The Lord’s Prayer Matt 6:5-15

After the fall of the Soviet Union a young woman in Russia was asked how she came to faith. “Was there a church in her village?”, she was asked. “No, the communists closed all of them’, she replied. “Did some saintly grandmother instruct you in the knowledge of God?” “No, all the members of my family were atheists.” “So how come you have faith?” She said: “At funerals we used to recite the Lord’s Prayer. As a young child I heard these strange words and had no idea who we were talking to, what the words meant, where they came from, or why we were reciting them. Something about them remained etched in my mind and when freedom came, I had the opportunity to search for their meaning. Reciting this prayer made me a follower of Christ.
I too give thanks for the Lord’s Prayer. I remember learning it as a young boy and praying this prayer every night before I went to sleep. No-one explained it to me and I had little idea of what I was praying about. But it gave me a sense of God’s presence and I felt comforted by God. I slept better. I’ve found it’s a prayer I keep coming back to, it is a prayer that still remains at the heart of my faith. It still helps me sleep better sometimes, but it also now disturbs me and confronts me with the challenge to join with God in making this world a better place. In just a few words it refreshes me with the presence of Jesus. It draws me close to God.
I want to take a step backwards though because Jesus gives ssome advice about what we should do before we pray that is important. He says find a quiet private place where you can be alone. Jesus I believe would have told us today turn off the noise, unplug the earphones, you can’t get deep with all that stuff. Some people think prayer is simply sending some words off to God up there somewhere, but real prayer is also connecting with God deep inside us. It’s about accessing our soul. It’s easy to think prayer is about sending some words off into the ether, but at it’s heart it’s about listening and deepening our awareness. Words may help us focus on this task but most people find silence and stillness to be vital parts of this activity of focusing. Where we choose to pray is important, and it needs to be a place where we get deep with God and our soul.
And so Jesus says pray like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…. I’ve noticed many people when they come to prayer see it as a means to get God to do what they want. They are saying “hello God, notice me, I’ve got a problem….would you do something for me….” They simply want to use God, to push the right buttons so that God will give us what we want. Often people will ask me to pray for some need they have and I’m happy to do this, but I often have some trepidation. I think I’m being asked because people think I have a hotline to God or can pull a few more strings. Jim was such a fellow. Jim had been arrested for striking his wife and refusing to leave the family home. I caught up with him in the police cells. Police cells are not very nice places. Being locked away in a tiny cell with none of your usual freedoms is not pleasant. It certainly had been a very sobering moment for Jim and full of remorse and fear he said to me, “where is God now that I need him? Why have I been going to church every week if he won’t get me out of this trouble that I’m in. Will you pray that I get released right away?” I tried to explain that I had hoped that attending church might have meant he would have found another way of dealing with his frustrations than hitting someone, and now that something had happened that maybe his relationship with God would help him face the issues head on, admit his stupid-ness, and seek a new beginning in God’s love. Jim wasn’t listening – he wanted instant action from God and he knew exactly what he wanted God to do. When I said I couldn’t pray as he wished he got rather angry with me. God for him was a magic genie that if he rubbed the lamp the right way would sort out this mess and get him out of jail immediately. He later told me someone else had prayed for him and he’d found another woman and life was good. I’m afraid I had the sad thought that the new love of his life would end up the victim of violence too.
True prayer will take ‘my selfish wants’ away from the centre of things and instead open our eyes to the bigger picture of God, and what God is doing and what God wants. I think that’s why Jesus teaches us to pray not My Father, but Our Father. In our narcissistic self centered age we need to note well this small word at the beginning. We are coming into the presence of the Great God Almighty who is the creator of all that is. Our true needs are important to God, but we are connecting with something much bigger than ‘me’. We are not coming to prayer to have our own selfish wants magically met, but to meet the great God who created us and who has the whole world in his hands seeking to draw this whole world towards heaven. In prayer Jesus is asking us to go deep into our lives and release the power of God that can help us face the issues and demons that lurk there that we might become people who are part of God’s healing presence of salvation for this whole world.
Jesus calls God “Father”. The little word Jesus uses is the Aramaic word ‘abba’ which means dear father or even daddy. It is a close intimate term. It is a very deliberate term. It is a term of deep respect in the Middle East and many other places where fathers have a special place in society. But it is also a term of closeness and care. Jesus goes on to explain further in the passage that just as good earthly fathers would give everything to see their children grow well so too it is with God who has a deep longing that each of us might become more truly ourselves and live the fullness of life. God is not out to get us as some seem to believe but God, Abba, is out to see us mature and grow to be the best possible human being we can be. God is on our side, Abba delights in us.
I have to say I don’t see an old man when I pray Abba Father. In fact I don’t have a physical picture of God. God for me is beyond form. I find Paul’s description of God as the one in whom I live and move and have my being (Acts 17:26) to be helpful. But I am human and human terms for God that tells me of the qualities and characteristics of God are helpful. Dear Father or Abba is helpful for me, as are other terms like Mother or Lover.
In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer God is in heaven. Luke omits these words, and I don’t know why. What I don’t find helpful is to imagine heaven as a place beyond the clouds. Heaven for me is another reality in our lives that is beyond time and space. Heaven is the spiritual realm that sometimes breaks into our earthly realm. As Jesus taught us it is a dimension that is all around us. I see signs of heaven often. Joyce one of our Wednesday worshippers was telling us that she finds it hard lifting her supermarket bags into her car. Last week an Asian lady seeing her struggling stopped and did the job for her and then gave her a big hug. Heaven came into earth. Every day, every hour, every minute it happens – someone living their life fully, someone caring for another and enhancing their human dignity, someone risking their life for what they believe is right, someone reaching out in love, someone standing up for justice, someone facing some hardship, or trial, or death with courage. The Lord’s Prayer has much to say about heaven but it makes plain that heaven is to be found here and now. God isn’t a distant God located somewhere else, but is close to us, within us and around us.
Jesus teaches us to recite the words hallowed be thy name. I see in this phrase a clear link to the first four of the ten commandments which are in their simplest form all about putting God first and trusting God. Jesus teaches us to recite our trust in God, our honouring of God in our lives. We are called to sanctify the way of God which we see in Jesus, to put our trust this Way, to put our faith in this Way. We hallow many things in our lives. Parents and grandparents hallow the gift of a baby, we hallow the person we love and treat them as special. We often hallow material possessions or our bank balance….some hallow their work. We are sometimes known to hallow the All Blacks in New Zealand and make them into gods. Jesus tells us to recite this prayer and to re-orientate ourselves in God. It is God who should be hallowed first and foremost in our lives. It is God we should put our trust in.

So I invite you to use the Lord’s Prayer in your life. Some of you I know recite it daily or maybe more than once daily. I believe that the practice of reciting the prayer even if you simply rattle through it is a good practice. This prayer given to us by Jesus opens the door of our soul and in some small way gets our footsteps back into the footsteps of Jesus. It can and will open the door to God in your life. Pray this prayer daily – your life will be the better for it.

Dugald Wilson 15 Jan 2012