Therefore, as beautiful and inspiring as its words might be, the Lord’s Prayer remains at its very essence a subversive prayer. It is a pledge of our allegiance to God, one that challenges our world views and our loyalties. It does so by connecting us with the one who empowers and guides us through life.
I approach this traditional but subversive prayer from a certain context. I serve as pastor of a Disciples of Christ congregation that prays this prayer each week, but then this was true as well of the Episcopal Church in which I grew up and first encountered the Christian faith. There was, however, a period in my life when I worshiped in less formal settings, in congregations that rarely if ever recited the prayer. These communities may have looked to the
prayer for a model, but for these communities true prayer came from the heart and therefore it was to be extemporaneous. To pray one set of words, even if biblical, simply made no sense, and could even be seen as the precursor to the uttering of vain repetitions.
Perhaps it is a reflection of my own background that led me to reflect upon this prayer in the course of a series of sermons. I had begun to wonder what these words meant. If prayer leads to theology and to action, then what was it that I was praying? What did Jesus intend for his followers to take from this prayer? Having made the decision to focus on the Lord’s Prayer, I laid out a series of six sermons. Each sermon lifted up one of the petitions that comprise the prayer, with a final sermon focusing on the doxology that closes out the traditional prayer shared in worship. Although this was a Lenten series, the final two sermons were preached on Palm Sunday and Easter, and thus reflected the events commemorated on these two hallowed days of the Christian year. The Palm Sunday sermon focused on the issue of temptation, which seems appropriate considering the context of Palm Sunday. The final sermon came on Easter Sunday, and it too seemed to fit nicely with the day in which it was preached. What better day to focus on a doxology than the day of Resurrection? The original context for those two sermons may not be as visible in these revisions, but it is helpful to know the background.
My hope is that this series of reflections will prove helpful to those who seek to deepen their own understanding of this prayer. For those readers who are preachers, perhaps this series will stir in their imagination the possibility of a similar series. It is possible that the reader will, like the author of this series, be surprised at what lies behind and between the words we recite. In my case, I discovered that the prayer of Jesus is much more politically focused than I expected — and I’ve read widely in books by John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Richard Horsley, which lift up the political elements of the gospel stories. Nonetheless, the encounter with the prayer was insightful and challenging. It is my hope that the reader will also be challenged by what is found both here and in the prayer itself. May the reader find the prayer to be both spiritually enriching and deeply practical, whether the prayer is used as a model or one that is recited — from the heart — with great regularity, perhaps as often as recommended by the author of the Didache.
Introduction
The assumption of this book is that prayer has a subversive quality to it, because it upends the usual flow of our allegiances. Although God may be our creator, nation, family, clan, work, can all have greater influences on the way we live our lives. But because prayer, especially this prayer, calls for a sense of commitment to God, it directs our attention to a different way of life, one that reflects the reign of God. It is because prayer challenges rival claims of allegiance that it cannot be imposed by outside forces. It must come from one’s inner convictions, or it will become nothing more than the meaningless repetitions that Jesus condemned in the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon that gives context to the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples (Matt. 6:7-8).
The prayer under consideration may be subversive in nature, a sense that suggests a certain political component, but there is another side to the prayer, one that recognizes our need to experience the presence of a transcendent but gracious God, one who reaches out to humanity out of love rather than out of a desire to manipulate or control. It is the assumption of this writer that the one to whom we offer our allegiance is not despotic or tyrannical, but rather one who desires what is best for the person who offers this prayer.
In Luke’s Gospel we read that even as Jesus taught the disciples to recite this prayer, he also assured them that “everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:8). God is like a parent who deeply loves one’s child. If human parents won’t offer a snake when the child asks for a fish, or a scorpion when an egg is requested, then surely the God who pours out the Spirit upon humanity will not act unjustly. God is gracious, merciful, and just (Luke 11:9-13). To give allegiance to such a God doesn’t require of us blind obedience. Instead, our allegiance is given in response to an invitation rather than due to any coercive force.
As has been noted earlier, Jesus taught what we call the Lord’s Prayer to the disciples in response to their requests for guidance in such matters. Over time it has served as both a model for prayer and a prayer that is recited in its own right. It has the sense of a statement of allegiance and dependence, but it also issues forth in worship and praise. Having become so familiar to countless generations of Christians, much like the equally familiar Psalm 23, the prayer provides a comforting word of hope during difficult times. When no other words seem to issue forth, these words, words recited daily or weekly, can provide the link that sustains one’s walk of faith.
As one who found great meaning in this prayer, John Calvin devoted considerable space to this prayer in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Through this prayer, Calvin suggests that we are able to “acknowledge his boundless goodness and clemency.” It gives expression to our own sense of need and desire in words appropriate to such a conversation between human and divine.
For he warns us and urges us to seek him in our every need, as children are wont to take refuge in the protection of the parents whenever they are troubled with any anxiety. Besides this, since he saw that we did not even sufficiently perceive how straightened our poverty was, what it was fair to request, and what was profitable for us, he also provided for this ignorance of ours; and what had been lacking to our capacity he himself supplied and made sufficient from his own. For he prescribed a form for us in which he set forth as in a table all that he allows us to seek of him, all that is of benefit to us, all that we need ask. From this kindness of his we receive great fruit of consolation: that we know we are requesting nothing absurd, nothing strange or unseemly — in short, nothing unacceptable to him — since we are asking almost in his own words (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:20:34).
While Calvin acknowledged the spiritual utility of this prayer, he also recognized its distinctive beauty:
Truly, no other can ever be found that equals this in perfection, much less surpasses it. Here nothing is left out that ought to be thought of in the praises of God, nothing ought to come into man’s mind for his own welfare. And, indeed, it is so precisely framed that hope of attempting anything better is rightly taken away from all men (Institutes, 3:20:49).
As we contemplate the meaning of this prayer, it is appropriate to stop and recognize that the prayer itself has great beauty and even a perfection that can never be surpassed.
Even as this prayer possesses great beauty and even perfection, as it offers an appropriate means of sharing one’s petitions with God, it also carries with it a sense of Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom of God. This prayer finds its center in serving as a kingdom petition. As John Koenig puts it:
The prayer that Jesus taught is among the shortest of the daily disciplines in the world’s great religions. But to the eyes of Christian faith it shimmers