# Morning Prayers: The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts October 23, 2025 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) ![The Rev. Matthew Potts preaches from the pulpit in Appleton Chapel.](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/2025-10/220902_Morning%20Prayers_MIP%20copy.jpg) *By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13* *Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity* *Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Oct. 22 2025)* This is a reading from the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew beginning at the 54th verse. Jesus came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue so that they were astounded and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother called Mary? Aren't his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?" And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house." And he did not do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief. Here ends the lesson. Tomorrow is the feast day of James, St. James, the brother of the Lord, and martyr. James was the brother of Jesus. Certain Christian traditions, the majority of Christians, in fact, Roman Catholics and Orthodox, teach that Mary remained a virgin her entire life and that Jesus had no biological siblings, but the scriptural witness tends to suggest that he did. There are a couple of reasons why this is kind of an ambitious interpretive leap among other Christians saying that he did not have siblings, but for the sake of time, the most obvious reason is that scripture talks about his brothers and his sisters. And I don't think these villagers in his hometown were talking about his spiritual brothers. That's the traditional kind of interpretation of this line, why they call James the brother of the Lord, but they name other biological relatives. And also earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter six, Jesus's brother, mother, and sisters come to him, and the crowd says, "Hey, your family's here," and he says to them, "Who is my family? My family is anyone who does the will of God." And so these others are not thinking in spiritual terms. Jesus has to correct them and encourage them to think in spiritual terms. So Jesus said, "Oh, brother, brothers, sisters." I find that really appealing and humanizing because I have brothers. In the same way that I find it humanizing to think of his relationship to his parents, I think of the fact that he had siblings who grew up with him and walked around with him and then mourned him when he died. And James was one of those, and James became one of the leaders of the early Christian community in Jerusalem. But of course, Jesus does redefine what it means to be a brother. Jesus says it's not just biological, that there's something more, something else going on. "Whoever does the will of my father," he says. Earlier this year, our vice president did some moonlighting as a theologian. He was trying to defend indirectly policies that withdraw foreign aid to needy people abroad to justify immigration policies in this country, and he referred to this thing called the “ordo amoris.” Some folks who were in my class heard about this last week. The “ordo amoris” is Latin for the order of love. What order are you supposed to love people in? That's not actually what it means, but that's what he said it means. This comes from St. Augustine, a very important theologian. We don't need to go into the way Augustine uses it, although I think he does it differently than Vice President Vance. But what Augustine is saying — and what the “ordo amoris” says — is that we have this impossible task. We're supposed to love everybody. How am I supposed to love someone on the other side of the world? How do I strategically, practically do that? And Augustine says, "Well, the person closest to you. Just start there. You actually can't reach the other side of the world, but there is somebody next to you, somebody for whom you are responsible or to whom you owe love, so love them." That's what he says. So you love the people, closest family, then friends, and community, and so forth. Harvard Memorial Church · The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts - Oct. 22, 2025 | Morning Prayers The vice president said that this was a reason not to love anybody on the other side of the world. He calls it the sin of empathy. This may be reasonable practically, it is just false spiritually and theologically because as Jesus says in chapter six, "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister, wherever in the world they are," and so if my brother or my sister or my sibling is the one to whom I owe love, then they might be on the other side of the world. In the Gospel of Luke, "Who is my neighbor?" the lawyer asks. "Who is the one closest enough to me to deserve my love?" And Jesus says, "The one who... If there's a person suffering, go close to them. Seek out the suffering." And of course, there's also in chapter six, when Jesus teaches the Lord's prayer, Jesus begins at saying, "Our Father." If God is our Father, then we are all siblings and the order of love is one which obligates us to all, even to the least of these wherever they may be. Speaking of that prayer, some of you were here last week when we were honored to have [Tink Tinker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-bRWf3LBz4), Osage Elder, speak from this lectern, honored to give him an extra five minutes. The least we could do. Marty is our seminarian, and when they asked Tink, you may have heard this last week, when they asked Tink if Tink would like to lead the Lord's prayer, Tink said, "I do not have a Lord." Interestingly, Jesus doesn't call it the Lord's Prayer. Interestingly, the majority of Christians in the world, Catholics and Orthodox Christians, do not call it the Lord's Prayer. We do, but that's not what Jesus calls it. That's not what these other Christians call it. They call it the “Our Father.” What Tink said last week is like, "Don't make this about Lordship, make it about relationship," which is exactly what Jesus is doing in this prayer. Everything I'm about to say is in agreement with Tink, by the way, not in disagreement. In the Hebrew Bible, the primary analogies for God are: our God is a king; our God is a judge. Father shows up occasionally. God is a shepherd. Father shows up occasionally, but Jesus's emphasis here is absolutely distinctive. God is your father, and in fact, the Aramaic word was probably something more like Daddy. Jesus is redefining God here in the same way that Jesus is redefining other things like Lordship. "Whoever would be Lord must be servant of all, "Jesus says, or like Messianism. The Messiah is not the king. The Messiah is the one who brings revolutionary violence. The Messiah is the one who brings peace, and in the same way that Jesus is redefining what it means to be a brother or a sister or a sibling. In the prayer, Jesus teaches, he tells us to pray. He does not ask for Lordship. He does not pray for power. It's all about forgiveness and mercy and sharing and goodness. Now, I know what you're thinking. What about the end? "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory." What about that? That's not part of the prayer. It was part of ancient liturgies, and then it was added to the Gospel of Matthew in the fifth century. In one text, it was added later on in the Gospel of Matthew in the 11th century. We couldn't abide not having power and glory in that prayer, and so we tacked it onto it. We Protestants, who are all about sola scriptura —scripture alone —Jesus says forgiveness and mercy and goodness, and we say, "And power and glory and kingdom, right?" And now only we Protestants keep saying it. Catholics and Orthodox do not say, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory." We were so uncomfortable with giving up those things. When Jesus says, "Just say this," we can't help but edit. These subtle or sometimes not so subtle instincts are so contrary to Jesus's teaching that we don't even notice when we are undermining them, or sometimes we do, like when the Vice President of the United States calls loving a neighbor or a sibling on the other side of the world a sin, the sin of empathy. The world conspires against this. The world wants kings and power and might. We are called to change the world first. We might change the way we pray. In just a minute, I'm going to ask you to say the prayer Jesus taught us. I'm not going to call it the Lord's Prayer. I almost never do. I'm going to ask us to stop at the word evil. It's habit. I know some of you will keep going. It's okay. But just like Marty said last week when they led us in the prayer, I'm going to invite you to think about what you're saying and stop at evil and don't go on to power and kingdom and glory, but to follow Jesus instead. 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