Tag: the last the lost and least

Luke’s Last Surprise: One Condemned Man Joining Another as the First in Paradise

David HerbertLeave a comment

This Sunday marks the end of the Christian year.
Next Sunday we hop on the next liturgical cycle of readings – it will be Year A.
Each year focuses on a particular gospel. Next year it will be Matthew’s. This year it has been Luke’s.

When I began this preaching year, I wondered what Luke would offer us.
I wondered how he might inspire us, challenge us, lead us.
And now, at the end of the year, I find myself saying one thing above all: WOW.
Luke has surprised us. Luke has stretched us.
Luke has shown us the kingdom of God in places we would never have thought to look.

This Sunday is a WOW moment,
a hinge on which we hang our wonder,
before the new year opens again.
Next week we begin again,
not from cold, not from scratch,
but already warmed by hope,
already knowing what God’s kingdom looks like
in the dominion of darkness.

We will return to the manger
knowing now what Luke has shown us all year –
that God’s kingdom begins with the smallest,
with the least, with the last instead of the first,
in a vulnerable baby held by exhausted parents
on the edges of empire.

These are the readings (Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 23:33-43) that crown our year.
And this is where Luke has been leading us all along:
not to a palace, but to the place of the skull,
Not to a gold throne, but to a wooden cross.
A king.
A sign nailed above his head.
And a thief beside him.
That’s the gospel picture.
That’s where Luke brings us when the year ends and we crown Christ our King.

Our other reading, from Colossians, may seem difficult at first –
until we recognise it as a hymn.
A hymn praising the God who rescues us from the dominion of darkness,
who strengthens us with endurance,
who qualifies us for the kingdom of his beloved Son –
the kingdom of light,
the kingdom where Christ is King.

Luke paints the scene.
It is the “dominion of darkness” (to use the phrase from Colossians).
The place is the place of the skull,
Death Row in the Dominion of Darkness:
there is the smell of death
and the overpowering smell
of cruelty, injustice and wrongdoing.
There are three crosses.
One is for Jesus, the others for two criminals crucified either side of him.

Luke gives them very different voices.
One sneers – placing him with those who mock, jeer and insult Jesus.
“He saved others, let him save himself if he is who he says he is.”
(In other words, he isn’t who he says he is.)
“Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

The other criminal rebukes him, saying the two of them deserve their punishment.
Then he protests Jesus’ innocence. “This man has done nothing wrong.”
And in that moment he is just right.
He is right to defend the defenceless
against the forces which have conspired against Jesus.
“This man has done nothing wrong,”
and yet he is facing the same sentence, only worse,
because insult is added to injury.

Then he turns to Jesus.
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”

This criminal is the first to defend Jesus publicly.
He is the first to take his stand with Jesus.
And Luke wants us to see him.
This figure.
This last, least, condemned man
who becomes the first to declare Jesus innocent
and the first to receive a royal promise.

He is the last person in the world you’d expect
to be the first to defend Jesus –
(we are led to believe that there is no honour amongst thieves),
but here he is in the picture of paradise – alongside Jesus.
The last becomes the first in paradise,
that kingdom of love –
a relationship, not a place.

And here – right here – you can almost see it happen:

And perhaps this is Luke’s final surprise for us:
that the first to enter paradise with the King is not a saint or a scholar or a faithful disciple,
 but a criminal who can offer Jesus nothing but honesty and trust.

He offers no record of virtue.
No proof of goodness.
No last-minute achievements.
He can’t even lift his hands in prayer.
All he can do is speak the truth —
about himself, about Jesus, about the kingdom.
And Jesus takes that truth, that tiny seed of faith,
and makes it bloom.

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

And that paradise begins there,
in the dominion of darkness,
with a king crowned not with gold but with thorns,
and a wrongdoer who sees more clearly than anyone else.

The only crown Jesus could ever wear is a crown of thorns.
They’re the thorns of scorn, the barbs of bitterness.
They’re our failures, our wounds, our complicity,
our inability to rule even ourselves.

But the kingdom Luke has been showing us week after week
is a kingdom where the last come first,
the lost are found
and where the crucified King gathers in his arms
those the world’s unjust powers condemn.

This is the WOW moment.
Everything has led to this,
when the thorns begin to flower.
This is what Luke is intent on showing us.

His sequel, Acts,becomes the story
of the cross in bloom.
The frightened disciples become bold and generous.
The failures become witnesses.
A crippled beggar stands up and walks.
An Ethiopian outsider becomes the first fully Gentile convert.
A persecutor becomes an apostle.
Prisoners sing hymns; jailers are baptised;
enemies share bread.

Again and again the thorns flower.
Again and again the barren places bear fruit.
Again and again the last become first.

This is where the King of Love leads us:
into a rule of life that puts the last first
and sees thorns flower with grace.

All year long Luke has shown us a kingdom that grows in unlikely places,
and now at the last,
he shows us the unlikeliest place of all,
the place of the skull, Death Row.
Yet even here, if we look through Luke’s eyes,
Something ]begins to bloom.

At the place of the Skull grows the tree of life.
The crown of thorns flowers with grace.
The King of Love
and the convicted criminal
become the first couple in the new creation –
the first to walk the way of mercy,
the first to step into the garden of God’s future.

This is how the Christian year ends:
not with worldly triumph,
but with this strange, saving beauty –
a King who makes the last first,
who turns a place of execution into a place of promise,
who opens paradise to the least likely of all.

This is the kingdom of God and the gentle thorn-crowned rule of Jesus.

Luke 23:33-43

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.’

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’

There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’

But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’

Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’

Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’

Are the rich fit for the kingdom of God? Here’s the test.

David HerbertLeave a comment

A sermon for September 28th 2025 – the 15th Sunday after Trinity (Proper 21C)

All three readings, (Amos 6:1a, 4-7, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16: 19-end) address the issue of wealth. (There is far more in the Bible about wealth and riches than about sexual morality, though that is hard to believe when we listen to the politics of the church).

Amos condemns those who are at ease in Zion, those who feel secure in Samaria – the notables of the first nations.
He condemns those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, who drink wine from bowls and massage themselves with the finest oils, but who don’t give a fig about those whose lives are ruined.
For Amos, they will be the first to be exiled.
The revelry of the loungers shall pass away – and we will be all the better for that.
Now, there’s a phrase to conjure with. “They shall pass away” –
dead, no more, nada – thank God –
and those who are the victims of their indifference will breathe a sigh of relief.
What use are the loungers to the world?

The kingdom of God does not belong to the comfortable and secure,
but to the last, the least, and the lost.

Then Paul, in his letter to Timothy talks about the great gain in godliness combined with contentment.
He doesn’t condemn people for having things but warns against wanting more and more.
True wealth is “godliness with contentment”.
That’s the way to be happy.
Paul warns Timothy about the dangers of desire.
“Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”
The danger of desire is that it makes us restless, blind to our neighbour, and forgetful of God. When we chase being first we often step over those who are last.
When we crave more, we forget those with less.
When we seek security in wealth, we leave others lost.

Paul warns that desire blinds us to our neighbour.
And Jesus shows us the tragic result – a rich man so blinded by wealth that he couldn’t see Lazarus at his own gate.

Isn’t it interesting that nobody knows the name of the rich man?
But we all know Lazarus.
The rich man has been forgotten.
That phrase again – he is passed away. He is no more. He is dead.
He is in torment for the torment that Lazarus went through at the rich man’s gate.
He was covered with sores,
and was so hungry he’d have gladly eat the crumbs from the floor of the rich man’s table.
See how the dogs came and licked his sores.
The compassion of the dogs is such a contrast to the indifference of the rich man.

The rich man was at his gate, on his doorstep.
Compassion was surely in his reach.
But he’d made wealth his wall,
and when death came, that wall turned into an unbridgeable chasm.
He passed away into torment, dead to the kingdom of God.
Whereas Lazarus is carried by all the angels to be with Abraham – carried as one of the people of God.
“The loungers shall pass away” says Amos.
And in this parable, the rich man – nameless, forgotten – has passed away.
Dead to God’s kingdom, dead to compassion, dead to life.

We are a rich nation.
And yet, how often we choose not to see the plight of the poor.
The men, women and children arriving in small boats —
are they not Lazarus at our gate?
They lie at the threshold of our common life, in need of compassion.

And here’s the Gospel twist:
Lazarus means “helped by God.”
God helps the poor, the overlooked, the forgotten.
They are not abandoned.
And in God’s strange mercy, they are also sent to help us.
Lazarus is not just a man to be pitied — he is a gods­end.

How the rich man needed Lazarus.
At the end of the parable, he begs Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers.
But Abraham replies:
They already have Moses and the prophets — they should listen to them.
He could also have said:
They already had Lazarus — lying at their gate.
That was their opportunity. How many more chances do they need?

Lazarus is the examiner of compassion,
who stands at the door and knocks to see if any love of God lives in this household.
This is where the kingdom of God begins: in the last, the least and the lost whom God helps.

The rich man failed the test.
He failed the test to help the ones God helps.
He was like those condemned by Amos – a reveller, a lounger,
and he becomes one of the first in the gospel to go into exile, into torment, into unending death.

Can a rich man ever enter the kingdom of God?
Yes, but only if they help the ones God helps.

The tragedy for the rich man was that he never recognised Lazarus as the gift God had sent him. Wealth had become his wall against him.
When death came, that wall turned into an unbridgeable chasm.
The rich man passed away nameless, forgotten, as Amos warned.
“The revelry of the loungers shall pass away.”

But Lazarus —
helped by God, sent by God —
was lifted up and carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham.

Pope Francis reminded us that the poor are our evangelisers.
They proclaim the gospel to us.
They show us the face of Christ.
They test our compassion
and teach us where the kingdom of God begins (and where it ends).

So the question is this:
will we see these godsends at our gate,
within our reach, and open the bridge of compassion?
Or, will we, like the rich man, turn away and pass away?

Safeguarding is the Mission of God

David HerbertLeave a comment

I had thought that this Sunday was Safeguarding Sunday. It’s not.
That’s November 16th.
But shouldn’t every Sunday be Safeguarding Sunday?
When we look at our readings for the day, (Amos 8:4-7 & Luke 16:1-13),
they are all about safeguarding,
and they expose our current safeguarding focus as hopelessly inadequate.

Safeguarding isn’t just reacting to scandals of abuse,
but is the mission of the church.
Our calling is to protect the vulnerable,
to care for creation and to defend the excluded.

And safeguarding begins with the little things.
The soil beneath our feet.
The worm in the allotment.
The bee that pollinates our food.
The sparrow that falls unnoticed to the ground.
Creation itself is vulnerable,
and safeguarding must mean cherishing the earth, not exploiting it.

If we cannot be faithful with the earth — the very ground of our life —
how can we expect to be trusted with the riches of the kingdom?

Safeguarding has a political edge which is being overlooked.

We are in the Season of Creation,
a season for highlighting the needs of the earth and the environment
and our responsibilities for safeguarding the planet.

And we are in the season of disenchantment and political turmoil
when we are seeing thousands of people taking to the streets
to protest against immigration,
who want to turn the clock back
to make Britain Great again,
or America great again,
or make themselves great again.

There are safeguarding issues here as well,
challenges to safeguard those who are vulnerable,
those in the firing line, those claiming asylum,
those terrified in the targeted hotels,
those who are scared to be seen in public.

My son told us of his experience last weekend.
He was in London during the protests.
Protesters surrounded the Uber they were in,
banging the windows, shaking the car
and shouting to the driver, “GO HOME”.
He was a Bangladeshi who has lived here for twelve years.
His home is here. That requires safeguarding.

And there is the other side.
Those protesting aren’t all fascist or racist.
They are people who feel they don’t belong,
who feel they’ve been left behind
by a society which has put financial gain above everything,
where the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider.
It is hard for me to speak for them,
but have they had enough of “rip off Britain”,
have they lost hope? Have they been safeguarded?
Is what we are seeing on the streets a consequence
of the lack of safeguarding for these least and last,
with a poverty of opportunity?
I will not demean these people as racists or fascists.
I have lived in their communities.
Most of them have just reached the end of their tether.

They become easy prey for those who would exploit them for their own ends,
false shepherds who would mislead them with false promises.
You know who I mean.

And into this world — our world — comes the voice of Amos (Amos 8:4-7 – printed below),
eight centuries before Christ.
Because his scripture has been treasured,
we have been hearing Amos for nearly 3000 years!
He names what safeguarding failure looks like in his time:
people trampling on the needy, treating the poor as expendable,
twisting religion to cover up exploitation.
Are we any different now?
He cries out against a society where profit matters more than people,
and where the very ones who most need protection are sold for a pair of sandals.
Amos is God’s safeguarding officer, raising the alarm.

And then Jesus, in Luke’s gospel, gives us this line:

Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.

It’s a complicated parable, but this is the heart of it: the little matters.
Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.
The small ones matter.
The least matter.
The soil matters.
The worm matters.
The daily, unnoticed acts of honesty and care matter.
Because in the little, the kingdom begins.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding creation itself:
tending the soil, honouring the creatures that work unseen,
the worms, the insects, the birds —
each one part of God’s great economy of life,
the web of life that holds us.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding people:
the child, the refugee, the neighbour
who feels they don’t belong.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding our choices,
managing ourselves in those moments
which could turn into flash points when we fly off the handle.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding our community:
choosing honesty when it would be easier to cut corners,
choosing care when it would be easier to look away.

The little matters – because in the little the kingdom begins.

Jesus speaks of being our shepherd,
the true shepherd
who safeguards the last, the least and the lost.
That must include those who have been misled
by opportunistic shepherds who trade in fear.
They, too, are vulnerable, though they don’t always see it.
They are last and least in ways that make them lash out.
But they are still little ones Jesus longs to safeguard.
So safeguarding is not just paperwork or policy.
It is the mission of God, entrusted to us:
to safeguard the earth, to safeguard the poor,
(and protest against the causes of poverty and exclusion).
It is the mission of God
to safeguard even those who have lost their way.

Every time we join this mission,
we are being faithful in the little,
and the little is what God treasures.
The little are the treasures of the kingdom.

Our commonwealth is woven together
from moments of safeguarding the vulnerable,
moments of honouring the smallest,
moments of choosing care over indifference.

This is what God entrusts to us.
This is what it means to live for the kingdom.

The little matters,
because in the little, the kingdom begins.

Amos 8:4-7

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
  and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, ‘When will the new moon be over
  so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath,
  so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
  and practise deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
  and the needy for a pair of sandals,
  and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds

A motley crew of cheerleaders

David HerbertLeave a comment

Sometimes one sermon leads to another. The focus here is Hebrews 11:29-12:2, very much picking up from last week’s sermon commending those who never give up and never settle for the way things are, always hoping for justice and love. Here we join the author of Hebrews in looking more closely at who these people are because they really are our cheerleaders. The gospel reading is Luke 12:49-56.

This morning I want to bring to your attention the great cloud of witnesses who surround us.
It is such an evocative image that the author of this letter to the Hebrews has brought to the church.
It is a piece of art.

(The authorship of Hebrews has been kept a mystery.
There is a strong case that the author is a woman – perhaps Priscilla, named as a church leader in Paul’s letters.
Her authorship may have been suppressed because she was a woman.
To avoid repeatedly saying “the author” I’ll be using the pronouns, she/her.
I think it’s helpful to picture the hand of the person writing this letter.
It may well be a woman’s hand.)

Last week we heard from her letter the closest the Bible comes to defining faith:
“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

She then gave us a list of people who lived faithfully in hope and love, never settling for anything less that what God had promised.
She commends them for their faith.

She lists some by name:
Abel, the first of many victims of resentment and murder,
Enoch, the first of “the disappeared” – those who vanish without a trace,
Noah, the first of many victims of flooding and climate change, and
Abraham, the archetypal migrant, forever moving from place to place, a stranger and foreigner wherever he went, refusing to settle for the world as it was, forever following a call into a future he could not yet see.

They’re the patriarchs of faith.

But she goes on to name others, and, in today’s reading (Hebrews 11:29–12:2),
to hold up a whole host of unnamed witnesses.
These, too, are the people she commends for their faith.

The technology she has at her disposal was words, and she uses them like a camera lens – zooming in so we see them vividly.
She populates the crowd. They are not faceless.
She wants us to see them for who they are.
She has given us a series of close-ups of them.

Here they are.
They faced jeers and flogging, even chains and imprisonment.
They were put to death by stoning, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword.
They went about in sheepskins and goatskins,
destitute, persecuted and ill-treated,
They wandered the desert and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

These are the people commended for their faith.

Have a look at them. They won’t mind you taking their photo.
See the man in the torn sheepskin,
and the woman whose wrists still bear rope marks.
See the exile who carries home only in memory
and the young man with a limp and joy in his eyes.

Take those photos to heart. Treasure them.
None of them are ever going to make the front cover of Vogue.
They are the last people anyone would think of.

But this is the kingdom of God we are talking about,
where there is one rule
that the first shall be last, and the last first.

And this is sacred scripture,
the treasure of those who are last, lost and least in the kingdoms of this world,
whose hope is stubborn, resilient, never-say-die,
and will settle for nothing less
than the justice and mercy of God’s kingdom.

This cloud of witnesses surrounds us:
not a polished gallery of saintly portraits,
but a motley crew — scarred, weathered, unkempt, unruly.

They are our cheerleaders.
Imagine them as the author of Hebrews wants us to.
Imagine each and every one of them cheering you on.
Come on Margaret, Come on Niki.
“Don’t give up”, “Don’t get downhearted”, “Don’t beat yourself up”, “Keep hope alive”.

We look after our grandchildren two days a week.
One of them is soon to be 5, the other is 2.
The days are long and hard.
These days highlight my weaknesses, especially as we all tire towards the end of the day. 
Patience wears thin. I can feel mean, and I hate myself for feeling like that.
But there are other times when I see how good I can be and how helpful I can be to them.
I love that, and they love that.

I suspect many parents, grandparents and carers know what I’m talking about, especially in the long summer holidays.

In moments like those, moments of temptation, weakness and vulnerability we need the right voices in our heads and ears.
We need to hear these cheerleaders who’ve come through their trials.

But there are other cheerleaders too, if we can call them that,
The voices of dog whistlers and fearmongers
egging us on in a different race altogether:
the race to be anxious about everything,
to fear the stranger,
to protect our own at the expense of others,
to trade trust for suspicion and love for self-preservation.

They sound persuasive because they speak the language of fear — and fear is loud.
But it is not the language of the kingdom.

Hope is the language of the kingdom.
Mercy is the language of the kingdom.
Love is the language of the kingdom.

The gospel ends with Jesus asking a question, more or less wondering to himself,
“How is it that you do not know how to interpret this present time?” (Luke 12:56)

It may be that we have got it wrong, that we are seeing things the wrong way,
through the wrong eyes.
The author of Hebrews has given us a different picture,
a picture of the last and least who lived for hope, mercy and love.
They’re the eyes through which we need to see the present time,
the mean time that we are called to live through with faith.

They’re the cheerleaders who love us,
who want us to run well the race that is set before us,
who cry out “Don’t give up! Keep hope alive!”

Don’t give in to those who put themselves first.
Don’t give in to those who want to lose you and confuse you.
Don’t give in to those for whom you matter least.

They are the ones who have come last, been least, and got lost,
who were beaten, broken and jeered,
but who persevered, running their race,
and are commended for their faith.
They never gave up, and they don’t want us to either.
They want us to keep running forward
till mercy, justice and love become the rule of the day.
Theirs are the cheers we need to hear.

When prayer gets risky: what Abraham and Jesus teach us

David HerbertLeave a comment

There are lessons to be learned about how to pray in both readings appointed for the 6th Sunday after Trinity (Proper 12C). This sermon explores what it means to pray like Abraham and Jesus. The readings are Genesis 18:20-32 and Luke 11:1-13.

I want to begin, as I so often do, by saying how much I love preaching that brings the scriptures back to life. Surely that is the point of preaching — to let these ancient words breathe again, so they speak into our lives with all their surprising grace and challenge.

Today we have lessons in prayer.
One from Abraham and one from Jesus — both treasured in scripture,
both handed down through generations as pearls of love.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more aware of something about our scriptures.
They are not the comfortable writings of comfortable people.
They are the scriptures of a people who know what it’s like to be beaten,
to be hated, to be exiled and poor.

They are the treasures of those who have discovered the good news of a kingdom
so different from the kingdoms that rule over them —
kingdoms of injustice and indifference.

I had a small taste of that kind of indifference this week — two and a half hours on the phone with the TalkTalk supposed helpdesk, after an engineer had supposedly fixed our broadband the day before.
It was one of those maddening, circular conversations where no one seems able to help and your time seems to mean nothing.
And I found myself thinking: in the empires we live under today, it’s often shareholder profits that come first — and customers, ordinary people, come last.
It’s a small thing, a First World problem, but it reminded me how easily we’re made to feel powerless, unheard, even invisible.

The kingdoms of this world haven’t changed that much.

And that’s what makes the scriptures so precious.
They are not polite reflections from the powerful. They are the prayers and stories of those who know what it’s like to be last — and who dare to believe that in God’s kingdom, the last are first.
A kingdom that lifts up the last, the least, and the lost.
A kingdom that puts the bullies and tyrants last and sends the rich away empty.

It’s against that background that we hear Abraham’s prayer and the prayer we have always said Jesus taught us.


Think of Abraham’s life.
It was no easy road.
God singled him out and called him into migration — forced him to leave everything he knew for a future he could not see.
He endured famine.
He had to make his way, as many migrants still do, with deception and lies just to survive.
His faith was tested to its limits.

And here we see him in conversation with God about Sodom —
a violent and corrupt city, a city whose sins cry out to heaven.
Abraham could have said, “Yes, Lord, wipe them out. They deserve it.” But he doesn’t.
Instead, Abraham pleads for Sodom.
He bargains with God for the sake of any righteous people who might live there.
“What if there are fifty righteous? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?”
Each time God agrees to spare the city for their sake.

Do you see what’s happening?
Abraham stands in the gap for a city most would have written off.
He prays out of love — even love for an enemy city.
This is no detached, polite prayer.
This is bold, persistent intercession.

Abraham dares to hope that God’s mercy might outweigh God’s judgment. And God listens.

This is how the beaten, hated, and poor pray:
not from a place of superiority,
but from within the mess of the world.
They pray not only for themselves
but for their neighbours, even their enemies.


And then we come to Jesus.
His life, too, was marked by difficulty.
Born into a world ruled by empire,
he knew poverty, rejection, and violence.
When his disciples ask him to teach them to pray,
he gives them words shaped by that reality:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us … for we ourselves forgive.
Do not bring us to the time of trial.”


This is not a safe or sentimental prayer.
It is a radical act of trust and love.
It longs for a kingdom where tyrants no longer rule,
where the hungry are fed, where debts are forgiven,
and where the trials of this world are ended.

And notice: it’s not “give me my daily bread” but “give us our daily bread.”
This is the prayer of a people —
a community that knows its dependence on God and on one another.

This is the prayer of those who, like Abraham, refuse to give up on the world.

And Jesus doesn’t just teach this prayer — he lives it.
From the cross, he prays, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
Even in the moment of his own suffering, Jesus intercedes for his enemies.
He shows us that to pray in the midst of trouble is to love in the midst of trouble.


So what do we learn from Abraham and Jesus?
We learn that prayer is not for the strong and self-sufficient but for those who know their need.
Prayer is not an escape from the world’s mess but an entry into it.
Prayer is where we bring the beauty and the brokenness of the world before God and ask for nothing less than its redemption.

This is the radical love at the heart of prayer:
love that prays for the beaten and the poor,
but also for the violent and corrupt.
Love that does not give up on God’s mercy, even for Sodom.
Love that says, “Your kingdom come,”
even when the kingdoms of this world seem unshakable.


So today, as we join together,
lifting our voices in the prayer Jesus taught,
let us remember:
this is not a polite religious exercise.
This is the prayer of Abraham bargaining for Sodom.
This is the prayer of Jesus calling down the kingdom of heaven.

It is the prayer of those who dare to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.
It is the prayer of those who believe that God’s mercy is wider than we can imagine.

It is where we have a say, particularly those who come first in the kingdom of God –
those who otherwise have too little say in anything else to do with them.

These are the pray-ers we join when we dare to pray as Jesus and Abraham have taught us.

So let us pray boldly.
Let us pray persistently.
Let us pray with hearts full of love –
for the world, for our enemies, for the kingdom that is coming.
Let us be one with those Jesus counts first –
joining the last, the least and the lost in their prayer.
Amen.