Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

It has been a rough stretch for our congregation and for me personally, as we have gone through a sequence of funerals in which the definitive nature of our lives has been impressed upon Kathy and me, upon our friends, and upon the congregation. While the finitude of this life sometimes closes in all too near, there are other signs that life itself is perforated with openings that lead us out to the Beyond.

I was reminded of this at the funeral of Michael Pullara’s mother on Thursday in Abilene. It was a solidly Christian service filled with evocations of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. This is the Christian way of acknowledging the openness of all creation to the Creator Spirit that created the universe, empowered the life of Jesus, and will guide to fulfillment the meaning of it all. As the service came to a conclusion, our friend Isaac was asked to recite the Kaddish, which is the traditional prayer for the dead in the synagogue. Isaac did so in Hebrew. I am not sure that this was something that the people of Abilene, Texas expected.

There are variations on the Kaddish. I offer here the more general form for your consideration.

May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he has created according to his will. May his Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen.
May his great name be blessed, forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored, elevated, and lauded be the Name of the holy one, Blessed is he- above and beyond any blessings and hymns, Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say,
May there be abundant peace from Heaven and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.

The striking nature of this prayer for the dead is that it does not mention the dead! The prayer is about God. It reminds me of the “good old days” when a funeral service in a traditional church was about God. We used to hear complaints that the Episcopal, Roman or Lutheran liturgies for the burial of the dead did not even mention the name of the deceased. Now matters have swung much too far in the other direction. Our funerals in the west are now all about the dead. God is mentioned only as a measure of respectability or a desperate attempt to redeem the one who has died.

We can learn a lot from the Jewish Kaddish as we think about the prayer that Jesus gave us to pray. We pray also in a similar manner to that of our Jewish brothers and sisters, asking that God’s name be made holy, that God’s kingdom come so that God’s will may be accomplished. We acknowledge God as the source of all earthly blessings. We seek redemption, and we pray that we not fail in our courage at the hour of death and that peace (shalom) will prevail at the end.

In the Jewish faith the Kaddish in its various forms is not recited only on special occasions such as funerals. The Kaddish closes every service. The Kaddish is said daily and even several times a day. As one Rabbi says, “Just do it!” One understands why this admonition is so critical to the life of faith, for God is often hidden behind the veil of this life with its suffering and injustice. Prayers like the Kaddish and the Lord’s Prayer not only evoke God’s presence but they also evoke from us a true sense of humanity as we stand before God who made heaven and earth.

One of the things that attracted me to the Lutheran tradition was the constant use of the Lord’s prayer in the life of the faithful. It seemed to me that every time my Lutheran friends got together, they would say the Lord’s prayer. This was a great contrast with my Baptist upbringing, in which we were taught to use the Lord’s prayer simply as a model by which we were to pray strictly from the heart. But Jesus did not instruct his disciples to fashion their prayers along the line of a model.

He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." (Luke 11:2-4)

I don’t think we have any liturgies that are without the Lord’s prayer. At Christ the King Church we never conclude a meeting without saying the Lord’s Prayer. It’s almost Pavlovian. When I hear the prayer, I think it is time to leave. One parishioner was worried about our use of the small bell when we pray the Our Father during the Eucharistic prayer. They said, it almost made them salivate for the bread and wine and the future that is promised in the sacred meal. Now that is Pavlovian!

But the truth is, we are to pray the Lord’s prayer as often as possible in order that we remain conscious of the truth of the incomprehensible mystery of the presence of God around us mortal creatures who are incomplete without the knowledge that we are loved by this same God. That is who we really are.

One of the oldest manuals on the Christian faith dictates that we

Pray this way three times a day. (Didache 8:3)

In the Coptic liturgy the Lord’s prayer is said over and over again at an incredible speed. For the prayer in its totality evokes the sacred presence. The Lord’s Prayer is a linguistic symbol capable of placing us properly in the world and before God.

Dear brothers and sisters, we are to recite the Lord’s prayer as often as possible, as Jesus admonishes in the Gospel. The repetition is nothing other than our persistent turning to God for help, renewal and peace. In this way the prayer delivers the blessing that Christ himself came to deliver—life now and forevermore.

When we visit each other at times of illness or in times of grief, it is the Lord’s prayer that most often is the decisive moment among us. As I have visited with those who face surgery or the funeral of a beloved one, I sense that all the effort that we put into holding ourselves together, of running on our own steam, condenses into the tears of relief that God is here and in the end it is all about God.

Amen.