Kindness & Humility
We pray the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples — what we call the Lord’s Prayer — so often I suspect we rarely think about the words we’re praying. Almost certainly, we don’t think about the importance of Jesus’ use of the first person plural instead of the first person singular. As Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJE pointed out in a sermon last year, it matters that we pray “Our Father” instead of “My Father,” that we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread” not “give me this day my daily bread.”
The Lord’s Prayer is a corporate prayer, not an individual prayer. This does not mean we shouldn’t pray it as a part of our personal devotion. But when we do, it’s helpful to remember that we’re praying the prayer of and for the whole community. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. It reminds us that we live in a web of relationships, not only those that enrich our lives but also those that challenge us.
“Jesus’ point,” Brother Curtis said, “is that we pray for ourselves in the same way that we pray for others. And the ‘others’ are everyone. We pray for people whom we love. We counter-balance our lovely prayer list with our nasty prayer list: to pray for those whom we do not love. We pray for those whom we tenderly carry in our hearts; we pray for those for whom our hearts are hardened; those with whom we most disagree and want to forget, or condemn, or punish; those whom we regard with disdain. We pray for them like we pray for ourselves.”
This is easier said than done, don’t you think? We live in a time in which it has become acceptable to divide people between “us” and “them.” Most, if not all, of us have a “lovely prayer list” and a “nasty prayer list.” If we’re being honest, we probably aren’t praying for the people on the nasty list unless we’re asking God to stop them or smite them.
One of St. Paul’s core values is “compassionate justice” which we define as “forming relationships with our neighbors, partnering with others to create equity and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.” In other words, we strive for justice but do so with open and welcoming hearts. As the prophet Micah reminds us, kindness and humility are necessarily linked to the work of justice. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
Prayer rarely seems the most effective way to strive for justice. But perhaps it’s the best place to start. When we pray for those for whom our hearts are hardened, we open ourselves to transformation. Prayer softens our hard hearts and invites God’s Spirit to work in and through us.
