Our Father, Hallowed - Mike
This Sunday, just a few short hours after leaving emergence I had the privilege to go to New York City for the "Prayer in the Square" event in Times Square. The event is hosted by the Times Square Church which meets for services at 51st St. and Broadway. Heidi and I have been to the event for each of its three years. I think this year has been the most meaningful so far because we are studying the Lord's prayer during Common Ground. Here are a few brief impressions of the event and how it relates to my deepening understanding of the Lord's prayer.
First, the Lord's prayer is so familiar to so many of us that we often recite it by wrote without interacting with its deep meaning. Starting with the "our" in "Our Father..." This has been one of the more difficult hurdles for me to cross spiritually and mentally in my faith walk. I am not sure why that is, but I believe it has something to do with the individualism that modern, particularly American, culture has circumscribed around the Christian faith. We routinely hear terms such as "my faith" or "personal savior" used to describe contemporary Christian spirituality. It is not that these terms are improper in and of themselves, but they most certainly distort the communal nature of faith. "I" have faith and "you" have faith, therefore "we" have faith. There is something almost unnerving to admit that faith - a deep relationship with God - can be both profoundly intimate and yet shared simultaneously by so many. In the same way, Jesus is "my" savior and He is "your" savior, therefore He is "our" savior. And Jesus is the Son of God, I am a child of God and so are you, therefore God is "our" Father.
This is never more obvious than when you go to an event like Prayer in the Square where tens of thousands of people from every ethnicity and background united by a common faith in Jesus Christ gather together to worship and pray to the Father. This year at "prayer" we experienced something unusual. Don't forget, there were tens of thousands of people there, a crowd several city blocks long flowing northward up Broadway. A few minutes before the conclusion we were asked to form small prayer groups wherever we stood with whoever we happened to be standing near. Hundreds and hundreds of prayer circles spawned, forming handholding rings of previously unaquainted brothers and sisters. My left hand held the rough hand of Masal, a man recently emigrated from Senegal. My other hand held Heidi's. She held the hand of a woman from Hoboken, who in turn held the hand of another African American woman. And so it went around the circle of about 10 of us. Together we prayed for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. We prayed for each other's churches and for God to be glorified by our lives as His children. My prayer started something like this: "Thank you God for allowing me to meet for the first time these of my brothers and sisters who will I spend eternity with together with You." It was an awesome moment of realization.
The second impression is of worshiping our Holy God in such a large crowd. Of experiencing the passion and energy of multitudes of yielded hearts, their voices singing songs of praise which echo powerfully through the canyons of steel and glass. Of experiencing the surrealism of thousands of hands and heads raised skyward amidst the enormous video screens and giant garish billboards while the air is filled with the vibrating sounds of words once heard at the great throne of Heaven:
"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" Rev. 4:8
It was truly an an awesome experience. One which I am not entirely at ease with because it stretches my comfort zone past "my" personal faith toward a corporate expression of faith. And yet curiously I am also drawn to these experiences. I think that's because they represent small seeds - just a little taste - of what is to come, God's everlasting kingdom.