It may not surprise you to hear that the golfer Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open golf tournament in 2008. But if you watched that tournament, then it was, if not a surprise, then nothing short of an incredible physical feat. Having recently had surgery on his left knee, it was obvious to anyone watching that Tiger was playing in considerable pain. But only after he won a sudden death 19th hole after an eighteen-hold playoff round against Rocco Mediate did the public discover the extent of pain he suffered while he played. It turned out Tiger was not only playing on a knee that had recently been operated on; he had also suffered a double stress fracture in his left leg during his rehab from the surgery.
It was impossible to watch this event without marveling at Tiger’s mental and physical toughness. Appropriately, there was also a commercial that played over and over during the tournament, an ad that showed shots of Tiger playing golf over the years accompanied by a voice-over by Tiger’s father. “I would do all kinds of things to mess Tiger up,” his father said. “Just as he began to swing, I’d drop my whole bag of clubs and he would stop and look at me and grit his teeth. And then he would strike [the ball] and turn around and look at me. Never said a word, but that look said “take that!” And I said, Tiger, I promise you, you will never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life. And he hasn’t and he never will.” (1)
Given the recent revelations about Tiger’s personal life, it appears that even for someone with Tiger’s remarkable physical and mental toughness, something’s got to give. Still, that 2008 U.S. Open was a truly incredible performance. Clearly, as Tiger Woods played the ninety-one holes that it took to achieve victory, he was in the zone.
Now not one of us here today may have the talent or skill for any activity that Tiger Woods’ has for golf, but in spite of that, I bet we all know what it feels like to be in the zone, to experience what psychologists call “flow,” that feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the performance of an activity. A musician might achieve flow during a concert when she hits every note perfectly and effortlessly and when there is an unspoken connection with all the other musicians, so that the performance itself is almost an out of body experience. A writer might achieve flow when he sits down and a poem pours forth from him in a way that feels completely natural -- there is no searching for the right word or tinkering with different phrases; he gets it perfect the first time. If you can think of anything that you love to do--anything from making a presentation at work to meeting new people to preparing an after-funeral luncheon for a hundred people--then you can probably relate to the feeling of being in the zone, on the ball, in the groove, in a state of flow. Getting into that state requires first a mastery of the activity itself, so that you don’t have to concentrate too much on the actual doing, you can let your muscle memory take over; but it also requires paying attention to and looking forward to a goal.
The second petition in the Lord’s Prayer is this: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And in this petition we state our goal: for God’s kingdom and will to come to earth. This is the goal of our faith.
Here are some of the ways the kingdom of heaven is described by Jesus: as a mustard seed--a tiny seed that produces a huge bush; as yeast--just a little of which is enough to make a whole loaf of bread rise; as a treasure hidden in a field; as a place belonging to the poor in spirit and to those who are punished because they dare do the right thing. And then there are a few more complicated comparisons: the kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard whose owner hires workers throughout the course of a day and then at the end of the day, pays them all a full day’s wage; the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding feast which the original guests choose not to attend so, instead, people off the streets are invited to come to the party.
Apparently, trying to put into words what the kingdom of heaven is like is as difficult as trying to explain to someone what it means to be “in the zone” if that person has never experienced it for themselves. So what exactly are we praying for when we pray to God “your kingdom come?”
Once again, Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Lord’s Prayer helps us see this request in a different light. This is how Peterson puts it: “Set the world right. Do what’s best--as above, so below.”
“Set the world right.” Whatever it is the kingdom of heaven looks like, we can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that it doesn’t look like the world we live in. And so we find ourselves again begging God in this prayer to do something to make this world look more like that place called heaven--wherever heaven may be--that place where God’s ways reign. “God: set the world right!” No wonder Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a treasure buried in a field or to yeast stirred into a bowl of bread dough -- because it is that hard to find, that difficult to hold onto, that challenging to spot in the world.
But what if...what if...this prayer is not just about asking God to do what we think a holy, omnipotent God ought to to do? What if this prayer is about offering ourselves to God in service to this undefinable kingdom of heaven? What if we are to pray this prayer like a kid dying to be picked for the team, raising his hands above his head and shouting out to the captain, “Pick me! Pick me!”
Stanley Hauerwas once said: “The Lord’s prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives toward God in a way that God has offered--‘thy will be done, thy kingdom come.’ We have quite enough teaching in the various modes of achieving our will in this world. We build our kingdoms all over the world and the wreckage is all around us.” (2)
Yes, the wreckage of our kingdoms, of the achievements of our will is indeed all around us. Broken relationships, ineffective government, staggering poverty, racism, genocide, and war after war after war. Time and again, both individually and collectively, we find that our will, our kingdoms are deeply flawed. So how might it change things if we see the Lord’s prayer as an act of bending our lives toward God? When we pray for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will be done, we acknowledge that we human beings are free and responsible for our own actions, which means that all too often, we have let our will and our kingdoms prevent God’s kingdom from coming and God’s will from being done. And so we beg God to bend our will and align it with God’s.
Although the exact definition of God’s kingdom may not be totally clear, we cannot deny that a defining element of the kingdom of heaven is justice--God’s justice--where the poor are cared for by the rich and the strong look out for the weak and everyone shares their resources so that each person has at least the basic necessities of life. This kind of justice requires a bending of our wills, our lives, so that they are move in line with God’s will and God’s kingdom. If we are going to pray for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done then we had better be ready to play our part in that kingdom, even if it goes against our individualistic, capitalistic natures.
If we have a part to play in bringing God’s kingdom here then we need to develop the skills required to participate in this kingdom. If we want to get in the zone of doing God’s will then it’s going to take practice. We need to get flexible enough that God can bend our lives toward God in ways that reveal God’s kingdom on earth.
In his commentary on the book of Matthew, Dale Bruner offers us a work out for our life of faith that is one way we can try to align ourselves with God’s kingdom. Bruner divides the passage we heard today, the beatitudes, into three groups: the first is the Need Beatitudes -- blessed are the poor in spirit...blessed are those who mourn...blessed are the weak...blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; these are blessings for people who are failures, both in the world’s opinion and probably also in their own, people who have been broken by poverty and suffering. The second group is the Help Beatitudes--blessed are the merciful...blessed are the pure in heart...blessed are the peacemakers; people who, rather than being empty like those in need, are full, satisfied, and from their fullness they “reach out to the world in imitation of the One who has reached down to them.” Finally, there are the Hurt Beatitudes--blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness...blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you because of me; these are the people who “take flack for trying to bring Jesus’ blessing into a strangely resistant world.” (3)
When he talks about this in a classroom, Bruner likes to illustrate these three groups by drawing stick figures on a blackboard. First he draws a figure on its knees with its hands reaching up to heaven -- that represents the blessed poor. Then he draws a figure standing up with its hands reaching out to the world to represent the blessed helpers. Then he draws a figure flat on its back with its hands reaching back up to heaven again to represent the blessed persecuted. Put all together, Bruner calls this sequence the aerobics of discipleship. (4) First we are on our knees in need; then, after Jesus picks us up, he sends us out into the world to reach out to others in need; but inevitably this work means that we’ll be thrown flat on our backs in persecution, placing us once again in a position of need, and from there Jesus will lift us up again and the cycle starts over. This movement from receiver to giver to persecuted to receiver to giver to persecuted is the basic work out Jesus requires of those of us who pray “God: set the world right,” and who want to participate in bringing the kingdom of heaven down to earth. And when we have done this work out so many times that it is part of the muscle memory of our faith, then we can get to the place where we are in the zone, where we can pray: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, and at the same time know that we are participating with God in bringing that kingdom here where we are.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”(5) But he said it not to make his hearers complacent in the face of intractable prejudice but to inspire them to bend their wills and their actions in line with the arc of the moral universe. And so it is when we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” We are not just passively asking God to come make things right here and now, we are proclaiming our intention to get in the kingdom zone with God, to live out our faith, whether from a place of need or fullness or persecution. We are proclaiming our desire to work with God, to bend our will toward God’s so that we can bring this world more in line with what we so desperately long for and what God intends...heaven here on earth. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Watch the commercial here.
2. Willimon, Will, Stanley Hauerwas, and Scott Saye, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life. Abingdon Press, 1996.
3. F. Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, the Christbook, Matthew 1-12. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007.
4. Ibid.
5. Watch one of the many sermons/speeches in which MLK used this phrase here.
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