Lord's Prayer

CHRIST CHURCH
July 29, 2007: 10am
Luke 11:1-4

I want us to focus out thinking this morning on some of the best-known words of the Bible; best-known because they are words we say every time we meet for worship, as well as other occasions. I speak, of course, of the Lord’s Prayer-as we title it, though perhaps better called the ‘Disciple’s Prayer’

At the beginning of Luke chapter 11 which we heard this morning, the disciples see Jesus praying. As we read through the gospel narratives there are many occasions where Jesus spent long periods at prayer, communing with his Father. “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” they ask. It was common practice for the rabbis to teach their disciples to pray, often giving them model prayers to say, and having seen how important prayer was to Jesus, they feel that they must be missing out on something!
Jesus immediately replies. “When you pray, say…”, and what he taught is what we use in our church liturgies, what countless generations have used in their homes, and other places. What we have here is not the Lord’s Prayer as we have it verbatim. You’ll find something much closer in Matthew’s account, where it comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. But virtually all the ingredients are here.
And, surely, Jesus, who spent so long at prayer wasn’t giving his disciples words to say by rote. I’m sure we are all aware of how easy it is to say the Lord’s Prayer almost on, as it were, ‘auto-pilot’ I think what Jesus was doing here was giving his disciples the basic building blocks for prayer. There may be times when we may want to use just these words. I, personally, have known that sometimes at the end of a day, when I’m maybe very tired then I say this prayer, but say it slowly, allowing pauses between each phrase to allow the words to sink in and to add any special thought or request to take shape. Let’s then just look at each phrase one-by-one and just think about how this can maybe illumine the shape of our prayer time.

So, firstly, Jesus said, “When you pray, say ‘Our Father’.
That in itself is quite something. In one sense it may not even have surprised those disciples. The Jews thought of God as the father of the nation. What would have surprised, if not shocked them was the use of the use for ’father’ of the Aramaic word ’abba’. This was used mainly as a child’s name of intimacy for its father, much as we might say ’Daddy’. Jesus was teaching them to address God in these terms of intimacy and of trust. I remember once hearing of a Greek pastor who lost his young son on a London mainline station. He sought frantically, until he heard a voice crying out ’abba’
This is how may approach God. But let us remember too that Jesus, when he prayed in agony in Gethsemene cried out ’Abba! Father, if possible let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but yours be done’. A name, too, of unquestioning obedience.

The next bit of the prayer, of the blueprint for praying is “in heaven, hallowed be your name”.
God is addressed as heavenly Father, but then how often did Jesus speak of ’your Father in heaven’. We speak to not earthly Father, but to the Father of our eternal life, the Father who loved us so much he gave his one and only Son.
But ’hallowed be your name. The Christian disciple can never dishonour God’ name; this is especially true in a society which loves to dishonour God’s name. For many ’God’ is just an expletive. But no! We have a reminder of God’s holiness. So although we approach God with such intimacy we do not even approach him in a casual manner. Dan Gooding rightly says that, since God is Creator of all that is, then if we devalue God we devalue everything else. We must surely pray that our lives will honour him; that all we say, do and even think are things by which God’s Name would be hallowed, held holy.

Then, ’your Kingdom come’ Every good Jew looked forward to the coming of the Messiah who would usher in God’s Kingdom; orthodox Jews still do to this day- they just fail to recognise their Messiah as having come in Jesus.
The burden of Jesus’ teaching was the Kingdom; his parables were parables of the Kingdom; his message was that the Kingdom was at hand. The burden of all Scripture is that eventually God’s Kingdom will come in all its fulness and glory. In the interim we pray for the Kingdom’s coming, and we work to advance the Kingdom in the sense that the Kingdom has no geographical or political boundaries; rather it is a Kingdom which exists in the hearts of men and women, of those born into it, by that second birth.
Luke’s account doses not have the petition ’your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ But surely in one sense the prayer for the Kingdom to come is in synch with God’s will being done. For God’s Kingdom, if not a geographical kingdom, is surely to be found in those lives where his will is done. You see, the Lord’s prayer, it we pray it properly will have radical consequences in our lives.

We turn now in prayer from God to ourselves, and it’s worth noting that Jesus’ prayer model seems to allow no space for personal or family requests. We pray that the will of God and his Kingdom will be in our lives. It’s so easy isn’t it for our prayers to become shopping lists. This isn’t Jesus idea of prayer. Yes, it we read on to those verses where Jesus says God will give is good things when we ask we feel that personal requests are included, but at then end we must rest on God to provide what is best. We pray simply for our ’daily bread’ Here we are asking that God will provide the basic necessities. Yes, he does, and often, of course, much more. God will provide good things is we pray, as we are taught in the following verses to pray with persistence. Maybe the lesson is: No selfish requests in our praying!

But while we have one request for our physical needs we have two for our spiritual welfare.
‘Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’ All pray must include the request for forgiveness, but it’s interesting to note that it wasn’t first off. When we do that we are in danger of a kind of spiritual navel-gazing. And equally important that we ourselves are forgiving people.
And that final clause in Luke’s version. ’Lead us not into temptation’. This does not mean that God ever tempts us to sin. The Greek word translated ’temptation’ is used in the New Testament only here and in the parallel in Matthew 6. It implies testing or trial. We are asking God not to test us beyond what we can stand.

Let us thank God that in this prayer we do have a model for praying. Not a prayer to say by rote, but a structure round which we can build out prayers.