Darfur, the Middle East and Pakistan. In the name of civilization, or of preserving democracy, or of a thousand other noble ideals, we seem willing to watch people decimated, land destroyed, and spirits crushed when idealism is a casualty of battle. Can Christians pray, "Thy will be done," and not rise to full responsibility in the human struggle to see that wars cease throughout the world?
Over and over again Jesus' point is that our deeds must match our words if this prayer is to be real. We cannot pray, "Thy will be done," unless we are willing to act, to exercise our power to bring life, forgiveness, healing, and transfiguration to our world. "Thy will be done" means that we, too, must reproduce the miracle of the loaves and fish in order that we might feed the hungry. "Thy will be done" means that we must bring life where death reigns supreme, hope where despair is overwhelming, peace where hatred, fear, suspicion, discrimination, and war abound. For the fullness of life- love, joy, and peace-is the will of God, says Jesus. To pray for it is to be willing to work for it-to live it. If we are not willing to live it, then let our lips be quiet and our tongues be silent whenever we kneel to pray.