Session 4: The Lord’s Prayer

APOSTLES ANGLICAN CHURCH
Fr. John A. Roop

Christian Essentials / Anglican Distinctives
Session 4: The Lord’s Prayer

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

For the Spirit of Prayer
Almighty God, you pour out on all who desire it the spirit of grace and of supplication: Deliver us, when we draw near to you, from coldness of heart and wandering of mind, that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 647).

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Introduction and History
Luke 11:1–4 (ESV): 11 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:

“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3  Give us each day our daily bread,
4  and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”

This, Luke 11:1-4, is one of the contexts in which the Lord’s Prayer is presented in the Gospels; the other is in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:5-13. The timing and setting of the two presentations are different, as is the exact wording of the prayer. Matthew’s version is longer, and it is the one we use liturgically, though even there we add the doxology (For thine is the kingdom, etc.) that is not actually part of the prayer proper.

For a moment, I would like us to consider the context of the Lukan account. In it, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Why might they have done that? From the text, we get these possible reasons.

1. Jesus was devoted to prayer and the witness of his example led the disciples to ask. Jesus prayer, and they wanted to pray like him.

2. Their request may represent the disciples’ desire for “continuity with distinction” in the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. In continuity with John, Jesus’ disciples want him to teach them to pray as John was doing for his disciples. In distinction, they likely wanted a unique prayer from Jesus to set them apart from John’s disciples.

And these are still good reasons for us to make the Lord’s Prayer our own: Jesus was a person of prayer and this was the particular prayer that he gave his disciples and that they passed on to the Church.

But did Jesus actually expect his disciples to memorize this prayer and repeat it verbatim? The church of my youth certainly thought not. I was raised in the Christian Church, an outgrowth of the American Restoration Movement which was itself part of the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840). The churches which came from this movement — the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Church, and the Churches of Christ — tend toward a certain American brand of Puritanism, a rejection of that which was not specifically mandated in Scripture. These churches tend to be non-liturgical (a-liturgical) and non-sacramental. In my congregation, we never said the Lord’s Prayer together. The minister I had for the greatest part of my four decades there — may his memory be blessed — would not even refer to that prayer as the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer, he insisted, was the prayer that Jesus himself offered to the Father as recorded in John 17 (sometimes referred to as the High Priestly Prayer). He — echoing the emphasis of the Restoration Movement — called the “Our Father” the “Model Prayer.” Do you see what that implies and what the consequences of that name change might be? We never said the Lord’s Prayer corporately in worship, nor was its use ever advocated for private prayer and devotion. Rather than using the actual words of the prayer, we were encouraged to consider it a model of prayer to guide us in formulating our own, personal prayers. The prayer was not to be said verbatim, but rather to be used only loosely as a template for our own prayers.

So, was my preacher right? Well, yes and no. He was right in saying that the Lord’s Prayer offers a good model for prayer. Even C. S. Lewis used it as a springboard for his own, personal prayer. But, he was not right — and I say that with great reverence and respect — he was not right to insist that the church was not intended to use the prayer liturgically, verbatim. As early as the late first century or early second century — and probably from the very beginning — some churches were already using the Prayer verbatim as recorded in the Didache, an early church manual:

8:1 And do not keep your fasts with the hypocrites. For they fast on Monday and Thursday; but you should fast on Wednesday and Friday. 2 Nor should you pray like the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel, you should pray as follows: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy, may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread [Or: the bread that we need; or: our bread for tomorrow]. And forgive us our debt, as we forgive our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one [Or: from evil]. For the power and the glory are yours forever.” 3 Pray like this three times a day (Bart D. Ehrman, ed., The Apostolic Fathers (Volume 1), Harvard University Press (2003), pp.429-430).

The Lord’s Prayer has been central to the prayer of the Church from the beginning. We can certainly pray it in Jesus’ name because it is the prayer he gave us. We can be certain that this prayer fully reflects the will of God, because God the Son commended it to us. If you do not yet have a fixed rule of prayer, I suggest that you start with this: pray the Lord’s Prayer three times each day — morning, noon, and evening, perhaps before rising, at lunch, and immediately before retiring. If you already have a rule of prayer that doesn’t include the Lord’s Prayer with this frequency, you might consider adding that to your rule.

Content of the Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven
Let’s begin with an important question: for whom is this prayer intended? That is, who can offer it fully and with authenticity? The salutation gives the answer: Our Father. This prayer is given to all those who can authentically call God “Father.” As to who these people are, St. John makes that clear in the Prologue to his Gospel:

John 1:9–13 (ESV): 9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

With this, St. Paul agrees as he writes in Ephesians:

Ephesians 1:3–6 (ESV): 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

And just one more reference — another from St. John — this time with an addition:

1 John 3:1–3 (ESV): 3 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

This prayer is given to those who have been born from above — or born again as Jesus tells Nicodemus — through faith in Jesus and baptism in his name. There is also the expectation that such people — the children of God — will be leading lives of repentance, engaged in purification. We are sons and daughters of the Father to the extent that we share the family resemblance, or to the extent that we are seeking and growing into that resemblance. These are the people to whom this prayer is given, the people who can pray it authentically.

Notice that the salutation is not “My Father,” but “Our Father.” Christian faith — and Christian prayer — is always personal (important to the “individual”) but it is never private because we are part of the corporate body of Christ. This dynamic even plays out in the Creeds. We use the Apostles Creeds as the baptismal confession of faith. It uses the first person singular pronoun, I: I believe. In doing so, it acknowledges that you are not yet a member of the body of Christ, but rather are in the state of becoming that. You are speaking for yourself, declaring your fidelity to the group to which you do not yet belong. But, when we affirm our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist — the family meal which is given only to the baptized, the members of the family — we do so using the first person plural pronoun, We: We believe. Our faith is precisely that: our faith. It is personal to us as was our baptism. But it is shared, not private, as is the Eucharist, and as is the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father. When we pray, even if alone, we always pray with and for the Church. You gather up the prayers of all your brothers and sisters when you pray in the words Christ gave us, and you are gathered up in their prayers when they pray. “Our Father” is an expression of that, a reminder that we are not alone, that by virtue of our common Father we are brothers and sisters praying with and for one another.

We pray to our Father who art in heaven. In speaking about heaven, I am forced to resort to a type of theological expression that we in the West use only infrequently, but which is common in Eastern Christianity: apophatic theology. In apophatic theology we say not what a thing is — because it beggars our power to express it well and fully — but rather what a thing is not. I can’t tell you what heaven is because every positive statement I make about it is partial and misleading. So, I can say that whatever heaven is, it is not a physical place far away where God is sequestered. Isaiah says this:

Isaiah 66:1 (ESV): 66 Thus says the Lord:

“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?

Throne and footstool: those two are nearby and connected, not far away and disengaged. Somehow heaven and earth — the spiritual reality and the physical reality — intersect so that, as the Orthodox Christians pray:

O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of good things and Giver of life: come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every sin, and save our souls, O Good One.

I am going to offer this not because I think it is right — I know it is deficient in many ways — but because it’s the best I can do at this moment. I think of heaven as the life and presence of God which is everywhere, which fills all things, but which is made manifest to us in various ways and in various times. The angels and archangels, the cherubim and seraphim, the apostles and saints and martyrs are always “in” heaven because they are always caught up into the life and presence of God. Some day, please God, that will be our experience, too. But, even now we glimpse heaven, we are caught up into heaven: in the Eucharist when we share the Wedding Supper of the Lamb with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, with the real presence of Jesus Christ; in “thin places” of silence and worship where the Lord’s presence is palpable; in reading the Word of God when the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us; and, not least, when we pray — when we pray the Lord’s Prayer because in and through that prayer, through the intercession of Jesus our Great High Priest, we come boldly before the throne of grace.

…hallowed be thy Name
And what do we do first when caught up into heaven through this prayer? We say, “Hallowed be thy Name.” Hallowed” stems from the same root word as holy, sanctified, saintly (αγιομς). This is an act of praise: we are exalting the Name of God, which is an expression of his essence — as glorious above all, as supremely good, as of the highest worth. But, even as we do that, it is important to keep in mind the words of another prayer, The General Thanksgiving:

And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,
that with truly thankful hearts
we may show forth your praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to your service,
and by walking before you
in holiness and righteousness all our days (BCP 2019, p. 25).

In praying “Hallowed be thy Name,” we are asking God to use us as the instruments/agents through which honor and praise will accrue to him and to his name. And that will be true only if the witness of our lives match the words of our lips. So, this is both praise and commitment.

…thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
I take this as an example of the Jewish poetic device of parallelism. You see it most frequently in the Psalms, in a couplet of lines where the first line makes a statement and the second line re-emphasizes it is slightly different form.

Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,*
nor stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of the scornful (Ps 1:1).

Why do the nations so furiously rage together?*
And why do the people devise a vain thing (Ps 2:1)?

And, in the prayer we have:

Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth / as it is in heaven.

I see these petitions as parallel so that the kingdom of God comes whenever and wherever God’s will is done. Every act of true worship, every act of obedience, every act of sacrificial love, every act of mercy and compassion and forgiveness, is an inbreaking of the kingdom of God. Of course, the Church should be the earthly locus of this, the center from which radiates outward the kingdom of God so that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. But the Church is not commensurate with — not exhaustively identical to — the kingdom of God. The kingdom is manifest in unlikely places and through unlikely people. There is an interesting passage in St. Luke’s Gospel that gets at this:

Luke 9:49–50 (ESV): 49 John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” 50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.”

Since only the power of God can cast out demons, this exorcist, though not a disciple of Jesus, was being used by God to manifest God’s will; each exorcism was a manifestation of God’s will on earth as in heaven. So, we should rejoice whenever we see God’s will being done, even by someone who is hostile to us and to our faith. God is up to something there. The kingdom of God is near and is being manifest. Good. That is what we want and what we pray for. Perhaps, as Jesus said from time to time, the person doing the will of God is not far from the kingdom of God.

In an ultimate sense, when we pray for the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven, we are praying for the redemption and restoration of all things in and through the Lord Jesus Christ: for Romans 8 and for Revelation 21-22 to come to be. As we say often, there is a sense of already but not yet is this petition. The kingdom of God is already breaking into this world, but it is not yet fully present. So, we pray for this present moment, that God’s will be done in and through us, and we pray for that future moment when God’s kingdom will arrive on the last, great day.

Give us this day our daily bread.
Next in the Prayer comes the only material petition, that is, the only petition related specifically to our physical needs: Give us this day our daily bread. This petition harkens back to the Exodus and to God’s provision of manna in the wilderness.

Exodus 16:4–5 (ESV): 4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”

Each day, God provided for each person his daily bread, just enough for that day, or in the case of the sixth day, enough for that day and the Sabbath to follow. It was not possible to gather more and hoard it, to try to corner the market on manna and make a profit by selling to those who needed more. Why not? Because everyone had enough: the ones who gathered little and the ones who gathered much. And, what happened if manna were stored for tomorrow? It bred worms and stank (Ex 16:20). Give us this day our daily manna, but not tomorrow’s today.

And then there is Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount which occurs right after his teaching on prayer:

Matthew 6:19–21 (ESV): 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:25 (ESV): 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Matthew 6:32–34 (ESV): 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow: Give us this day our daily bread.

So, the meaning is clear. What most of us have to grapple with is how to pray this authentically when our larders are full to overflowing: bread for today, tomorrow, and next week. What does it mean to ask God to give us our daily bread when we already have it and more? Let me suggest two things, though there are many more.

First, let this be an exercise in and an expression of gratitude. Yes, I have much more than I need — more than just my daily bread — but it all came from God, from the breath he gave me daily, from the strength and health to work he gave me daily, from the peace and security he gave me daily. While, by his grace, I may have much laid up, it came daily and I should be grateful for it daily.

Second, let this prayer prompt an examination of your relationship with things. I am not a fan of streetside church signs. But occasionally I see a good one like the one I saw around Thanksgiving on a local Methodist Church. I can’t quote it exactly, but the gist was this: When God gives you abundance, don’t build bigger barns; build a longer table. In other words, when you have an abundance, don’t hoard; share. So, what does it mean that I have more than my daily — weekly — bread when some around our city do not, when some around me are often hungry? Perhaps I can be answer to this prayer for some of my brothers and sisters.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
We need to consider this petition in light of Jesus’ own commentary on it in Matthew:

Matthew 6:14–15 (ESV): 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Unfortunately (!) there is no ambiguity here, no wiggle-room. God’s forgiveness of us is in proportion to our own forgiveness of others. I have no reason to expect God to forgive me when I am willfully harboring a vengeful, unforgiving spirit toward others. This is in keeping with Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant (Mt 18:21-35). The notion was scandalous to Peter then, and it is scandalous to us now. But it is God’s word. So, as you pray this, it is the perfect time for some rigorous self-examination, or better yet, the time to ask God to examine your heart and reveal to you unforgiveness hidden there.

Now, just a word about forgiveness: it does not mean the full restoration of relationship with another who has sinned against you or the renewal of warm feelings when you have been hurt. Those things might come in the future, or they might not. Forgiveness means at least this: the refusal to take revenge, the relinquishing of judgment into God’s hands, the refusal to be an accuser of the other before God, and something like this prayer, echoing Jesus as he was being crucified and Stephen as he was being stoned: Father, do not hold this sin against [N.]; forgive him/her for my sake and help me also to forgive. Forgiveness is an act of will/obedience and not of emotions. And, it is a work in progress. It is a necessary work. As C. S. Lewis wrote: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
I want to lay two texts alongside one another to help us with this part of the Prayer. About temptation, St. James writes:

James 1:12–15 (ESV): 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial (πειρασμόν), for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted (πειραζόμενος), “I am being tempted (πειράζομαι) by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

So, James is clear: God does not tempt anyone — does not entice anyone — to evil.

Now, let’s compare this with St. Mark’s Gospel as it describes the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ baptism.

Mark 1:12–13 (ESV): 12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

The English translation is a bit mild here. The Greek text says the Spirit immediately “threw” Jesus out into the wilderness; there is a forcefulness in the original that is lacking in the translation. To be faithful to St. James and to St. Mark, we cannot say that God tempted Jesus; that was Satan’s doing. But, we can say — we must say — that God the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the situation where the temptation would occur.

I think we may read the account of Jesus’ temptation a bit too sanguinely, with Jesus as the easy victor in something that is not really much of a contest. But, it really was a life-or-death spiritual battle with the fate of all creation on the line — the highest of stakes and the greatest of struggles. Jesus fasted and prayed for forty days before the temptation, not to make himself weak, but to give himself the spiritual strength to endure and overcome the temptation. That’s how serious and how difficult it was.

I think — and I stand to be corrected — that this may be the context in which we pray, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Jesus taught us to pray this because he and he alone fully understood how “devilishly” hard temptation is to endure. I suspect it took every spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional resource he had to emerge victorious. I think it drained him, because the text says that the angels were ministering to him. Not wanting us to experience that same trial, not wanting us to fail, he bids us pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That petition is a mark of his great love for us. And to pray it is an act of humility and dependence on our part. I do not trust myself, because I know how weak my faith can be. Better to be spared the temptation than to succumb to it.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

These words, often referred to as the doxology, are not part of the original text of the Lord’s Prayer; they are, rather, an addition by the Church and are in keeping with similar doxologies found in the Psalms and in other biblical prayers. Some form of the doxology was is use by the second century and perhaps before as is evidence by the Didache, a late first or early second century church manual. If you’d like some additional information on this from a Roman Catholic perspective — history is history — then I suggest the following article:

Now, in closing, let’s pray again the words our Lord Jesus taught us to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy Name,

thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.

Amen.