Week 10 (16.11.08)

This week we looked at the passage in which Jesus talks about praying, giving to the needy and fasting for the right reasons rather than doing these things so that other people think you look 'holy.'

This passage (Matthew 6:1-18) first looks at giving to the needy, then prayer and finally fasting. In each passage, Jesus tells us not to do these things so that they are 'seen by others' because this is 'as the hypocrites do.' He gives various examples of the ways in which people go about making their 'acts of righteousness' obvious to others so that they are revered and honoured by men. Jesus says that these people have 'received their reward in full.' Instead he tells us that we ought to do these things 'in secret' because our 'Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward' us.

In the passage about prayer (Matthew 6:5-15), Jesus gives us a perfect example of how to pray in what we now know as 'The Lord's Prayer' (or the 'Our Father,' if you are Catholic). This begins with praise and adoration of our Father, remembering who and where he is (that he is in Heaven and therefore sovereign). Then the prayer goes on to express the hope that the Lord's will alone is done and that his Kingdom will start to break out here on Earth as it will be in Heaven. Then, Jesus says we should humbly ask God to provide all that we need for while we are here on Earth before asking him to forgive all that we have done wrong, which in turn is followed by the promise that we in turn will forgive those who have wronged us. Finally the prayer asks God to keep us safe from temptation and give us deliverance from evil. Once he has finished the prayer, Jesus tells us that 'If we forgive those who sin against us, our heavenly Father will also forgive us, but if we do not forgive others their sins, our Father will not forgive our sins.' (Verses 14-15) Which is something we all must not take lightly: there's no footnote reading a list of examples of when somebody has done something 'so bad' that it's okay if we don't forgive them. We must remember that when we accept Jesus into our lives, confessing and repenting from our sins, the Lord forgives us infinitely more than we will ever have to forgive another person. When others wrong us, it's easy to feel like we're wholly in the right, but we can forget that we will, in our life times, hurt others just as much if not more and therefore we are not perfect. God, however, is perfect and will never wrong us. So, when he forgives our sins, he expects us to do the same for others. He reminds us in other parts of the Bible (eg Romans 12:19) that he sees all that happens and will repay those who wrong us if they do not repent, and therefore it's not up to us to seek revenge. (God does not say anywhere that he is happy when other people sin against us, or even that he does not care. Therefore, 'forgiveness' is not saying that it is okay for us to be wronged, but rather that we will not continue to be tangled in that wrong: if the person who committed the wrong is never sorry, that will essentially only ever be their problem).

The overall message of these three passages is that we should check where our hearts are and what our motives for living the way we do are. For example, in the passage about giving to the needy (Matthew 6:1-4), Jesus says that when we give to the poor we should: 'Not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.' This taken literally, however, is not possible: of course we ourselves will be aware of what we do. Therefore we know that God is really saying that we should be naturally wanting to do things like giving to the poor: it should not be a special occasion when we do 'acts of righteousness' (good deeds) but rather it should just be the way that we live. We are called to live lives of love, and this is the sort of behaviour that would naturally occur if we were. Similarly, we need to make sure that we are praying simply for the joy of speaking to our heavenly Father rather than to show other people what long and 'beautiful' prayers we can say. We shouldn't be worried about saying 'the right thing,' but rather talking from the heart as if no one else were able to hear (which sometimes may come out as a rather long prayer, but we shouldn't say long prayers just to make it look like we have a lot of 'holy' things to say: if it's an honest prayer from the heart that happens to also be long, this is not a sin). Finally, on fasting, Jesus says that we shouldn't moan about being hungry throughout our fast. (If and) when we fast, this is between us and God: there will be specific personal reasons why we have chosen to do so and other people don't need to know about it.

Lois and Eleanor