Luke 23:44-46:
It was now about the sixth hour,
and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the
sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus,
calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my
spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.
I’m going to begin a prayer
and you help me finish the first couple lines
Our
Father, who art…
Hail
Mary, full of grace…
Glory
be to the Father…
The
Lord is my shepherd…
Now
I lay me down to sleep…
Some
of you may not even remember learning the words of those prayers. They stir up
from your minds almost automatically. The words feel like a part of you and
they slide out of your mouth as easily as breath. When we understand ourselves
to pray with the help of the Holy Spirit, these prayers are the way God,
through Jesus and the Spirit, gives structure, pattern, and depth to our
prayers.
Even
children can (and should) learn these words. Does it matter if they fully
understand what they mean? It does not. Does it matter if we fully comprehend
these prayers? It does not. Our prayers- in word and deed- express our trust in
God, our lived out hope that we may live to see and comprehend how God is
acting in the world for renewal, healing, and resurrection.
Jesus
told the disciples, who were concerned about their status in heaven, that they
needed to change their thinking and become more like children. The only way to
enter the kingdom of heaven is to become like a child. This does not mean to
act childishly, in the way that we might imagine (or hope). It means to have
the faith of one who has not yet learned of harshness, to have the clear
intentions of one who speaks the truth because she does not know how to lie, to
have the ability to imagine and reach for entirely brand-new possibilities- all
of which is rooted in having experienced safety and care from the very first
minutes of life.
“Into
thy hands, I commit my spirit” was a child’s bedtime prayer in the time of
Jesus. It is likely that Mary would sit down next to a young Yeshua, settling
down for sleep on his bed of rushes in the family room. They might have sung a
soft song or recited the Sh’ma (Hear O
Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one). She might have spoken a soft
prayer or blessing over him. Then she would have reminded him of the last
prayer of the night. The last words for each child (and adult to speak) before
falling asleep were a quotation of Psalm 31:5, “Into your hands, I commit my spirit.”
These
words, believed to be of David- shepherd boy and powerful King- were the last
prayer of the night, the prayer of trust and expressed hope before surrendering
to the oblivion of sleep, which must have seemed like a kind of death. Praying
as the psalmist gave parents a way to teach their children about trusting in
God- a Creator and Redeemer who was with them in a way that even their own
parents could not be.
Thus,
young Jesus would have uttered this prayer every day of his life. He would
likely never remember having learned it. He might remember his mother helping
him pray it. Or remember hearing Joseph whisper it at the end of a day’s
labors. Jesus might have prayed it in the night with other children in his
family- as they piled in together for sleep, exhausted after play, worship, and
work.
When
Jesus prays this from the cross, he is no longer a child. He no longer retained
the innocence of one who has not seen evil. He had been betrayed, denied, rejected,
beaten, and crucified. His humanity had been stretched to its breaking point
and that same humanness was about to experience the end of earthly human
experience- death. Yet, in this moment, he is still the Son, still God’s
anointed, still Emmanuel- God with us. Even as he experiences, he teaches. Even
as he teaches, he saves. Even as he saves, he transforms.
Jesus
utters this prayer, “Into thy hands, I commit my spirit” and transforms it for
his own self on the cross and for all who would pray it after him. By adding
the word “Father”, Jesus reveals his nature as the pioneer of our faith-
leading us into a new kind of intimacy and familial relationship with God, with
himself, and with one another. Jesus prays the words just as he has thousands
of times, but this time, we are able to hear that he is not David. He is not just another
claimant to the title of Messiah. He is not a failed political revolutionary.
He is not a rejected king.
Only
one who knows the heart of God would dare to address the Ground of All Being as
“Father”. The only one would could
truly know the heart of the Holy Parent is one who was of that heart, was of
the same being, understood the same things, and had the same desires since
before the beginning of creation. Only the Living Word would dare to pray with
such familiarity and deep trust, trust that came not of hope, but out of
knowledge.
Only
Jesus would pray a children’s bedtime prayer in the moment of his death to
teach all who hear and all who follow how to live and how to die with true
faith- born out of concrete expectation in God’s faithfulness.
Every
prayer of Jesus is a model for us, a way to pray- as children of faith, as
children of light, as children of adoption by the Holy Spirit. In his last
words, Jesus teaches us how to pray in the hour of death. Since most of us do
not know that hour, we are therefore empowered to pray in this way every day of
our lives, every moment of our lives. When driving, before sleeping, in
choosing a daily intention, in our hobbies, in our relationships… by praying as
Jesus did, “Father, into thy hands, I commit my spirit”- we are asking the
Father to shape our will, our actions, and our prayers to God’s own will,
actions, and plans.
In
that way, it is a challenging word, a challenging prayer. It requires us to
understand that external forces may alter our experience, but they cannot
ultimately change us if we are ever giving our spirit over to God’s own
control. Jesus knew who he was and whose he was, and still he prayed, “Father,
into thy hands, I commit my spirit.”
We
who seek daily to live with the same knowledge- whose we are and who we are- can
do nothing less to pray in the same way, with the heart of child, with trust,
with hope, and with abandon. Let it be the new prayer we know by heart- “Father,
into thy hands, I commit my spirit.”
Amen.
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