This song of praise at the end of the Lord's prayer is the goal, the climax and the consummation of every prayer directed to the Father in the name of Jesus, every prayer that leads us to God in the Spirit. All the churches throughout the world have rightly taken up this song of praise into their prayer. Even though historically it is viewed as a later addition made by the church, it is by no means simply a dispensable, liturgical decoration. For in this song of praise we arrive at God's peace, participate in his power, and enter into his eternal light.

Once we have cried out our unrest in our hunger for bread, for life and for happiness, then we arrive at the great peace of God: "Thine is the kingdom" - thine, with thy righteousness and thy fullness. And a great certainty descends on us. Our prayer is not in vain: we shall not perish. Our prayer is not futile: he will give us our daily bread.

When we have confessed our guilt, the guilt we can never make good, which torments the personal conscience of every individual and weighs on the collective conscience of mighty nations; when we stop trying to repress this guilt or compensate for it, but simply stand there with it, naked and defenceless, then this prayer takes us into God's great light: "Thine is the glory." And we discover that this divine radiance expels the shadows of our guilt and lights up the night of evil. Our life has not been wasted. Nothing is irrevocably past and gone: He will forgive the guilt, and turn our evil to good.

When, finally, we are overcome by the fear of temptation, when we realize that we can't stand up to persecution, won't stand our ground under cross-examination, and will weaken under torture, then this prayer leads us into the secret of God's great power: "Thine is the power." It is the power that is made perfect in weakness. Once we have experienced this, we no longer fail. We don't remain prostrate in our defeats, but rise from them, again and yet again, until the final resurrection.

The song of praise in the Lord's prayer is in fact the song of the imprisoned, not the song of the mighty. It is the song of resistance, not the song of conformity.

When Paul and Silas came to Philippi in Macedonia, they were arrested, tortured and thrown into prison. As they lay there in chains, they prayed and at midnight, we are told, they praised God (Acts 16.25). Why did they praise God in prison, of all places, and in the darkest hour of the night, of all times? They praised God because they found him there, in their dark cell; because he was with them; because they felt the joy of his presence more vividly than the fetters of men.

When, in the 17th century, Marie Durand, with other Huguenot Christians, was locked up in a tower and for thirty-seven years refused every day to deny her faith, she etched just one single little word into the wall of the cell next to the window through which she was able to look out into the free world: it was the word "Résistez" - resist! How was she able to do this? Because every day she praised the God whose nearness, whose warmth and whose life she every day experienced.

Today Christians are exiled, expelled from their professions, banned, imprisoned and tortured in the prisons of the cynical dictator states. What we hear from them is, however, the same message. What comes through to us is not their self-pity but their song of praise: "Thine is the kingdom..."

So this song of praise is the very heart of Christian existence. It is out of this prayer that an indestructible hope wells up at the very point where, humanly speaking, there is nothing left to hope for. It is from this assurance, that resistance wells up at the very point where, in human terms, there is nothing more to be done.

This song of praise is fed by a strong movement of the Spirit. It leads us from ourselves to God - "Thine is the kingdom" - and then leads us back again from God to ourselves: "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Let us enter into the movement of this song of praise. We shall think about it in three steps:

We experience its critical power in liberation from the modern world's God-complex;
We experience its liberating power in the glorification of the God, who has become human;
We experience its encouraging power in the blessing given to the poor.

Liberation from the modern world's God-complex

The hymn of praise to God's glory is not sung today in a world without God, but rather in a world where people and powers make gods out of themselves. "Mine is the kingdom, and mine is the power, and the glory belongs to no one but me." That is the rough, discordant tone we hear in our world today. Humanity has been a victim of this God-complex. We are no longer supposed to endure humanity's limitations, its weakness and its ambiguity. We are supposed to overcome them. What everyone is striving after is divinity, in its strength and security. We can't apparently permit God to be God. We have to turn ourselves into mighty supermen or little mini-gods. It is this, that makes us so inhuman. That is why our earth is becoming so uninhabitable. Our earth has room for a great many people, but not enough room for so many master nations.

We can recognise our God-complex very clearly from three characteristics - characteristics which in prayer we give back again to God, because it is to him alone that they belong.

The kingdom

To whom does the world domination belong? This is the cardinal question in our international conflicts today. The nations are growing inexorably into a worldwide community; but according to what pattern, and according to whose lordship, and according to which law? Two great concepts are wrestling with one another: western democracy, which the eastern countries also call capitalism; and the socialism of the eastern countries, which the west also calls dictatorship. This is not a struggle for coexistence. It is a struggle for domination. Who is Number One? Who is going to determine humanity's future? To whom is the kingdom of the earth going to belong? For this "God", the nations today are arming themselves to death, classes and races are being plunged into poverty, and the whole world being menaced by the apocalypse of total nuclear annihilation. The present struggle for world domination makes us fear the worst for the future. The omnipotence of the dictators, the omnipresence of the secret police and the omniscience of their computers - are these things not a bitter foretaste of what the coming glory of this race of supermen is going to be like?

The power

The modern superstitious faith in the almighty power of human beings has led to the delusion that everything is possible and that everything can be manipulated. By means of science and technology, human beings have fulfilled their longing for power and have subdued the earth. They exploit its resources and destroy the natural environment. They subjugate foreign peoples and force their own ideology and their own economy on to their victims. The modern desire for power and always more power is nothing but the desire for self-deification. That is why it knows no limits. That is why it is so ruthless and so brutal. Today the desire for power has become the power of annihilation. Will we ever get rid of our God-complex? Will we ever be able to restrict ourselves to human limits? Are we prepared to replace domination by community, and controls through trust?

The glory

"All the glory upon earth" is what this God-complex promises: politically, technologically and personally. The delusion that everything can be manipulated promises unheard-of riches to the vanquisher of nature. The mighty are supposed to acquire undreamed-of delights. What a lie! What a deception! What a delusion! If this were really true, why are the mighty ones of this world so neurotically greedy for acclamation? The hour-long clapping on Red Square in Moscow, and the show-business put on by the politicians on our television are not proofs of their glory. On the contrary, they prove their insecurity. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number were really so close, why is the delusion of total technological manipulation so insatiable and so aggressive? Isn't the reason for this absurd compulsion towards power a fathomless fear? The fear of not getting enough, the fear of being left behind, the fear of living in vain? Powerless to love, and to suffer, and full of the fear of death, we are destroying life though our greed. Is this "all the glory upon earth"?

We are victims of this God-complex - a sickness unto death. It is a calamity, that has befallen us because of the failure of our love for God. Of him we lost sight when we began to deify ourselves. We pushed him out, when we began to chase after our kingdom, our power and our glory.

Glorification of the God who has become human

The human being who has become "God" is a monster. Who is going to liberate us from this monster? Where are we going to rediscover our humanity, betrayed and trampled under foot as it is?

The gospel's answer is simple and clear. God himself becomes human in order to turn us proud and unhappy gods into true men and women, people who recognise their limitations, their weaknesses and their poverty and accept them. We gave up our humanity in order to become gods. But God became human in order to give us back the humanity we have betrayed; and this is how he saves us. We find our true humanity in God, in the God become human, in the "God with the human face". That is why we praise the Father of Jesus Christ, confessing that "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever".

Anyone who prays this in all seriousness, takes "the kingdom" out of the political struggle and gives it back to God, to whom it belongs. He says "no" to the struggle for world domination and supremacy, and resists it.

Anyone who prays this in all seriousness, takes "the power" away from human civilization and gives it back to God, to whom alone it belongs. He says "no" to the delusion of total manipulation, and resists it.

Anyone who prays this in all seriousness, takes "the glory" away from the world of men and women and gives it back to the God who is the only one who is, and can be, glorious. He says "no" to every form of self-glorification, and resists it.

But who is this God?

Isn't this Father simply a super-patriarch up in heaven and an idol of the male religion? The Greeks called their supreme god Zeus, the father of the universe, because he was almighty, and all living things were supposed to be dependent on him. But we don't call God "Father" because he is the Almighty and everything is dependent on him. We call him our Father because he is "the Father of Jesus Christ". It is only when Jesus becomes our brother, that his Father becomes our Father too. That is the special thing, the new thing about Jesus' revelation: the fact that he no longer calls God merely Lord, no longer merely Judge and King. In unspeakable intimacy and trust he calls him "Abba", my dear Father. This name "Abba" is an expression of supreme love and closeness - one can even say that it breathes unheard-of tenderness. "Abba" is God's true name, the name which Jesus taught his friends, his sisters and brothers to use, when they called upon God. So when we pray "our Father" we must always have this original "Abba" mystery of Jesus in mind. It was for this God's sake, that Jesus left his father and mother. What distinguishes the Father of Jesus Christ from the Father-god of the patriarchal male religions is quite simply Jesus himself - nothing but that. Jesus' brotherly life with the poor, the weak and the lost reveals God's fatherhood. Jesus' suffering and death on the cross reveals the Father's merciful, "motherly" love - love in all its pain. Jesus' resurrection reveals the infinite joy of this Father, who liberates through his own suffering and is victorious through reconciliation. That is why Jesus rightly tells us that "He who sees me, sees the Father".

It is to this Father that the kingdom and the power and the glory belong. For his divine love is stronger than human power, and his divine weakness is stronger than all human might, and the cross on Golgotha is more victorious than all our armaments, also the nuclear ones.

Persecuted Christians have always known this when they experienced the divine power of resistance and perseverance. That is why in their visions they saw the crucified Jesus as the victor: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing," proclaims the Revelation of John (5.12; 7.14ff).

The ancient Gothic churches in Europe make this plain. It is true that they are built like heavenly fortresses, and that they illustrate outwardly the wealth, power and glory of the church in medieval times. But when we stand in the apse and look upwards, following the hands of the adoring angels, what do we see there, in the centre of the divine glory? The mystic Lamb with the sign of the cross.

In the kingdom of the God made human we can put aside usurped divinity. We can once more be truly human and are restored to health again.

In the power of the vulnerable God we can lose our anxiety and our demand for security. We can learn to live without armaments, open for other people - for our enemies too.

Blessing to the poor

In this song of praise we give back to God the kingdom and the power and the glory, which we have usurped; and in return we receive from him our true humanity. In the glorification of God our world will be humanized and will become a world to delight in.

But then something happens, which one hardly dares to express, because it is God himself, and only God himself, who can say it. He tells us what none of us can tell ourselves: yours is my kingdom, for you will not die, but will live with me. Yours is my power, for my power is made perfect in your weakness too. And in the end yours will be my own glory, when you behold face to face what you now believe.

The song of praise in the Lord's prayer has always filled me personally with a strong and indescribable feeling of joy, ever since I discovered this movement in the song of praise, which leads so critically from us to God, and then so graciously from God to us.

It is really and truly so: God doesn't keep his kingdom for himself, but opens it to all the weary and heavy-laden. His kingdom is also the kingdom of those who are shut out from the riches of this world.

It is really and truly so: God doesn't keep his great power for himself, but shares it with the people who are weak and powerless, who are trodden under foot by the people in this world, who are strong.

It is really and truly so: God doesn't allow himself to rest content with his own glory in heaven. He lets himself be touched by the suffering on earth, and it cuts him to the heart. He makes the shame of the men and women, who are humiliated and discriminated against in this world, his glory (1 Cor 1.28). He makes the cause of widows and orphans his own cause. We human beings ourselves are God's glory in the world, for it was to be his image in creation that God created us. How should this God not be zealous for his glory, and suffer with his own image!

His kingdom, his power and his glory are already in the midst of this world, in the midst of us. This means liberating judgment on the rich, the violent and the oppressors. This means gracious liberation for the poor, the weak and the downtrodden.

According to the Sermon on the Mount, the kingdom of the God, whose power and glory we praise, is the kingdom of the poor, the suffering, the gentle and the merciful and the people who hunger for righteousness, and the peacemakers.

So ultimately speaking, it is "the people of the Beatitudes" who truly praise him. It is these people, who are now already singing to him the whole creation's song of praise. Let us enter into the community of this people of Jesus Christ. In solidarity with the poor and the lost, in sympathy with the suffering, and in fellowship with the men and women who hunger for righteousness and thirst for peace, we will bless and praise God as long as we live:

For thine is the kingdom
and the power
and the glory
for ever and ever, Amen.

Our Father in heaven,
You are a Father to widows and orphans,
a Father to the abandoned and lonely.
That is why we call out to you in our need,
why we trust you in our fear.
Give us bread and love the whole day through.

Forgive us the sins which bind us, that we may be free.
Deliver us from evil, for we belong to you alone.
For we, too, want to share as brothers, so that no one goes without.
We, too, want to love and forgive those who have wounded and grieved us.
We want to stand fast, resisting and renouncing temptation to the end.

Jesus Christ, our friend, our brother,
You became poor that you might be with the poor.
You suffered in order to be with the suffering.
You took on the sins of the world and died, deeply isolated from the Father.
We come to know you in hunger and poverty.
We feel your nearness in our anxiety. You are our brother, going with us and before us, remaining close to each one of us.
Bring us ever deeper into your fellowship. Assure us of your nearness in life and death. Stay by us - don't abandon a single one of us!

Holy Spirit, source of life,
We hunger after life, we thirst after happiness. We long for you.
We find no rest because we look for you where we can't find you, for you have already found us.
Deep within us you wait and provide us with a calmness of heart, a self-possession in all things.
Awake in us, gather us to yourself, that we may be unshakeable.
Where you are, there is freedom, come what may. In you is true life; we live in you.

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, now and forever, without end. Amen.

This sermon was preached in the Dominion Chalmers Church in Ottawa during the opening worship service on Tuesday August 17 1982.