The Lord's Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer by Rev. L. John Gable
September 11, 2022
Very early in my ministry I was asked by a man in our church to visit his sister-in-law who had become critically ill while visiting from out of town and had to be hospitalized. He explained that years before she had suffered a debilitating stroke which left her able only to mumble incoherent sounds, but he assured me that she could hear and would appreciate a visit. Then he requested that I be sure to say the Lord’s Prayer with her before I left.
The next morning I found her just as he had described. Her face was contorted and disfigured by the stroke and her words made no sense, though she tried desperately to speak to me. I visited with her for awhile, and then when it came time for me to leave I asked her if she would like for me to pray with her and she nodded that she would. I held her hand and prayed for her health and good care, and then, as had been requested of me, I began to say the Lord’s Prayer. To my amazement, she began to pray with me. This mumbling, bed-ridden, stroke impaired woman spoke these words as clearly as I, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…” Now, more than three decades later, I can still hear the sound of that woman’s voice saying this prayer.
As we discussed the pitfalls of practicing our piety last week you will recall that I lifted out this section on the Lord’s Prayer as we looked at Jesus’ teaching about the practice of prayer. We know Jesus was a man of prayer. He practiced it, He lived it. So when He talks about it, disciples, then and now, would do well to listen to what He has to say on the subject. In Luke’s Gospel we hear the disciples asking, “Lord, teach us to pray like you pray.” We want that too, don’t we? So what we have in the Lord’s Prayer is not actually the Lord praying, but the Lord teaching us, giving us a model, a prototype, a pattern for genuine prayer. It is a working model which can inform our attitude, our focus and the content of our prayers.
One of the correctives which Jesus gives to the practice of prayer is that it should not dissolve into vain repetition, merely the mumbling of meaningless words in rote recitation. Clearly in our familiarity, and some would even say our meaningless over use of this prayer, we need to hear this word of caution as we have been found guilty of merely mouthing the words without considering their meaning, uttering the syllables in sub-conscience cadence without giving any thought at all as to what it is we are actually saying; how naïve of us.
As we have seen throughout the Sermon on the Mount it should come as no surprise that these words are the stuff of revolution against the ways and means of this world. They call us to a new way of living and relating to God and one another as they point to that day when God will finally have His way with us. Friends, we must be careful what we pray for, and we should not ask for it if we don’t want it to happen, for this prayer is part of the manifesto of the Christian counter-culture.
Karl Marx’ daughter, who for obvious reasons was raised without religion, eventually became a Christian. In explaining how it happened she said, “I found this old German prayer and I thought, ‘If there really is a God like that, I could believe in Him.’” And what was that prayer? It was the Lord’s Prayer. These familiar words contain the power to change lives and to transform the world.
Jesus begins the model prayer by saying, “Pray then in this way, Our Father in heaven…” This first notion of God being our Father was unparalleled in Jewish thought, so already Jesus is blowing the doors off of any traditional understanding of prayer. He is giving us permission to approach the very throne of God with the confidence and boldness of a child coming before his or her loving parent. Recall, Jesus teaches His disciples to pray as He prays, calling God “Abba”, the term a child would use for “daddy, papa”. But lest we forget who it is we are talking to and our easy access slips into casual familiarity, He reminds us that this is our Father “in heaven”, the Creator of the universe, the eternal King and Judge. He reminds us that in our familiarity the purpose of prayer is still adoration, worship and awe!
But there is another radical thought that Jesus introduces here when He says “Our” Father. Too much of prayer, my prayer, our prayers, perhaps even of religion itself, is so self-centered and individualized, and it appears to be becoming increasingly more so. Prayer can easily assume the attitude of “What’s in it for me?” So Jesus counters that by saying, “Our” Father. While Jesus teaches us to pray with incredible intimacy, He also bars us from being exclusive. What He desires for us and our relationship with God, He desires for all people, and so must we. So while we are instructed to bring our daily needs and concerns before our Heavenly Father, our attention must also be focused on the shared good will of all people. If God is “our” Father, then we are His children, all of us, which makes us brothers and sisters to one another.
So what are we then to pray? Take note that Jesus opens this prayer with three petitions which focus on God, not us, teaching us, reminding us to keep God first in our lives – “Hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Prayer is first of all about God, not us.
The first petition of this disciples’ prayer is that God be treated as God as we “hallow His name”, just as we hear in the third of the 10 Commandments. To “hallow” or to “make holy” is to “set aside or set apart”. We have to confess that we have not done very well with this one. God’s name is taken in vain with alarming regularity, even by those who claim to keep it holy. We defame the name of God, and hence the character of God, whenever we use it in any way other than in direct reference to Him. We hallow the name of God by keeping it sacred and set apart in our conversation and when we desire the things God desires.
The second and third petitions direct us toward the coming of His Kingdom and the doing of His will, and they are inseparable. We would be foolish to think that we can, in any way, make the Kingdom of God come by our good works or good behavior; however we are called to pray that we would so align ourselves with the Kingdom purposes and activities that we will be ready for it when it comes in its fullness. How do we do that? By actually “doing” the work of the Kingdom now, by actually “doing” the will of the Father now, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, sharing the Good News of the Gospel, now, as Jesus instructs us.
When we pray these three petitions we are not asking for something to happen which is of our own invention. God’s name is holy whether it is for us or not. God’s Kingdom will eventually come and His will will be done in its fullness whether we are on board and a part of it or not. So this prayer is, “May it be so in me, in us, may God’s name be honored, may God’s Kingdom be established, may God’s purposes be fulfilled, in me, in us, on earth, even now, as it one day will be in heaven.”
The focus of the prayer then shifts from “Your” language to “our” language – “Give us this day our daily bread…forgive us our debts…lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the Evil One.” In each of these we are reminded that we are dependent on God for all the necessities of life. Many through the centuries have prayed this prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread” without any real concern for what they were going to eat that day and the same likely can be said of each of us. Some of the early church fathers tried to spiritualize this teaching by saying that Jesus was really talking about the spiritual food of the Word of God, or of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or of the great eschatological banquet feast in the Kingdom of Heaven. Calvin came along and said, “That is exceedingly absurd!”, saying it is almost shocking how anti-spiritual this prayer is. When Jesus said bread, He meant bread. Our Lord here is teaching us that there is nothing too basic, too simple, too worldly to pray for. But we must also remember the caveat of “our” Father. We cannot rightly pray for these things for ourselves, unless we also pray for, and work for, these things for our neighbors who need the same. This prayer does not say, “Give me this day my daily bread”, but “Give us this day our daily bread”, which means if I have bread and my neighbor does not I have a responsibility to share with them, not just to pray for them.
The second petition in the “our” section says, “forgive us our debts” which of course we would expect. That is God’s job, isn’t it? Isn’t that what He does best? At the heart of the Christian Gospel is the message of God’s unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, and we love that. We live in dependence upon a God who is infinite in mercy and abounding in steadfast love, but then there is a catch to this prayer which we would not have included had we written it ourselves, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” The sobering truth is, in order for God to forgive us, we must also forgive others. Suddenly this beautiful, comforting promise becomes somewhat bothersome for us. As C.S. Lewis writes, “Everyone says that forgiveness is a lovely idea until they actually have something to forgive.”
This petition reminds us that we are called to forgive exactly because we have been forgiven. Years ago Pastor Samuel Johnson wrote these insightful words, “Of those that hope to be forgiven, it is indispensably required that they forgive. It is therefore superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended; and to those who refuse to practice it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible and the Savior of the world has been born in vain.” If we seek to be forgiven, which of course we do, we are completely dependent on it, then we must be forgivers. There is no other way to understand or to apply this petition.
Jesus then concludes this model prayer by saying, “And do not bring us to the time of trial, but deliver us from the evil one.” We live in a world of trial and temptation. We should gain some comfort in knowing that Jesus knows this, so He lends us His comfort and aid. Scripture assures us that God is not the tempter (James 1:2), but that temptation is real and it comes from the one who desires that we abandon the purposes of God. So Jesus here teaches us to depend on God for protection from the Evil One, even as we are dependent on God for the provision of our daily bread.
And then the prayer ends with an addition, a very appropriate addition, which was tagged on sometime after this original teaching, “For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” This conclusion brings us back to where we started. The focus of prayer is not on us and our need, although all of our needs are addressed and attended to. Rather the focus of our attention in this prayer is, as it must always be, on God and the coming of His Kingdom.
Whether this is the first prayer we learn as a child or the last prayer we hold on our lips on our dying day, we would do well to remember that this model prayer is the disciple’s prayer; it is a prayer of submission, grounded in a loving relationship between God and His children, by faith in Jesus Christ. But it is also a prayer which rises up against the way things are now as we wait and watch and work for the coming of the Kingdom of God in our lives and in our world.
I close with this little piece which summarizes this model prayer well, titled “I Cannot Pray.”
“I cannot pray “Our” if my religion has no room for others and their needs.
I cannot pray “Father” if I do not demonstrate this relationship in my daily living.
I cannot pray “Who art in heaven” if all my interests and pursuits are in earthly things.
I cannot pray “Hallowed be Thy Name” if I, who am called to bear His name, make no commitment to be holy.
I cannot pray “Thy Kingdom come” if I am unwilling to give up my own sovereignty and accept the righteous reign of God.
I cannot pray “Thy will be done” if I am unwilling or resentful of having it in my own life.
I cannot pray “on earth as it is in heaven” unless I am truly willing to give myself to His service here and now.
I cannot pray “give us this day our daily bread” without expending honest effort for it, or by ignoring the genuine needs of others.
I cannot pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” if I continue to harbor a grudge against anyone.
I cannot pray “lead us not into temptation” if I deliberately choose to remain in a situation where I am likely to be tempted.
I cannot pray “deliver us from evil” if I am not prepared to fight in the spiritual realm with the weapon of prayer.
I cannot pray “Thine is the Kingdom” if I do not give the King the disciplined obedience of a loyal subject.
I cannot pray “Thine is the power” if I fear what my neighbors and friends might say or do.
I cannot pray “Thine is the glory” if I am seeking my own glory first.
I cannot pray “forever” if I am too anxious about each day’s events.
I cannot pray “Amen” unless I can honestly say “Cost what it may, this is my prayer.”
And may it be so with us. Amen.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN