17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel – Luke 11:1-13

Taking Out The Garbage

Mass at the Tomb, Church of Holy Sepulchre with Fr. Steve

Over the many decades we lived in our Chicago house, there were many times when I was awakened rather rudely very early in the morning (yes, even early for me) by the sound of clashing glass and metal out in the alley.  No need for me to get up and see what was going on; I knew from experience.  It was my neighbor taking out his trash. He’s been doing it for many years.  Now I do not begrudge him taking out the trash, although the timing could be better.  What does irritate me is that, when I go and take out my trash, I will find that my garbage cans are already full to overflowing.  With his bottles and cans and trash!!!!  Seriously??

After all these years, I think to myself, couldn’t he say something to me?  Sorry for using your trash bins?  Sorry for all the noise at odd hours?  Sorry for taking advantage of your ‘empty’ trash cans!  Doesn’t he owe me an explanation?  An apology?  Thanks? Definitely not something I am missing!

And then I read today’s Gospel – the Lord’s Prayer! Our Father, who art in heaven………… Need I go on?  We all know the words; we all pray with those words!  We have them memorized in our minds and printed on our hearts.  And yet, the Lord’s Prayer we hear today in Luke’s Gospel is not the same as Matthew’s, the one we are most familiar with.

Luke doesn’t use the word “our”.  And in a sense, that makes it more personal for me.  I am addressing God as ‘my’ Father. Granted, the rest of Luke’s version uses the word “we” but it feels like a prayerful personal conversation between myself and God, one on one as it were.

What strikes me most are the words ‘everyone in debt to us”.  Too often I think we interpret those words as referring only to people who do actually owe us something.  But I wonder if we are limiting ourselves here.  What if it also includes everyone ‘we think’ are in debt to us?   What if I am called to not only forgive those in debt to me but also letting go of all the resentment and anger we harbor inside us for what we think others ‘owe’ us!  All those perceived slights that we just can’t seem to let go of?  Forgive and forget!  What a concept!  I guess we all have a little ‘garbage’ to let go of in our life!


Ending with a little trivia!  Did you know that, in the early Church, the Christian community deliberately withheld the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer until AFTER the person was baptized into the Church?  In the midst of the Roman Empire at the time, it was considered treasonous to believe in one God, Father in Heaven, much less profess that the Emperor was not divine.  The Lord’s Prayer was/is considered so precious, so vital, to the Faith that it was shared as a ‘pearl of great price” only with the baptized!

And so in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us His words of prayer, our primary prayer of faith to Our Father!  It is a prayer of a common faith; we use the word “OUR”!  It is meant to unite us all with our Father in heaven! Every nation in the world, every culture and community, offers up this prayer, each in their own language, their own context, their own circumstance!  I offer you today a Native translation of the Lord’s Prayer!

“O Great Spirit, our Father from above, we honor Your name as sacred and holy.  Bring Your good road to us, where the beauty of Your ways in the spirit world above is reflected in the earth below.  Provide for us day by day – the elk, the buffalo, and the wild rice.  All the things we need for each day.

Release us from the things we have done wrong, in the same way we release others for the things done wrong to us. Guide us away from the things that tempt us from Your good road and set us free from the evil one and his worthless ways.  Aho!  May it be so!”

(First Nations Version – An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament)

 


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