Gospel: Matthew 6: 7-15
A Christian would never admit that they pray like pagans. After all, we pray in Jesus' name and in the Spirit! Yes, well, leaving that aside, the words of Jesus today indicate otherwise. Jesus gives us a simple prayer, around which sacramental Christians have constructed elaborate liturgy with endless prayers, and non-sacramental Christians have adorned with the rambles of spontaneous prayer and a sermon series on the book of Judges. How often Christians compete on length of service as if that were the criterion for worship and Christian life.
Jesus tells us to pray simply and briefly. The essence of our prayer is to be the one thing necessary - mercy. We are in need of God's mercy for our sins, and we ourselves need to be merciful as the sole criterion to receive mercy and for being a Christian at all. For, if we have mercy in both senses we have all that we need. We have the burden of our sins lifted, and we have the peace of God's kingdom within our own hearts as people of mercy directed to all.
If mercy be not the center of our prayer life and moral striving, ours is then a false Christianity, one that is of bloodlust and power. But mercy was the entire ministry of Jesus, who came to be the incarnation of God's mercy in the world, the one who invites and anoints others to be the mercy of God in the world. So, today we pray to be merciful not only so that mercy might be shown to us, but because it is the first of the Beatitudes, the way to peace in the world, the essence of God's very life among us.
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