Thy Will Be Done
Last week, we discovered that the Aramaic tone of the beginning of the second line of the Lord’s Prayer was not what many of us have considered. “Thy Kingdom come” is as passionate and sexy and intimate as you can get, inviting a lover with language of longing, a plea of desire that consummation would happen sooner than later. Jesus’ relationship with the Divine was one between lovers, and his instruction to his disciples then and now encourages the same.
The second half of the phrase, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is intimately related to the lover’s framework. The essence is that we would be so united in our love for God, so “oned”, that our wills will be aligned and our desires for the world the same. The union with Divine shapes and reshapes our vision of life, sometimes causing us to do very unselfish, other-centered acts that defy our lizard brain’s built in predisposition to self-protection and our ego’s self-promotion. We sacrifice ourselves for others.
This happens in romantic love all the time, at least in spurts or seasons. In early stages of falling in love, it’s like people lose their minds. We become so other-focused that we think as one and are one because we are inseparable. Life happens, of course, and we realize that we are, in fact, two separate people with well-functioning egos that lead to differences of opinions and vision which leads to tension and disagreement that eventually leads to destruction and/or cause for making up, the latter inviting us back into union. Perhaps losing our minds – ourselves – in favor of something more – our union with another – is the secret to why “Thy Kingdom come” is necessary; a precursor to the natural next expression, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Does this not describe the faith experience of many? Of Israel as witnessed in the Jewish scriptures? How has this been true for you?
Neil Douglas-Klotz, author of Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus' Words, offers the following insights on this part of the prayer given the original Aramaic language Jesus used:
In this fourth and most central line of the prayer, heaven meets earth in acts of compassion. We have remembered our source in Abwoon, the source of all parenting. We have let go to clear a holy place inside for this realization to live. From this new beginning we have clarified our goals, realized the power of our co-creation, and envisioned our next step. Now we are ready to act. In one sense, Jesus presented a prayer for all humanity, one that all creation joins in each moment. In another sense, he presented a very practical method by which to approach any undertaking or to renew one’s purpose in life.
Tzevyanach [Aramaic] can be translated as will,” but it is not what we usually think of as willpower (trying hard) or willfulness (unrestrained force). In Aramaic, the word carries the meaning of “desire,” a harmonious cooperation of movement that includes natural discipline. This kind of “heart’s desire” means that one’s goal or purpose has moved beyond the mental or ideal stage. It has become so much a part of oneself that one need no longer think about it. One’s whole being moves toward the goal with certainty. The ancient roots of the word summon forth images of a vortex of harmony and generation, of a host of stars swirling through the heavens.
Aykanna [Aramaic] (“just as”) carries the sense of a determined desire toward consistency and stability. We pray that God’s heart-desire be done consistently through our lives in form as it is in sound (word) and light (image or vision).
Arha [Aramaic] means “earth”; in fact, it may be the original source of that word. In sound-meaning it evokes the sigh of the human species whenever it feels the support of the earth underneath and remembers to treat it as another living being, rather than an object to be exploited. Behind that, the old Hebrew roots carry the meaning of all nature, all natural gatherings of mass and form produced by the universal force AR—power with movement. From this root, we also get our word ardor (passion).
Klotz offers the following ways to more fully appreciate Jesus’ intent with this line of the prayer:
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light,
so in all forms.
Let all wills move together in your vortex,
as stars and planets
swirl through the sky.
Help us love beyond our ideals
and sprout acts of compassion
for all creatures.
As we find your love in ours,
let heaven and nature form
a new creation.
Unite the crowd within
in a vision of passionate purpose:
light mates with form.
Create in me a divine cooperation—
from many selves, one voice,
one action.
Let your heart’s fervent desire
unite heaven and earth
through our harmony.
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light,
so in all forms.
How do these expressions sit with you? How do they resonate? How are they foreign? How are they desired? How are they repelling?
Presbyterian minister, seminary professor, and activist Robert McAfee Brown (1920-2001) wrote about the tension provoked by this line:
There is a prayer some people pray without admitting it, a prayer that a few other people are honest enough to acknowledge is what they really desire. It goes, “Our Father who art in heaven … stay there!” We can cope with a God who is sequestered in some corner of heaven (or even center stage), but far off – which is where we like our gods to be – safely removed from our dwelling place and therefore no threat to us.
French Roman Catholic Archbishop, theologian, and poet, François Fénelon (1651-1715) expressed Jesus’ hope for us: “What God requires of us is a will which is no longer divided between him and any creature; a simple, pliable state of will which desires what he desires, rejects nothing but what he rejects, and wills without reserve what he wills, and under no pretext wills what he does not. In this state of mind, all things are proper for us; our amusements, even, are acceptable in his sight.” When lovers are in deep union, this is what it looks like...
Scottish author, theologian, and broadcaster William Barclay (1907-1978), reflecting on what happens when people fall deeply in love with God as evidenced in the witness of Christian scriptures, noted that, “Unless our Christianity makes us kind, it is not real. Unless our declared change of heart is guaranteed by our change of deeds, it is superficial and false.” While he presents a binary in his expression, I recognize the gist of what he is saying and resonate with it: when I’m tight with the Lover of my Soul, I reflect the shalom of the One. Yet I can get off track, lose my center at times, and in those moments am living in a superficial, false, and weakened form of Christianity.
Theologian and Baptist pastor, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) fell in love with God at the age of 17 in a religious experience that he said, “influenced his soul down to its depths.” This adult conversion was related to his sense of being out of alignment with God. When he reached out for union, he experienced being met with grace. This was a personal repentance, a turning back to God. His outlook would be captured a decade after this moment when he wrote about the culture of the spiritual life in 1897:
The Blessed Life
The main thing is to have God;
to live in God;
to have God live in us;
to think God’s thoughts;
to love what God loves and hate what God hates;
to realize God’s presence;
to feel God’s holiness and to be holy because God is holy;
to feel God’s goodness in every blessing of our life and even in its tribulations;
to be happy and trustful;
to join in the great purposes of God and to be lifted to greatness of vision and faith and hope with God— that is the blessed life.
In another space he wrote about what it means to find ourselves living as a child of God:
Realize often the presence of God. It is the first article of religious belief that there is a living God. It is the first act of religious life to realize God and come into contact with God. It is a mighty act of faith every time . . . If your thoughts are often of the living God, if God’s fatherly care is your trust, if God’s will is your final law, if God’s communion is your joy, you are living as a child of God, as a possessor of the spiritual and eternal life. Therefore, practice the presence of God.
Rauschenbusch would realize that identifying as a child of God would lead him to make some very adult decisions as he lived in a very grown-up world. As pastor of Second German Baptist Church adjacent to Hell’s Kitchen area in New York City, he witnessed the ugly side of the Industrial Age’s greed. While those who experienced the wealth of the Gilded Age enjoyed their luxury, the employees who made them rich lived in squalor. Tenements built and operated by industry titans were the only affordable options for many (mostly) Irish immigrants who worked in the factories. The working conditions matched the living conditions, forcing men, women, and even children to work themselves to the bone, with no recourse to protect themselves.
Having presided over too many funerals of children who lost their lives due to the harsh environment, Rauschenbusch could no longer settle for a personal piety that only looked after one’s personal salvation while thousands of God’s children suffered next door. He increasingly spoke into the social crisis unfolding all around him. Then, as now, he received criticism for focusing on social ills and was encouraged to not get political and stick to personal salvation. But he could not contain his concern for his siblings born from the passion between himself and the Lover of his Soul. His heart ached as he called his congregation and readers to repent of their shallow expression of Christianity, like Chiara Lubich (1920-2008), founder of the Italian Foculare movement that sought to create greater unity in Italy and beyond. She lamented, “May our eyes be spared, at least a little, from seeing the knots lovingly tied by your mercy, tempered by justice, that have been placed where our blindness has broken the thread of your will.”
Not dissuaded by the voices around him calling him to tone it down, Rauschenbusch lifted up a vision of what a God-honoring response to God should look like in the face of crisis, a worship beyond words:
The real worship, the only thing that God really cares for, is a Christlike life. To live all the time in the consciousness of the love and nearness of God, to merge all our desires and purposes in God’s will, to walk humbly before God and justly and lovingly with all people, this is the real Christian worship. Without that no prayer, no song, no “divine service” on Sunday is more than discordant noise in the ears of God . . . A loving and pure life is the true liturgy of Christian worship.
How is the temperature of our love affair with the Lover of our Souls? Are we “one enough” with the One that we find ourselves loving like Jesus, who is our great reference for what faith can look like when lived fully? Are we loving like Jesus with our behavior? Our attitudes, our language, our curiosity, our compassion, our hands, feet, and budgets?
We are living through a time of great change in our country which is affecting the entire world. We can see the short-range implications and damage already. We don’t know how deeply the changes made in this season will carry into the distant future, for better and/or worse. Many feel helpless, powerless. Rallies feel like something, but don’t feel like they make much impact right now. Midterm elections, when we can exercise our vote, feels like an eternity away, and the reality of gerrymandering raises concern about whether or not everyone’s vote will count (which has been a political tactic for a hundred years or more, leveraged by all parties). What can we do to live out our genuine love for God and others? What can we do to appropriately worship?
In our radically individualistic society, which has shaped us to look primarily after our own needs often to the ignorant neglect of others, perhaps the first act of genuine worship is to simply be curious about reality. Who is suffering in our little world and the world at large? Why? What mixed emotions are we holding about those who are struggling? Have you taken time to become informed about the bias of the media you trust? How about taking some time to see what ad fontes media has to say?
Do you know how to be alerted to opportunities for action, so that when something that could make a difference is happening, you can be a part of it? Have you signed up with 5Calls.org yet?
Are you worried about people here in Napa that are or will face food insecurity? You can do something about that! Have you set up automatic giving to CrossWalk’s Missions/Outreach fund? The top two priorities are our own Food Pantry and Project Hope, the former serving at risk Napans who slip through the cracks of the Food Bank program, and the latter serving Napa’s houseless population. If we all pitch in just $30/month, we can fully fund these and other important programs. Sign up here.
One thing we can all do regardless of our physical or financial capacity is pray. When we pray, we open ourselves more fully to what God is doing in the world. Somehow, our prayers have an effect at least on us and others as well. Pray for and about the heartbreak you see. Allow God to enlighten you. Keep your eyes and ears open to the work of God that is constantly in flow. Sometimes prayer simply removes our earplugs and blinders so that we can hear and see more clearly.
All of the above are ideally meant to be in response to the love we share with God, our hearts moved from our love of Love and Love’s love of us. Sometimes change comes from within. Sometimes change is initiated from our behavior. Sometimes we do work on the inside, and it changes our look on the outside. Sometimes changing the outside helps change us on the inside. These happen to represent two different approaches to therapy. Perhaps when we move forward on both fronts at the same time, we might see things shift even faster.
To conclude, I am reminded of Jesus’ most famous parable of what living a life in response to a love affair with God where two hearts beat as one. The Good Samaritan was the third to come across a beat-up Jewish man who foolishly traveled alone down the perilous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The first two “responders” apparently were more concerned with personal piety than compassion and walked right on by. The Samaritan, however, put him on his donkey, and made sure he was tended to in Jericho while he carried out his business. He invested himself – his time and resources – to address the need in front of him, even though the victim was from a people group he was trained to hate. What dawned on me recently, however, was where the Samaritan took the Jewish man to receive care: an inn. He paid the innkeeper to look after him until he returned. He didn’t take the Jewish man to the local synagogue. Perhaps he didn’t believe they would be of any assistance. May all who come behind us find us to be faithful lovers of God – not just with our mouths but will our wills as well.
Sources:
Douglas-Klotz, Neil. Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus' Words (pp. 22-24). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Brown, Fénelon, and Lubich, from Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together (p. 208, 210). Kindle Edition.
Barclay, William. The Acts of the Apostles. 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated. The New Daily Study Bible. Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
Johnson, Dennis L. To Live in God: Daily Reflections with Walter Rauschenbusch. Kindle Edition.