7/16/67
Change the Lord's Prayer?
Scripture: Matthew 6: 1-15.
In the eight days of its meeting in Cincinnati, from June 22 through June 29 of this year, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ in America kept its delegates busy! For the first day, each delegate was assigned to meet with one of the ten main Review Committees, or Report Committees. Lots of these also met in sub-committees. All delegates had this duty. The work of each of the denomination’s boards, Councils, offices and commissions was carefully reviewed and evaluated. Resolutions which were being proposed were reviewed and sometimes ordered amended. The whole procedure resulted in more acquaintance, in depth, on the part of delegates, with the work and the direction, and the proposed actions of our denominational agencies. I was assigned to the Report Committee on the Stewardship Council and to the sub-committee on Program Development.
Much of the business transacted by the General Synod over the next seven days emerged out of these Report Committees. Delegates were asked to vote on matters that involved at least 100 actions. (It will take weeks, perhaps months, for the Secretary’s office to get the minutes in shape, and printed, and published, and distributed.)
Early in the sessions, the report of the nominating committee was put in the hands of the Synod delegates. It had involved many months of work by a lot of people. An effort had been made to nominate officers and board members and council and commission representatives who could really represent the United Church of Christ from among ministers and laymen and laywomen; from various areas and each conference in the nation. When the election, later in the session, was over, the entire slate of the nominating committee was elected with a couple of changes. A man who was nominated from the floor, Rev. Joseph H. Evans of Chicago, was elected Secretary of the Church for 4 years, over the man nominated by the Committee. And the delegates had to make a choice of 6 out of the 12 persons nominated for membership on the next nominating committee. (Class of 1973).
I think I ought to tell you names of Wisconsin people who were named by this Synod to National office in the United Church of Christ. Rev. Mitchell Whiterabbit of Black River Falls was named to the Council for Christian Social Action, class of 1973. A Mrs. Gordon Grant, from Wisconsin, was elected to the Stewardship Council, class of 1971. Mr. Dennis C. Streiff and Rev. Vernon E. Joberg were named to the Board for Homeland ministries, class of 1973. Mrs. Henry Hefty of Madison, Mr. George Burridge of Green Bay, and Mr. William Huffman of Wisconsin Rapids were elected to membership on the Board for World Ministries. Mrs. Hefty was elected an assistant moderator for the next biennium; and Mrs. George Kahlenberg of Two Rivers was chosen to be Chairman of the Executive Council of the United Church of Christ. The election was of course only one of the one hundred or more actions taken by the Synod.
As is so often the case with the work of great gatherings, only a few actions catch the general public attention. Reporters for the press, radio, magazines, television announcements and other mass media, are interested in what they think will catch the attention of the public -- particularly if it appears to be even mildly sensational. One item received wide press notice midway in the deliberations of the synod. It had indirect reference to a report of the commission on worship. There were these 4 items in the report offered for the Synod’s consideration and adoption by the report committee on that commission’s work.
1) “General Synod commends the Commission on Worship for its recent publication of the booklet entitled ‘Services of Word and Sacrament’ in which the commission sought to meet many of the concerns expressed by pastors and lay people in response to ‘The Lord’s Day service.’”
2) “General Synod urges our churches to study and use ‘Services of Word and Sacrament’ and to accept the invitation to send comments to Dean Louis H. Gunnemann, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.”
3) “General Synod instructs the Commission to proceed with the publishing of a book of worship which will contain services of worship, rites, the lectionary, and an extensive collection of prayers, provided that financial arrangements can be made acceptable to the Executive Council.” At this point, there was a motion introduced and passed to the effect that the Commission on Worship be instructed to give every consideration to using modern language (for instance “you” instead of “thou” and “thee.”)
4) “General Synod reaffirms the action of the General Synods of 1963 and 1965 concerning publication of a hymnal for the United Church of Christ and is pleased to note that progress is being made; recognizing, however, that time will be required for the completion of this work.”
Well, that report was offered, section by section, for consideration and adoption by the Synod delegates. It was only one item among many dealt with on that day. Each of the four items was discussed, and at length adopted by vote. The third item was the one that was debated and amended, and it was that amended item that hit the metropolitan press the next day!! The press article proclaimed the startling news that we’re going to change the Lord’s Prayer! The particular metropolitan newspaper that I saw -- “The Cincinnati Enquirer” -- proclaimed on page One that “a new, modern version of the Lord’s prayer is adopted by the United Church of Christ.” On page 21 of the same paper the staff reporter opened her article by writing: “A new version of the Lord’s prayer which substitutes the word ‘sins’ for ‘trespasses’ and ‘debts’ was presented to the United Church of Christ Monday.” Then there were printed two versions, side by side, in bolder faced type. The New Version was printed in this wise:
Our Father in heaven,
your name be honored
your kingdom come,
and your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need;
and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those
who have wounded us.
Keep us clear of temptation,
and save us from evil.
For the kingdom and power
and glory are yours forever. Amen.
The Standard Version was printed in this wise:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy will be done (printer must have slipped on the line that should have been “Thy kingdom come”; then this news copy repeats the line)
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our debts, (this newspaper did print debts, not trespasses)
as we forgive us our debtors;
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Aside from printer’s slips and errors, it might appear that the so-called “Standard Version” printed in that newspaper sounds more like that used in Roman Catholic circles, omitting the lines “For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.”
Do you understand that I was both startled and amused at that news account? Startled because I do not recall that there was any discussion of wording of the “Lord’s Prayer” on the floor of the Synod meeting; and amused that the reporter chose for comparison a version not commonly used in Protestant churches, and surely never in the United Church of Christ, as the so-called “Standard Version” for comparison. The reporter did comment that “Congregations are free to adopt the new form if they so desire.” (I, for one, am grateful for that permissiveness!)
I make no attack upon the usefulness of a version somewhat like the suggested “New Version” of the Lord’s Prayer. I think that it may very well be that it could be understood with better meaning for the young student. But neither do I intend to ask any of you to turn your back upon the stateliness, and the enduring poetic beauty, of the version appearing in the Authorized Translation of the Bible.
The ripples created by this pebble tossed on the waters of a large and responsible Church gathering in Cincinnati have traveled to far shores! On the evening of June 29th, a cousin of my wife, herself an active and devoted Presbyterian, whom we visited for a few hours in Indiana, commented that she understood we were changing the wording of the Lord’s Prayer in the United Church of Christ! The next day, we were again asked about it by another Presbyterian in Decatur, Illinois. He is a retired University professor who was a former college teacher of both Mrs. Kingdon and myself. He had heard that the pastor of the Congregational Church near them in Decatur was going to ask his congregation to use the new version at the very next Sunday service only two days away! And this week my eldest son wrote home from Europe, where he is attending summer sessions of interest to historians. He says: “I saw in a paper here the new version of the Lord’s Prayer you all adopted in Cincinnati. Do you like it?”
Well, so much for the way some news starts, and for the speed with which it travels, and the distance it goes! But the Lord’s Prayer, whatever its exact wording or translation, is going to continue to be used -- to be taught and learned, to be spoken and memorized, to be uttered as an expression of worship, of dedication, of commitment. It is not only given, or even commanded, by our Lord as a prayer to be used by his disciples. It is so entirely commendable because it sums up what is essential to the personhood of each man or woman, boy or girl who uses it.
“Our Father.” No matter in what terms one understands the Deity, it is realistic and essential to recognize our creaturehood in relation to the creator, or the creative force, that has brought us into being and sustains us as a part of the creation. We are not self-evolved; nor, we believe, spontaneously emergent in the world. We are part of the Divine purpose of the universe, brought forth in our particular time to live our particular part. Our personhood is a part of the over-arching Personhood. And we look to the Great Self that is beyond our selves in recognition, in confidence and trust, in desire to be enlightened and completed. We are taught in this prayer to think of the Creator as Father; to approach the Father in all honesty, in trust, in expectation; in willingness to be taught, enlightened, corrected, inspired; and to act upon what is revealed unto us.
When we speak to the Father, thinking of Him as “in heaven,” we may not suppose that this refers to some finite being in a nice compact place in geography, or in space, or even in time. “Gates of pearl,” “streets of gold,” or even “houses” or “mansions” may be poetic ways of trying to express the realm of the Eternal God. But His true realm, it seems, must be the timeless, unconfined, limitless realm of ultimate goodness. That is heaven.
Such Creator-Father; in, and of, and over, such goodness, is Holy and is to be “honored, hallowed” by all who reach out in participant recognition, and longing and desire toward Him. When one recognizes the God of Eternal Goodness, it is no vain or flippant or casual matter. It is a matter of such genuineness that one best recognizes the Deity as sacred -- holy -- to be sincerely honored.
His “will,” that of eternal Goodness, is what we want to see accomplished. His will is that to which we become dedicated; His will is that in which we wish to serve; His will is what we long to have revealed to our understanding and experience. We want to see it have its practical effect right here in this troubled, complex, torn, contradictory world of right and wrong, of sin and salvation, where we live now -- on “earth” as well as in “heaven.”
One of the things we are sure we need is “food.” For that we rightly pray -- food for body, mind and spirit. It is not just a celestial handout that we seek, but the revealed knowledge of how to procure our food --- that which nourishes our bodies; clothes and houses us; nourishes our minds, feeds our spirits; the good substance that feeds our mortal being day by day. We are grateful when we have it; we become desperate when we lack it; we are willing to strive for it; we recognize it as a gift when we receive it. We do well to remember that the prayer pleads not for the individual alone. We do not pray for my food; we ask for our “daily bread.” We people, we human beings, are brothers in God’s creation. We are all a part of His purpose. The need of others is my need and concern; just as I feel the need for the concern of others, and of God, for me. The “pluralness” of our “personhood” alerts us to the whole area of mission. And our concern is not limited to disembodied souls that will one day have their part in immortal eternity. It is for whole persons --- people who live right now, body, mind and spirit, in this world.
When I think of the mission of the church, I often recall the kind of commission that we are told was given in New England churches to pioneer missionaries who were going -- supported with money, equipment and prayers by the New England church folk -- to the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii. They were not sent out to save souls in any limited or narrow sense. They were commissioned to help “make green the fields” of those with whom they were to work. They were expected to help feed their minds, to print books and help the Islanders to read; to assist in the improvement of health -- doctors were as important to the mission as were evangelists and teachers. Printers were added --- and agriculturists. The recognized need among others, as well as among ourselves, is for our daily “bread” --- food for the whole being, the entire person.
The need for food today is staggering; and tremendously challenging. Much of the work of Christian missions has shifted in emphasis. Those who now go out to other countries, with our backing through the Board for World Ministries, seldom go, now, as directors or managers of mission work. That kind of pioneering has passed. More often, now, we send our missionaries to help in the Christian enterprises that have grown up and are now mainly in the directional hands of people native to the lands where they live. But the need for mission is still vastly more than anything we do. And our missionaries are acutely needed as co-workers in a common task. Where emergency relief supplies are distributed, Christian missionaries are often the most efficient channel for action. Famine conditions persist in India where, in many places, there is little or no bread to be had from drought parched land. Many are saved by our relief supplies in the hopeful expectation that life may be continued until rains return. But relief supplies are not all. Some of our support goes for equipment and “know-how” to dig more wells.
Meanwhile the times call for a “passion for mission!” Because of a cutback in funds, our Board secretary gets a letter from an already-overworked and burdened missionary in India who is stricken at the news that his operational budget must be cut 10% in the coming year, because there is not enough money from us in our churches, when there is so much that needs to be done! The same holds true for our concern expressed on the home field in our own nation. Here is a woman pastor in Appalachia -- doing a heroic work among impoverished people, living herself in a poor parsonage, gray and grimy with coal mine soot; not well-supported; and lonely. She is 150 miles from the nearest fellow-minister family. She needs our support through the Board for Homeland ministry! The plea, “give us our food” -- “our daily bread” -- must be prayed not just “for myself and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.” It must be prayed by “us” and for “us” in the widest outreach possible, if it is said in the spirit I believe our Lord intended.
One of the never-ending burdens of living is the knowledge that we are so often in error. We are blind and mistaken at so many points. We are headstrong and self-willed in ways that injure others. We are proud and haughty instead of teachable by God’s grace. We have been sinful in attitude and act. The only way to alleviate the burden is to find “forgiveness.” And so we approach the divine Goodness with a plea for forgiveness of our sins -- our debts -- our trespasses against God and our fellow persons. We have some assurance, out of experience and the testimony of others in Scripture and among fellow Christians, that our sins will be forgiven when honestly confessed. But, again, not in the vacuum of selfishness. We are forgiven by God’s grace, as we are willing to forgive those others who have injured, wounded, sinned against us. And this attitude is a condition for the lifting of the burden of our own sinfulness.
“Lead us not into temptation.” “Keep us clear of temptation.” Temptation in the Biblical sense, is more than simply the devilish desire to be, and to do, wrong. It also refers to strain and testings that may be beyond what one can endure. From these, we need strong deliverance, and for this deliverance we pray to be saved from evil delivered from its power. Some scholars who have examined the text of the Bible carefully and searched its sources in the original tongues in which it is written, believe that the last phrase which we commonly use at the close of the Lord’s Prayer may not have been given by Jesus, but may rather have been added by the early Christian church as a further ascription of recognition and praise to God. “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever.” Or, “For the kingdom and power and glory are Yours forever.”
You and I may be a bit “choosy” about the linguistic version of the Lord’s Prayer which we prefer -- in the use of which we most naturally reach out to God, the Father in Eternal Goodness. But the language is hardly the most important thing about this or any prayer. It may be uttered in Greek or Aramaic; in Latin; in German, Italian, French, Hindi or Tamil; in Japanese or a Filipino dialect; in Cantonese or Congolese; in Samoan, Tahitian or Hawaiian tongues; in the English of the Authorized King James Bible, of the Revised Standard version, the New English Bible or any other careful translation. It is the meaning of the prayer that matters.
You and I, who are in this room today, might not understand a single word of the spoken language in which Jesus taught his disciples of 19 1/2 centuries ago to pray. But we need not allow words to deprive us of a single shade of meaning in that prayer. For it is “the spirit that giveth life” --- the life that we receive and that we are to share continually with others in Our Father’s family.
Amen.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, July 16, 1967.