Perspectives

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

Historically this prayer made a lot of sense, it is the prayer for the disciples of Jesus in their context… yet though Scripture is not written to us it written for us. The time of trial was coming increasingly in their context and would reach a climax in the decades that were to follow their context, but for us?

Many Bibles translate the word as ‘temptation’ and that is probably included under this wider term of ‘trial’. (Likewise ‘the evil one’ is a broad term and can mean ‘evil one’ or ‘evil hour’ or even simply ‘evil’.) Trials come, life is not a straight line, but if we are proud of heart to think that whatever comes we will make it through – the Peter attitude of ‘even if all the others don’t make it you can count on me’ – we are likely to find that we are experiencing battles we really did not need to fight.

I love the practicality of Scripture. Don’t pray for difficulties… pray for peace… each day has enough trouble in it… And here comes a humble request in this prayer, indicating a positioning of ‘I am not so smart as to make it through regardless, so make the path for me one I can really handle’, and we know that if we pray in that way we will discover that ‘there is no temptation that we cannot bear’. (Imagine if Judas had prayed that prayer… no money bag given to him, no deal with the Jewish leaders for money…)

A profound prayer… a kind of summary of ‘all kinds of praying’. Some parts will appeal more than others. If we think about how we pray we will probably find that we resonate with some lines more than others. I am not great at intimacy, nor at the need to focus on today, and with an unhealthy element of arrogance am somewhat vulnerable to the cock crowing twice.

And if prayer is as much to do with life positioning as it has to do with what comes out of our mouths, there is a lot I need to give attention to. ‘With all kinds of prayers pray’. My way is OK and part of the ‘all kinds’… but I have to acknowledge it does not say ‘with one kind of prayer pray’. Ah well, just one more reminder that I have a way to go!

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

And we need to add the underlining to this phrase with the verse that follows:

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

‘Forgive me, Lord’. Who has not prayed that, and sometimes when we really should not have done so! But what about – do it just as I do it others? That is a bit challenging, and might explain why God is somewhat distant at times.

Debts, used in the prayer, and trespasses used in the underlining. A debt is what I owe; a trespass is crossing a line (I did a post recently on boundaries). What a great way to understand ‘sin’. I owe… I owe it to treat people as if they are part of humanity created in the image of God. It pushes me back to what I understand to be a central plank in Paul’s ethics – how we see no-one through old categorising criteria. And if I do not treat people in that way I am trespassing, I am stepping outside of my boundaries and resisting them living to the edge of their boundary.

Forgiveness – release the ship to her destiny. The problem of sin is that it imprisons us. So it seems if we are to fly and touchour destiny we need to release others, not demanding that they put right what they ‘owe’ us, not fighting them over where they have trespassed on to our territory.

Maybe so much of the prayer hangs on this part. After all it is the only part in Matthew that Jesus picks up and repeats.

Imagine not a world of perfection, but a world of release. Maybe this is why creation was never created perfect, maybe this is why the ‘bad’ tree was the one that would enable us to know what is perfect and what is not. Maybe the tree of life will help us simply live releasing, untying, saying to the ships we see ‘Untied, go sail’. I don’t think I can contribute much to perfecting the world, but maybe I have a contribution to liberating those I see within this imperfect, this ‘sinning’ world. A liberated world.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

Not so easy to translate, with the unusual word ἐπιούσιος – a word unknown in Greek literature. Could be ‘daily’ as in most Bibles, could be ‘tomorrow’. If it is the bread of tomorrow then it is asking God to help us live with the anticipation of the final bread at the Messianic banquet. To live with a future orientation and that to affect our present experience. If it is the daiy bread it is that we will have everything we need in terms of provision, and if so it is not a prayer for luxury but for what we truly need to be who we should be.

Maybe we can put the two together. As we anticipate that this is not all there is but there is an age to come, when we will sit down and eat (figurative, but how important meals were) and we will have everything we need. That banquet will be the fullness of the life that comes from the one who is the bread from heaven, and I suggest from the fruit of each life submitted to Jesus. Then tying the ‘daily’ understanding in – give me everything today that I need to live in a way that will both provide food for others and position me to benefit both now and then from all you are doing in the lives of others. Provision, positioning; now and the future; with the provision enabling me to be positioned to receive and give, what will be fully manifest then, in some measure to one and all now.

Intimacy and inclusivity; who God in heaven is; bold prayers offered in humility; then we drop down to provision and position. There is a flow because from here we are moving internally… forgive us.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

We have just had ‘in heaven’ and it seems the real intercessory prayer follows with on earth as in heaven. In between comes this phrase ‘hallowed be your name’, so the positioning of it seems key to move from the intimacy to the more declarative part; it both connects back and forward.

Hallowed – maybe if we used a non-word translation ‘holy-fide’; a recognition of the setting apart of the name of God. The name declaring who this God is, not where we can control God, know God in the sense of understanding everything, for the revelation to Moses was ‘I will be who I will be’. Unchanging in the eternal sense but adaptable, surprising, something new.

The name of God is to focus on who s/he is. The Yahweh names; the El / Elohim names; the name of Jesus… The God in heaven, that same God who is among us, who is this God? Too big to hold all of God, but perhaps a good way is to sanctify the name that is needed for now? How else are we going to pray – other than in nice theory and maybe simply quoting a verse to bolster our ‘faith’ – on earth as in heaven?

Faith, trust. Really kicks in when circumstances say differently. Really kicks in when we pray and nothing changes! That’s the time when we lose sight of the ‘name’. I don’t like some of the biblical books – Job being one of them. ‘You give and take away’; ‘even though he slay me…’ Don’t think for one minute that Jesus would agree that there is a revelation of God in those texts, and neither do I, but… quite a revelation of how to respond in the face of difficulty. Even if it appears to me that God could have, I will still trust, I will still honour, halllow the name of God.

Not all prayer is answered as we anticipate, but all prayer that has a trust in God is sown into the now of the ‘not-yet’ to contribute to the harvest of the ‘then in fullness’.

This is why a focus not simply on the intimacy of God: ‘Father’; the inclusivity of God: ‘our’; but on the name of God, who this God will be is so important. If we are going to pray ‘on earth as in heaven’ we need to hallow the name. God will be who God will be.

Prayer… not so good at that one, but at least we are instructed to pray ‘with all kinds of prayer’. Mine is not very meditative, so for sure lacking at that level, but just squeezes in under the ‘all kinds’ of definition. And maybe if we are to ‘pray without ceasing’ it is as much to do with heart attitude as it does with words and practices. I hope so!

Been thinking a bit about ‘the Lord’s prayer’ and as we have it in two different versions it is probably a bit of a guide rather than a formula to follow. Here it is in Matthew’s gospel:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

And the verse added after the prayer relates back to it and is key for our progress, with an interesting change from ‘debt’ to ‘trespass’.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So heart attitude… First word ‘Father’, second word ‘our’. Maybe the word order is incidental as per many languages, but probably quite helpful. First word is beyond ourselves and our world; first word is not to an unknown deity. The promise of Jesus was not to bring us to God, but that he was the way to the ‘Father’. I appreciate that word can be a tough word for some, and within it certainly is contained the whole concept of ‘mother’. Intimacy is suggested, for the relationship is the one that we can see Jesus had. We cannot insist on the correct word, but push for the intimate relationship, and sadly the word can even prevent that intimacy if we project on to God any negative experience we have had.

However, by starting with that word we are being invited to move beyond projectionism from our experience so that eventually any negative experience will be covered by the intimacy of ‘true parenthood’. Love covers a multitude of sins… and that has to cover sins that we have experienced as well as all our (my?) bad behaviour.

The prayer is short when we count the words, but pretty long when we walk the journey. Many days we will get the first few letters of the prayer out. ‘Fath……’ First word is a life-long journey to a place of deep rest and security, particularly when we face situations where (in our opinion) God could have done something. The fact he didn’t maybe indicates something wrong with our theology. We want to believe in an all-powerful God, Jesus introduces us to a relational being.

Second word ‘our’. Those first two words are familial words, belonging words, corporate words. If the first word puts me in touch with intimacy the second word puts me in a horizontal context. Amazing how connected those two words and concepts are. Private religion nor separatedness seem to be what it is about. Familial context, belonging, me not more important than you… and truthfully the more I know of intimacy the more I will see you, and see you and me connected.

How wide does the ‘our’ go? Maybe like the meals of Jesus, with a ‘sitting down with his own’, that close identity with those who have imbibed of the Spirit, and the thousands in the desert who were not even clear about what the food was all about. We probably should lose our desire to draw the in / out lines and seek to live in a way that we have many overlapping circles of ‘our’ as possible. The more ‘ours’ there are the more likely there will be those who also come to the place where they can utter the first word.

Some days we might be praying the second word. Intimacy can lead to a very loud ‘our’. I don’t think religion leads us there. If people exclude themselves from the ‘our’ that is their choice; if we include people in the ‘our’ that is our choice.

‘In heaven’… no reductionism there. God among us, ‘one of us’, yet not one of us. Not a God made in our image. However far I have progressed – and if only you knew you would be impressed beyond belief!! – there is more.

Father, our – among us, intimacy. In heaven – not simply among us, not simply one of us. And an invitation not to stay where we are but to grow.

This first line seems to be a healthy starting point and maybe a line that we might never get much beyond, certainly a line that will be repeated many times over.