"Considering the Lord's Prayer Anew"
Rev. Peter Hofstra
We
pray these words every week. We probably
know it better than we know our own Social Security numbers. Whenever we have a mixed crowd, like at a
wedding or funeral, you will hear me hold half a beat on debts and debtors so
that the Catholics in the room can fit in trespasses and trespassers. We call it the Lord’s Prayer and the Padre
Nuestro in our order of worship, but it is also known as the “Our Father”, so
named for the words it opens with. It
carries such weight in the tradition of the church that the Heidelberg
Catechism and the Westminster Shorter and Longer Catechisms offer line by line
interpretations of the prayer, what it has to say, its relevance to us, and the
richness of theological insight that Jesus has gathered in so few words.
So
here is the problem. Rote. In the order of worship for our church, we
generally close the prayers of the people with the Lord’s Prayer. And I wonder how many times it serves as
little more than an extended Amen. In 2
languages.
Luke
11:3, “Give us each day our daily bread.”
When I first got here, part of Sunday School was a reward system for
number of bible verses memorized. My
favorite is from the story of Lazarus, the whole verse is “Jesus wept”, but
this one serves in that same vein rather nicely.
There
is an inherent danger in providing the disciples, and us, with a fixed prayer
formula. It is the problem we have
already identified; the formula becomes Rote.
We have it memorized and we can spit it back without a second thought as
to what the words actually mean. To address
this, Jesus does what Jesus does so well, he shares with us a parable, about
daily bread. And remember, these are
well before the days of a 24-hour 7-11 or Walgreens.
"Suppose
one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend,
lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have
nothing to set before him.' And he
answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and
my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up
and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his
persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”
To read this back into the Lord’s
Prayer, we pray “Give us this day our daily bread” and we keep asking until the
Lord provides, not so much because we are loved, but because in this case we
will get off the Divine’s back.
The
cleaned up version of the lesson in persistence comes next, "So I say to you, Ask, and it will
be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for
you. For everyone who asks receives, and
everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Instead
of looking at the Lord’s Prayer simply as the go to when we can’t think of
anything else, except maybe grace, perhaps Jesus has intended something far
more comprehensive with these words.
If you look at the Order of Worship,
you will see the variety of prayers that we offer over the course of this time
period. We offer a prayer of
confession, an offertory prayer-which is a prayer of thanksgiving, the prayers
of the people, which are intercessory prayers, asking the Lord’s intervention
in the things of life in our concerns, and praise to the Lord in our joys. We sing our prayers. Our opening hymn is a prayer of praise to our
God. After sharing God’s Word, we sing
a prayer of response.
Look at how this fits into what Jesus has given to us:
“Father, hallowed be your name”: this is a prayer of
praise, offering up our knowledge of the Holiness of our Father in heaven.
Your kingdom come: this is a prayer
of thanksgiving, responding to the gift of Christ’s death and resurrection, of
our salvation, of the gift of life eternal we shall return when God’s kingdom
comes again.
“Give us this day our daily
bread.” This is not just about having a
sandwich each day. This is a prayer of
intercession. Lord, give us what we
need. It may be for us, it may be for
those whom we love.
And forgive us our sins, for we
ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us: This is our prayer of confession and
the exchanging of the peace. You know
the words, “Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us forgive one another. The Peace of Christ be with you.”
And do not bring us to the time of
trial. You know the cliché, an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure? It
seems to work for prayer as well.
This is not exactly the same format
as we share in worship, but that form amalgamates the different places where
the story of the Lord’s Prayer is told to us in the gospels. But I hope we can understand what we have
here. It is not just a memorized
religious curiosity. In the Lord’s
Prayer, we have the framework, the table of contents if you will, of a fully
rounded and extended conversation with the Almighty.
When I was in Seminary, we had
weekly prayer groups. The whole student
body was divided into groups, each led by a member of the faculty. It was powerful stuff. One day we got into the power of the
personalness of prayer. The subject
under discussion was about praying for missionaries. Who are the missionaries we know, what do
they need, what can we lift up to the Lord?
This was over and against the
generic “we pray for all missionaries everywhere”.
There is the difference between the
Lord’s Prayer as a standard repetition each week over and against what it was
meant to be, a lesson by our Savior Jesus Christ on how we should pray.
Here is another cliché for you, we
will get out of this prayer what we put into it. Ever been here on a Sunday when it just
wasn’t happening? We could be singing,
“Jesus loves me, this I know…” but it might as well be blah dee blah dee blah
for all the meaning we are taking away from it.
So it can be even more easily with the Lord’s Prayer because it is so
ingrained that we can slide right through.
Remember learning your
multiplication tables? At first, for me,
it was like the teacher had invented a whole new level of mind-numbing
torture. I don’t care how many
flashcards or speed drills or treats I got for getting them right, eight times
eight is sixty four….blah dee blah dee blah.
Until we started to build on it.
Multiplying multi digit numbers.
Before I knew my times tables, I did not think they were possible (I am
of the generation that was on the cusp of the personal calculator). But once I had those tables down.
How much more then in the Lord’s
Prayer? There are books full of math stuff
that I have learned that I have truly NEVER used again. But there is not a day that goes by that is
not made better when I am living it in the Lord and not on my own. There is nothing that can stop us if we are
in the love of God. Like Jesus concludes
our passage today, even evil people give their kids nice stuff, how much more
will our heavenly Father give to us through the Holy Spirit?
We pray these words every week. How much more powerfully could they change
our lives for the better, in Christ, with the investments of our words, our
hopes, our fears, our joys, our sorrows, our very lives, offered up to our
Father who art in heaven?
Amen.
