Do you remember learning the Lord’s Prayer? It was a big deal when I memorized it and our 2nd grade class recited it all together. The Lord’s prayer is foundational for faith, our prayer life, and good to know in a pinch. Of course, we know that the Catholic version and our version are a bit different, debtors and trespassers and the ending varies a little too. This is because the ending of the Lord’s prayer was added a bit later as a doxology, a praise of God, hence the variation. We recite Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer (6:9-13) that gives God’s location, encourages God’s will, and asks that we be delivered from evil. Listen now for God’s word as we hear Luke’s simplified version of the Lord’s prayer. Luke 11:1-13.
“A mother sent her fifth-grade boy up to bed. A few minutes later she went to make sure that he was getting in bed. When she stuck her head into his room, she saw that he was kneeling beside his bed in prayer. Pausing to listen to his prayers, she heard her son praying over and over again. ‘Let it be Tokyo! Please dear God, let it be Tokyo!’
When he finished his prayers, she asked him, ‘What did you mean, ‘Let it be Tokyo?’
‘Oh,’ the boy said with embarrassment, “we had our geography exam today and I was praying that God would make Tokyo the capital of France.”
Prayer is not going to change the capital of France. It is not a magical means by which we get God to do what we want. Prayer is an inner openness to God which allows (God’s) divine power to be released in us. Ultimately, the power of prayer is not that we succeed in changing God, but that God succeeds in changing us” (Sermons.com, Robert Allen).
If we break down what Jesus teaches us to pray there are three things in addition to praising God. Give us bread, forgiveness and keep us on your path. Trials are times we veer off God’s path. Daily bread teaches us that God provides all our needs. Much like manna in the wilderness that rained down each day, this prayer seeks to foster a dependence upon God, rather than our own self-sufficiency. Also, a daily practice of communicating with God, thanking God for our food and turning our life over to God in prayer. This is not an alter call, one and done, but a daily practice of submitting to God and placing your faith first. God feeds us with our daily food and with the Holy Spirit (13). Jeremiah speaks to the physical needs of the people of Israel and laments why they can’t sense God. A lament we can all share when we think about how many Americans will not have health care. Where communities will literally not have physicians. One friend was just told her very basic health insurance will go up over $900/month because of these cuts. Another family was affected when the school staff where the wife works was cut by 2/3 and the husband who builds low-income housing fears his firm will have to close. We too can lament is there no balm in America? Is there no help for the poor in our midst? This is when we say the Lord’s prayer on behalf of our neighbors, asking God to give them their daily needs and daily food.
Let’s remember Jesus gave this prayer to the disciples to pray. Jesus was praying and they too wanted to know how to pray. “They saw the power of prayer in Him… Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote, ‘Here, before their very eyes, (the disciples) saw a personality in whom prayer was vital and influential! The more they lived with him, the more they saw that they could never explain him or understand him unless they understood his praying…the amazing spiritual power released in him by prayer’” (Sermons.com, by James W. Moore).
Forgiveness is next. Forgiveness is how we have right relationships with God and with each other. We can let go of shame and guilt by receiving God’s forgiveness. The parable Jesus tells addresses this. When the friend wants to borrow bread and is told no, we are encouraged to be persistent in our praying. But we do not need to cajole God into giving us what we want. Rather the word translated “persistence,” can also mean “shamelessness” (Working Preacher, David Lose). Now that’s not shameless like without shame, but rather a boldness that comes from familiarity. We are to be familiar and comfortable praying to God, shameless in our persistence, much like Jesus is in his prayer life. We have a shorten Lord’s prayer in Luke’s gospel, but Luke talks about prayer 26 times, double that of the other gospels. We are also to forgive everyone. We cannot expect to be forgiven by God but then withhold forgiveness towards others. I have to give a shout out to Jane Odell, because she wants us to say forgive us our sins, like Luke, rather than debts and debtors. I pray that we all know our shortcomings, and whichever word we use, our hearts are humbly seeking God’s forgiveness and granting forgiveness to others.
Times of trials, or temptations, are those moments we wander away from God and do the things we should not do. Jesus was tempted and so are we. The Jewish Talmud teaches, “Lead me not into error, nor into iniquity, nor into temptation nor into disgrace” (b. Ber. 60b, William Davidson Talmud). Times of trials. “We’re saying, in effect, ‘Lord, when the hard times come, times of trial, times of temptation, I need you to save me. I need you to protect me, to lead me away from that which I cannot handle’” (dupree.org Praying like Jesus, Mark Roberts).
Daily bread, forgiveness, and staying in God’s will are what Jesus taught us to pray and do. You might have noticed I left out Matthew’s “Your kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” This is part praise, but mostly a surrendering to God, to God’s will and to God’s kingdom on earth. The foundation of prayer is trust in God’s love and provision. We express that trust and praise when we say, “For thine is the kingdom and the power and glory forever.” These are words the church added as the prayer became formalized, but it is hard to imagine praying the prayer without them.
“The Lord’s Prayer is an expression of faith. It assumes that human beings are not self-sufficient but dependent on God. It is not a sign of weakness to pray but a sign of our humanity. Prayer acknowledges our need for God. Prayer is surrender. In his book, The Reaffirmation of Prayer, E. Glenn Hinson says that ‘the key to human existence lies in surrender to God, putting one’s self and one’s affairs utterly and with complete child-like trust in God’s hands’” (Sermons.com, Keith Wagner). Maybe that is why Jesus addressed the prayer to Father. Of course, God is Jesus’ father and our heavenly father. Yet “Jesus emphasizes God’s relationship with his people, not as subjects or as a faceless mass, but as children…Jesus summarizes all the things we need most when we come to God: God’s presence, our needs met, forgiveness, and salvation” (Working Preacher, Jennifer Wyant).
Jennifer Wyant writes; The Lord’s prayer is “simple, accessible, and theologically rich. This is not just a prayer to recite. It is also a way to live before God…. We do not pray because we know the outcome. We pray because we trust the One who hears us. This is why Jesus calls us to keep seeking. In the very act of searching, we acknowledge that there is someone to be found—someone who loves us deeply, like how a father loves a child… We knock because we believe someone is listening. We ask because we believe the Father loves us as children and that the good gift of the Holy Spirit is ours. The Lord’s Prayer may be familiar, but it still invites us into mystery. It belongs to us, and yet it escapes us. And maybe that is the point.” (Working Preacher). Amen.
