You may have thought that we had finished our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer last week. But we are actually looking at one final part of it today. The final word, which we kind of tagged onto last week’s phrase, is a very important word. It’s the word Amen! We use this word all the time, but do we really know what it means? For many of us, it simply means the prayer is finally over. But it has more to it than that. The word Amen is a Hebrew word. And it means “so be it” or “certainly” or “let it be so.” At the Gering Library, when we check back in a kids backpack, which is a theme specific backpack with books and games and toys related to that theme, when we check it back in, we have to click a button that says, “Make it so!” And every time I click that button, I think, this is kind of like saying, Amen. Or when Captain Jean Luc Picard on Star Trek says, “Make it so.” That truly exemplifies the meaning of our Amens. We are asking God to “Make it so.” To answer our prayers.

Now, we often say Amen at the end of our own prayers. But in the Jewish tradition, Amen is said in response to the prayer of another. It would be a way to agree with what the prayer just prayed for. It’s like a formal way of saying, “What he just said.” For many Jews, the word Amen is almost a magical word. It is said by some that it can cancel punishments and achieve forgiveness, even open the gates of Eden. It is written in one Jewish text that the reciter of the word Amen actually receives a greater blessing than the one who actually prayed the prayer. It is thought that this stems from the Jewish belief that two witnesses are required to corroborate a story. The prayer then is witness one and the person who says Amen is witness number 2. And because the second witness completes the necessary number of witnesses, that one is more blessed.

There was a preacher who bought a horse. And he trained his horse to go when he said “Thank God” and to stop when he said “Amen” So one day, The preacher mounted the horse and said “Thank God” and went for a ride. When he wanted to stop for lunch , he said, “Amen.” He took off again saying, “Thank God” But then after a while the horse started going toward the edge of a cliff. The preacher got kinda worried and said, “whoa! whoa!” Then he remembered how he’d trained the horse and said, “Amen.” The horse stopped at the edge of the cliff. The preacher was so relieved and grateful that he looked up to heaven and said, “Thank God!”

We so often think of the word Amen as an ending. It stops the prayer. But if we think of it with the meaning of “Let it be so!” or “Make it be so!” then it’s not really an ending but a beginning. It is the beginning of change, the beginning of our call to work toward the answering of that prayer, the beginning of God making it so. To quote the band Semisonic, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Amen marks both an end and a beginning. It marks the end of what was before and the beginning of what is to come from the prayer that was just prayed. When we end the Lord’s Prayer with the word AMEN, we are saying, “Help us, Lord, to live into these words we just prayed and bring them to reality through us.”

Let me end with this story: A man was praying in church. He looked up to heaven and said, “God, could you answer a question for me?” “Of course, my son,” God replies, “what would you like to know?” “God, what is a million years to you?” “Well,” God says, “a million years to me is as a second.” “Hmm,” says the man. “I guess I understand. So what is a million dollars to you then?” “My son,” God says, “a million dollars to me is as a penny.” “Hmm,” says the man. He goes back to praying, but after a little while he looks up again. “God,” he asks, “can I have a penny?” “Sure,” God says. “Just a second.” Our prayers are important to God, but the answers don’t always come when we want them or how we want them. But still we pray, “Make it be so!” And we trust that God will hear that prayer and bless us. For God’s is the kingdom and the power and the glory…forever. AMEN!