September 29, 2023

Praying and Living the Lord's Prayer

Each Sunday, after we invite the Holy Spirit to consecrate our offering of worship to make it worthy of our God, we pray the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer has been used in Christian worship for as long as we have records. A document contemporary with the New Testament gives us the earliest version of the Lord’s Prayer outside of the gospels. It also required the faithful to pray the “Our Father” three times a day. It is uncertain if this was part of daily corporate prayer or personal prayer, or both.

For as long as the Lord’s Prayer has been part of Christian practice, there are some questions that are still not settled, such as, “Where in worship should it be prayed?” Many Christians pray it as part of the prayers at Christ’s Table. Others place it with the intercessions or prayers of the people. Others, like us, use it early in our worship service as a model for our prayers and a reminder that God both invites and instructs us to pray.

The important, but often unasked, question is “What does the Lord’s Prayer mean?” The recent gospel texts we have proclaimed in worship give us a clear indication of some core meanings and purposes of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew’s gospel does not refer to the “Reign (or Kingdom) of God,” but instead refers to the “Reign (or Kingdom) of Heaven.” The Lord’s Prayer combines both titles: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In other words, when God’s will is done and God reigns on earth, our reality on earth will resemble God’s eternal reality in heaven.

The next three lines indicate what that looks like, and how we should behave. Matthew’s gospel contains Jesus’ teaching on each of these, which have been part of our worship services recently. The first is “Give us today our daily bread,” might be more clearly stated, "give us each day the bread (food) we need that day." This appears to be a point made in last week’s gospel lesson (Matthew 20:1-16), when God’s will is done, all people have adequate food. The next line, “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,” was likewise referenced in the gospel text on September 17 (Matthew 18:21-35), that we who have been forgiven much should likewise forgive others, forgiving them not just in words, but “from the heart” (v. 35). So too the last line “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” is referenced in Matthew 5:21-37 (read all the way back on February 12) when Jesus—using extreme illustrations—encourages us to do all we can to get impediments to faithful and holy living out of our lives.

Pulling this all together, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are invited by Jesus to pray to God as a child would approach a parent, and to pray that God’s eternal reality of love, compassion, justice, and redemption would be present in our world. When it does—at least for starters—it looks like this: no one goes hungry, people live lives of harmony together as they are constantly reconciling their lives to one another in light of their failings, and we are kept from being attracted by things that do not reflect God’s will and nature. We pray this to a who God offers to help us live into these prayers, enabling us to embody these expectations with God’s help.

What does this mean for us? As we begin worship each week, we remind ourselves of God’s desires for all people and all creation that they might be our desires and prayers. We also confess that the ability to do this is not within us; for the power to reign on earth—and in our lives—and bring glory to God, comes from God. Which is why the Lord’s Prayer concludes our request for God’s Spirit and power to fortify our worship, in an attempt to keep our worship and our lives in line with God’s will.

Might we all, by God’s grace, align our lives and prayers with God’s desires.

~ Pastor Todd