A Sunday School teacher began
her lesson with a question, "Boys and girls, what do we know about
God?"
A hand shot up in the air.
"He is an artist!" said the kindergarten boy.
"Really? How do you
know?" the teacher asked.
"You know - Our Father,
who does art in Heaven... "
Polls report that 55% of Americans pray daily
and another 21% pray at least weekly.[1]
The Lord's Prayer, part of today's reading from Luke, also occurs in Matthew's
gospel.[2] The
brevity of Luke's version compared to Matthew's suggests that the Lukan version
is older because texts tend to expand through retelling and revision. The Lord's
Prayer both summarizes Jesus' teachings and teaches us how to pray.[3]
First, the prayer addresses God as Father,
asking that God's name be hallowed or made holy. The word Father
emphasizes that we are God's children. Persons who find thinking of God as a
father or in masculine terms troubling can usefully substitute Mother in
their private devotions. Mother and Father are both biblical
metaphors for God; both, at their best, point to God's loving embrace and care.
Matthew's addition of the word heavenly is a helpful reminder that many
people, including me, often feel as if God is remote or distant. We hallow
God's name by honoring God's presence by not misusing or demeaning God's name,
keeping a weekly Sabbath, and intentionally thinking of God during our waking
hours.
Second, praying for God's kingdom to come,
which Matthew underscores by adding a repetitive petition that God's will be
done on earth as in heaven, defines our hope and the goal towards which
Christians strive. If God's kingdom existing on earth depended only on God,
presumably God's kingdom would now fully exist throughout the cosmos. However,
God works primarily, but not exclusively, through people. Homelessness in
Hawaii, murdered police officers across the US, slain innocents in Nice, war in
Syria, de facto apartheid in Palestinian territories, and many other evils
highlight the urgency of God's people engaging more assertively building God's
kingdom on earth. Thus, this petition is more about us than God. We pray that
God will help us to overcome indifference and inertia so that we will love all
of our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.[4]
Third, praying for our daily bread has a
different emphasis in the twenty-first century than it had in the first
century. Most of Jesus' hearers were peasants working in a subsistence economy
who struggled daily to obtain sufficient food. While some of us probably live
paycheck to paycheck, none of us faces the real prospect of being hungry
tomorrow if something goes wrong today. We are more affluent, and some much
more affluent, than were most of Jesus' original hearers. Consequently, praying
for our daily bread is now praying for freedom from the idolatry of believing
that our money or possessions can offer us security. Churches receive an
offering as part of worship partially to thank God for God's good gifts but
more importantly because generously contributing our money and possessions to building
God's kingdom can liberate us from the false belief that possessions or money can
guarantee security against life's vicissitudes.
A woman lay in a hospital bed, her body ravaged
by a rapidly spreading cancer. Day after day, her family prayed that God would
heal her. A silent, pervasive disappointment had taken root among the family
because the cancer continued to spread in spite of their prayers. God did not
seem to care about her. Driven by desperation and frustration the woman began
to reflect about how they were praying. After much thought she told her family,
“Today let’s not pray that I will be healed; God knows that I hate this illness
and want to be healed. Instead, let’s pray that whether or not I am healed, what
I really want is to feel close to God.” She was a woman whose begging for bread
grew into a request for living bread.
Fourth, we pray for God's forgiveness. Three
English words translate Greek word hamartia: sin, debt, and trespass.
Sin denotes rule breaking, debt an unrepaid loan, and trespass an inappropriate
border transgression. Spiritually, all three illuminate different types and
areas of sin. None is inherently superior or more theologically accurate than
the other two. Sin, debt, and trespass each appear in contemporary
versions of the Lord's Prayer. Alternatively, an unknown pre-K child may have unwittingly
framed the most memorable translation: "And forgive us our trash baskets
as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."
Jesus ties experiencing God's forgiveness to
forgiving those who have sinned against us. Specifically, if you wish to
experience God's forgiveness, you must forgive those who have lied to you or otherwise
hurt you, failed to repay kindness or a loan you extended to them, or abused
your trust or respect. When I harden my heart – and the heart in the Bible
represents the whole self – against others, I unintentionally but invariably
harden my heart to God's presence in my life. My difficulty in receiving God's
forgiveness lies not with God but with me.
Fifth, we pray that God will not bring us to
the time of trial. This final petition is one of two reasons that I strongly prefer
the new version of the Lord's Prayer found in the Book of Common Prayer.[5]
Asking God not to lead us into temptation is nonsense. The devil, not God,
leads people into temptation. Incidentally, the other reason that I prefer the
new version of the Lord's Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer is its use
of you and your instead of thy and thine. English
is a living language and usage continuously changes. When translated into
English in the sixteenth century, the Lord's Prayer used thy and thine
because those were the familiar terms, emphasizing our intimacy with our divine
parent. You and your were formal terms used to address one's social
betters. In the intervening centuries, the usage has reversed and pronouns that
originally signified intimacy now ironically connote distance and formal
respect.
Saying the Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful
habit that can inculcate the pattern of prayer into our spirit. Praying the
Lord’s Prayer is even better, that is, when the words carry our spirit to God
and God’s spirit to us, when through our meditations on the petitions we hear
the voice of God speaking to us. Living the Lord's Prayer is better yet,
because then we actually follow Jesus, living as his disciples.
No comments:
Post a Comment