I am reminded. . .

“The entirety of our prayer is ‘Your will be done’—not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression."   I borrow those words from someone I was privileged to meet and, as a very young pastor, to preside before and commune.  Those were years long before Richard John Neuhaus had left Missouri for the ELCA or the ELCA for Rome.  

I fear we have lost that perspective.  To pray "Your will be done" is seen today as no prayer at all but an indignity unworthy of humanity.  It is God who must bend His will to us not we who bend our wills to Him.  That is the singular failure of modern Christianity -- our insistence that we know better than God and it is God's job to acknowledge this.  The singular mark of Christianity is that we do not simply defer to God's will but pray for it and trust it more than we trust ourselves.  That is the shape of our faith.  We are not and forever deferring to the will of God.  It is an act of faith, to be sure, but it is also an act of fealty.  

In the end, the whole of our lives as well as our prayers is the application of this hope and confidence in God's mercy to everything.  It is not that we are resigned to this will of God as those who have no choice nor as those who fear that will.  God's will is good and gracious.  We submit to that will and it is our prayer precisely because we know Him to be good and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  This is the very thing that marks our faith and this is the very thing that makes it hard to believe.  Our stubborn hearts are still the fruit of Eden and our confidence to know and decide what is in our best interest.  Daily we wrestle against this temptation and daily the spirit prompts us to say amen to God's will, building in us the confidence to pray this petition with delight and joy -- and freedom.

When Neuhaus penned those words in the journal he had labored to create, the end of his life was near.  At that moment, perhaps, the words and our faith are clearer.  All of life is a march toward home, his was the very end of that march.  Accompanied by angels, encouraged by the saints, sustained by the life-giving Word and the Sacraments of life and worship, the only permanent things in our lives are those that proceed from God and lead us to Him.   The homeward bound character of this mortal life was sealed in the obedient life and life-giving death of Christ -- the shadow behind every Sunday of Lent and every mid-week service.  If the cross bears any fruit in our lives, it should be an ever growing peace with this prayer as well as an ever growing awareness of the joy and freedom given to us once we learn to pray it -- Thy will be done.

The heavenly reward is not given to us to value for ourselves -- only the promise.  More than we could ever imagine, is what St. Paul promises.  The vision of St. John takes what on earth is treasure and lays it down before our feet as the most common and ordinary of all.  The stumbling block for those who refuse to believe and that which the Spirit must lead us through is that this happens through the mystery of the cross.  Indeed, to pray Thy will be done is to pray the cross in every circumstance of sorrow, in every pain of struggle, in every tear of loss, in every guilt of sin, and in every weakness of death. But not only in these weary moments; to pray Thy will be done is to pray the cross in every happy moment, when life is filled with joy, when we wish the days would never end, and when we are sure we could never be happier.  The cross is that lens through which we see God's good and gracious will in time of discontent and in times of great contentment alike.