Luke 11:1-13 (NRSV)
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:
4 And forgive us our sins,
Luke 11:1-4 is a saying of Jesus that tradition defines as the Lord’s Prayer. The source is Q in verses 2-4, with Luke providing the introduction in verse 1.[1] As we discuss this prayer, we will see that the distinctiveness and uniqueness of Jesus occurs in the course of actual human history. His contemporaries could understand him and relate to what he taught. In teaching the disciples to pray, Jesus uses the language of later Judaism.[2] The prayer is for disciples. Every line is about disciples forgetting their own desires and plans for their lives and desiring only what God wills. In that sense, the prayer becomes dangerous for anyone who prays it.[3] We will also see that Jesus commands his followers to pray.[4]
I did a paper in the early 1980s on “Jesus and Prayer,” I assume for a class, which I have adopted in the opening paragraphs here. I like the way the paper resists treating the Lord’s Prayer as an abstraction, but rather, sets it in the context of all that Jesus did and said regarding prayer.
In the canonical context, Luke 10:25-28 has Jesus agreeing that the summary of Jewish Law is to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan to show that we are to learn to be neighbors to all persons we meet. He visited the home of Mary and Martha, which became an example of what it means to love God with all that you are. You are to listen to Jesus. If you do this, you will find abundant, meaningful life.
For Luke, it is while Jesus is praying at this baptism that he receives his heavenly vision (Luke 3:21-22). It was his habit to pray alone (Mark 1:35). He withdrew from the crowds to pray (Luke 5:16). After the feeding of the 5000, he withdrew into the hills to pray (Mark 6:46). Before the choosing of the Twelve, he went into the hills to pray (Luke 6:12). He spent time alone in prayer, and only then does he ask the disciples who people say he is (Luke 9:18). He took three disciples with him to pray, and in the process the three have a vision of Moses and Elijah with Jesus and a declaration from Heaven that he is the Son of God (Luke 9:28-29). People brought children to Jesus for him to lay hands upon them and pray for them (Matthew 19:13). He was well acquainted with the traditional Jewish prayer, the Shema (Mark 12:29, Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27).
Jesus followed the pattern of personal piety typical of his day. He attended the synagogue for corporate worship and learned its prayers. He had the regular practice of morning, noon, and evening personal prayer. He knew liturgical prayer. Jesus needed these times alone, away from the demands of the crowds so that he could gain clarity with his heavenly Father. He acted with clarity when he prayed regarding his mission, the choice of disciples, his sonship, and how people perceived his ministry. He gained clarity about the will of God and the strength to do it. Prayer enabled him to deal with the struggles that fulfilling the call of God upon his life would bring.
We are told what Jesus prayed in Luke 10:21-22/Matthew 11:25-27, a prayer similar to Ecclesiasticus 51:1, where he gives thanks to the Lord and King and will offer praise to the One who is God my Savior, as well as in Qumran, where I give you thanks, O Adonai, for you have given me understanding of your truth and has made me to know your marvelous mysteries and your favors to sinful humanity and the abundance of your mercy toward the perverse heart (1QH7:26), where you have hidden the source of insight (1QHV 25-26), and where unheeded and recognized remains the seal of the mystery (1QHviii, 10-11). In this prayer, Jesus says the meaning of his ministry is a mystery to the wise, while only babes can see clearly. He then says that all things have been given to him by the Father, but right now, only the Father knows the Son and only the Son knows the Father, but also the prospect that the Son will reveal the Father to others. Jesus is claiming a unique knowledge of the Father and that he is the mediator of that knowledge to others.
A second prayer of Jesus is in Mark 14:32-42/Matthew 26:36-46/Luke 22:39-46. Jesus becomes an example to all followers of Jesus who pray that the will of the Father be done, regardless of the nature of our desires or requests. He addresses God as Abba, Father, admits his desire that this cup of suffering pass, but that regardless of what happens, he does not want his own will accomplished but the will of the Father, with Matthew adding that if the cup cannot pass, your will be done, which is remarkably similar to the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew. Jesus confronts the temptation he has to will something other than the will of his Father. He does not surrender to that temptation and submits to the will of the Father. As Jesus gains strength through his prayer, the disciples are asleep and in their weakness flee from Jesus at the critical moment when the soldiers arrive. The failure of Peter to pray led to his denial of Jesus in the end. Jesus stands in sharp contrast to his disciples as he was tested but stayed true to the purpose of the Father while the disciples were tested and failed.
We are also told of a final prayer of Jesus from the cross. Luke has a version in which the asks the Father to forgive those who crucified him, for they do not know what they do and at the last he prays to the Father that in the hands of the Father he commits his spirit (Luke 23:334, 46). In John, Jesus simply says that it is finished (John 19:30). In these prayers the cross is a fulfillment of the purpose of the Father. In another version of the final prayer of Jesus from the cross, Jesus prays, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34/Matthew 27:46) Here is a prayer connected to how who he is as the Son can also be the crucified one. Here is the reason that the cross is not the final act in the life of Jesus. Rather, resurrection by the Father and through the life-giving power of the Spirit is that final act.
Jesus will also give guidance regarding prayer. He urged that prayer arise from the motivation to pray to the Father rather than for pious display before the crowds (Matthew 6:5-6). He will urge simplicity of prayer and trustfulness in prayer before the Father, who knows what we need before we ask (Matthew 6:7-8). Greek and Roman philosophers could write fo those who fatigue the gods with their endless prayers (Seneca, Epistles, 31:5). It reflects the criticism of the worshippers of Baal who tried to get his attention (I Kings 18:26-40), and the Lord says the people can spread forth their hands and make many prayers, but the Lord will hide them from sight and not listen (Isaiah 1:15). The people are not to repeat themselves in their prayers (Ecclesiasticus 7:14). All this contrasts sharply with the simplicity and calm assurance of the Lord’s Prayer. The follower of Jesus can pray with calm assurance of coming before the heavenly Father as a loved child of the Father. Luke will focus on listening to Jesus as the proper stance in meditation and prayer, using the story of Mary and Martha to make his point, where Mary has made the best choice in this situation (Luke 10:38-42). The saying was to let your house be a meeting-house for the sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in their words with thirst (Aboth 1:4). Martha may have been trying to listen to Jesus while she was preparing an elaborate meal. May adopts the position of a disciple or pupil. Such an attitude toward women was not universal, as one saying says that may the words to the Torah be burned should they be handed over to women (jSota, 10a, 8). Others thought knowledge of Torah was merit for the woman caught in adultery, which was the basis for R. Eliezer to say it is better not teach women the Torah for it would lead to lewdness, although Ben Azzai disagreed because she needed to know she had required merit (jSota 3:4). In any case, Jesus has no problem with accepting Mary as a disciple and Luke has no problem offering her as an example of an ideal disciple. Martha could have offered a less extravagant meal, but Mary has chosen the one thing needful in this moment. Jesus also taught that it was better to rely upon the grace of God in prayer rather than any achievements in spiritual life one might have (Luke 18:9-14). Jesus urged confidence and persistence in prayer, as asking, seeking, and knocking are done by people at prayer even in the use of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:9-13/Matthew 7:7-11). Regardless of the original intention of the parable, Luke uses a story of going to a friend at an inconvenient time asking for help in showing hospitality and receiving a negative answer to stress that going to our heavenly Father in prayer is more like going to faithful friend in our need (Luke 11:5-8). Luke also uses a story of a worthless judge who agrees to the plea of a widow in need so that she stop nagging him to say that prayer is a matter of persistence upon our part, recognizing that we come before a loving Father with our needs (Luke 18:1-8).
The prayer Jesus taught the disciples to pray became central to the public worship and personal prayer of Christians. It was so for the first century Christians. If we look upon the context in which the prayer occurs in Luke and Matthew, we see indications of its importance. In Luke, the prayer is immediately introduced by the disciples seeing Jesus pray, and then asking the Lord to teach them to prayer. It was typical of rabbis who had students to give them an example of proper prayer, and the disciples are asking Jesus for that example. Jesus responds with saying that when they pray, they are to say…. This is not an option. It is a command of Jesus to pray in this way. In addition, the larger context in Luke heightens the importance of the prayer. Luke 11:1-13 is organized around the theme of prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer begins that section and sets the tone. For Luke, the Lord’s Prayer conditions his interpretation of the friend who comes at midnight to ask for bread from a neighbor, since it is suggested by the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer. He then includes the sayings about asking, seeking, and knocking, and the saying about God giving good gifts, as encouragements to pray, with the pattern of that prayer being established by the Lord’s Prayer. If we step back even further, it follows the way Luke presents the command to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor. In Luke, Jesus offers the parable of the Good Samaritan to elaborate upon love of neighbor, and then he presents the story of Mary and Martha and this segment on prayer as elaborating upon loving God with all our we are. In Matthew, the context heightens the importance of the prayer. It becomes an example of how to pray as Jesus advises his listeners to pray like this. It is in direct contrast to the prayer of the Gentiles, who have many words and empty phrases. The Lord’s Prayer has few words that are packed with meaning. the larger context stresses its importance. The central section of the Sermon on the Mount is organized around the themes of the Lord’s Prayer. It is an exposition or commentary on the prayer. Therefore, the first three petitions correspond to 6:19-24, hallowing of the name of the Father by giving allegiance to God. The fourth petition corresponds to 6:25-34, asking for daily bread in a spirit of trust that God will provide for the people of God. The fifth petition corresponds to the 7:1-5, forgiving others by not judging others. the sixth petition corresponds to 7:6, not being led into temptation by not taking discipleship seriously and becoming apostate. Both versions of the prayer become invitations to pray in the context of the pattern of prayer established in the Lord’s Prayer, so that God will graciously grant the request of a person who prays like this.
This prayer was in use in the public worship of the Christians in Palestine at the time of Matthew. The longer form found in Matthew is typical of liturgical texts ot add material and to make the text balance. The early church supplemented the Lord’s Prayer with material from the rich tradition of prayer in Judaism.
There are other indications in the New Testament that the Lord’s Prayer was important in the worship of the Gentile churches as well. In this case, the evidence is not as firm. Paul, writing to encourage people that they are children of God, and not slaves, says they have received the spirit of being a child of God when we cry, “Abba, Father.” In an equivalent way, he will say that God sent the Spirt of the Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father.” The emphasis upon the plural pronoun and the Aramaic beginning of the Lord’s Prayer are hints that Paul is referring to some liturgical usage in which the community refers to God as Father, a liturgical text like we find in the Lord’s Prayer. John 6 becomes a commentary upon the Lord’s Supper as understood in the Johannine churches. After a long dialogue with the crowd, Jesus speaks of the true bread from heaven. This bread gives life to the world. The crowd asks that the Lord give them this bread always. The request is like the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. When Jesus says he is the bread of life, he is interpreting the significance of the bread of communion. This interpretation is made clear when Jesus speaks of eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking of his blood, and by doing so having eternal life, for his flesh and blood are true food and drink, and those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in Christ and Christ abides in them (John 6:35-7). The suggestion is that the Lord’s Prayer in these churches was used with the communion service and that John is giving a commentary on the meaning of the fourth petition by combining it with the Lord’s Supper account known from the Pauline and synoptic Gospel traditions. As we might expect, in John, the fourth petition is not simply a prayer for physical bread, but for spiritual bread, for it is Jesus who brings salvation. This is the spiritual nourishment that we need to be asking for from the Father in the Lord’s Prayer.
The connection that John makes between the Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Supper is heightened in the second century church. The Didache was written between 80 Ad and 120 AD. The text was written for the instructions to new candidates for baptism. In the immediate context, they are taught to pray this prayer three times a day. In the larger context, there is instruction concerning the meaning of baptism just preceding and instruction concerning the thanksgiving of the eucharist just following. In the early church, unbaptized persons were dismissed after the agape meal, and only baptized persons were allowed to participate in the Lord’s Supper. It would appear that at least in the community served by the Didache, only the baptized members of the community said the Lord’s Prayer, emphasizing the specialness of the prayer, and that it was for followers of Jesus (Didache 7-10). A further piece of evidence for this connection is given by the gnostic heretic Marcion, who made several alterations in the prayer in 140 AD. First, he added to the beginning of the prayer the invocation that the Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us. This was a traditional baptismal prayer in the early church. He also works with the fourth petition, changing it to a request for “thy bread for the morrow give us day by day.” Marcion makes this petition relate to the Lord’s Supper. A further illustration of this tradition is that in 350 AD in Jerusalem, Bishop Cyril gave a series of Lenten lectures for baptismal candidates. These were people who would be receiving communion for the first time. In his instruction he gave a detailed instruction about the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer was important in the early church, an importance it gained from the first century church. That importance focused on both public worship and private prayer. It served as a model prayer and helped believers to focus on what Christian prayer is. The next step is to focus on the individual petitions of this prayer. There will be an attempt to relate them both to Old Testament and Jewish concepts, as well as using the first commentary on this prayer ever devised, that is, the exposition in Matthew.
Luke 11:1-13 continues to invite us to reflect on what it means to love God completely. It involves learning to pray. There is a message of faithful assertiveness running all through Luke 11:1-13 that encourages us to be bold in prayer and confident in the results. This begins in 11:1-4 with a succession of imperative statements: "teach us to pray," "When you pray, say," "hallowed be your name," "Your kingdom come," "Give us" and "forgive us" (plus two textual variants: "Your will be done" and "deliver us"). First, the prayer is pure petition. Second, the prayer is short. Jesus also advised that his disciples pray, they are not to heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. They are not to be like such persons because they can have the confidence that their Father knows what they need before they ask (Matthew 6:7-8). Third, the prayer gets right to the point. Instead of heaping one phrase upon the other, customary in addressing deity of the time, the disciples is to address deity with the simple address, “Father.” Disciples do not approach deity as they would in the official court of the king. Rather, they approach with the intimacy of the Father-child relationship. In a family, people speak to each directly. When things are right in the family, people speak to each other with profound mutual understanding. Fourth, the interest of God comes first. The structure of the prayer illustrates what Jesus taught when he said disciples are to strive first for the rule of God and the righteousness of God, and God will add other things as well. Thus, in the version in Matthew, the first petition focuses on concerns of God, while the next three concern the interests of disciples concerning food, sin, and temptation. Fifth, the prayer assumes that God acts through people. The passive form of the petitions could refer to the acknowledgement that only God can fulfill the petition. However, the form is ambiguous enough that we could understand it to refer to the importance of the actions of human beings in fulfilling the petition. The point is, both are correct. Yes, the focus is on the responsibility of God to fulfill the petitions. However, disciples are to hallow the name of God, make space for the reign of God, and do the will of God. God takes the initiative, but because of the independence and freedom involved in creation, God can do nothing in the world unless there are people prepared to participate in the divine initiative. The prayer summarizes all that Jesus wanted and hope for in his mission on earth.[5]
The prayer reflects the specific situation in life of Jesus traveling through Israel with his disciples. Jesus lived an irregular life. He was on the move, announcing the coming rule of God. They rarely knew what each new day would bring. Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Jesus has nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). Jesus also had local followers. He healed some, he had friends, supporters, sympathizers, and those curious in a good sense. The traveling Jesus and his disciples, defenseless and without means, needed these local followers to survive. The life situation of Jesus and his disciples distinguished him strongly from the zealots who were also on the move in Israel, gathering followers and weapons for their revolt against Rome. The mission discourse in Luke 10 sharply distinguishes Jesus and his disciples from the zealots as they stood for peace rather than violence and war. Jesus wants to gather eschatological Israel as a place of peace, rejecting violence and holy war. The disciples left home and family and form a new family. In inviting the disciples to address God as their Father, Jesus is acknowledging the new family and a new way of life. God cares for them as their biological fathers had previously done. They can trust in God unconditionally. His disciples leave their old, natural families for the sake of announcing the reign of God. They have found a new family with hundreds of new brothers and sisters (Mark 10:30).[6]
I am working on approaching this prayer as expressing the aspiration and desire of the Christian life. I do so at the suggestion of Karl Barth in his Christian Life, lecture fragments on the incomplete Volume IV.4 of Church Dogmatics. We may well best define who a Christian is by saying a Christian is one whose life is a calling upon God to make the Lord’s Prayer a reality in oneself, in the church, and in the world. Approaching the prayer this way reminds us that Christian life is not a legalistic approach to life. Rather, the Christian life is a prayer that we spend a lifetime learning to pray. The prayer looks forward to the day when God will make this prayer a reality. We will see repeatedly that this prayer is teaches us that prayer is not a technique by which we get what we want. Rather, prayer is a matter of bending our will to what God wants. The Christian life, then, is a journey in which we steadily learn to bend our will to the will of the Father. The prayer involves the Christian life in an eschatological orientation. Eschatology refers to the goal of history toward which the Bible moves and the biblical factors and events bearing on that goal. Thus, the Christian life is one lived in the time between the ascension of Christ in the power of the Spirit and his return, when Christ will perfect the will of the Father for creation. The Christian life intimately connects with the gathering of the people of God in the church, as the power of the Spirit constitutes the church in order to witness to the coming rule of God.[7] Now is the time for the people of God to hear the promises of God and respond with a hope embodied in its prayers. Thus, the key theological question confronting the Christian life is the effect the approaching end of the world should have on the everyday existence of the people of God.[8] In the end, I will want to provide a plausible intellectual vision combined with a compelling account of a way of life.[9] This prayer invites us reflect upon what we may know, what we must do, and for what we can hope.[10] We have the opportunity of learning the meaning and correct grammar of God regarding the Christian life.
Luke provides the setting. The prayer Jesus teaches his followers to pray emerges from an episode in the relationship between Jesus and his disciples, He was praying in a certain place along the journey toward Jerusalem, and after he had finished, one of his disciples (unnamed) said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” Here, Luke depicts a disciple not so much asking as telling Jesus to teach about prayer. Here is a request which, in order to answer, would require considerable discussion about the nature of prayer. We might also discuss related issues such as the discipline of prayer, the time to pray, the frequency of prayer, the posture of the penitent, and so on. Instead, Jesus offers a prayer for them to use. Jesus then bids the disciples to say a prayer, the mood of which in the original Greek reads more like a series of insistent instructions than humble intercessions. The implication is neither that this prayer would make further praying unnecessary nor that only this prayer we could use. The simplicity of the address bookends nicely with the parable which follows in which Jesus makes the pointed observation that God does not need to be browbeaten into submission before he acts upon our petitions (11:9).
The prayer Jesus now recites is another way to create in his followers the proper attitude they should maintain as disciples of the kingdom. That Jesus urges his disciples to address God so informally also points to one of the primary motives behind this prayer. Jesus was trying to instruct his disciples how to pray, not so much what to pray. Luke's version of this prayer now links together the petitioner's plea forgiveness of sins with his or her promise to forgive the indebtedness of all others. There may yet be moments of testing or temptation.
The Lord’s Prayer is commonly recited in worship services all over the world. It is in danger of being turned to the “babbling” which Jesus criticized. We need to immerse ourselves in the mood, spirit, style, and content of this prayer. This prayer is a model. Let us take a look at the prayer as Jesus might have originally given it.
Our Father ... your name be revered. Impose your imperial rule, ... Provide us with the bread we need for the day. Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us.
The traditional use of “hallowed” is archaic, yet it rolls easily off the lips of most congregations. We often begin praying in such a lazy way. We ought to ponder the reality of the presence of God. Prayer begins with God, not with us and our needs. Before we start telling God our troubles and trials and petitions, we focus upon the glory of God. To “hallow” is to praise God, to be in gratitude, for what God has done. To “hallow” or “revere” is to give honor, to set apart, to focus, upon the reality and power of God. Without such an experience, we simply offer pious prayers with little meaning. The traditional use of “who art in heaven” was added by Matthew. The phrase can be taken too literally. Gerhard Ebeling, in On Prayer (1960), p. 50, hassaid of this passage:
To proclaim God as the God who is near, as Jesus did, is to put an end to the idea of heaven as God’s distant dwelling place. . . . It is not that where heaven is, there is God, but rather where God is, there is heaven.
We pray to the God who is near to us. We find God in the depths of our being, in our minds, our spirits.
Thy kingdom come is a broad petition. It refers to the reigning activity of Christ in human hearts and society. This is a big petition, a huge desire. To pray in this way is to focus one’s mind and heart in such a way that it becomes real in our lives. We have no choice about the kingdom of God. It has already come in Jesus. God is the one who brings the kingdom. It is a result of God’s design and doing. Wherever the reign of Christ is experienced, the kingdom of God is present. This is not a prayer for those who want things to stay the way they are.
Thy will be done is the primary limit to prayer. Jesus was expansive in regard to petition in that he could also say, “Ask, and it will be given . . .” We often jump to the limits of prayer before we have the faith to reach out with bold petitions. We are often timid in that for which we ask. However, this is a legitimate limit to prayer. Remember the story from Mark 14:36, where Jesus prayed that the cup of suffering would pass. That was the petition. Yet, he made sure that he submitted to what God wanted in this situation. We are to put ourselves in the center of the will of God. To pray “Thy will be done” is to pray, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”
Give us this day our daily bread is the first petition for daily needs. In Luke 12:15-25 we have the best example of trusting God for our needs. This is a commitment to not worry about such matters. We are to live our lives entrusting ourselves and our basic needs to God. God is the giver. God is the one who gives us what we need. God keeps on giving day by day. We are dependent upon God for all of life. God is provided the resources for our needs to be met. This does not mean we are to work any less. It means we dedicate the use of our talents to the giver of life. We receive from God by faith all that we need to meet the demands of life.
Forgive us, as we forgive is a prayer for pardon. There have been several translations for this part of the prayer. “Debt” recognizes our indebtedness to God and to others. “Sin” recognizes the ways we have morally fallen short. “Trespass” refers to entering places we do not belong. Whatever word we use, there is no way any of us can repay the debt we owe. We cannot make it right on our own. Forgiveness comes from beyond us. Sin is separation from God. Forgiveness is reconciliation with God. Forgiveness is a gift of God. In Jesus, God has already forgiven us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil seems like a strange petition. This is not a prayer to be excused from the trials of life. The cross teaches us that Christians are not exempt from such experiences. However, it is a prayer to not be abandoned in the midst of such trials. It is that feeling of being abandoned which makes temptation so fearful. It is not a prayer for special treatment. Evil is what threatens to destroy us. This is a prayer for the future, for strength to meet the challenges of the future.
Thanking and glorifying God belong together. Christian prayer has retained the stress on thanksgiving because of its link to the Eucharistic prayer. It is a response to the grace of God in all of human life. It arises when we experience something good and undeserved, such as the beauty of nature, the delight of family and friends, or any other experience of tenderness and love. Thankful people are a joy. They have an inner sweetness that invigorates others in the home, the place of work and social gatherings. Thankful people sweeten their social space.
Address: Father/Our Father who are in heaven
2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father (Abba in Aramaic, which we also find in Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:15). As Father, God is our creator who gave us life and the one who sustains us in our lives. Most importantly, he is the Father of Jesus Christ.[11] Jesus taught us to pray out of the intimacy of our relationship with God: “Father” or “Daddy.” The word arises out of the intimacy of family life. It contains tenderness and confidence. Jesus ventured into this language out of his relationship with his heavenly Father and out of the formation of a new family he had begun with his disciples. The disciples had left their biological family to be part of this new family for the sake of Jesus. Such language is consistent with Jesus telling his followers to call no one father, for they have one Father in heaven (Matthew 23:9). The fact that Paul could refer to the word in the way he does suggests the term was dear to the early Christians, even though it was a foreign language to most in his churches. They knew it was the language of Jesus. That was how he addressed his dear Father before his suffering (Mark 14:36).
The use of the word “Father” was something distinctive to Jesus. There are many times in the Bible when it is said that God is “like” a mother hen, a rock, a hen, a shadow, and many other images. Rarely is it said that God “is” a particular image. One of those times is when God is referred to as “Father.” It is not that God is “like” a father. God “is” Father. In this case, we are called to re-imagine the concept of father. God is not “like” a human father. God “is” the Father of us all. Some persons have difficulty with the father image in the Bible. We must remember that the use of “father” in reference to God is intended to redefine “father” considering who God is. The issue, however, is to reflect upon the meaning of God as the one who has been committed to caring most deeply for us. It is such loving behavior that is intended to be called to mind when Jesus uses this image.
Of course, God does not have a gender. Not everyone has a father or even the right kind of father. Those who look to Jesus as their brother will learn from him what it means to talk with God as a dear Father. They will gain God as their dear Father. The Spirit will work in their lives in such a way that they will call to God, “Abba, Father” (Romans 3:26).[12] Thus, the word “father” communicates provision, caring, and nurturing. Prayer arises out of a desire to deepen our relationship with God. The prayer Jesus now recites is another way to create in his followers the proper attitude they should maintain as disciples of the kingdom. That Jesus urges his disciples to address God so informally also points to one of the primary motives behind this prayer. Jesus was trying to instruct his disciples how to pray, not so much what to pray. Compare the simplicity of the address in this prayer, "Father," to the "Prayer of Eighteen Petitions" which a conscientious Jew is to utter three times daily. It begins: "Lord God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob! Most High, Creator of heaven and earth! Our Shield and the Shield of our Fathers!" (1.23-24). “Father” as an address to God suggests intimacy of relationship. "Father" is an address which Jesus himself uses frequently (Luke 10:21, 22:42; John 17:1). The Lord’s Prayer has a set of petitions, but the prayer begins with thanksgiving and adoration of the Father. Christian prayer has its basis in this prior relationship with the Father and desire to submit to the wisdom and will of the Father. Christian prayer means praying for the heavenly Fatherhood of God to manifest itself, realize itself, and perfect itself, in the individual Christian, in the community of the people of God, and in the world. The hope for the coming fatherhood of God animates Christian prayer and life.[13]We need to read the following sayings that involve petition in prayer (11:5-13) in that context. The use of the concept is in the Jewish tradition. The question is asked of Israel if the Lord is their father, the one who created them and established them (Deuteronomy 32:6). The Lord will be the Father of the descendant of David, and the descendant will be the son (II Samuel 7:14). The people refer to the Lord as their Father from their youth (Jeremiah 3:4-5) and the Lord thought if they called him Father they would not turn away (Jeremiah 3:19). The Lord is the Father of Israel and Ephraim is his son (Jeremiah 31:9). The Lord refers to Israel as his child and the son called out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1-3). We have one Father who created us all (Malachi 2:10). The Lord is our Father (Isaiah 63:16, 64:8). Yet, Jewish prayers do not payer to God as Father, and Abba might have seemed disrespectful. What is highly unusual is the relational metaphor that was not only important to Jesus, but one that he wished his disciples to understand and value. "Father," Jesus suggests, is an address one can use when one prays to God. God has a link to the creatures God has made as parents have a bond to their children. The heart of the message of Jesus was the announcing of the nearness of the divine reign. Yet, Jesus called the God whose reign was near, and even dawning with his coming, his Father. God shows fatherly qualities in many ways but is especially ready to forgive those who turn to the Father and ask for forgiveness and forgive others.[14] What Jesus says about the Father has a close connection to the message of the nearness of the lordship of the Father and the summons to people to subordinate all other concerns to the dawning future of God. Then, they will acknowledge God as God.
A major theme of the prayers of the prayers of Jesus was that he gained clarity as to who he was. His experience of prayer led him to the realization that God was his Father, and he was the Son. He was in a unique relationship with the Father. However, Jesus invites his followers to share in his experience of God as Father. The experience of God as Father was important to the first century church. In the sermon on the Mount it occurs at 5:16, 45, 48, 6:1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 26, 32, 7:11, 21. Paul in Romans and Galatians also stress the importance of this experience of God. These could be multiplied many times. Jesus experienced God as Father and himself as Son, and in the Lord’s Prayer believers are invited to participate in experiencing God as Father and themselves children.
The obedience of Christians follows from the fact that in Jesus Christ they recognize God as their Father and themselves as children of their heavenly Father. In addressing God as Father, we do so because Jesus related to God in that way. Jesus related to the Father as the Son. We know God as Father because we know Jesus as the Son. We might say that God is not the unknown, faceless, nameless mystery. Rather, God has a face and name in Jesus Christ, and invites us to know God through him. Obedience is the action of children to the extent they venture it in invocation of God. Liberated by the Holy Spirit, they take God as their Father and themselves seriously as children of their heavenly Father. God is not an impersonal force. God is personal, even if in ways we as persons find mysterious. The prayer Jesus teaches us to pray becomes the principle of the Christian life. The guidance Jesus offers regarding prayer becomes guidance for the followers of Jesus regarding how they are to live their lives.
Christians do not speak about the Father, but to the Father. The creed begins with the affirmation, “I believe in God the Father…” The prayer Jesus taught us to pray puts the affirmation into practice. God acts as Father toward us. Father gives content to the word God. God is the head and founder of a family. If God is our Father, then we depend upon God. We have the feeling of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher). It suggests fatherly goodness. The Father is the origin and source of all good. It suggests an encounter with truth and goodness in a way that suggests filial engagement in complete trust. This trust expresses itself in the assertiveness and confident prayer for the completion of the rule of God. With the rule of God comes the establishment of just relations between human beings.
Jesus invites his followers to address assertively and humbly God as Father. We continue to do so as we anticipate the future universal praise of God. Living in this prophetic minority is the destiny of the people of God. To address God as Father suggests closeness and intimacy. We who address God in this way must regard ourselves as children of God. To do so means our property belongs to the Father. It means we orient our lives to the Father. It means love toward the Father. We can approach God in this way due to grace. God overcomes the separation and alienation that exists between God and humanity. The history of Jesus of Nazareth exhibits this grace. In the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, it opens with the relationship of Father and child, signifying the reconciliation of the world with God.
As children of the Father, we are grateful for the grace that invites us into the intimacy of the Father-child relationship with God. Yet, we are always children and always beginners in this relationship. The most mature of Christians will find themselves learning and growing as if children. In fact, if one views oneself as master and virtuoso in discipleship, one will need to learn again of grace and helplessness. The New Testament does invite us to move from childishness in faith to maturity in faith, which would suggest some notion of stages of growth on analogy with the stages of human life from infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Moving toward maturity in faith and discipleship means an increase of love to God and to neighbor.[15] Yet, part of the spiritual struggle is that as soon as we move toward arrogance and pride in what we have achieved spiritually, we are moving toward immaturity.
Our invocation of the Father suggests that Christian life is event, history, and action. The Father wants a living partnership with his children. Our lives express our invocation of the Father and our petition of the Father. The Christian life is a form of our call upon our Father. As we call upon the Father, we assertively call ourselves to the attention of the Father. As children, we place ourselves alongside the Father, take the word of the Father as true, and confess our relationship with the Father before others. We offer our thanksgiving and praise for the gift of this Father and child relationship. Our call upon the Father expresses the event quality of the relationship. The event that expresses this relationship is extraordinary. This astonishing event suggests the fruitful meeting and the living fellowship that human children have with the Father through the Holy Spirit empowering our spirits. The Infinite and Eternal Father, who is Spirit, meets with troubled and struggling finite human spirits. All of this reminds us that the Christian life is a spiritual one and thus awareness of the immediate presence of God. When the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills (John 3:8), the Spirit blows in the dark valleys and well as on the bright mountains. The Spirit blows into the holes where Christians find themselves. The Spirit takes good care that when they fall asleep, they will always awaken.
Further, while the call upon the Father is a personal matter, we must not think of it as private. The point of the prayer of Jesus is not private salvation and individual bliss. Matthew is in tune with the spirit of the prayer of Jesus when he begins with, “Our Father…” We are to understand this in the widest sense, as the Father of humanity.[16] I am not an island of the blessed in this prayer. Rather, I am precisely with all other people who are children of the Father. In praying “Our Father,” we acknowledge that we can navigate our weaknesses and difficult times only with a little help from our friends.[17] Discipleship and the Christian life are inherently communal. The Father did not give eschatological life to Jesus of Nazareth and raise him to be with the Father to separate the Son from the world. Rather, the Son continues act in the world through the Holy Spirit. In addition, we do not pray “Our Father” as if God is our possession. Rather, God created us for the purpose of friendship with God. The world needs the witness of the children of the Father. Such children are salt and light in the world. Such children may well be aliens, exiles, and pilgrims. They may well experience affliction and distress in the world. Yet, as children of the Father, they are messengers in the service of God. The fact that God hears those who call upon God in this intimate way becomes an integral part of the covenant between God and humanity.
Matthew adds that the Father is “in heaven.” This is also a good reminder that we cannot domesticate God. In fact, the first three petitions will affirm this reality.
Thus, the Lord’s Prayer continues with petitions to the Father. The prayer Jesus teaches begins with “Father.” It continues with petitions regarding the hallowing of the divine name, the coming of the kingdom, and in Matthew, the doing will of God on earth, as it is done in the hiddenness of heaven. What follows the address to God as Father constitutes an expression of praise couched in the eschatological language of hope. Jesus will be one who fulfills this prayer. He called upon God as his Father. His life will exhibit the fulfillment of this prayer. The concern of the prayer Jesus taught us is to unite with him in our concern for the cause of God. To pray these first three petitions is to pray that we make the cause of God in the world our cause as well. To pray in this way is to pray that God will bring the work of God to its goal, the divine light expelling darkness.
The thou petitions
hallowed be thy name
thy kingdom come
Matthew:
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
These petitions focus on God. The commentary by Matthew in 6:19-24 focuses on the believer giving total allegiance to God. Matthew deals with the issue of priorities in the life of the person. He does this combining three sayings of Jesus.
The first, 6:19-21, contrasts treasures in earth with treasures in heaven. The parallel saying in Luke 12:33-34 focuses on almsgiving as a way of laying up treasure in heaven. This is consistent with many Jewish sayings. If they have many possessions, they are to make their gifts in proportion, while if one has few possessions, they are to give according to the little they have, so they will be laying up a good treasurer for themselves (Tobit 4:8-9). They are to lose gold and silver for their brothers and sisters so that they may receive a treasure on the day of judgment (II Enoch 50:5, text A). They are to lose their silver for the sake of a friend, not letting it rust under a stone and be lost and lay up treasure that will profit them more than gold and store up almsgiving the treasure and rescue them from affliction (Ecclesiasticus 29:10-13). Other references in Jewish writings refer to the treasury as good works that are stored there. They have a treasury of works laid up with the Most High (IV Ezra 7:77). The righteous have many works laid up for them and they shall receive their reward in consequence of their deeds (IV Ezra 8:33). The righteous justly have good hope for the end because they possess a story of good works which is preserved in treasuries (II Baruch 14:12). The days are coming when the treasuries in which are brought the righteousness of all those who have proven themselves to be righteous (II Baruch 24:1). The rabbi has laid up treasures for above (T. Pea. 4:18). All that Israel lays up in the form of fulfillments of the Law and good works, it lays up for its Father in heaven (D. v. 1, in comment on Deuteronomy 1:1). Considering these parallels, it is quite clear that Luke understood the sayings as referring to almsgiving. Matthew would be closer to the Jewish understanding of the good works of the believer laid up in heaven, but with a difference. For Matthew, the whole Sermon on the Mount is an exposition on the theme of righteousness that involves relationships with other people in 5:21-48 and relationship to God in 6:1-18. The person who follows through on the righteousness laid out here is laying up treasure up in heaven, rather than earth. This is the person who has given complete loyalty to God.
Matthew makes his second comment on the Thou petitions is in 6:22-23. It has a parallel in Luke 11:34-36. When the two versions are combined, an introduction by the writer (6:22a/11:34a), a parable of Jesus is related (6:22b-23a/11:34b), and an interpretation of the parable is presented (6:23b/11:35-36). The parable stresses that the light is coming from outside the body, and that it is the condition of the eye that determines whether that light is received. Thus, the exhortation of the parable is to stop being blind and have a healthy eye to receive the light. That light is brought by the message of Jesus. The exhortation involves giving fully priority to God and receiving what God is giving.
The third exposition of the Thou petitions by Matthew is in 6:24. It has a parallel in Luke 16:13. The saying has three parts. There is a statement in verse 24a, followed by an explanation in verse 24b, and an application in verse 24c. legally, people could serve two masters. There is an example of this in Acts 16:16-18 and a rabbinic text refers to a person working for two masters (Pes 8:1), and in another a person ceases being a slave to one master but continues to be the slave of another (SB I, 433f). thus, the issue in this saying is not legality but practicality. That is what the explanation brings out. The behavior of the slave will reveal a preference for one master over the other. The conclusion makes the application apply directly to the relationship between the believer and God. The use of the word “serve” implies total allegiance. ‘Mammon” was a typical Jewish reference to all wealth or property. It was neither good or bad. Here, Jesus says that if a person tries to “serve” both God and this wealth, God will not be given exclusive loyalty. The issue is not having possessions but are they serving the believer or is the believer serving them.
Matthew has explained the meaning of the Thou petitions. They are the personal implications of these petitions for the sovereign rule of God to become a reality on earth.
When the believer prays the first three petitions of this prayer, there is the recognition that there is a contradiction between reality and that for which one is praying. Thus, in praying for the name of the Father to be hallowed, the believer recognizes that the name of the Father is not being hallowed. In praying for the rule of God to come, the believer recognizes the rule of God is not hear. In praying for the will of God to be done, the believer recognizes that the will of God is not being done. Therefore, the Lord’s Prayer begins with a certain tension between what the believers longs to be true on the one hand and the reality of the world situation on the other.
The First Petition: hallowed be thy name
The first petition asks the Father hallowed be your name. The aorist passive verb here is the divine passive. The Father is the one who will do the hallowing. The Father is the one who will bring about the hallowing of the name of the Father. The Kaddish, a Jewish prayer recited in the time of Jesus, included the prayer: “Exalted and hallowed be his great name in the world which he created according to his will.”
We pray that all capable of understanding will grow to honor and love God for who God is.[18] The sanctity of the name of God revisits the common Jewish understanding of God's name being above every other name. Part of the biblical background for the hallowing of the divine name is in Ezekiel 20 and 36. We find here the only occurrence in the Old Testament that God as the active subject will hallow the name of God (36:23). A basic text is the command that the people show not profane the holy name of of God, so that the people of Israel may sanctify the holy name (Leviticus 22:31-33). Nations "are called by my name" (Amos 9:12). God's house "is called by my name" (Jeremiah 7:11). God acts in the history of his people "for the sake of my holy name." God will "sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations" (Ezekiel 36:22-23). God has a name. Many people in the modern and even post-modern perspective think of God as a concept or some vague experience. God becomes the sum of the highest and best aspirations of humanity. God is a primitive way of thinking about morality. The prayer Jesus taught us to pray invites us to think of God as personal. God lives and acts. God has a name. In this first petition, we ask God to accept the people of God, assemble that people from its dispersion, make it one people, give it a new heart, and fill it with the Holy Spirit. We pray that the people of God will be a place in the world that demonstrates the honor and glory of God. Such a place will transcend national and ethnic boundaries. We see that for Jesus, the only thing at stake is the honor of God. The first petition is about the eschatological gathering and restoration of the people of God. That is how the name of God will be hallowed. One can offer this petition properly by longing for the gathering of the scattered and divided people of God.[19]
When we pray "holy be your name," we are both asking God to make his name holy and pledging ourselves not to misuse God's name. This is what the Ten Commandments are getting at when they prohibit our taking God's name "in vain." It is commonplace to hear God's name taken in vain today. Though it may well be blasphemy, saying "God damn" may not be the greatest blasphemy against the name of God. The German soldiers who went into battle in World War II bearing, Gott mit Uns, "God with Us," on their helmets are a greater blasphemy to the holy name of God. To invoke the name of the free, mighty God as patron of our causes is to take the name of God in vain. Those who are being formed by praying "Our Father who art in heaven, holy be your name..." are not permitted to abuse the holiness of God by attempting to put a leash on God, then dragging God into our crusades and cruelties. The holy God will not allow us to jerk God around in this way.
When Moses experienced God in the burning bush, his question was, “Who are you?” He is not in the presence of a concept. Rather, he has come face-to-face with a person who has a peculiar way of doing things in the world. In his case, the Lord heard the cry of an oppressed people. The Lord not only heard, but their oppression has moved the Lord to act. The Lord is bigger than Pharaoh. The Lord uses people like Moses to disrupt palaces. Clearly, the Lord is not the concept of liberation, self-esteem, or freedom. Rather, the Lord creates an identity in acting and being toward a people. The Lord is sovereign, free, untamed, compassionate, and holy. The result of hearing from the Lord was that Moses was afraid. He did not want to look upon the Lord. The Lord is not safely sealed in the heavens. The Lord is busy disrupting arrangements on earth. We can petition the Lord, for the Lord has graciously revealed the name. Every creature bows to the Lord (Revelation 4-5). If we do not know how to hallow the name of the Lord, then we live in conflict with our true selves. We conflict with our destiny as the Father of Jesus has revealed it in the Son. We are here for no better purpose than to hallow the name of the Lord. The Second Vatican Council described Christian worship as "the glorification of God and the sanctification of the faithful." As we glorify God in worship, we are in turn sanctified, made holy in everyday life. "Sanctification" is a church word that means to be made holy. As we praise God, we become formed in God's image. "We imitate whom we adore" (Augustine). Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God (St. Augustine). Obviously, we do not know how to hallow the name of God. Every day, the news displays our disconnectedness and disarray. We break the Ten Commandments with apparent glee in our killing, stealing, misuse of sexual desire, abuse of family, and our coveting of what others have. We engage in the large evil of the course of human history and in petty nastiness in our relationships with each other. We are here to enjoy God. Yet, we anxiously attempt to secure ourselves by ourselves. We frantically seek to give substance to our lives. Yet, the Father, by embracing us as children of the heavenly Father, has already bestowed meaning and purpose for our lives. Our sin is our way of singing out of tune with the song the Father has graciously granted us. To hallow the name of God is to sing the praise of God. We need to learn the melody of that adoration. We join with creation in that song. We are not just individuals who live a life for ourselves. We must learn how the Father has transformed our destiny into the good destiny God has determined for creation. We are counting for something in a much larger picture we will never see in its fullness. Our private, personal voices join with creation in praising the holy God who embraces us and enjoys our praise. The holy God enjoys hearing our unique songs. Regardless of our unique occupations and personalities, the prayer Jesus taught us to pray unites us with the corporate hallowing of the name of God. In doing this we discover our true being. When we pray the way Jesus taught us, we are also hearing our commission to live our lives in a way that makes visible the hallowing of the name of God. Our lives as children of the Father are to reveal that God is reclaiming some of the rightful territory from the enemy of humanity. Our praise of God has a deep link with ethics, living in the light of the holiness of God. If we learn to pray the way Jesus taught us, we also learn to have our lives bent in the direction of the will of the Father. We will learn how to live. We are engaging in a war that demolishes human temples to false gods. Every culture has its unique altars at which it wants us to make our sacrifices. To pray as Jesus taught us to enter a battle in which we choose to hallow the name of God above the false claims of such gods. Christians do not steal, cheat in marriages, bless war, and so on, because we are to live in the light of our knowledge of the name of God. The conflict of this battle arises comes with the territory of being Christian and of being church. We discover who God is and therefore who we are. We are not our own. Thus, the Heidelberg Catechism asks the Christian, "What is your only comfort, in life and in death?" The answer? "That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death - not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ..." We live as we pray.[20]
The theme this petition, and therefore of the life of the partnership between the Father and the children, is zeal for and honor of God. Such zeal brings delight and desire. We unite with Jesus in his concern for the cause of God in this world. The children have zeal for the primacy and validity of the Word in the world, the church, and in their hearts and lives. Thus, children of the Father have a great and definite passion. They have unfulfilled desire that seeks fulfillment. Of course, they will join with the rest of humanity in having other passions, but this passion to have zeal for give honor to God makes them uniquely Christian.
Because God's name is holy, we are not free to abuse that name, not free to utilize God in support of our causes and our concerns. The basis of Christian ethics is Christian prayer and praise, in all the ways we sanctify and hallow the name of God.
To pray for God to hallow the name of God is to ask God to do something that only God can do and give. To petition the Father seriously in this way is to say that honoring God characterize one’s being, life, and action. To pray in this way involves pain and suffering, for one prays from unfulfilled desire. Honoring God in this way has not yet happened in the world, in the church, or in the life of the one who prays. The children of the Father long for the sanctification of the name of God in a way that this desire fills, impels, and rules Christians.
To pray in this way is to pray something like the following. “Father, do what you alone can do. See to it finally, perfectly, and definitively, that people will know you. See to it that no one desecrates your name. Dispel the fatal ambivalence of our situation.”
What this petition requires is zeal for the honor of God. Those who pray for the future honor of the name of God cannot accept present desecration of that honor. The way forward is acceptance in all humanity of the present situation. We continually begin in our present resistance to desecration. We never become adept at it.
In what acts will one have to be zealous for the honor of God? To pray for the hallowing of the name of the Father is to affirm that the holy God reigns, that God has a rightful claim to creation, and that God has regained some of the territory from the enemy. The newly won territory is us who dare to pray this prayer. Our fitting response to honor the name of God in all we do and say. To pray in this way seriously will lead us to feel the alien and strange character of the people of God in relation to the world. The person who prays this petition lives in three circles: as a child of the world among children of the world, as one of the members of the Christian church, and in the relative isolation of personal Christian life. Each circle represents unity and particularity. The general answer we must give if we give it with reference to each of these three circles. Thus, the personal life of the Christian needs to express zealousness toward the honor of God. Christians live with their Yes and No to God. Yet, Christians will venture to contradict the contradiction in which they find themselves entangled, even if in a provisional and relative way. The life of the church must reflect its zealousness for the honor of God. The church is unsettled. To use the images we find in the Book of Revelation, the church is always between Babylon and New Jerusalem. As citizens of the world, Christians also have zeal for the honor of God in the world. The church must not be so arrogant that it views its role as setting the world in order or fixing what is wrong about the world. Monastic holding itself aloof from the world or a militant crusader in the world have not proven to be faithful ways of honoring God. Both approaches underrate knowledge of God in the world and overrate knowledge of God in the Christian and the church! Christians can also affirm the world as it is, assuming there is far too much reconciliation between God and world in our present. This approach would encourage individuals and church to join the world and adapt to it. Such a position is gullible and innocent toward the world. It makes the Christian keep the secret of his or her message from the world. It refuses to give the No of the gospel message to the world. This approach lacks the courage that must characterize Christian obedience in the world.
The content and meaning of this first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is as follows. The One bears the pain of our division, the One humbled and wounded by it, yet superior to it, takes this disorder and distress within the divine life, and removes it from the world. The prayer of the believer is that God would stamp out ignorance of God in the world, in the church, and in oneself. This request given by the church and the Christian occurs in a provisional way on behalf of humanity. Repeatedly, God will make God known. The hidden quality of God is such only where people deny, blaspheme, and dishonor God. The prayer arises out of genuine knowledge of God, regardless of how weak that knowledge may be. Only God can hallow the name of God. The one praying it, as part of human invocation of God, has a corresponding will and action. As Luther puts it in his Small Catechism, it becomes a prayer that the name of the holy God would become holy among us. However, the petition looks beyond human zeal, will, and action to a work whose subject is God. We ought not to view this petition as a pious wish. Rather, God must act at some future date to make this petition a reality. One can pray this petition only because one has at least some knowledge of this God shown in Jesus Christ, regardless of how weak it is. Coming from Good Friday and Easter Day, the Christian world knows what it is talking about when it prays for the hallowing of the divine name. It prays for the taking place of the unique and definitive divine act that it knows to have taken place already in Jesus Christ. Further, given the confidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Christians know that God has already answered the prayer in Jesus. To what extent can the hallowing of the name be future? The confusion of the church, the Christian, and the world, suggest the desecration of the name of God. Hallowing the name of God in this world has its only source in the cross. Therefore, it has validity for our time as well. God does not abandon us to the scandal. What has to happen was done in the history of Jesus Christ, and it was done perfectly and definitively. Thus, the petition looks beyond the division of the present. With the promise, “I will glorify it again," it looks ahead to its future fulfillment. As in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new.” Between the yesterday and tomorrow of the redeeming work of God is today, our present time. We believe in the Word of God spoken in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Yet, we cannot see it in the world, in the church, or in our hearts and lives. What we see is the misty landscape, the luminous darkness, in which people know God and people in whom God remains unknown. The hallowing of the name of God already accomplished in Jesus Christ presses toward the manifestation that will remove the veil. The petition relates to this last thing that God will do. It prays that the one who came yesterday will come tomorrow as the Victor over the division of the present. Along these lines, we say with Luther, “Help us in this, dear Father in heaven.”
The Second Petition: Thy kingdom come
The second petition has a close relation to the first: Your kingdom come. This petition is a major theme of the preaching of Jesus in the soon-arrival of the rule of God. This rule would not come by human activity. As in the Kaddish prayer: “May he let his kingdom rule, in your lifetime and in hour days and in the lifetime of the whole house of Israel, speedily and soon.”
We pray for the rule of God to come in personal life through repentance and believing the gospel. We long for the rule of God to appear in the earth, subduing earthly kingdoms in a way that they will see the beauty of the coming of the Lord. The rule of God in grace now will reach its fulfillment in the coming of the rule of God in glory and power. We look forward to the final redemption of all things.[21] The background of this petition is Daniel 7:13-14, where the royal rule over the earth is giving to a “son of humanity.” The text speaks of the coming rule of God, as does this petition. Since this son of humanity comes with the clouds of heaven, we know the new, eschatological society descending from above. Human beings do not achieve this rule through their actions. Such royal rule is the gift of God. Royal rule will end all government by force. Yet, this royal rule does not float above the world. Despite its heavenly origin, the royal rule is earthly and worldly. The royal rule of God is the gathering of eschatological Israel, Jew and Gentile alike, identified in Daniel as the holy ones of the Most High. Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray for the coming rule of God promised in Daniel. Jesus gave his life for the proclamation of the coming rule of God, linking it to the gathering of the people of God. The difference with Daniel is that Jesus links the coming rule of God to the present, he links it to his own person, and it comes to serve the world. All rule by violence will continually fail and will often find its destruction in bloody and fearful fashion. We live already in this new beginning. God has already presented it to the world as gift. We can only receive this gift. We experience the humanity of this new thing, recognizing that beasts are no longer the measure of history. Rather, the Human One, Jesus, is the measure of human history. Daniel 7 has a powerful historical vision of the coming of a new community stronger than world empires and the violence by which they rule. The reign of God begins here and now. It has a social shape. It begins with the people of God in history as a new society. The first duty of the people of God is demonstrate what it means to accept this rule. The life of the people of God is the best serve to render a secular society. Yes, we are aware of the future nature of this rule. Yet, we do not do justice to the second petition of our focus is only there. We must be alert for the coming of the reign of God that is trying to happen right now, among us. We need to ask ourselves constantly where we find signs of the right of God today. The question is how the people of God take a form which Easter and Pentecost has gifted it. We are praying for the end of our old world with its powers and the beginning of a new world that God is offering us already today.[22]
The Christian life is eschatological in the sense that the rule of God, the fatherhood of God, is already present through Jesus and in the Spirit. The basis of for the hope of Christian life is here. The Old Testament promise was “I will be their God, they shall be my people.” The New Testament promise was Immanuel, God with us. We need to learn how God perfects such promises. God has done this through the self-sacrifice of the Son and the offer of forgiveness for the children of Adam. The fatherhood of God occurs now through the Son and by the Spirit, to make creation conform to the promises of God. In this way, the world becomes open to the future and coming rule of God. The rule of God is active in the mission and ministry of God and continues in the Christian life of individuals and the community.[23]
To speak of a kingdom is to speak of the reality and sovereignty of a king. This prayer acknowledges only one true Lord. Yes, there may well be others rulers, but only one Ruler and Lord of our lives. Other forces may well seek to seek our allegiance, but this prayer envisions only one allegiance. Thus, the hallowing of God's name, linked with the coming of God's kingdom, together embrace a full-visioned notion of a future reign in which God's interactive presence is felt in human history. This prayer is the beginning of discipleship.[24] It involves the world, the church, and the individual Christian in the struggle for human righteousness. The issue of the rule of God is a question about whom we worship. To be part of this rule is to acknowledge who is in charge and whose will ultimately counts in this world. We do not legitimately separate spiritual and earthly matters. The focus of this prayer is on asking God to cause divine righteousness to appear and dwell on a new earth under a new heaven. Those who pray this prayer are to act in accordance with their prayer as a people who are responsible for the rule of human righteousness. They pray for the preservation and renewal, the deepening and extending, of the divinely ordained human safeguards of human rights, freedom and peace. We recognize the rule of God primarily through hints, analogies, parables, and images. We get a sense of the rule of God through stories and parables. Definitions and explanations will not help us.
We have prayed that we might have zeal for the honor of God. This prayer needs testing in real life decisions. A life that reflects this zeal is one willing to work in the ethical sphere of human life. To pray for the rule of God to come is to enter a conflict. Such a life is like warfare. Ephesians 6:11ff shows Christians in need of armor for battle. I Timothy 6:12 and II Timothy 4:7 refer to their good fight. The fight involves Christians in affliction. Yet, this affliction does not separate them from the love of Christ. Such affliction can strengthen their perseverance, deepen their self-confirmation, and renew their hope. Christians become fit for the battle as they experience the transformation of their lives toward personal freedom rather than slavery, living in light rather than darkness.
In praying for the coming rule of God, we recognize that the rule of God is not here in its fullness. The rule of God is here, incipiently and proleptically. This now and not yet quality of the Christian hope is eschatology. Christian hope is not satisfied with the way things are. We are praying that word and deed participate in that end time. We are busy becoming that for which we yearn. We are able to live hopefully in a yet to be redeemed world because Jesus taught us to pray this way. We live between the times. The stretch of time between past fulfillment, present participation, and promised future is the tension with which the people of God live. God has not abandoned this world. We honestly see the ways in which the world does not reflect the rule of God and hope for more because of the future nature of the rule of God. God has reclaimed enemy territory.[25]
In praying for the coming rule of God, we pray for the secure establishment of just relations between human beings. It involves us in the struggle for human justice. It involves us in naming those powers that have become oppressive idols. The idol is not oppressive because it has power in itself. It has power because we give it power. The only true Lord is the one whom Jesus invited to call upon as Father. The Lord is the only secure foundation and ruler of our lives. Yet, we fashion idols that slowly exert power over us. They are “lordless powers” in that they exert power without having genuine lordship. We see such idols in political absolutism, materialism, ideological dogmatism, and chthonic or earthly powers (technology, fashion, sport, pleasure, and transportation). Turning aside from God, humanity uses nature in a way in which humanity becomes their slave. Christians call upon God to set aside evil powers. The adversary in this battle consists in human unrighteousness, the great disorder of the world. Alienation from God, from each other, from self, is the basis of the disorder. Humanity wants to lead its life apart from allegiance to any lord. Yet, it becomes difficult to be a little god. Further, human history is a record of innumerable absolutism of different kinds. They are powerful in spite of their impotence. In praying for the kingdom of God to come, negatively, we ask for the gracious unmasking, overcoming, and abolition of these absolute powers that rule us. The Book of Revelation in general and 13:1-8 in particular, shows how political absolutism of a beastly sort can be at work behind human government. Mammon (material possessions) becomes an idol that competes with God for love, devotion, and service (Matthew 6:24=Luke 16:13).
Ideologies and intellectual constructions are another prominent form that such idols can take. Humanity has the remarkable ability to grasp in the form of concepts its perceptions of inner life, that of other people, and that of the world. One can put these together in definite pictures. One can arrange impressions and ideas in thoughts. One can make them into exact knowledge and then bring this into inner connection with other thoughts one has. One can convince oneself of the need to begin with certain theoretical and practical ideas in all that one knows, wills, thinks, says, and does individually, to make these ideas the solid presuppositions underlying actions, and to approach solutions to problems determined by them. Yet, fallen humanity has a problem in all of this. One no longer views this ability as provisional, but rather, as permanent. The ideology becomes so fascinating that, rather than freedom, it brings enslavement. The ideology that a person creates exerts power over the individual. It receives loyalty from the individual. One now ventures to ask questions and answer them only within the world of the ideology. One orients one’s life to it. Individuality disappears behind the mask created by the ideology. One evaluates others on the basis adherence to an ideology. Such “isms” become dictators, in which individuals cease to experience freedom of spirit. They lead to slogans or catchwords, usually with a menacing ring. They do not enter into conversation with the other. Rather, they speak about the other in a massive surprise attack. It does not teach, instruct, or convince. It aims to exert a drum-roll influence and issue marching orders. Ideology must also put out propaganda with a swing on its own behalf and with varying degrees of violence. Propaganda puts things in black and white. They must know the valueless and harmfulness of their rivals. Ideology reveals it is a lie, for truth needs no propaganda and does not engage in it. Truth speaks for itself and opposes falsehood. Propaganda is a sure sign that truth is not at issue, but an ideology.
There are such powers as Leviathan and Mammon, and spiritual and chthonic powers, that we must not ignore. We must not overlook their false lights. We have had to speak of the. fall of humanity that brings their disorder into human history and life. The Christians who prays for the rule of God also rebels against them. They bring no help to humanity. Humanity thinks they will give liberation, strength, ease, simplification, and enrichment. They do not do so. They do not intend the best for humanity. On the contrary, they break away from humanity, even as they break away from God. They are inhuman. They are the enemy of God. They are hostile to humanity and the enemy of humanity. They disrupt human life. They are fictions, illusions, and lying spirits. They oppress people. They tear apart individuals and society. Giving rights to no one, they make it impossible for any to grant mutual rights. They care nothing for human dignity. None of them can have peace; none of them can grant peace to others. Their dominion reveals the plight of humanity.
Let us be honest about the human condition. The persistence of such idols of our making reveals an important truth about humanity. Humanity would like to break itself free from God. In so doing, it overreaches itself. Humanity cannot succeed. Such idols find their limit in God. The prayer for the kingdom of God sets a limit to the power of idols. The petition points to an act of God that is a once for all act. It points to the occurrence of a specific history inaugurated anew and brought to its goal by the Father. It opposes the demons and the disorder of human history. This kingdom referred to in Luke 2:14, is peace on earth, actualized when God comes as King and Lord and creates and establishes it. The kingdom defies expression. Only in the reality and truth of the coming of God does that beautiful morning light dawn on the margin of the horizon of our experiences and thoughts. The second petition looks toward this. The New Testament compares the kingdom to a house (John 14:2), to the future world of God, the New Jerusalem, and to the royal action of God in history (Luke 17:20-21, Romans 14:17, I Corinthians 4:20).
The kingdom of God escapes intellectual systematizing. It is independent of human will and action. The kingdom is the new thing toward which we pray, not the completion of what we already are doing. Luther said this petition prays for the kingdom to come to us. For Calvin, the petition refers to the expansion of the kingdom among us. Pietism saw the kingdom arriving in various renewing movements and in the deepening of the Christian life. The Enlightenment saw it as the expansion of the fellow feeling among human beings, including expansion of ethical life. The point is that J. Weiss, A. Schweitzer, and F. Overbeck are pioneers in viewing the kingdom of God as future.
The one who prays engages in pure prayer. First, God is the One the prayer invokes. Second, such persons turn to God. Third, it carries with it the certainty that God will hear the prayer.
How does such a prayer enter the lips of the Christian? It has eschatological content and character. It has its basis and meaning in this history. The kingdom has already encountered those who offer the prayer. The new thing for which they pray has already entered their lives. It already terrifies them as judgment and comforts them as grace. The kingdom is already an event. The new thing coming is the history of Jesus Christ. He is the mystery no system can contain. He is God acting in human history. He calls people to obedience. He is the limitation of human disorder and the limit on the demonic. He was in his history the immanence of the rule of God. First, the past act of the coming of Jesus and the drawing near of the kingdom had the power to present itself to the Christians who looked back to it as also their future, and the future of the whole world. Second, the first Christians were still able to find a place for and to follow the impulse that came to them from the history. Such an apparent impossibility became actuality in the Easter history. It also became actuality ever since through the work of the Holy Spirit, the power of God to open blind eyes to see this light. The Holy Spirit is the forward that majestically awakens, enlightens, leads, pushes, and impels, which God has spoken in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. One could give no answer without reference to Easter and Pentecost.
The unassuming action of prayer is still a movement toward that which one prays. When some turn bravely to God with this petition, then with their hearts and lips, caught up by what they pray, their whole life, thought, and deed are set in motion, oriented to the point to which they look with the petition. They established themselves on that for which they pray. Christians live toward the kingdom and the new heaven and new earth it promises. They wait for the kingdom, but they also run toward it. As such, God claims them for action in the effort and struggle for human righteousness. At issue is human righteousness. Such righteousness is imperfect, fragile, and problematic. What can one mean by kingdom-likeness and therefore human righteousness? The aim is to help people. Christians can look only where they see God looking and try to live with no other purpose than that with which God acts in Jesus Christ. The concern of Christians is with humanity, and therefore they are humanists. The question is whether any cause will serve the improvement of the human condition in a provisional way. Devotion to a worldview ought not to get in the way of such a concern. Christians, looking always to the only problem that seriously interests them, must allow themselves the liberty in certain circumstances of saying only a partial Yes or No where people might expect another answer. They will not become prisoners of their own decisions. God loved humanity. Christians owe to humanity whatever righteousness they have. In praying for the kingdom, in praying, “Come, Lord Jesus,” they do not abandon humanity. They see in every person a companion and future brother or sister, and treat the neighbor as such.
One can gaze beyond the ambiguity of human life in the petition, “Thy kingdom come.” Theology cannot become here and now a reality without being accompanied by its internal endangering through this contradiction. Its character remains fragmentary, a knowing in part. The theologian deals with doubt in the gospel. Paul praises the gospel in Romans 1:16-17 as the power of the God. However, what is the power of the gospel compared with the powers of world economics, natural science, and technology? The gospel does not even seem as powerful as the arts, sports, fashion, ideology, mystic, rationalism, or ethics. People seem to live by these things rather than the gospel. Further, the community of faith in terms of its feebleness and disunity can also be a source of doubt. Flaw in individual life can also lead to doubt.[26]
We worship God as Creator, as gracious Reconciler, and as powerful and beautiful Redeemer. Therefore, we should use our lives in the service of the rule of God and in revolt against acknowledged idols. The advent of the rule of God has begun. Redemption is the completion of that rule. We are between the times in an ambiguous mixture of light and darkness. We have seen the reconciling grace of God but we depend upon the final revelation of a grace yet to come. We hasten toward the consummation of the rule of God. Of course, again, we do not have the power to actualize that rule. We cannot identify our activity straightforwardly as the activity of God. We can aim toward our action as analogy of that rule or corresponding to that rule, but never identical. Our engagement in the service of the rule of God is subject to radical eschatological qualification. We hasten toward a future that is the gift of God rather than the result of our achievement. We are decidedly NOT the future for which we have been waiting. Our hastening is one of prayerful waiting upon the gracious initiative of God.[27]
When we pray for the rule of God to come, we pray that we may also receive the insight to see the first signs of this new age, of the victory that God has already won in Christ. We pray to see the events of our history in the light of the universal day that is ahead of us. We have this insight because of the event of the past, which looks toward the Day that is coming that will reveal the universality of the work of God. We receive the gift of living in that hope. In praying for the rule of God to come, we have hope for our time, for today, for tomorrow. The great Future is also future. This fact is enough to help us see the insufficiency of present works, the pettiness of our conflicts. In particular, it sets in context our personal, psychological conflicts. We see such tensions differently in light of the rule of God to come. Such a hope helps us live in tranquility, good humor, and in love that may attract some people. He notes that in Luke, a variant reading asks the Holy Spirit to come upon us and purify us. The variant is a proper commentary on this prayer. If one prays for the coming of the rule of God, one is praying that the Holy Spirit may come within us.[28]
The Third Petition: Thy will be done, on earth as it in heaven (Matthew)
The third petition is in Matthew 6:10, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This addition is typical of liturgical texts, which would not like the lack of balance created by only two thou petitions and three we petitions. This petition has an interesting parallel with the prayer of R. Eliezer (90-1000 AD), “Do thy will in heaven above, and give rest of spirit to those who fear thee below.” In addition, Matthew has more references to the will of God than any other gospel, and his references to heaven are numerous. Thus, most scholars think Matthew added the phrase. It also adds little to the second petion, since the rule of God comes wherever the will of God is done. This is in line with the personalizing of the Lord’s Prayer that Matthew does in 6:9-24.
Such a prayer refers to faithful resignation to the will of God during our lives. More than that, it refers to active discerning and doing of the will of God by the one who prays. If we assume that the company of heaven does the will of God willingly, continually, perfectly, and fully, then we pray that humanity will do the same on earth.[29] The biblical background of this petition is one we find in Isaiah 40-55. The prophet stresses the idea of God making a reality of the divine plan, will, and decree for salvation in the world. The prophet writes of the realization and accomplishment of the will and plan of God. Thus, the purpose of God will stand; God will fulfill the divine intention. God has spoken; God will bring it to pass. God has planned and God will do it (Isaiah 46:10-11). Like the rain that nourishes the earth, the word of God will not be empty. It shall accomplish the purpose of God and succeed in the matter for which God sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11). The will of God is the good pleasure God has from eternity, fulfilling the great plan God has for the world. Jesus made it clear that only those who do the will of the Father will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). Jesus likely refers to the commandments, a formula we also find in Psalm 40:9, 103: 21, 143:10. The Lord has established the throne in the heavens, the kingdom rules over all, while angels are obedient to the divine word, ministers that do the divine will (Psalm 103:19-21).[30] John Chrysostom could say that we are to long for the things in heaven, but also make the earth a heaven as we continue to live in it.[31]
The will of God is mysterious because God chooses sinners like us to fulfill proleptically the promises of God among rebellious human beings. The action of God toward salvation is a gracious provision in which God binds the divine self to the divine plan for the fatherly relationship God desires with rebellious humanity. Jesus interprets this mysterious will of God, but is also the one who executes this will in his life. The return of Christ will be the execution of the will of God for peace and justice on earth among the rebellious recipients of the promises of God. In calling sinners to repent in the ministry of Jesus, we must not neglect the divine right to bring judgment.[32]
The will of God is for salvation, which creates redemption in the face of all human sin. It refers to the commandments of God, but even more to surrendering oneself to the saving decree of God. The will of God is to maintain and save that which God has created. The will of God is to fulfill the work of God by the manifestation of the rule of God. In praying for the will of God to be done, we are praying for the execution of the plan of God. We cannot fulfill the plan. We ask God to turn toward us in loving concern for us and for our world, patiently working with us until the end. Yet, God is already engaged in carrying out the will of God. We pray in communion with Jesus Christ for the fulfillment of the will of God.[33] In Gethsemane, Jesus would ask that the cup of suffering pass. However, he wants the will of God rather than his own will.[34] In Jesus, the will of God is done on earth, as it is heaven.[35] Barth would have us note that the emphasis of the first three petitions on “Thy,” referring to the Father who is in heaven, becomes the basis of the following three petitions.[36] This petition is of vital importance. The will of God should be done on earth as the end and goal of the divine purpose and activity as it is done in heaven as its origin and commencement. The will of God should be done on earth today, tomorrow, and always, as heaven already does the will of God. The will of God should be done on earth by the obedience of the earthly creature as it is done in heaven by the obedience of the heavenly. The will of God should be done on earth with the same self-evident necessity as it is done in heaven. The point is that heaven should come to earth. From heaven, God should cause the will of God to be done on earth as in heaven. The petition presupposes that heaven and earth are still divided or at least distinct. It asks that this differentiation should cease in the day of consummation. It presupposes that the will of God is done in heaven. Heaven is the created sphere in which the will of God is done. Such obedience is still to come on earth. We must orient our lives toward the will of God. Thus, we know that for which we ask when we ask for the will of God to be done. Chrysostom paraphrases, “O Lord, let us be so zealous for the heavenly kingdom that we may will as it does.” Luke 19:37-8 and Luke 2:13-4 are good commentary on what this petition means. Both passages reflect the biblical emphasis upon the movement from heaven to earth.[37]Here is the substance of all prayer. What do we pray for, when we pray like this? We clearly pray God will make us obedient. We want nothing other than the will of God done to us. We pray that in some way God will deal with us in the gracious, holy knowledge, and will of God. Yet, we must not dispute with God, as if it is not the will of God done to us, or as if the will of God is not really gracious and holy. At what point and in what position will we stand to offer such a dispute? Rather, we stand on the side of the will of God rather than dispute with God. The will of God is not our fate. We adore the will of God, for the will of our Lord is always justified and right. We are not speaking of the will of God at all if we do not grant it this range and adore it.[38]
People may intend evil, but God is able to bring good out of it. God did not plan everything human history. Rather, this petition invites us to reflect upon the amazing resilience of the purposes of God. Our plans do not stump the purposes of God for the world. Sometimes, looking back upon our lives, the history of the church, and even world history, we can see that the twists and turns fit amazingly well into the divine will, as if a hand has an overriding purpose in it all.[39]
This prayer also shows that the proclamation by Jesus of the fatherly goodness of God has a relation to the message of the nearness of divine rule. The prayer begins with two petitions (three in Matthew) that are oriented to the coming of the lordship of the Father.[40] The name of God is hallowed among us as we honor God as God and give place to the divine will. For that reason, the first two petitions (three in Matthew) belong closely together.[41] What Jesus says about the Father has a close connection to the message of the nearness of the lordship of the Father and the summons to people to subordinate all other concerns to the dawning future of God. Then, they will acknowledge God as God. Thus, the Lord’s Prayer begins with petitions to the Father for the hallowing of the divine name, the coming of the divine kingdom, and the doing of the divine will on earth, as it is done in the hiddenness of heaven. The name of God is hallowed among us as we honor God as God and give place to the divine will. For that reason, the first three petitions belong closely together.[42] This prayer also shows that the proclamation by Jesus of the fatherly goodness of God has a relation to the message of the nearness of divine rule. The prayer begins with three petitions that are oriented to the coming of the lordship of the Father.[43]
The first order of prayer is to align oneself with who God is and what God wants in the world. We are attempting to school ourselves to what God wants. The desires of our hearts are important to God. We need to bring our desires to God and be sure they are in line with the will of God. What does God want? This is a time to reflect prayerfully upon what God says to us through the Bible, through other religions, through friends and neighbors, through devotional reading, and through world events. This requires a discerning mind and heart. What will bring honor to God? What will bring our lives into conformity with the will and purpose of God?
In these first petitions, we make some powerful admissions. The world God has created is not one ordered to God. The covenant God has with the world in Jesus Christ remains a secret to much of the world. The world does not yet witness to the honor of God. It does not seek to make the rule of God real by conforming to the will of God. It remains ambivalent, neutral, and indecisive in its relationship to God. The church and the individual Christian participates in this ambivalence. God has already hallowed the name of God in making a good creation. To know God is to honor and love God by living in obedience. In a sense, every blade of grass, every snowflake, and every breath we take, honors the name of God. They become parables of the rule of God. God remains constantly open to the world. God creates, sustains, and brings to its completion, the world God has made. God loves the enemies of God. People cannot escape God. The subjective ignorance of God does not obliterate the ways in which it unconsciously expresses honor to God, anticipates the rule of God, and does the will of God. Yet, the world evades the witness of the church. Granted, the weakness of its witness gives the world some excuse for its evasion. The hidden quality of the knowledge of God in the world contrasts with the way in which the history of Jesus of Nazareth exhibits the hallowing of the name of God, the actualizing of the rule of God, and the performing of the will of God. The world remains ignorant of God. Yet, the world is not as devoid of God as the atheist would propose. For example, the atheist would hardly need to propose the proposition, “There is no god,” if the proposition were as obvious as the atheist suggests. Granted, the reverse is also true. Those who believe in God would not need the proposition, “There is a god,” if it were self-evident. The point is that the world is ambiguous in this regard. The world is not as godless as the atheist says it is. The world is not as full of God as some devotees of religion might say. Religion itself arise from a form of the knowledge of God in the world that humanity cannot escape. Yet, such religion seeks to domesticate God. In spite of so many religions, God remains unknown and strange. The world can desecrate the name of God by elevating its ideological cause as if it were the cause of God. God becomes useful to an agenda that fulfills its goals, aims, and aspirations. The world desecrates the name of God by not knowing truly the fellow human being or the world of nature.
The church is part of the world. As such, it participates in the knowledge of God the world has. Relying as it does upon the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, it can see the knowledge of God in the world and name it where the world cannot. As the church lives by Christ and bear witness to Christ, it is also faithful to the world, for Christ sends it into the world. The church ought to expect ignorance of God in the world. Yet, the church acknowledges in its prayer for God to hallow the name of God, for the rule of God to come, and for the doing of the will of God, that the church has fallen short of sanctifying, honoring, delighting in, and having zeal for, the name of God. The church is unfaithful to itself in this regard. The church may take itself too seriously, a sinister way in which it brings glory to itself. The church can also not take itself seriously enough as it is only half-sure of its cause. In either case, the church is unfaithful to its Lord and unfaithful to the world.
Individual Christians knows God well. They seek to sanctify the name of God in their lives. Living in the light of God makes the darkness one sees in the world and in the church even more strange.
Let us look at our own lives. Us Christians are able to know and live with a clear understanding that we brought nothing into this world and can take nothing out, that wealth is a great deceiver, and yet, we live with two masters. Us Christians have a profound sense that we are always in the wrong before God, where as we are strongly in the right. We are confessing members of the Christian community, while finding it strangely hard to live in a real unity of spirit with fellow Christians. We see clearly the need to handle weak fellow persons in the church with special patience, and yet we do not bear with them. We believe in peace. Yet do not Christian fighters for peace of all schools compete with non-Christians for the honor of being the most difficult of all God’s creatures? We are not to have anxiety about tomorrow, yet, we regard our situation as special and in need of anxiety. The world and its lusts pass away, yet, we ensure our fair share of it. We live in the joy of the Lord, and yet, when we have to suffer reverses, we have the odd freedom to react if possible with greater pessimism. We believe in the primacy of faith, and yet, every moment we think it appropriate to think and to take up positions according to the rules of some self-invented or acquired psychology, politics, aesthetics, or morality unaffected by theological considerations. The list could go on. The point is that the Christian is righteous and sinner. Our knowledge of God and our ignorance of God are present equally in each of us.
Calling upon God in these petitions is an act of obedience. The people who pray in this way long for the great and final day, the Sabbath day of the light of God that abolishes all the division of the present. They turn toward the day with some movement of their lives toward it. As the command of God, this petition demands zeal for the honor of the name of God from us, the anticipation of the rule of God from us, and the performing of the will of God. It demands a movement in our lives. The Reformation understood this petition was that with the help of God, it might be that our works and words, through our lives and teaching, we would honor God. The petition is for God to act. Yet, as with all prayer, it implies human movement toward that which the person prays.
Our part can only be our part, taking place in due modesty and honesty. We adopt and validate the idea that we engage in active participation in the hallowing of the name of God, the anticipation of the rule of God, and the performing of the will of God. Of course, we cannot try to do what belongs only to God. Human beings cannot make the future envisioned happen through their word and work. The fulfillment of these first petitions is in the hands of God. We move toward this petition in personal life, in church, and in world. Such limits do not alter the urgency required for us to make this movement. The knowledge of God we do have is not idle. Living in obedience to the command of God, we move toward the command to hallow the name of God, to realize the rule of God, and to perform the will of God. With small steps or large leaps, with humility and resoluteness, we move toward its fulfillment.
Praying these first three petitions as a believer is to experience the tension between what one prays for and the present experience of the world. The commentary by Matthew reveals the pastoral concern that believers reflect in ther lives the values of these petitions. Matthew personalizes the petitions. Though the world is not now hallowing the name of God or letting the rule of God come or doing the will of God, it is possible for the believer to do these things by giving exclusive loyalty to God. Where this is done, the name of God is indeed hallowed, the rule of God comes, and the will of God is done.
To sum it up, Christians must confirm the precedence of the Word of God in what they will, choose, and do. The precedence of the living Word of Christ must assert itself over all other factors that may influence the life of the Christian. One must hear the Word of God first. The Word has distinction, majesty, and dignity that mark it off from all other factors that touch the lives of Christians. The Word of God hallows the name of God, points us toward the rule of God, and helps us to know the will of God. Living by the Word, we participate in hallowing the name of God, anticipating the rule of God, and performing the will of God.
To give the Word of God precedence over other constitutive factors in our lives is something we can do. The Holy Spirit can enlighten, command, and help. The Word of God differentiates itself from all others in that it does not just stand alongside these factors, but puts itself ahead of them. Other factors will influence Christians, of course. We can make that assumption. We cannot ignore or eliminate them. As those who pray this this set of petitions, our thoughts, words, and actions do not result in mere sanctioning of the status quo.
Christians are persons of the world who have heard the Word, recognize its value, and live by its authority and promise. They seek to be wise hearers and doers of the Word in the world. Their lives will become a text accessible to Christian and non-Christian alike. So long as they do not have the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, the non-Christian may not understand it, but it becomes legible to them as written by a human hand. The Word is present to non-Christians in the person of Christians as bearers of the Word of God. To make this witness fruitful and successful is the affair of God. The affair of the Christian is to be unassuming and resolute doers of the Word, and in this way to be witnesses to it. Christians cannot take part in the great vacillation contained in the ambivalence of its knowledge of God. Christians present themselves to other people of the world as nonconformists, as those who are zealous for the honor of God, as a witness to what they have to advocate to others of their kind. They do this by offering to them the image of a strangely human person – Jesus Christ.
The first three petitions have focused upon the glory of the Lord. They correspond to the first four of the Ten Commandments. In them, we are to pray that the cause of God reach their fulfillment in the hallowing of the name of God, the coming of the rule of God, and in the doing of the will of God. The cause of God becomes our cause as well. Our prayer for these things is to issue forth in an altering of our lives so that we become part of the fulfillment of these petitions. God invites us to participate in their fulfillment in our work, church, and world. The freedom, joy, and alacrity of the second set of three petitions have their basis in the first three.
The We Petitions
The first three petitions are the ground on which we walk to pray the second set of petitions, in which the focus shifts from the Father to the needs of the one who prays. They assure us that we live with God as we align our cause with the cause of God. As we do so, the second set of petitions assures us that God aligns with our cause as well. Thus, the second set of petitions concern us directly. Our prayer concerns itself with our comfort, good pleasure, and physical and spiritual wellbeing. We can appeal with simplicity on behalf of our cause. We entrust the baggage we have accumulated in life to God. Our baggage is temporal, material, secular, eternal, Christian, ecclesiastical, and theological. We must remember that Jesus of Nazareth prays this prayer. We join him in this prayer. In this prayer, we take part in the action of God. God is busy for the glory of God and for our salvation. We benefit from this divine action by uniting with it in prayer. The cause of God and our cause have an intimate connection and unity. The “us” of these petitions involves those who wish to unite with Jesus Christ. The prayer becomes direct, explicit, and imperative. The prayer shifts toward boldness and temerity. We are asking God to have a concern for human affairs. God has accepted us as co-workers. The first three petitions involve us in the cause of God, and the second three boldly invite God to have concern for the human cause. Christ has vanquished the enemy, inviting us to participate in the victory.[44]
The first three petitions express what it means to love God with all that you are. Jesus said this was the first and greatest commandments. If we look upon Christian life as living the Lord’s Prayer, we need to explore what it means to love God in this way. An important part of that exposition would be to explore the first four of the ten commandments.
The next section of the prayer addresses the earthly concerns that Christians face. The Lord’s Prayer continues with a set of petitions regarding personal needs for daily bread, forgiveness, and temptation. The prayer to the Father that Jesus taught his disciples to pray combines the prayer for daily bread, the sum of all earthly needs, with the prayer for forgiveness, which Jesus connects with a readiness to forgive.
The Fourth Petition:
Give us today our daily bread. (Matthew)
Give us each day our daily bread. (Luke)
The third (fourth) petition asks the Father: 3Give us each day our daily bread. Here is a prayer in which the one who prays asks that the Father will provide for daily material needs. Matthew 6:25-34/Luke12:22-32 is the commentary by Matthew on this part of the Lord’s Prayer. It is a wisdom saying. It prohibits having anxiety about the material things of life, especially what to eat, drink, or put on the body. Using illustrations from minor to major: birds do not sow or reap or gather into barnns, but people do. If birds are fed, so will the Father make sure that you are fed. Anxiety cannot add even a small amount to one’s span of life. clothing is given to flowers, which do not work, so surely the Father will clothe people who do work. The final illustration is drawn from the experience of the Gentiles, who seek things to eat and drink, but the Father knows people need these things. The admonition is that if a person seeks the rule of God with a certain single-mind loyalty, then the material things, the necessities of life, wil be provided for. This type of exhortation to trust the Father for material things of life is closely paralleled in Jewish literature. Thus, one source says that I have not seen in my lifetime a deer engaged in gathering fruits, a lion carrying burdens, or a fox as a shopkeeper, yet they are sustained without trouble, though they were created only to serve me, whereas I was created to serve my Maker. Now, if they are sustained without trouble, how much more should I be sustained without trouble, who was created to serve my Maker (Kid 82b). R. Eleazer said that whoever has bread in his basket and asks what shall I eat tomorrow, is not other than those of little faith (Sotah 48b). The advice is not to fret over the trouble of tomorrow, for you know not what a day may bring forth, and peradventure tomorrow is no more (Sanh. 100b). Do not prepare for the morrow before it comes, for no one knows what evil it brings (from Egypt). The good of the morrow will care for the morrow (From Arabic). The focus of Matthew is on the material understanding of bread. As I have already discussed, another early interpretation was that this bread refers to the spiritual nourishment that only the Father can give.
The differences between Matthew and Luke in wording suggest that Matthew is closer to the original saying. Luke has the verb here in the present tense and uses an adverb that stresses that the bread is given day by day rather than today as it is in Matthew. This suggests that Luke has an interest in focusing on the continuous nature of the provision the Father, while Matthew focuses on the provision for this day. I direct you to an interesting parallel: feed me with the food that is needful for me (Proverbs 30:8c). The Greek word ἐπιούσιον is used only here in the New Testament and only in one other place in Greek literature. It is difficult to translate. Jerome (342-420) says that he had an Aramaic translation of Matthew before him. His comment was that in the Gospel according to the Hebrews he found “mahar,” which means “for tomorrow,” so that the sense is, “Our bread for tomorrow” or even “our future bread give us today.” He followed the Johannine tradition and interpreted the bread as referring to the bread of salvation, which is the future bread the Father gives today in communion. Others suggest that the saying, when applied to the Palestinian home, would make just as much sense. The bread to sustain the family tomorrow would indeed have to be given today, for there was no way to store it.
Jesus invites us to look to the Father for preservation in this life and into the new creation. We pray for bread for the coming day. We pray for the bread that the Father will provide at the heavenly table, with the final intervention of God. We pray we will have a place at the table of the Father in the new creation. We pray Jesus would be our bread of life (John 6).[45] We pray that humanity may receive the necessities of life.[46] Just as their forebears lived by the bread that came to them daily in the desert (Exodus 16:4), so now they must rely on the Father for their daily sustenance. This petition does not acknowledge provision for a prolonged period. It does not plan for the future. The end-time situation is so acute, the current proclamation so urgent, that no planning is possible for Jesus and his disciples. They live in the now, no knowing in the morning where they will be at night. Their situation corresponds to the Hebrews in the wilderness. The Hebrews left the securing of their life in Egypt and began a journey toward a new social order of mutual solidarity. In the exceptional situation of wilderness, God nourished the people with manna. His disciples are not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. The troubles of today are enough for today (Matthew 6:34). They can count on the local followers throughout the land. This petition is about a new form of society, a new family in which all hep each other to enable the proclamation of the rule of God.[47]
The early Christian exegetical community began to allegorize the meaning of bread as the "bread of heaven." Later it referred to the Eucharistic bread. The overwhelming tradition has remained rooted in the notion of bread as the bread of subsistence, the food that keeps us alive.
Since we need daily spiritual and physical nourishment, we properly pray for the things that will sustain our lives. This prayer does not expect abundance. Rather, this prayer sees the sufficiency of receiving what we need for this day. We properly make such basic needs a matter of prayer, recognizing that sometimes Christians die of starvation in a famine and do not receive what they need for each day. Yet, placing such matters before God helps us to know God as the source and sustainer of life.
When we ask for daily bread, Luther suggested that “bread” means the necessities and requirements of life. In biblical language, it can refer to the minimum nourishment without which the poor cannot survive. It can also refer to a sign of the grace of God. Bread becomes something sacred. We pray that would God give us the minimum requirements of life, but doing so as a sign anticipating the wholeness of life. We receive in the gift of the minimum requirements of life the sign of eternal goodness and the assurance of life with God. We are a people in the wilderness, surrounding by the glories of creation. God is faithful to us as our creator. God desires that we live.[48]
When we pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are acknowledging that God is the giver of life. We confess our deep, daily dependency upon God to give us what we need to live. As fragile as our lives are, God gives us what we need to sustain life, even something as mundane, but essential, as bread. We pray with the psalmist that all creatures look to the Father to give the food they need at the right time, as the Lord sustains creation with an open hand (Psalm 104:27-28).
When we want to meet God, we gather and break bread in Jesus' name. We pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," not just as a survival strategy; no matter how much bread we get, we shall not survive. We are mortal. In praying for daily bread, we are praying for the daily presence of God among us.
Note that we pray only for daily bread. A more accurate translation of this word "daily" might be sufficient or enough. To pray for more would tempt us to try to live as if we were self-sufficient, not in constant need of a gracious God. When manna was given in the wilderness, the Hebrews were permitted to gather only as much as they needed for each day (Exodus 16:16). Daily we must reach out to God who daily reaches out to us. Daily we wake up to the realization that, if we live, it is only because of the daily gifts of God.
People in our situation ought to pray for the grace to be able to say, in a culture of over-consumption, "give us the grace to know when enough is enough" or "help us to say 'no' when the world entices us with so much." In praying this prayer, perhaps we will become schooled in desiring what we really need rather than that which we desire. Perhaps we will one day be able to say with Paul, "I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Phil 4:11b-13).
Here we pray, "Give us ...our daily bread." We are not praying for my bread; it is our bread. Bread is a communal product. No bread is eaten alone. The farmers in Iowa, the bakers in New York, the delivery truck drivers in town all make bread a corporate endeavor. None of us eats or lives alone. We are also generational beings. We rely upon what human beings have done in the course of time to meet such necessities of life. Each generation has a responsibility to future generations to pass on the gifts they have received.[49]
Every gift is also a responsibility. To pray "give us today our daily bread" is to radically reexamine ourselves, to acknowledge the claim that God has placed upon us through the gift of bread, to admit the responsibility we have for our neighbor's need.
This prayer has a close relationship to Matthew 6:25, where we are not to worry about our lives.[50]Jesus wants us to pray with the same confidence for our daily bread as we do for the forgiveness of sins, the revelation of the divine name, the coming of the rule of God, or the doing of the will of God on earth as it is in heaven.[51] Jesus acknowledges the relationship between humanity, animals, and vegetation that God established in creation. God provides necessary food for humanity. God abundantly spread the table for all.[52]The basic motive of work is the earning of our daily bread. Without it, we cannot exist at all for the cause of God. We cannot pray for the hallowing of the name of God, the coming of the rule of God, and the doing of the will of God. The first three petitions place us at the service of God and summon us to be witnesses for God. The fourth petition is an immediate call to work. This petition refers to the existence we are to receive from God in prayer and maintained by work. In our work, we preserve, develop, and fashion our existence. If we do not work, neither should we eat. Daily bread refers to that which is indispensable or at least highly desirable for the existence of each of us. They are the object of our prayers and the aim of our work. Of course, our work reminds us that others are seeking to earn their existence by their work. How will we understand our work in relation to them? They are our fellow human beings. We cannot be human beings unless we see them as our fellow human beings as we receive assistance from them and as we assist them. If our work is genuinely the command of God, then we must ask in what way it is human. We need to consider the humanity of our work. If we reflect upon our actual practice of work, we can see the distance between the human quality of the command of God on the one hand and our observance of it. Even in our best activity, we are perverted people in a perverted world. Human work takes place in co-existence and co-operation. However, human work also takes place in isolation and mutual opposition. Human work should provide each of us with our daily bread in peace. It offers us an opportunity for the development of our particular abilities and the corresponding accomplishments. It would then liberate us for the service of God, which is our real work in obedience to the command of God to work. Yet, our reality of work is that reflects the struggle for human existence. It affirms our existence, in the isolation and abstraction of our needs, wishes, and desires and in the ignoring, thwarting, and suppressing of those of others. We express our inhumanity in isolation from and opposition to fellow humanity. Ecclesiastes reveals the shadow that hangs over work. The Reformers gave some approval to the notion of work as worship. Barth cannot yield to this type of enthusiasm for work. In his view, the economic arrangements of the modern era have intensified the inhumane quality of work. If we are to experience work as the command of God, we must avoid the thoughtless opinion that one can work to procure daily bread in isolation from fellow human beings. Nourishing bread derives from work gained from the bread broken and shared with fellow workers. The vital claims of become part of our lives. If we are to experience work as the command of God, we must guard against the thoughtless opinions concerning the claims that each of us advances. What tears people apart and incites them against each other is the various wants, desires, and claims that have such a slender foundation. We experience the revolution of empty and inordinate desire. We have lust for superabundance. We have lust for possessions. We have lust for power over others. Work in the service of genuine and vital claims will have the character of peaceful co-operation. In any case, these two evil roots in human work is not something that either capitalism or socialism can eradicate. We can do much to remedy these two thoughtless approaches to work. The competition can be fine, invigorating, and exciting. Yet, the means becomes an end as people compete for the necessities of life. The struggle for existence seems deeply embedded in nature. It may be behind what we think of as progress of civilization and culture. We may ease the situation by people who engage the context with degree of decency and generosity. We can place limits on the struggle with a system of justice that sets limits between freedom and caprice, between legitimate and illegitimate competition, between admissible and inadmissible seizure for one’s own advantage. The command of God will always gravitate toward such counter-movements to the thoughtless approach to work. Yet, work under the sign of this competition is always inhuman. To the socialist mind of Barth, modern industrialization can only rest upon the principle of exploitation, where benefits accrue to the owners of the means of production. He acknowledges arguments in favor of free competition, but seems not to take them seriously. He admits that pure capitalism does not exist. Employer and employee can develop mutual loyalty. One can remove its worst features. One can mitigate its greatest severities. Yet, to his mind, capitalism makes people a means to end. He admits, however, that state socialism can reflect the same bitterroot and thoughtlessness as does capitalism. Socialism will not end the class struggle. His basic point is that the church must stand against exploitation that arises from the two thoughtless approaches to work. The command of God is a call for counter-movements on behalf of making economic arrangements increasingly humane. Christianity in the West needs to comprehend the disorder and assert the command of God. It must stand with the exploited and the victim. We must not forget our fellow-humanity nor forget our genuine and vital claims. The fact that we do forget, giving precedence to isolation and inordinate desire, we express our basic disobedience to the command of God. In any case, the decisive word of the church does not tie itself to a particular program. Its decisive word is the proclamation of the revolution of God against ungodliness and unrighteousness and in favor of the proclamation of the rule of God that has already come and is yet still to come.[53]
The Fifth Petition:
And forgive us our debts (ὀφειλήματα)
,
as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew)
Forgive us our sins (ἁμαρτίας),
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. (Luke)
The fourth (fifth) petition to the Father is: 4And forgive us our sins (hamartias in Luke, changed from opheilemata, debts, in Matthew), for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. The interpretation by Matthew is in 7:1-5/Luke 6:37-42. It has a wisdom pattern. The prohibition is a blanket rejection of censorious judgment of other people, or else the person who judges will be judged by the Father. The basis for this prohibition is in two parts. First, the standing a person has at the judgment of God will be directly related to the relationship the person has to others. It would be wise to link one’s measuring with the divine measuring at the end. In another saying, one who calls down divine judgment the neighbor is punished first (Rosch hasch 16b, 2nd century AD); judge others by their good side (Pique Aboth I. 6); do not judge your friend until you come to the place of your friend (Pique Aboth II.4); one who judges one’s neighbor in the scale of merit is judged favorably (Shab 127b). one rabbi lamented the popularity of this saying even among the Jewish people and attacks it by saying that I should be surprised if there were anyone in this generation who would accept correction. If one says remove the speck from your eye, the other will reply to remove the beam from your eye (R. Tarphon, AD 100, TB, Arachin 16b). Such illustrations use hyperbole and absurdity to get across the point about not judging at all. the first illustration shows how easy it is to spot faults to others while it is easy to overlook one’s own faults. The second illustration says it is easy to judge someone else for something of much less consequence than one’s own faults. Thus, Jesus counsels strict self-examination and self-improvement. The concluding admonition can be interpreted in two ways. One would be that after self-examination and the log is removed from oneself, then one will be able to help others. but this seems to go against the thrust of the text. Another possibility would be that lit is an ironic statement on the principle of not judging at all. in this sense, it would be like the question of Jesus in John 8:7, about allowing the first stone to be thrown at the woman caught in adultery by the person who was without sin. To judge in this sense is to be a hypocrite and to already have the beam in one’s own eye.
The differences between Matthew and Luke in this petition focus on tense of the verbs and the word sins in Luke. Matthew again has the verbs in the aorist tense and thus focuses on the pact action of forgiveness. Luke emphasizes the present action of forgiveness of the believer. Though Luke uses the word sins in the first part of the pedions he uses debts in the second part. This verifies the originality of the text in Matthew.
Our sins are the greatest hindrance from receiving the bounty of God. Our sins bring us into bondage and wounds from which we need liberation and healing.[54] What seems important to Jesus is that the people of God live in harmony with each other in mutual forgiveness. Making trips to the temple to make sacrifices will be of no effect if this social reality is not actual. Amos 5 makes it clear that God hates solemn assemblies when the people of God ignore justice. He wants justice and righteousness to flow (Amos 5:21-24). For the people of God to live unreconciled with each other while engaging in acts of worship is a farce. People who live in unanimity and reconciliation are, for Jesus, the indispensable precondition of every form of worship. Prayer and worship are to lead to the creation of a new common life. God has taken the initiative in reconciliation, and we must take the initiative toward reconciliation as God has done.[55]
As human beings, we are prone to sin and are also the victims of other's aggressions. These sins the disciple must categorically forgive even as the Father forgives the disciples their sins. We can see here one of the reasons for maintaining the unity of Jesus with God in his public ministry. In his ministry, we find the nearness of the kingdom that connects between divine forgiveness and the forgiveness that people are to have toward each other. [56] Believers do not receive the love of the Father as a private possession. They can abide in the love of God, and hence in fellowship with God, only as they pass it on to others. The fellowship of love that the Father has with the Son is a love into which the children of God live.[57]
The heart of the message of Jesus was the announcing of the nearness of the divine reign. Yet, Jesus called this God whose reign was near and even dawning with his coming, his Father. God shows fatherly qualities in many ways, but is especially ready to forgive those who turn to the Father and ask for forgiveness and forgive others.[58]
Since sin so powerfully affects our lives, we are grateful for a God who is gracious, loving, and compassionate enough to forgive us our sins. This same God calls upon us to release any tendency toward resentment we might have, and forgive the sins others commit against us. Relationships are far from easy. We often hurt those closest to us. What we want is to extend forgiveness to others, even as we know we will need forgiveness from them. The forgiveness and love that flows from the Father to us is not our private possession, but must flow outward toward others.
Luther says the church admits its sinfulness when it prays the Lord’s Prayer.[59] We are in default in our relation to God. We owe to God the totality of our person. To forgive is to regard our debtor as having done no wrong. Those who know they depend upon divine mercy can do nothing other than extend mercy to their fellow human beings. We acknowledge that we are debtors to each other daily. Human forgiveness is a beautiful thing. Let us not settle down in order to enjoy the offences against us. Let us not nurse grudges against others. Rather, we need to retain some humor regarding those who offend us. When we receive pardon from God, it enables us to extend pardon to others. Even before I ask for pardon, God has pardoned us in the cross.[60]
This petition moves from the need for material and spiritual nourishment to the need to be in relationship with others. the concept of sin as a debt owed to God is constant in rabbinic teaching. This debt was removed by good works. For Jesus, the debt is removed by forgiveness, showing mercy to others. lit is only at this point in the prayer that human action becomes the trigger for releasing the action of God when merch is shown to others, God will show merc to the believer. For sin as debt, see Matthew 18:23-35 and Luke 7:41-50. In the Sermon on the Mount alone, Jesus connects forgiveness from God with forgiveness of others at several points: 5:23-24, 25-26, 38-42, 43-48, 6:14-15, and 7:1-5.
Jesus states clearly the close connection between receiving mercy from God and showing mercy to others. Matthew shows that one of the greatest hindrances to showing mercy to others is the spirit of censorious judgment. It is all too easy to overlook one’s own faults while at the same time magnifying the faults of others. Another author makes this connection: forgive your neighbor the wrong done and then God will pardon your sins when you pray (Ecclesiasticus 28:2).
The Sixth Petition
And lead us not into temptation, (Matthew and Luke)
but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew)
The fifth (sixth) and final petition to the Father is: And do not bring us to the time of trial.” The background for this petition we must again go back to the wilderness experience of the Hebrew people. Exodus 32:11-14 recounts the temptation of the people of God to apostasy. Here is the primal temptation and the primal sin. Here is apostasy from the calling or vocation of the people of God. Jesus shaped the entire prayer against a solid biblical background. Jesus must of read scripture with intensity. He followed the path of Israel, only now in pure obedience to the will of the Father. He urges his disciples to follow the same path.[61]
A Jewish prayer with which Jesus might have been familiar asks that God not lead my foot into the power of sin and bring me not into the power of iniquity and not into the power of temptation, and not into the power of anything shameful (b. Berakat 60b). temptation is the daily testing of life that confront the believer. The prayer is for preservation amid such testing. In another setting, a list of heroes of the faith endured such testing and includes the exhortation: My child, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation (Ecclesiasticus 2:1). Here is the final “We” petition, desiring preservation from falling under the power of temptation.
Matthew 7:6 is the interpretation of this petition he offers. One of the problems interpreters of the Sermon on the Mount have had is trying to fit this saying into any context. When it is seen that the Lord’s Prayer has provided for this part of the sermon, that in fact this part of the sermon is an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, then the verse has a context that fits nicely. In this context. The verse means that the disciple is warned against not taking their discipleship seriously. As disciples, they have a privileged status as children of the heavenly Father. When times of testing and temptation come, do not allow failure. That would be apostasy. This verse has a parallel with another in which the same imagery of dogs and swine are used of apostates, warning of a dog returning back to its vomit and the sow cleanly washed sow returns to the mud. However, Didache 9:5 applies the saying as rationale for not allowing unbaptized persons to receive communion. This would have some parallel with the phrase “what is holy,” which in the Old Testament would refer to food offered as sacrifices in Exodus 29:33, Leviticus 2:3, 22:10-16, and Numbers 18:8-19. Some suggest it refers to the mission context of the early church and counsels against sharing the gospel with those of unworthy ears (Pseudo-Clement, Recog. 3:1). Still others would want to see here an exclusivist, Jewish-Christian community that did not like the idea of gentiles becoming part of the church. However, this interpretation is so contrary to what can be seen of Jesus and even in the Gospel of Matthew, that it would be most incredible if that were true.
Matthew and Luke differ on the content of this petition. Matthew has added a second part of the petition which expands on the first part. He does so to balance the liturgical text with the third Thou petition. The word for evil in Greek could be either masculine or neuter. If the former, it would refer to the evil one, the devil, but if the latter it would refer to evil things. The latter is supported by the addition by Matthew and by a Jewish prayer: “Deliver me from every evil thing (Gina fragment). The masculine use is weakly attested in Jewish literature.
If the Lord’s Prayer were a musical composition, it ends in dissonance. It ends with an appeal for help. The request is like Jesus' warning to his disciples in 22:40: "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial." The trial from which they are to be kept is the trial that leads to apostasy. The thought here is that should the disciples be led into this sort of trial, the subsequent apostasy has the ring of inevitability to it. Nothing happens beyond the will of God for the religious devout of Jesus' day. Nuances such as the distinction between the absolute and permissive will of God were at this point unknown.[62] James departs from this tradition when he argues, "No one, when tempted, should say, "I am being tempted by God'; for God ... tempts no one" (1:13). His advice is like what we find in Sirach 15:11-13 advising that we not say that we have fallen away because it was the will of the Lord. The Lord does not lead us to places the Lord hates. We need to ponder whether God might lead us into a time of testing or trial. The notorious example of Abraham and Isaac comes to mind, where “God tested Abraham” (Genesis 22:1). The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness so that Satan could tempt him (Mark 1:12-13). The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness so that Satan could tempt him (Matthew 4:1). Thus, the answer is that the Father can lead the children of the Father into a time of testing, temptation, and trial. Such testing has a close relation to the calling of God upon the life of the individual. The people of God will experience testing in the situations of life to strengthen them to fulfill their vocation. The intent of this petition is to pray that the people of God not experience a form of temptation beyond which they are able to withstand. For the disciples, such a notion is unknown. They must pray that God will not bring them "to the time of trial," for if they are brought into trial, they may not be able to stand firm. God takes care that the life situations the people of God face will not beyond their capabilities; the temptation does not have to conquer us or make us succumb. Thus, the "trial" to which Jesus refers is not a tidy eschatological link to the opening portion of the prayer but is rather an existential possibility fraught with anxiety.
Times of testing come often enough in life. We rarely must seek them out. They come our direction. On a personal level, tests often come as challenges to the kind of person we are today and want to be in the future. When we fail to be patient with a child or spouse, when we fail to get the promotion or job we wanted so desperately, when we are not faithful to a spouse, when we do not keep a promise, and when we do not act with integrity or authenticity, we have failed a test. To pray for the strength that we need today to pass the test is an appropriate prayer. It recognizes that no matter how wonderful our lives may be now, life also its dangers that would pull us away from the highest and best that we can be.
We experience some minor or provisional temptations that God sends daily. Greed, arrogance, or grasping at power, are temptations to which life will expose all human beings. Such temptations will vary according to our stage in life, whether for the youthful or for the aged. Such temptations come to us because they are necessary for us. We endure them. They work together for the good of those who love God. Temptation came through the trials of Job or David. We must not ask God not to pass through the trials through which all saints have had to endure.
We best understand such testing as rooted in the calling or vocation we have from God to the person and people God has called us to become. God has called the people of God to offer honor to God, to accept God as their only ruler, and to become doers of the will of God. Their calling as individuals and as communities is to live in such a way that the world can see what God intends for the world. We reveal in our weakness and sin when we pervert the call of God. Self-promotion replaces proclamation and self-serving replaces service to others. A cursory examination of church history, and even of the church today, reveals that we can use our calling only to serve ourselves. Even Jesus had this type of temptation, but he resisted. He held fast to the written word of God as guidance for his resistance to the temptation. Since Jesus had such temptations to reject his calling, the church today can expect such temptation as well. The church can resist such temptations, which will always have a degree of plausibility, only by relying upon the knowledge received our sacred scripture and even the tradition of the church. To conclude the prayer in this way is to acknowledge that the gravest danger confronts the people of God to abandon their calling. No one escapes such testing. Such testing is even necessary as we learn to strengthen our faith.
Deliver us from evil. The prayer here involves the great, eschatological temptation. The infinite menace of the enemy that opposes God, the supreme temptation, can be of no use to us. It can produce no fruit. The threat exists and manifests its presence. Since we must speak of the Devil, we modern Christians pass over this temptation too lightly. I have no desire to become an expert in demonology. We must be aware that the Devil exists and we must hasten to get away from it. The Devil has only pseudo power. The Son revealed the sinister wickedness of the enemy. For that reason, the Lord’s Prayer ends with de profundis. Jesus taught us to end with a prayer for deliverance, to snatch us from the jaws of death. We are to think of many psalms in this regard. We are in the jaws of death. We complain of it, we suffer from it, but we cannot break loose. God directs us in the paths and gifts that lead us to pardon, to reliance upon God for our necessities, and to participate in the cause of God. When we follow the written word, we shall avoid the great eschatological temptation. The Son shall shield us from the aberration of the Devil. God alone is our liberator. Christ is victorious over the shadows by the resurrection. The signs of such deliverance are present if we open our eyes through faith and see them. We proclaim such deliverance in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Christ is already our victorious leader. We know that our paths would never be the right paths. Only God can snatch us away from the jaws of death. Because God is our liberator, we have the freedom that God grants us. God has annihilated the one who wished to annihilate us. The love of God is efficacious and delivers us.[63]
The Lord’s Prayer has the Father as the object and we become those who know the Father. In this petition, we must pray that we not succumb to the temptation to treat God objectively, as if we were disobedient observers that hold back in a place that we think is secure from obeying God. We must not succumb to the false opinion that God is object like other objects in the world we know freely and from differing perspectives. We must not succumb to the temptation of wanting to know God as if we were spectators and thus do not need to take part by corresponding our knowledge of God to obedience. We can change into the world of dead gods or all too living demons, in which contemplate the essence of the world without giving ourselves into the hands of God. We enslave ourselves to these gods and demons. Such are the characteristic directions of those whom God has already called to the people of God. If we give way to this temptation, we will lose true knowledge of God. That which proceeds from us will always succumb to this temptation. We must pray to overcome this temptation.[64]
The Christian life is no safe harbor, secure from storms and struggle. Those who live in communion and friendship with Christ and the people of God are in a war. It involves how we spend our money. It involves our sex lives. It involves the ethics of the workplace. It involves our social relations. The point is that we need liberation, healing, and guidance concerning the way the world works so that we can align ourselves with God. This prayer concludes by acknowledging that it is throwing us into a crisis. It thrusts into the middle of a cosmic struggle. Things are not right in the world. The purposes of God seem to have organized opposition to face. If we pray this prayer, we acknowledge we are under assault. Our lives become a virtual battleground. God fights the powers arrayed against us. Ephesians 6:10-13 reminds us that to pray is a bit like war.[65]
Jesus said that in addition to loving God with all we are, which the first and greatest commandment, we are to live by a second commandment that is like it. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. These two commandments are the beginning and the goal of Christian life. We must never forget the love that is to pervade all Christian life. yet, we must not think that love is all we need to say. What will such love look like? Continuing this exposition of the Christian life as living the Lord’s Prayer, then, will require of us a meditation upon what love of the neighbor as ourselves might look like. It will require an exploration of the final six of the Ten Commandments. It will require a thorough exploration of the works of the flesh, that is, what vices we are to avoid, and an exploration of the fruit of the Spirit, that is, what virtues we are to embrace. Such expositions need to arise from a loving mind and heart in the writer or preacher. When one urges others to avoid certain vices, one assumes that some have embraced them. When one encourages the embrace of certain virtues, one assumes that we have not done so perfectly. Here is a reminder that living the Lord’s Prayer is a life-long project.
Doxology
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Matthew)
The familiar doxology is not included in Luke. It is not included in the oldest Greek manuscripts of Matthew. The Didache does have it, but Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen do not. The Roman Catholic tradition does not contain it because their translation of the New Testament was based upon the earliest Greek manuscripts. The model for the doxology is I Chronicles 29:11: Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty. The doxology does reveal that the Lord’s Prayer was used in the context of public worship at an early date. It may have been the response of the congregation after the prayer was said, and this response may even have been written into the margin of some early texts and eventually found its way into the text of Matthew.
To God belong the kingdom and the power.[66] Such a statement calls into question our allegiance to other kingdoms and powers. When Jesus Christ is our Lord, we question the power and the glory of other lords who demand our attention. The followers of Jesus called him Messiah, anointed one sent rule. We pledge our allegiance to a ruler in a way that throws all other allegiances into crisis. Kings build kingdoms and defend them with murderous intensity. Politics is the exercise of power. George Orwell thought the great threat to humanity was a form of totalitarianism (1984). It remains a threat, whether in secular or religious (political Islam) garb. T. H. Huxley thought the threat was our own self-indulgent narcissism, drugged into simply feeling better rather than seeking a brave new world. He thought humanity would turn inward, drugged into a passive acceptance and hedonism, worried mostly about feelings. Both visions point us to some of the greatest competitors to this prayer. Such a vision has political and economic ramifications, even if we must be careful not to wed Christianity to the status quo or to a political ideology.
"And Mary said, 'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of her servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thought of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty" (Lk 1:46-53).
Luke reminds us that when the rule of God is breaking out, God is lifting up the poor, feeding the hungry, and the people of God sing of the victory of God. The people of God exist as a sign or signal to the destiny of humanity.
The prayer concludes with the statement that to God belongs glory. Those who have authority in kingdoms and those who have power also expect to have glory. We would all like a little glory. We all long for moments when we shine by rising above the crowd, radiating success and achievement. We have here a simple statement of fact. The people of God give glory to God. Such a statement rearranges our notions of glory. In the Old Testament, “glory” refers to the essential value of a thing. It is light as both source and radiance. It constitutes the worth God creates for the divine self. Glory is the divine presence in Israel. The revelation of glory is always in the future, but we can affirm it today. God reveals divine glory in grace and mercy, in condescending to humanity and in friendliness toward humanity. In the New Testament, we behold the glory of God in Jesus Christ (John 1:14). The love of God becomes event and person.[67] Yet, “Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory” means more than the statement of a fact. “Kingdom” suggests something broader than power. In the Gospel of John, Jesus frequently speaks of the "hour of his glory" (John 7:39; 8:54; 12:16; 12:23; 13:31; 15:8; 21:19). Most misunderstood what Jesus meant by "glory." In John's Gospel, ironically Jesus' "glory" is his cross. As Jesus embraces the cross that the world thrusts upon him, Jesus says, "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say - 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.' Then a voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.' The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder" (Jn 12:27-29). Any rule that defines glory in terms of a bloody cross is peculiar. Thus, it becomes easy to miss the point. The persecuted church remains the means through which the rule, power, and glory of God have special meaning. The persecuted church unmasks the lies of the world, revealing the violence upon which this world builds its kingdom and power. They place their trust in God, they resist evil by offering their lives as witness to the power of God, and they trust in God to bring significance of their lives. Early Christian art portrays the radiance of the martyr at death. They shine with a new kind of glory. They reject the glories offered by this world in favor of a future glory provided by God. "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples" (Jn 15:8). Mother Teresa of Calcutta shone with glory in her work with the dying of that city. Dorothy Day shone in her rejection of the rewards of this society and in her efforts in behalf of the poor in New York. The world is right to ridicule and to fear such persons, for they are a visible, glorious sign of resistance against all that the world worships.
When it comes to “glory,” the concept that lies ready to our hand here is beauty. God is beautiful. God enlightens, convinces, and persuades. The revelation of God is a revelation of the rule of God and the power of God. Yet, to say that God is beautiful is to suggest the form in which revelation of the rule of God and the power of God takes place. God has superior force in the power of attraction, which speaks for itself, which wins and conquers in that fact that God is beautiful, divinely beautiful, beautiful in a distinctive way. God is beautiful in a way that only God is beautiful. Such beauty is unattainable primal beauty, while also having genuine beauty. God acts in a way that gives pleasure, creates desire, and rewards with enjoyment. God is pleasant desirable, full of enjoyment. God alone is that which is pleasant, desirable, and full of enjoyment. God loves us as the one who is worthy of love as God. We mean all this when we say that God is beautiful. The beautiful becomes the ultimate cause of movement. I grant that such comments are a form of Platonism. Rarely has such thinking entered Protestant orthodoxy, although we might refer to the hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus.” The concept of the beautiful tends to be a secular one. Dangers abound if we go the direction of considering God beautiful. We may jeopardize or deny the majesty, holiness, and righteousness of the love of God. We may bring God into human oversight and control. We bring contemplation into a form of self-contemplation of an urge that does not recognize its limits. Yet, we need to take this step if we are to appreciate knowledge of God. Divine glory is the sum of the divine perfections. The divine self-declaration is superior and irresistible. The concept of beauty is not one of the leading attributes of God that we would discuss. The subject remains the glory of God. The beauty of God receives proper attention only in the context of the glory of God. Yet, the concept helps us to dissipate the idea that the affirmation of divine glory is only a statement of fact, effective only through power. Rather, the rule and power of God are effective as they are beautiful. Such an understanding is essential. Of course, the idea of the beautiful is not an outstanding part of the Bible (Psalm 104:1-2, 45:2, Song of Songs). Yet, the philological fact is that glory in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin includes the idea of beauty. Glory includes the pleasant, desirable, enjoyable, and beautiful. The glory of God is overflowing self-communicating joy. Its nature is to give joy. The objective meaning of divine glory is grace, mercy, patience, and love. Divine glory is worthy of love. In the quality of beauty, it speaks, conquers, persuades, and convinces. Where we recognize divine beauty, and its peculiar power and giving of pleasure, it awakens desire and creates enjoyment. As God stoops down to us, God becomes an object of desire, joy, pleasure, yearning, and enjoyment. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” as Luke 1:46-7 puts it. Paul urges us to rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4). The good and faithful servant will enter into the joy of the Lord (Matthew 25:21). Paul desires to be absent from the body and present with the Lord (II Corinthians 5:8). We are to have legitimate delight in the Law of God (Psalm 1:2, 112:1, Romans 7:22). We may find pleasure in its commands (Psalm 119:4). We are to delight in the Lord, who will give us the desires of our hearts (Psalm 37:4). If we give our hearts to the Lord, we will have pleasure in the ways of the Lord (Proverbs 23:26). The hand of the Lord is open in a way that satisfies the desire of every living thing (Psalm 145:16). The right hand of the Lord has pleasure forever (Psalm 16:11). We receive the invitation to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). We could recount the many times Psalms and Proverbs urge us to take delight in and find our joy in the Lord. The Lord is the object of joy and delight. God radiates joy. God would not be understandable apart from joy. Thus, we are saying nothing strange or excessive when we say that God radiates joy because God is beautiful, for we are speaking only of the form and manner of divine glory, of the persuasive and convincing element of divine revelation. God is glorious in the self-declaration of revelation. Thus, awe is not enough. Gratitude, wonder, submission, and obedience are not enough. We are to respond to God with joy, desire, pleasure, and yearning for God. Divine glory awakens joy in us. Such glory is solemn, good, and true. Joy before God has an objective basis. Something in God justifies our response of joy, desire, and pleasure toward God and is the basis of the summons to do so. Something in us attracts us to have this response. That which attracts us is divine glory. If so, we cannot dispense with the idea of the beauty of God. God is beautiful in love, in essence, in all the works of God. The form of revelation has this beautiful quality that elicits from us joy, delight, and pleasure. Without this dimension of divine glory, we run the risk of being joyless and humorless as a people of God. What is the beautiful element in God that makes God the object of joy, desire, and pleasure? We need to remember that what is beautiful arouses pleasure. Divine revelation and therefore divine being is that which is beautiful. We must learn from it what is beautiful. We see this beauty in the doctrine of the Word of God and in the themes of Church Dogmatics. Theology is a peculiarly beautiful science. The theologian who has no joy in the work of the theologian is not a theologian at all. Anselm makes occasional reference to the beauty of theology. Thus, all we can do is indicate by several examples they fact that the being of God speaks for divine beauty in di vine revelation. One would need to review the discussion of the reality of God (II.1, Chapter VI, 28-30), and thus, the attributes of God as one who loves in freedom, from the standpoint of its beauty. The being or essence of God in revelation is beautiful in the sense that grace and holiness, mercy and righteousness, patience and wisdom, cohere in the way they do. The being or essence of God is beautiful in the way unity and omnipresence, constancy and omnipotence, and eternity and glory, cohere in the way they do. The perfection of the attributes of God is beautiful. God shines out in this beauty. Only the form of the divine being is beautiful. Yet, this means divine being itself is beauty. Where we recognize divine revelation of divine being, we will feel it as beauty. When the perfect divine being declares itself, it also radiates joy in the dignity and power of divinity. It releases the pleasure, desire, and enjoyment of which we have just written. This form is persuasive and convincing. This persuasive and convincing form is the beauty of God. A second example is the Tri-unity of God (I.1, Chapter II, Part 1). We find here the three modes of being, simplicity and multiplicity, divine space and time. We have here a perichoresis, in which the three modes of being are always together. The tri-unity is the basis of the power and dignity of the divine being, and therefore also of the divine self-declaration in revelation, and therefore of divine glory. Of course, this glory is what makes this power and dignity enlightening, persuasive, and convincing. The form of divine revelation is radiant in radiating joy. It attracts and therefore conquers. It is beautiful. In fact, the tri-unity of God is the secret of divine beauty. Thus, we cannot escape the fact that God is beautiful. A third example is the Incarnation (I.2, Chapter II, Part 2). We are at the center and goal of the works of God, and therefore the hidden beginning of all the works of God. The prominent place the Incarnation receives correspondence to the essence of God. The Son forms the heart of the Trinity. The Son is the locus of the divine work. Therefore, the work of the Son reveals the beauty of God in a special way and in a supreme degree. The Son displays this beauty in a special way as the eternal Logos. The divine being becomes flesh in the Word. The divine being becomes one with humanity in Jesus Christ. God adopts humanity into unity with God. God does this while remaining divine. God becomes human while remaining God. God condescends to humanity in a way that is not strange to God and without creating estrangement within God. The beautiful in the being of God is the fact that God is one and yet another. The Incarnation is the form of divine revelation, and as this form reflects the beauty of divine being. Since the Son is beautiful in this way, God is also the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. We will need to recognize the beauty of God in Jesus Christ. The beauty of Jesus Christ is the beauty of what God is and does in Christ. We see the majesty and condescension of God in the Incarnation. We see the love of God in the Incarnation. If we see this, believe this, and this seeing happens to us, we will see the form of this event, the likeness of the essence of God in Jesus Christ. We will see this likeness as beautiful.[68]
"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:5-11).
In his life and death, Jesus transformed our definition of "glory." He showed us the glory of obedience to the will of God, even when that obedience meant suffering and shame. We speak in the prayer therefore of "your" glory, indicating that Jesus is working with a different sort of glory than that of the world.
Finally, the Lord's Prayer says that this kingdom, this power, and this glory, reconceived in life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is "now and forever." This kingdom for which we pray is not "pie in the sky by-and-by." The kingdom is now. We must not wait to participate in the glory of God. In Christ, the kingdom of God has come near to us. Usually, we know the kingdom of God only in glimpses. Yet we pray "your kingdom come" and we pray "now and forever." The kingdom is here, but not yet in its fullness. The kingdom is now, but also awaited in eternity. Church can be a foretaste of the kingdom of God, but no church is the kingdom of God. Evil is still present, pain is pain, and tragedy is tragedy. God is not finished with the world or us yet. We are on the way, but we have not yet arrived at the end of the journey. By the grace of God, there is more. In the Eucharistic prayer in many denominations, the people together share the words, “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” We have in this simple affirmation a story that becomes the master narrative of what God is doing in the world. Christ began a journey in which God enlists us to join Christ in the journey. Thus, the people of God are not satisfied with present arrangements. They are not satisfied with present arrangements. They are not at home in this world, with its named kingdoms, powers, and glories. The people of God have an appetite for more.
Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer has six basic points: honor God (11:2b), yearn for God's reign (11:2c), rely on God's daily providence (11:3), seek God's forgiveness (11:4a), forgive others (11:4b), trust God's protection (11:4c). This is a community empowerment prayer, not a personal piety prayer. It is a prayer about being in relationship with God and humankind where the interface of the divine-to-human and the human-to-human specifically centers in forgiveness.
Such petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, as well as the instructions in Luke 11: 5-13, raise the question of the place of petition in Christian prayer. God does not just want us to listen to God, to hear God, or even to worship God, thereby receiving strength and peace. God wants us to call upon God. God listens to the prayer of faith. People can call upon God in definite prayer for what they need, with the expectation that God will provide, with wisdom, of course, what they need.[69]
Conclusion
The Lord’s Prayer was of immense importance in the early church for forming public worship and private prayer. It was early associated with the Lord’s Supper and Baptism, being the special prayer of the people. As a model prayer, the prayer begins with a focus on the God as the Father. The one who prays this prayer acknowledges the sharp contrast between reality and what God wants for this world, for the church, and for our lives. The desire of the believer is that the name of God would be hallowed by all, that the rule of God would come, and that the will of God be done. The desire of the heart of one the one who prays this prayer is the fulfillment of this prayer in the world, in the church, and in one’s own life. With the priority of the cause of God in mind, we have the proper context of offering petitions regarding our needs. Prayer for daily provision of material and spiritual nourishment, for freedom in relationships, and taking our discipleship seriously so that we recognize the tests of that discipleship as they come, are all appropriate matters of prayer. Living the Christian life requires diligence, watching for the times of times of testing and temptation. When they come, it is important not to throw away what God has granted. We are to ask, seek, and knock. We do so because the Father will give, help us find, and open the door. The one who prays this prayer receives the good things of the rule of God, which Matthew expounds in the Sermon on the Mount, but also the good things a proper reading of the New Testament will disclose.
Luke 11:5-8 is a parable of the persistent friend. The source is the source unique to Luke.
One would best understand the parable in the context of the honor and shame culture. In the harsh land and the harsh times in which Jesus lived, the culture took the requirement of hospitality very seriously. Unexpected midnight visitors - who perhaps had traveled late in order to escape the desert heat - must be cared for correctly. Jesus uses an almost comic example of petitioning. 5 And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ To seek to borrow a cup of sugar at such an hour and under those conditions might well have been a shameful thing. The friend risks shame and asks for help. 7 And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ Yet, any refusal of hospitality would bring shame on him and his family. 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. Thus, we find a sleepy neighbor, who realized that it would bring shame on him for refusing hospitality, even late at night, so he gets up and gives his neighbor what is required so that the neighbor can fulfill his obligations as host. Jesus uses the metaphor of friendship to drive home the need for faithful assertiveness. On the human side, compared to a genuinely good friend, the persistent (from anaideia) friend falls short. He falls far short considering that a more literal rendering of anaideia refers to shamelessness, even irreverence. If those who are merely persistent receive benefits, then surely those who are faithful will have their petitions answered.
The story is realistic in terms of life in a village in Palestine. The wife of the household had no way to store bread from day to day. She gets up before sunrise and bakes the bread for the day. It was also known who in the village usually had extra bread. Nor was uncommon for a traveler to come late at night in need of hospitality. Thus, the person coming to the door is trying to fulfill the demands of the law of hospitality. When he knocks on the door, the neighbor has reasons for not responding to the request. The door was locked with a wooden or iron bar thrust through rings in the door panels. It would be noisy. Everyone in the one-room peasant house would have been disturbed. But when the neighbor says I cannot this, this is a disguise for an I will not. The parable is cast in the form of rhetorical question. This question demands a negative answer. Jesus invites his listeners to reflect on the situation. Yes, it would be an inconvenience to be in the position of the neighbor, but if the listener was the neighbor, he or she would respond immediately, even under these conditions. Even then, people may fall prey to varying moods and not respond as they should at a given time. The implied contrast is that God is not like that. God is the perfect friend who will readily respond to your needs. Thus, Jesus counsels persistence in prayer because God is far more likely than anyone else to hear the cry of the needy. God is the one who gives more than is asked. So, in all confidence, leave everything to God.
Many scholars think that Luke has adapted the original meaning of the parable, as it pokes around the honor and shame culture, by putting it in a context of prayer. The comic example of petitioning in the context of hospitality becomes a comic example of the attitude toward prayer Luke is encouraging. In that context, Luke is making an important theological point regarding who Jesus is. Jesus of Nazareth exhibited unity with God throughout his public ministry. The basis of this theological point is that in Jesus we see the nearness of the rule of God. In context, the point of this whole section is that if one is persistent in prayer, God will respond. It stresses persistence in prayer to God. [70] If the above paragraph is correct concerning the original meaning, Luke has used the parable for another purpose. The parable becomes an incentive to prayer. At one level, the context offers an implied contrast between God and the unwilling neighbor. At another level, the parable is an encouragement to go on praying even if there is not an immediate answer. The point is not that God will respond to persistence. We misunderstand the parable if we view it as emphasizing prayerful persistence. Rather, the point is that God pays attention to human need. For Luke, the situation to which the comic story regarding hospitality and petition speaks is whether it is worth praying because prayers go unanswered. In fact, the point Luke wants to make about prayer is precisely the opposite. In contrast to the friend who will give his persistent neighbor three loaves of bread at midnight only because the neighbor makes a pest of himself, God will simply give to those who ask, and not only will give, but give what is asked for.
Luke 11:9-13 contain sayings concerning encouragement to pray. The source is the material common to Matthew and Luke.
In Luke 11: 9-10, we find sayings regarding asking, seeking, and knocking. 9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. The emphasis is on persistence of prayer. It encourages the disciples to pray. The promise of response to each request is absolute: if you knock, it will be opened. Jesus may have given such assurances to those embarking on a life of itinerancy in which they would have to depend on human generosity for sustenance. He may have had in mind the generosity of his Father.
People who pray ask, seek, and knock. Here is an invitation to pray, because the believer has the assurance that the prayer will be answered. Once one asks, seeks, and knocks in prayer, God will give, all you to find, and open the door. A saying of R. Bannajah (200 AD) reflects a similar spirit: When he knocks, the door is opened for him (Pesikta 176a). You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you; you will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you (Jeremiah 29:12-14a). You will seek the Lord your God and you will find if you search with all your heart and soul (Deuteronomy 4:29). Seek the Lord while one can find and call upon the lord while the Lord is near (Isaiah 55:6). The Lord wants people to find: I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me, ready to be found by those who did not seek me, for I said I am here to a nation that did not call on my name (Isaiah 65:1). Jesus stresses the joy of prayer and the certainty of God granting requests. Beyond this notion of prayer may be the common experience of begging in the ancient world. Persistence in begging was essential for sustaining the life of one who begged, remembering that those who begged did so out of some necessity. There was some social responsibility to respond to the beggar, and this persistence reminded people of that responsibility.
In Luke 11: 11-13, we find sayings regarding good gifts. The saying uses the image of the father and son relationship. Jesus uses the metaphor of parenthood to drive home the connection between prayer and results on the divine side. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?[71] 13 If you then, who are evil, yet your parental love dictates that you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” On the divine side, if merely mortal parents can do the right thing for their children, then how much more trustworthy is the providence of God? The argument moves from the lesser to the greater. The context is prayer. The saying assumes that God is good. Requests addressed to the Father will meet with positive responses. Jesus compares the capabilities and sensitivities of evil parents to the response we may expect from God. In response to our childish petitions for food or things, God gives nothing less than the gift of the Holy Spirit. For Luke, of course, Jesus invited his disciples to address God as “Father.” His instruction on prayer concludes with another reference to God as “the heavenly Father.” For Luke, the supreme gift God gives is the Holy Spirit. The stress is upon the good gifts God gives.
The universal nature of the response of the Father indicates once again that prayer is not a matter of the right person, saying just the right thing, in the right company, with the right words. For Luke, the prayer of petition has its basis in thanksgiving and adoration. In the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, the petitions for daily bread, forgiving of debts, and protection against temptation to apostasy have their basis in the previous orientation to God and the consummating of the kingdom of God on earth. The believer has already decided to submit to the will of God, and petition occurs in that context. In this case, we see the relation of the promised hearing to prayer for the Holy Spirit. [72] Thus, God does not just want us to listen to God, to hear God, or even to worship God, thereby receiving strength and peace. God wants us to call upon God. God listens to the prayer of faith. People can call upon God in definite prayer for what they need, with the expectation that God will provide, with wisdom, of course, what they need.[73]
The faithful assertiveness of being bold in prayer (11:5-8) and confident in results (11:9-13) is a powerful spiritual reality. At the same time, we all know people of profound faith, hope and love whose most fervent and abiding prayers have not resulted in an end to suffering, consolation for grief, the slightest happy ending or even a new plotline that might redeem tragedy. Being bold in prayer and confident in results can and does happen -- but it is not a formula to wave around glibly.
Potentially underscoring this is a textual variant of 11:2 that reads: "Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us." (See footnote in the NRSV, v. 2.) Here, as the Holy Spirit comes upon us we more fully encounter God's presence and solidarity with us. Moreover, as the Holy Spirit cleanses us we are renewed by a sacred source of forgiveness and restoration with God and one another. If this textual variant holds up, then the reference in 11:13 to God giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask connects more directly to the Lord's Prayer. Even if not, it is clear from the way Jesus frames the discussion in 11:9-13 that what we need most to ask, search and knock for is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the Lord's Prayer is not so much about any one particular personal petition as it is a matter of the community being drawn together and equipped for discipleship by the power and purposes of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, if asked, “Who is a Christian?” the best answer you can give is, “A Christian is none other than someone who has learned to pray the Lord’s Prayer.” It is the Lord’s prayer. This prayer is not for getting what we want but rather for bending our wants toward what God wants. This is the Lord’s Prayer. Our need for someone to teach us to pray sounds odd today. We worship individual autonomy and freedom. Our culture tells we are accountable to no tradition or to anything outside ourselves. The Lord’s Prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives toward God.
In Luke, the disciples of Jesus fear they will not have the language of prayer in accord with Jesus, so they ask him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (11:1). Jesus responds by instructing them to speak to God as they would speak to a member of their own family, calling God “Father” — an expression of intimacy and familiarity — and suggests that they make three requests. They should ask for bread, for forgiveness and for deliverance, and they should trust God to give them whatever they need.
Intimacy, trust and expectation. These are the attitudes that Jesus advises his disciples to adopt as they begin to learn the language of prayer. He encourages them to approach God in the same way that they would approach a loving parent, and to trust God to hear their prayers and answer them in ways that meet their needs.
However, such requests need to be consistent with the words “Hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come” (v. 2). God is not going to grant any request that does not conform to the priorities of the kingdom of love, peace and justice.
We often begin praying in such a lazy way. We ought to ponder the reality of the presence of God. Prayer begins with God, not with our needs and us. Before we start telling God our troubles, trials, and petitions, we focus upon the glory of God: "hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come."[74] The traditional use of "hallowed" is archaic, yet it rolls easily off the lips of most congregations. The sanctity of the name of God revisits the common Jewish understanding of God's name being above every other name. The name of God was so holy; they hardly dared to speak it. It reminds us of the many ways we profane the name of God. This means more than swearing. We can profane the name of God by how we live. To "hallow" is to praise God, to be in gratitude, for what God has done. To "hallow" or "revere" is to give honor, to set apart, to focus, upon the reality and power of God. The Jewish culture in which Jesus and the disciples lived longed for the day when the kingdom of God would fill the earth. Thy kingdom come is a broad petition. It refers to the reigning activity of Christ in human hearts and society. This is a big petition, a huge desire. To pray in this way is to focus one's mind and heart in such a way that it becomes real in our lives. We have no choice about the kingdom of God. It has already come in Jesus. God is the one who brings the kingdom. It is a result of God's design and doing. Wherever the reign of Christ is experienced, the kingdom of God is present. This is not a prayer for those who want things to stay the way they are. Jesus spoke of the present reality of the kingdom of God. The kingdom, after all, is like a small seed that grows into a large plant. The kingdom of God is among us, he said.
We have quite enough teaching in the various modes of achieving our will in this world. We build our kingdoms all over the world. The wreckage is all around us. Too many of us simply recite the words. If we pray this part of the Lord's Prayer, does it represent the longing of our hearts? Do we hallow the name of God in our words and deeds? Do we long for the kingdom? Do we long for the doing of the will of God in our lives? Is that our passion?
Language has its internal rules and regulations. In English, the subject of a sentence needs to agree with its verb — it is correct to say, “My neighbor is a kind man,” while it is incorrect to say, “My neighbor are a jerk.” The singular noun “neighbor” always requires the singular verb “is” — regardless of whether he is, in fact, a kind man or a jerk. In a similar way, the language of prayer has its own internal logic. Prayer assumes that you are in a relationship with God and desire to be the person God wants you to be. One of the most important rules is that the requests of a disciple have to agree with the intentions of the Lord.
“Give us each day our daily bread” (v. 3) is a petition for the nourishment we need each day, and it reminds us that we are dependent on God for our most elemental requirements. Like the manna that the Israelites received in the wilderness, our daily bread comes to us from a Lord who loves us and wants to support us every day.
Of course, we do not live by bread alone. We also need forgiveness, a gift that is as necessary to our well—being as basic food and water. Without this gift from God, we would gradually be crushed by the burden of our guilt, a load that grows higher and heavier with every sin we commit. Without forgiveness, we would lose all hope for the future, and sink into despair. However, with this gift come release and renewal, inspiration and encouragement, an assurance of pardon and a deep sense of peace.
This forgiveness from God also gives us the ability to “forgive everyone indebted to us” (v. 4). In fact, the two are not to be separated, since they are part of the same heavenly package. If we truly want God’s kingdom to come, we are going to want to show the same mercy to others that the Lord shows to us. You might say that in the grammar of prayer, forgiveness from God is not a private possession you receive, but has a link to the forgiveness you give to others. It is like a subject and a verb. We need both to make a proper sentence.
Then Jesus teaches his disciples to pray that our Father will “not bring us to the time of trial” (v. 4). In the long history of God’s people, we know that there have been many times of testing — the testing of Job in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New, the testing of the Israelites in the wilderness and the church in today’s highly secular society.
Fortunately, we do not have to be at a loss for words when we face a time of testing. Jesus instructs us to pray for deliverance, asking God to protect us from anyone or anything that can endanger our bodies, our minds, our spirits or our relationship with God himself. When we pray for the Father to deliver us from the time of trial, we are asking the Father to spare us the kind of testing that can lead to our extinction.
Jesus goes on to encourage us to pray with persistence, using the language of prayer to plead for what we need (vv. 5—8). Then he assures us that God will hear our prayer and answer us, for if we human parents know how to give good gifts to our children, then “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (v. 13). Prayer is about a relationship with God first, and therefore gratitude and praise. Prayer is about a focus on what God wants in the coming of the kingdom. However, Jesus encourages us to come to the Father with our requests, confident that, God in divine wisdom will grant the desire of our hearts.
In any case, it is up to us to preserve this life—giving language, and keep it from extinction. Within the community of faith, we have the challenge of creating a healthy habitat for prayer, one in which we are not afraid to ask for the gifts we need for physical and spiritual health. We must not be afraid to search diligently for the will of God among the many competing agendas of contemporary life. We must not be afraid to knock repeatedly on the door to God’s kingdom, knock persistently through disciplined daily prayer, knock faithfully and forcefully with the full conviction that our Lord loves us and wants to meet our needs.
With such an approach, the language of prayer will remain alive and active and off the endangered list. It will keep us in close communication with God ... and never at a loss for words.
Let us not overstate the case. Helping our kids know the Lord's Prayer is not likely to turn the world around spiritually or be the start of a worldwide religious revival.
However, let us not understate the case either. The Lord's Prayer is a spiritual starting point, a way to reach out toward God when we are too numb, too much in pain, too blind, too angry, and too tired to do much else. Our kids and we will benefit from it, and God hears us when we pray it. Praying something is better than praying nothing. The Lord's Prayer is really something.
[1] Most scholars think that Luke preserves the form while Matthew has added other phrases. The Lukan version omits some of what Matthew includes. The phrase "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" is missing as is the expression "but rescue us from the evil one." Also missing from both accounts is the doxological material (no doubt based on 1 Chronicles 29:11-13) found in some manuscripts as well as in the KJV, but omitted in the NRSV and NIV (Matthew 6:10,13). However, in The Misunderstood Jew, Amy-Jill Levine notes that both versions are quite consistent with Jewish teaching of the period. Luke fashions the introduction. Jesus clearly referred to God as "Abba", "Father." The Jesus Seminar thinks it unlikely Jesus taught his disciples the prayer as a whole, even in this form. For them, someone in the Q community probably assembled the prayer for the first time, using petitions that circulated independently. Personally, assigning such creativity to the Q community rather than to Jesus seems rather strange.
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.2 [64.3]199.
[3]
[4] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 [53.3] 94.
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[12]
[13]
[14] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 259.
[15] John Wesley, Sermon 40, Christian Perfection.
[16] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[17] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “With a Little Help from my friends,” Sargent Peppers,” 1967.
[18] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[19]
[20] Inspired by William H. Willimon, “Hallowed be Thy Name.”
[21] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[22]
[23]
[24] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.2 [66.1]501.
[25]
[26] Karl Barth, An Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, Chapter 11, “Doubt.”
[27] (Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth 2000), Nigel Biggar, “Barth’s Trinitarian Ethic,” 218-20.
[28] (Barth, Prayer: 50th Anniversary Edition 2002), 35-41.
[29] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[30]
[31] John Chrysostom, “Homily 19 on Matthew.
[32]
[33] (Barth, Prayer: 50th Anniversary Edition 2002), 41-43.
[34] Barth CD IV.1, 270.
[35] Barth CD IV.2, 167.
[36] Barth CD I.1, 387.
[37] Barth CD III.3, 444-5, 447.
[38] Barth CD II.1, 558.
[39]
[40] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 259.
[41] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume I, 308.
[42] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume I, 308.
[43] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 259.
[44] (Barth, Prayer: 50th Anniversary Edition 2002), 26-31,43-47
[45]
[46] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[47]
[48] (Barth, Prayer: 50th Anniversary Edition 2002), 47-52.
[49]
[50] Barth CD II.2, 692.
[51] Barth CD III.1, 39.
[52] Barth CD III.1, 207.
[53] Barth CD III.4, 534-45.
[54] John Wesley, Sermon 26, On the Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 6.
[55]
[56] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 333.
[57] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 211
[58] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 259.
[59] Barth CD I.2, 747.
[60] (Barth, Prayer: 50th Anniversary Edition 2002), 52-59.
[61]
[62] (see Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke [New York: Doublday, 1985] 906).
[63] (Barth, Prayer: 50th Anniversary Edition 2002), 59-64.
[64] Barth CD II.1, 26-27.
[65]
[66] These reflections are from Karl Barth, as noted, and inspired by William Willimon, “To thine be the kingdom, the power, and the glory.”
[67] Barth, CD II.1, 642-3. He refers to Augustine, Confessions X.27. He refers to Pseudo-Dionysius De div. nom IV, 7.
[68] CD II.1, 650-66.
[69] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1 [31.2] 511.
[70] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 333.
[71] Luke seems to change the similarity that Matthew had between bread and stone, fish and snake.
[72] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 209.
[73] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1 [31.2] 511.
[74] v.2.
No comments:
Post a Comment