Orinda Community Church (UCC)
A sermon by the Rev. Frank Baldwin
Sunday, February 24, 2008

THY WILL BE DONE      Luke 22:39-46
I.          Our continuing exploration of the Lord’s Prayer in this season of Lent brings us this morning to the third sentence of the beloved prayer that Jesus taught us:  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.   If the astonishing spiritual depth and complexity of this simple prayer has not impressed you by now, today might be the turning point, because the very idea of God’s will invites some sustained theological heavy-lifting. 
That God has “a will” – an intention, a purpose, an imperative, a volition, a wish, a design, a direction, a plan, a program, a blueprint, an agenda – is a concept that pervades our Judeo-Christian scriptures beginning with the creation stories of Genesis and concluding with the end-time visions of Revelation.  The Holy One of Israel “wills” the world into existence; commands and requires humankind to live in accordance with the original intent; provides lawgivers, sages, poets, prophets and apostles to further define and clarify that purpose; and finally sends Jesus Christ (even as a parent might send his or her own child) to demonstrate and embody once and for all the realignment of human willfulness with God’s will.     
That across the long centuries of sacred history this extensive and varied range of divine initiatives has been necessary reveals two things:  first, that God’s will is apparently to be taken seriously; and second, that God’s will is apparently not easily attained.  The problem, of course, is that while God definitely has a will, you and I have a will too:  a breathtakingly powerful, wonderfully creative, incredible resourceful, head-strong, potentially-deceiving, self-justifying, God-given “free will,” (if you will).  And as you well know, it is all too tempting to confuse or conflate “our will,” as God’s will.
II.        How we recognize, or discern, or interpret, or understand God’s will is crucial for any believing person and crucial for the survival of the human race, because there are now – and always have been – so many competing and inconsistent voices proclaiming to know exactly what God’s will is for us.  No nation was ever sent to war without being solemnly assured that “it is God’s will” for us to fight and kill and die.  No crusade, no genocide, no pogrom, no “ethnic cleansing,” no imperialism, no apartheid, no fascism, no terrorism, no religious extremism, bigotry, injustice or violence was ever undertaken without the cover of “God’s will.” 
“God’s will” has been used as a rationale for persecuting heretics, marginalizing women, silencing scientists, excluding racial and gender minorities, abusing the earth, driving indigenous peoples off their land, enhancing the privileges of the affluent at the expense of the poor, refusing to negotiate with people we don’t like, and marching the planet toward Armageddon. 
Any pastor who’s been in the business for longer than five minutes will have been asked to explain cancer, tragic accidents, suicides, earthquakes, suffering and death itself, in terms of God’s will.  Over the years I have heard people seek to justify as God’s will their own sordid infidelities, intolerances, obsessions, excesses, indulgences, fears, angers, guilts, contempts, and inabilities to extend compassion and forgiveness to others. 
And yet, at the same time there are millions of us who sense that God’s will is a mystery as well as a certainty; who recognize the limitations – indeed, the dangers – of human willfulness; who know in their hearts that God’s will and our will are not necessarily the same thing; who are informed by their minds that God’s will cannot be rightly blamed for all the mistakes, misadventures, injustices and sorrows of our race; and who, with both humility and sincerity still pray “Thy will be done.”
III.       It is informative, and heartening in a way, that Jesus, who always seems to be so confident and certain in the way he aligns his will with God’s will, comes finally – as each of us do – to a point where he sees clearly that the will of God and his own human will are heading in vastly different directions.  Recognizing the fact that he has been betrayed into the hands of ruthless enemies and that a heinous crucifixion is the certain outcome, Jesus would love to escape these ironic consequences of his preaching the gospel of peace and proclaiming the commonwealth of God.  Understandably, he wills (as any of us would) to avoid the humiliation, suffering and death that lie ahead.  On the night when everything he has labored for appears to be lost, outside the city walls on the Mount of Olives, in a quiet place called Gethsemane he prays in all earnestness:  Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me…
Nonetheless, even in that dire hour he also trusts the will of God, and hangs onto his profound faith in God’s mysterious purpose.  And somehow, Jesus sees that this rapidly approaching calamity of the cross is actually not about him alone, but about the destiny of humankind.  God’s purpose here is not suffering, but salvation.  From the pain and mortification of these next few hours will come the reconciliation of the world.  His life will not be taken from him – not by the betrayal of Judas, nor by the might of imperial Rome, nor even by the powers of violence and death – but of his own free will Jesus will choose to go forward with the will of God, come whatever may.  And so, he concludes his prayer that desperate night with the awesome words, Yet, not my will but yours be done! 
How do we know, when we are hearing God’s will for us and not just the insistent clamor of our own will echoing around in our brain?  How can we tell, when someone claims to know the will of God for us that it really is God’s will and not just a manipulative gesture to get us to believe something or do something that even our own conscience would be ready to question?  And finally, how do we make a choice when we sense that God’s will and our will are not really on the same page?
One powerful corrective source at our disposal is always the Bible.  If what is being put to us as the will of God is in disagreement with the 10 Commandments, the testimony of the Prophets,  the Sermon on the Mount, or the witness of the early Church, it is probably not really the will of God.  A second rule of thumb for distinguishing the will of God from our own will is common sense, or the logic of consistency.  The God of love cannot be at the same time the God of hate.  The God of peace is not the God of war.  The God of creation does not desire creation’s abuse and destruction.  The God of reconciliation and radical hospitality cannot be used to justify intolerance and exclusion.  The God of humility and faithfulness that we see in Jesus Christ is not at the same time the false God of arrogance and self-righteousness.  God’s purpose will be in synch with God’s personality; God’s plan will be consistent with God’s character; God’s blueprint will be in agreement with God’s being.
And finally, we can use the very tool of our innate spirituality that Jesus himself used on the Mount of Olives and at many other points of discernment or decision in his life; and that is prayer.  As he said to his disciples more than once that night:  Pray that you may not come into temptation.  The “temptation,” of course, is that they would once again confuse or conflate their own will as the will of God.  That they would think only of themselves, and put their own desires and needs first before the desires and needs of others.  That they would unwilling or unable to “stay awake” and meet the challenges before them, yielding instead to the seductive comforts of sleep when vigilance and courage is required of them.  But prayer – if they can do it, and if they can stay with it – can open up for them (as it can for us) the dauntless resources of the Holy Spirit in that, or any fateful hour.
To be given a free means that we will not be coerced or manipulated into embracing God’s will, or anyone else’s will.  God desires our faith, our trust, our courage and our love as much – or more – than our blind obedience.  When our path and God’s plan diverge as they did even for Jesus Christ, the choice is always ours to make.  And for us, it is a choice that must be made not once in some Mount of Olives moment, but day by day, hour by hour, in all the places where we live and move and have our being.  And thus we pray:  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!