Psalm 138
OT Reading: Genesis 18.20-32
NT Reading: Colossians 2.6-15 [16-19]
Gospel : Luke 11.1-13
Text: Lord, teach us to pray (Luke 11.1)
We do not know whether the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels are a verbatim record of what he said. A whole generation had passed before the gospels were written down, and the way the different communities remembered what Jesus had said will have been seen through the prism of their own particular needs and circumstances. For example Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer, which we heard this morning, comes down to us in the context of teaching about not being afraid to ask God our Father for what we need, whereas Matthew’s account is linked with advice about praying simply and privately. There is no way we can tell now which context is closer to the truth. But the words of the prayer itself – even if they are a little longer in Matthew than in Luke – are so nearly identical that we can be confident they really do reflect what Jesus said when his disciples asked him how to pray. We usually repeat the Lord’s Prayer as a set formula. When we are really up against it, that may be our lifeline. But I’d like to treat it this morning as a framework for our own prayers. That may well be what Jesus had in mind.
Let’s start with the very first words: Father, Hallowed be your name. There are two ideas here that it’s quite hard to hold together. On the one hand Jesus teaches us to approach God as Our Father, with all the confident intimacy that those words imply. Indeed Father is not really intimate enough; Abba, the Aramaic word Jesus customarily used in his own prayers – was more Daddy than Father. Or if the gender bothers you, think Mummy instead. It’s as personal and intimate as that. But then we are taught to say: Hallowed be Thy Name. Intimate and confident as our relationship is, we should never forget that God is God. The wonder is that we are invited to approach this supreme focus of divine power and majesty as our loving parent, the one to whom we turn knowing that our prayers will be received with the full attention that a beloved child is entitled to expect. Father, Hallowed be your Name.
And then we continue with the words ‘your kingdom come, on earth as in heaven’. The God whom we are privileged to address as Our Father is not some distant potentate, up there – or out there – floating on some cloud in the heavens, but present and active all around us. What is happening down here really matters to him – the bitterness that I may have allowed to fester in some of my relationships, the thoughtlessness that may have blighted others – but it’s not just our failings; he is as quietly pleased as any parent when good things happen around us too. And of course his loving concern extends far beyond the personal sphere. He supports us in our working environment too, and in what we do as citizens and members of society. It all matters to him. So, when we pray: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, it’s a good moment to pause and reflect, opening our hearts to allow his will, the building of his kingdom, to influence the way we exercise our responsibilities, the way we make up our minds, the way we invest our money, the way we relate to others who are also his children, and therefore our brothers and sisters. Finding our place, our role, in our Father’s plan for the building of his kingdom, is a key part of the Lord’s prayer, not least because it helps us to think not so much about ourselves as about others, and in doing so to enter into the mind of Christ himself, as Paul would put it, Christ whose Spirit dwells within us as we pray, teaching us how to pray and what to pray for. Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
But Jesus knew, and God our Father knows that we need to pray for ourselves as well. Our own needs are very much at the heart of the three central petitions. First then, Give us this day our daily bread. Our Father knows that we need the basic necessities of life. He will give them to us, because he loves us, without our having to bang on his door and rouse him like the reluctant neighbour in the middle of the night (Luke 11.5-8). But he does like us to ask, with trust and thankfulness in our hearts. And those of us who have plenty need to play our part in making sure that our brothers and sisters do not go hungry.
Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone indebted to us. If food – our daily bread – is what we need for healthy bodies, then forgiveness is what we need for healthy souls. Forgiving one another and being forgiven is central to the way we relate to God and to one another. It’s not a deal or a trade we can do with God. God’s capacity for mercy is greater than we dare to imagine, as Abraham discovered in our first reading. When Jesus was asked whether we should forgive one another seven times, which sounds generous enough, Jesus raised the tariff to seventy times seven, far beyond what any of us could count. Forgiving one another and being forgiven is the very air that we need to breathe in and breathe out if we are to help build God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
And then finally: ‘do not bring us to the time of trial’, to which Matthew adds the words ‘but deliver us from the evil one’. It’s worth noticing that modern translations do not speak of leading us into temptation, a puzzling concept at the best of times, but ‘do not bring us to the time of trial’. We are very close here to the words Jesus himself used in the garden of Gethsemane, when he faced the prospect of a cruel and painful death. Our God knows what the time of trial is like. He has been there himself. He knows how desperately we may sometimes need to say: Lord, do I really have to face this? And if the answer is ‘Yes, my child,’ as it was for him, then he knows that we need to go on to say: But deliver us from evil, deliver me from the real evil, which is not perhaps the disaster that has overtaken me, or looms so large on my horizon, but the triumph of the evil one, who can use my misery to sow in my heart the seeds of hatred, vengeance and despair. That’s what we pray to be delivered from. The tradition has it that even Jesus sweated tears of blood in the garden of Gethsemane. But if we reach out in faith to God our Father, he will surely reach out to us with that loving compassion that recognises our pain, that allows us to rage and to weep, and yet gives us the strength we need to hold on in faith in our time of trial.
Time for another pause perhaps, as we allow God to meet us at our point of need. We may be struggling to make ends meet: Father, Give us this day our daily bread. We may be seething with injury or wounded pride: Father, forgive us, as we forgive them. Or we may be facing some grim challenge: Father, deliver us from the evil one.
So we continue in prayer till finally, whether we feel that our prayers have been answered, or we are still wrestling in the silence, we are ready to affirm in faith and hope, sustained by love, that Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever. We end, as we began, recognising that we live in God’s kingdom, where ultimately his gentle rule will prevail.