“Lord, Teach us to Pray: Thine is the Kingdom” by Rev. Cody Sandahl – March 20, 2016
Introduction
This is our last week looking at the Lord’s Prayer in depth. Last week we prayed for God to give us clear signs so we can get out of the bad neighborhood of trial and temptation, and we were warned against the false detour signs of the adversary.
Starting next week and for eight weeks total we will be going deeper with the letter to the Ephesians. We’re inviting everyone in the church to read along on your own as well. So we’re giving you eight weeks to read six chapters. And to help you go deeper, we’re putting the finishing touches on a devotional guide for each chapter and we have my class at 9:30 on Sundays and Carol’s class at 1pm on Mondays. We are convinced that leading our whole church deeper into Scripture, and Ephesians in particular, will help strengthen our spiritual practices – the trunk of our spiritual growth tree.
But to finish out our series on the Lord’s Prayer and get us into Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week, we have the final phrase of Jesus’ prayer – “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” As we read the whole prayer from Jesus one more time I invite you to notice where this phrase lands.
Matthew 6:9-14
9“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.11Give us this day our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. 14For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
Doxology
Well did you catch it? Did you notice where this final phrase of Jesus’ prayer is? No? That’s because it’s not there. Maybe you’re thinking we should check Luke’s version, since we’ve noticed a few differences throughout this series. But you’d be out of luck there, too. And maybe you’ve been to a Catholic mass before, and maybe you noticed that they end the Lord’s Prayer before this final phrase, too. Now if you have your trusty King James Bible with you and flip to Matthew 6:13, here’s what it says: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen”
Aha! Now we’ve found it! But we know this prayer so well. We know it ends with this closing. So why does it only appear in the King James Version? Why was it removed from the more modern translations? Why did the Catholics never have it as part of the prayer?
First off, have you ever played a game of telephone? That’s where someone starts with a phrase and they whisper it into the ear of the person next to them. Then that person whispers what they heard into the ear of the person next to them. And on and on and on you go until you’ve gone through you whole group. If you have more than about six people, you’re in for a shock. For instance, maybe the first person whispers, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” And by the end you’ll get something like, “We gobbled the toad and shaved a ton.” If you don’t believe me give it a try at home.
Or maybe you prefer the rumor mill. Once a rumor is passed along by two or three people, it has a life of its own and no longer bares any resemblance to the truth. We as humans simply can’t accurately pass along what we’ve heard.
And so it is indeed miraculous that when you compare all the various scrolls and parchments and letters with Bible verses from early Christianity, they agree about 95% of the time. And most of the places in the remaining 5% where there are some differences? It’s stuff like one version says “Jesus Christ” and the other one says “Christ Jesus.” Boring.
But occasionally there are true differences. And this last phrase of the Lord’s Prayer is one of them. So every translation of the Bible uses some baseline – they have to choose which ancient scrolls to go with when there are differences. The Catholic Church commissioned St. Jerome in the year 382 to collect and update the various Latin texts that were used in the church. That eventually developed into their baseline version, called the Vulgate, and when in doubt Jerome went with what was most commonly used in Catholic churches at the time.
When the King James Bible was being commissioned in 1611, however, they used a different baseline called the Textus Receptus. That was a Greek version put together primarily by a scholar named Erasmus, and he tried to figure out where scribes might have made errors while copying, and wherever he had a question he used the Catholic Vulgate to fill in the gaps. So his version was a little different than the Vulgate, but really similar.
Modern translations use yet another baseline, which treats the oldest scrolls as the de facto standard. So when it’s not obvious where the scribes messed up, modern translations go with the oldest scroll when they’re in doubt. Again, very similar but occasionally different.
And for Jesus’ prayer, the Latin Vulgate has never had this closing phrase, so the Catholic Church has never said it. Erasmus’ Textus Receptus used by the King James? It has this phrase. He thought the scribes messed up when they didn’t include it. And the modern translations based on the oldest scrolls? Not in there. To make it even more fun, the Byzantine church – the Eastern offshoot of Christianity – added our last phrase, not to the Bible, but as a blessing to be spoken together whenever it was read aloud in worship. It’s kind of like how we say, “This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.”
Now that I’ve bored you, what’s the “so what” for all of this? Well I think it presents us with a choice. Now that you know that our tradition intentionally added or added back in this phrase, “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” Now that you know that, you have a choice. The first choice is to pretend it’s not there. You can end your prayer by asking God to deliver us from evil. The second choice is to say it like you mean it. Because if we pray, “thine is the kingdom,” we’re saying “mine is NOT the kingdom.” If we pray, “thine is the power” we’re saying “I don’t have the power.” If we pray “thine is the glory” then we’re saying “I don’t deserve credit.”
Thine Is the Kingdom
And that brings us back to Palm Sunday. I think this is the choice available to the crowd as they gathered for Jesus riding into Jerusalem. Our text says, “the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
Did you hear that last bit? “Blessed is the KING who comes in the name of the Lord?” Add our last phrase to the end there, “For thine is the KINGDOM and the power and the glory forever.” The crowd is primed and ready for a KING. The crowd is primed and ready for a KINGDOM. The crowd is primed and ready for the Messiah. They are ready for Jesus to claim the throne.
They were ready for a revolution. And so as they followed Jesus, gathering in numbers, they knew, absolutely KNEW he was going to go straight down the road. Because at the end of the road, straight ahead, was Herod’s palace in Jerusalem. It was time for Jesus, the true King, to confront Herod, the pretend king propped up by the Romans.
But then a funny thing happened. Jesus turned right. And he went up the stairs. And into the Temple. And he drove out the merchants and the money changers.
To help you see how shocking this was, imagine that there’s a movement to clean up Arapahoe County. So a march is organized to go up Littleton Blvd and end at the Arapahoe County offices across the street from our church. And that’s where this march is going to demand change! But when the leader of the march gets to Littleton and Windermere, he turns right. And comes in through the main entrance of our church. And he trashes a bunch of stuff in here that he thinks distracts people from God. People’s jaws would be on the floor in shock!
But that’s kind of what Jesus did. The crowd expected him to go trash Herod’s palace. Instead he trashed the Temple courtyard. The crowd expected him to go clean up the government. Instead he cleaned up worship. The crowd expected him to want to save the nation. Instead he saved our souls.
And I believe that unmet expectation led the crowd that shouted “Hosanna” on Sunday to shout “Crucify him” on Friday.
They wanted a king. They wanted a kingdom. But they wanted the power and glory – they wanted it their way. They made their choice. They were shouting and singing and dancing. But it was for all the wrong reasons.
Instead of praying “THINE is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” they were praying, “OURS is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.”
Summary
Maybe on one level that’s why this phrase slips in and out of the Lord’s Prayer depending on which version you look at. Because we really want the kingdom and the power and the glory to be OURS, not GOD’S. We want it our way. Jesus refused to do it our way, and the rest of Holy Week shows how we respond.
So as we enter Holy Week again, where does Jesus want to turn right even though you want him to go straight? Where does Jesus want to save your soul instead of saving your kingdom? Where does Jesus want to do it his way, not my way?
“For THINE is the kingdom, THINE is the power, THINE is the glory. Forever.” Amen.
