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“This, then, is how you should pray,
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.”
Rev. Dr. Drew G. I. Hart is an associate professor of theology at Messiah University and has 10 years of pastoral experience prior to teaching. He currently directs Messiah University's "Thriving Together: Congregations for Racial Justice" program and co-hosts Inverse Podcast with Jarrod McKenna, an award-winning peace activist from Australia. Hart is the author of Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism (2016) and Who Will Be A Witness?: Igniting Activism for God's Justice, Love, and Deliverance (2020). And he is also a co-editor and contributor to the recently published book entitled Reparations and the Theological Disciplines: Prophetic Voices for Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair (Nov. 2023). Hart received bcmPEACE’s 2017 Peacemaker Award, the 2019 W.E.B. Du Bois Award in Harrisburg, PA, and most recently in December 2023 Life Esteem Ministries recognized him in Harrisburg with the Harambee Award for the Nguzo Saba Principle of Umoja—Unity for his faith-based activism and public scholarship in the community. Drew and his family live in Harrisburg, PA. View more posts
Drew G. I. Hart
Hey, Pastor Santhosh is doing a series on the Lord’s prayer too. Tonight he taught on the portion, “…and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. He brought in the passage from Luke about Jesus being invited to a Pharisee’s house (Simon I believe) for dinner and there was a woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointed them with perfume… The Pharisee goes on to think less of Jesus because he allows this woman to touch him but then Jesus tells him the story about two men forgiven of their debt. The one who owed more loved more… you know the story. I’m always wishing I could get a bit more info about what actually went on… we get snapshots of a scene with Jesus – the highlights are given but not much else. And so there-in lies the life of biblical teachers – filling in the picture with whatever seems right to them. It’s a scary job to not get caught up adding to the scriptures… I take my hat off to you if you accomplish it.
Yeah, I think the what is needed is for people to be students of culture. Learning as much as we can about ancient Palestine as well as of our current culture. Then as theologians we can apply the gospel taught in the bible and transfer it over as authentically as we can into the 21st Century. And then even then you have different schools of thought, literalists, allegorists, etc. i tend to fall in line with how the NT tends to teach how we should approach the bible, which is conveying the spiritual principles that point to Jesus, rather than a mere literalistic approach which can at times be a bit Pharisaical. Nonetheless, I admire anyone who authentically seeks to know God more and His mission for the church, and teaches it as faithfully as they can to others so that they too would become students of Christ. Thanks for sharing… the woman with Jesus is a beautiful story, filled with scandalous imagery, i think. At least, that is how we would look at it today. Jesus was very radical, and wouldn’t be excepted in most of our churches.