The Wonder, Wisdom and Power of The Lord's Prayer

Kate Thoresen April 11, 2010

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Matthew 6:9-13

When I was growing up, our family said grace before and after meals. These prayers became contests between my older brother and me to see who could say these prayers the fastest. We'd sit down at the table. We'd wait for our dad to start and then, Ready. Set. Go!

"Come-Lord-Jesus-be-our-guest-and-let-this-food-to-us-be-blest. Amen. Dig in."

It didn't occur to me to think about the words we were saying. It was just something we did.

Jesus talked about this very human dilemma when he quoted the prophet Isaiah, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." (Matthew 15:8)

Then I ask, "Have I been doing the same thing with The Lord's Prayer?" How often do I just say this by rote while also thinking about the list of things I've got to do next? Or, how many times have I said these words, but somehow kept them just on the surface?

Now for many of us, the Lord's Prayer has become so familiar that we can recite it without effort, often without even much thought. Does anyone here remember when you first learned it? Or, who taught it to you? I don't; it goes that far back. It has become a familiar part of our lives, almost like that favorite chair we naturally gravitate towards when we want to relax or read.

We find it comforting to not only say these words ourselves, but to hear these same words prayed by others together. It connects us. It links us. We find ourselves once again with others who are joined by those ties that bind our hearts in Christian love. Perhaps there are times when at some conscious level, like at Easter or world Communion Sunday, we might become aware that there are at least 2 billion people all across the world offering up this prayer to God in some 1600 languages and dialects.

The danger about having such a prayer that is so familiar is that we may not be praying it with the same commitment that it requires. We may be missing the wonder, the wisdom and the transforming power of these brief 64 words.

N.T. Wright, dean of Lichfield Cathedral in England, says this about The Lord's Prayer and prayer in general:

If we are serious at all about our Christian commitment, we will want to learn and grow in prayer. This is what we're coming to do in prayer: to lay hold of the love of God which has somehow already laid hold of us; to listen and respond to the voice we thought we just heard; to pursue the mystery; to follow the light which beckons round the next corner. (N.T. Wright in The Lord and His Prayer, page 11)

The Lord's Prayer intentionally invites us to grow in our understanding of the faith to which God calls us. It strengthens us to serve as followers of our Risen Christ and work for the Kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven.

The Lord's Prayer continually expands our minds and our hearts when we allow the Holy Spirit to continue to speak to us through it.

Some even say that this prayer is a lens through which we can better understand Jesus. It is an expression of his own identity, vocation and mission. N.T. Wright claims that when we pray this prayer, Christ's mission becomes our mission. (N.T. Wright in The Lord and His Prayer, page 12)

This prayer was so powerful and so revolutionary for the early followers of Jesus that it became a basic teaching text in the early church. Early Christians considered it so precious that no one was allowed to say it until they had nearly completed the three years training that preceded their baptism. Only then would they be allowed to enter into the congregation and pray together the Lord's Prayer. (Roberta Bondi: Study Guide for A Place to Pray: Conversations on The Lord's Prayer, page 3)

Let's consider the wonder, wisdom and the power of this prayer found in just in the first two words, "Our Father."

In my recent readings I was reminded once again that Jesus drew upon the Jewish concept of God as Father. The Jewish people did see themselves as the children of God, as the ones whom God brought out of slavery and called them the sons and daughters of the loving God. We can find references to this idea of God as Israel's father in the Old Testament. It reminded the people of God's deliverance of them as slaves and called them to be the sons (and daughters) of the Living God. The Hebrews understood God's care and providence through the steadfast love of a parent. It also reminded them of their duty to obey and follow the guidelines or covenant that God, the watchful, righteous, judging One gave to them.

Yet Jesus referred to God as "Abba Father." In the original Aramaic language which Jesus spoke, this was the equivalent of our English word, "Daddy."

What would your reaction be if we began to pray together, "Our Daddy who is in heaven..." Wouldn't you be a bit aghast? That feels too familiar, too chummy. Doesn't that take away our sense of God's majesty and otherness? The more I pondered this original meaning, the more it puzzled me. I found it hard to shift gears and think of God in this way. I began to sense my own rigid tendency to keep the prayer the way I always knew it and to pray to God in some of the familiar terms in scripture such as "Lord," or "Creator God, our Rock and Redeemer."

But last week something happened. I decided to try an experiment. I'd just try to change the father language to "Dad, Abba, Father" and see what would happen. Something was telling me that there was an imaginary box I must have put around my own concept of God. So I decided to try to begin to think of God as "Abba, Father, Dad." It felt strange, but I was curious to see what would happen.

One night I woke up around 3:30 AM. For some reason, those pesky gnats of negative thoughts kept swarming inside my sleepy consciousness. I poured over all those "should have's" and "would have's," those times when I disappointed others and myself. I could tell that I was starting an emotional and spiritual downward spiral. So in that fog of needed sleep, I consciously decided to hand it over to God as "Daddy." "Hey, Dad, I need help," I prayed. It feels strange, almost sacrilegious, to share this, but this is what happened.

But then it was as if the channel on a TV station changed. Words of the hymn "Love Divine, all love's excelling" entered into my consciousness. I was reminded of Jesus as God's own joy of heaven to earth come down who would fix in us his own humble dwelling. The song became a prayer itself. I seemed like Jesus, who is all compassion with pure unbounded love, entered into my heart. I experienced a new kind of peace.

I cannot explain it, but I experienced God's transforming power. All that self defeating talk changed. Jesus Christ and his timeless, unbounded love were there, and I experienced such a change of heart.

I began to realize why Jesus invited us to become open as children in order to enter the Kingdom of God. This phrase, "Abba, Father" gives us the atmosphere in which we can come to God with the simple trust and confidence with which a little child comes to a father whom he or she knows and loves and trusts. (William Barclay, The Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer for Everyman, page 169)

And this is just one tiny smidgeon of the power of this prayer. It not only changes hearts, but it changes our minds and our ways of thinking. It transforms our relationship with others and our sense of responsibilities for the well-being of all of creation. It expands our childhood images of God that may be limiting us and our fuller relationship with God and others.

When we look at this prayer and the fullness of love it conveys, it can transform childish notions into a new-found child-like trust in the faithfulness of God. It's a paradox.

This is not a sentimental picture of God, but one that invites a deep and abiding sense of relationship with the One who is the Source of all life. It moves us out of our more analytical, philosophical thoughts about God into an awareness of God's holy presence. This gives us a sense of the nearness of God even in the face of the great mystery and wonder of creation. It washes over us with mystery and healing reconciliation.

In addition, The Lord's Prayer gets us in touch with our relationships with all others as well. You've probably already noticed that the first two words begin with "Our Father." Not my Father. The words "me, mine, myself" are absent from this prayer.

With God as our Abba Father, we begin to see others through the eyes of Christ: each one is a beloved child of God. We pray together for all of us to be fed, the billions off human beings throughout our planet who need food; for all of us to be forgiven; for all of us to resist temptation; for all of us to be delivered from the evil forces surrounding us. United, we pray together and work together for the Kingdom of God, or as one friend says, the kin-dom of God to come to earth.

So much more needs to be said. In these next seven weeks ahead, we'll have the opportunity to reflect and review the wonder, wisdom and power of this life-changing, life-giving prayer.

You are invited to join Dick Henderson, Amy Grieger and myself on any Thursday evening you can make it. Come when you can. You can follow along the topics by checking out the schedule and discussion questions as found in the insert in your bulletin. Or, come on over to Fox Run on Monday afternoons at 3:00 P.M. when Dick and Amy will also lead the sessions there.

What would it be like for each of us, as God's Easter people, to pray this prayer in some new ways?

Can you imagine what it would be like if each would ask the Holy Spirit to help us continue to grow in our relationship with God and others as we seek to embody the meaning and mission found in this prayer?

What wonder, wisdom and transforming power would this church experience when we seek to pray more and more with all our hearts, souls, strength and minds, "Our Father who art in heaven..."

Thanks be to God in whom we live and move and have our being.

And together let all of God's beloved people say, "Amen"

©Kate Thoresen 2010