Hallowed be your name
Based on Matthew 6:1-18
When
I was 11 or 12, I read a letter to the editor of the Taranaki Herald
I
found
highly amusing. Although I cannot remember anything more than the opening,
which went, “Our Prime Minister who art in Wellington, Muldoon be thy name.”
But you will get the gist.
My
very religious grandparents were living with us at the time, and I showed
the letter to my grandmother, expecting her to share my mirth, but instead
of finding it funny, she was very offended. She considered it disrespected
the Lord’s Prayer and was clearly disappointed I had found it entertaining.
The
Lord’s Prayer is known by various other names, such as the Our Father, and
the Latin version of that, Pater Noster. We have prayed or listened to three
different versions of it this evening. Two were from the order off service,
and one was from its original source: the Gospel According to St Matthew,
which we will be looking into more closely. But before I do, I should note
there is also a slightly shorter version in the Gospel According to St Luke.1 Any
discrepancy need not concern us; Jesus was a travelling preacher who would
have reused his material in different towns, and not always identically.
While some scholars have suggested the version of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke
is the older one, others have argued the version in Matthew was said by
Jesus in Galilee early in his career, while the version in Luke was probably
said in Judah about a year later. And this makes more sense to me,
especially given the Luke version is found later in the gospel. But we
cannot be certain.
The
version of the Lord’s Prayer that can be found in Matthew is part of the
collection of sayings of Jesus we know as the Sermon on the Mount.
Immediately prior to saying it, Jesus speaks about the need to avoid public
displays of piety, then says the same about prayer, drawing attention to
those who seemingly turn public prayer into public entertainment.
I am
sure we have all been to church services and events where the prayer was
over the top, went on and on and on, and seemed to all about the drawing
attention to the person who was praying. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to
happen here.
Perhaps the worst example of inappropriate prayer I have ever heard was on
my Cursillo weekend about ten years ago. One of the pilgrims had taken a bit
of a bad turn, and while he was alright after a little while, people
gathered around him and prayed for him. And one of those praying quoted part
of scripture about how when two or more people pray for something, their
prayer will be heard, then cited it to command God to obey our prayers for
the healing of the man who was temporarily unwell. The afflicted man was
alright after a minute or two, and I don’t think it was because of someone
had attempted to manipulate God into intervening.
Jesus tells us that we should not be longwinded and offers us a template we
can use for prayer. The structure of this prayer template is relatively
straight forward. And note the language is plural, not singular. This is the
structure of a corporate prayer, not a private one.
I
will now take us through it, section by section.
Our Father in heaven,
We address our prayer to
God in the divine realm. While I believe God transcends the duality
of
gender, I would be going
off on quite a tangent if I were to go down that particular rabbit hole. As
a devout Jew living around 2,000 years ago, Jesus would have understood God
to be completely masculine, so he said, ‘Our Father’.
hallowed be your name.
We
pray for reverence for God.
Your kingdom come.
We
pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, the realisation of God’s reign of
justice and peace. And for me personally, this is the heart of the prayer.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Having prayed for the coming of God’s kingdom, we pray the physical world
will mirror the divine realm.
Give us this day our daily bread.
We
pray for the sustenance we need, in this life and the life to come.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
We
pray for forgiveness for our wrongdoings, which can only be justified by our
forgiveness of others.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
And
we pray for safe deliverance in testing times.
And
that is the Lord’s Prayer.
Or
is it?
You
will have noticed the two versions of the Lord’s Prayer we have prayed this
evening were the older and better known English translation, not the more
modern translation we use in most services.
However, you may have also noticed a significant difference between the two
versions we prayed this evening. The second version lacked the doxology,
“For thine is the kingdom, / the power, and the glory, / For ever and ever”.
(A doxology is
a short hymn of praise at the end of a prayer.)
This
is not included in the original version from the Gospel, and it is left out
in the Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer, although it said elsewhere in
the Mass. However, it is usually included by Anglicans and Protestants, and
Orthodox Churches tend to use an augmented version; the doxology used in the
Greek Orthodox Church translates as,
"For thine is the kingdom
and the power and the glory: of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages."
Does
it matter that this has been added? I don’t think so. It reflects the
Byzantine Greek practice of adding a doxology, at the end of a prayer, and
you will have noticed how we said another doxology after various prayers:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son:
and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be:
world without end. Amen.
This
is known as the Gloria Patri or the Minor Doxology, and we said it after the
Psalm, the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis this evening. So, including a
doxology after the Lord’s Prayer is not much different from saying the
Gloria Parti after a psalm.
So,
is that all we need to do? Pray like Jesus taught us? No, it is not.
Firstly, prayer should include silence, so we can hear what God might be
saying to us.
Dan
Rather, a newsreader with CBS News, once asked Mother Teresa what she said
to God when she prayed. She
answered, "I listen." He then
asked her what God said, and she replied, "He listens."
Dan didn't know what to say. "And if you don't understand that,"
Mother Teresa concluded, "I can't explain it to you."2
Those of us you enjoy my love of tramping on one’s own may especially relate
to this.
Secondly, prayer needs to be put into practice. Some years ago. Pope Francis
said, “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That is how prayer
works.”3 (Well words to that effect, because he was speaking
Spanish.) So, prayer is not just about words. It’s about action. When we
pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, it’s not sufficient to just ask for it
to happen. We have to actively participate.
When
we give food to the hungry, refresh the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe
the naked, care for the sick, and visit people in prison, we are helping
bring about God’s kingdom.
Your
kingdom come.
When
we show compassion to the last, the lost, and the least, we are helping
bring about God’s kingdom.
Your
kingdom come.
And
when we fulfil our obligations to care for God’s creation, we are helping
bring about God’s kingdom.
Your
kingdom come.
So,
let us pray in anticipation of the coming of God’s reign of justice and
peace.
Darryl Ward
8 September 2024
1 Luke 11:2-4
2 http://www.servicespace.org/blog/view.php?id=14736
3 Pope
Francis, St Peter’s Square, Sunday 21 July 2013 (paraphrase from original
Spanish)
All Bible references are from the New Revised Standard Version unless stated otherwise.