Lord, Teach Us to Pray
Seventeenth Sunday Scripture Readings
How should we pray? What should be our mental state? Our expectations? Whereas last week, we were given a contrast between Martha’s distracted prayer and Mary’s listening prayer. This time, we have Jesus himself teaching his disciples about prayer. The gospel passage begins with Jesus giving his disciples words to use when they pray. As always, the words themselves are far less important than the attitudes behind them. The first word of this prayer, according to Luke, is, of course, “Father.” Matthew’s version is a little different, as he writes, “Our Father.” Yet, whether it’s a communal prayer coming from “us,” or an individual prayer offered by you or me, the critical concept centers on the word “Father” itself. It more than implies an intimate familial relationship between us and God; it presupposes and requires it. It’s the relationship that Jesus is commenting on later in the gospel when he asks, “What parent among you would hand their child a snake when they ask for a fish?” Unthinkable, right? So, beginning prayer with “Father” reminds both God and ourselves of the relationship between us.
The meaning of “Hallowed be your name” may not be quite so obvious. When the Jewish people spoke about the “Name,” they were referring to Yahweh, the name revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. But it was always understood to be more than just a tag used to reference God. The Name encapsulated the being and the essence of God himself. The name “Yahweh” was spoken by the high priest, only once a year in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem temple on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, while the assembly outside shouted so as not to hear it, even by accident. Calling upon the Name summoned the kabod—the Glory of God—and made him present. So, what is Jesus counseling us to ask for in this prayer of his? We are to ask that God’s Name—his essence—become holy, that is, to permeate everything and to become all in all. This is an eschatological petition, referring not so much to the end of time as we know it, but to its consummation as it becomes at last all that it was ever created to be.
Furthermore, our text says, “Hallowed be your Name.” That “you” isn’t as simple it seems. In English, as in many other languages, “you” is a polite plural, like usted in Spanish, vous in French, or sie in German. Those languages have a singular form that is only used to express intimacy with another: tu in Spanish, tu in French, or du in German. English also has a singular, familiar form, which we no longer use. It’s thou. “Your Name,”—really “thy Name”—implies an intimacy with the essence of our Father God. That intimacy is carried forward in the next phrase, “your”—really thy—“kingdom come.” This is actually only a rephrasing of what came just before. We’re asked to pray that the reign of God, when all things will be subjected to him, may come about soon. Because of the implied intimacy, it asks that the petitioner may become an integral part of that reign. The entire opening of this prayer—like with every well-formed prayer—is a type of anamnesis, a calling-to-mind of who God is, who we, the petitioners, are, and the nature of our relationship that we should dare to pray, and that God should deign to listen.
Next comes the request itself, “Give us each day our daily bread.” Whereas Matthew’s version says, literally, “Give us today our daily bread,” Luke’s perspective is, again, eschatological, looking forward long-term to the culmination of everything in the ultimate fulfilment of God’s will. It’s a petition for sustenance, for the kind of nourishment that will sustain us and carry us forward, faithful to the end.
Look for a moment to the little parable that follows the prayer. Obviously, the friend with the bread represents God, the source of our sustenance. Here, again, we focus on the relationship: they are friends, not just neighbors. Here, we’re shown how the long game is to be played. Prayer takes both perseverance and patience, because we cannot expect God to provide what we want when we want it. However, because of our relationship with the Father, if we’re patient and persevere, we’ll always receive what we need when we need it. The daily bread we pray for is God doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
In the second petition, Jesus counsels us to ask for forgiveness for our sins. We need to get it out of our heads that sins are just wrong-headed activities or just “being bad.” They aren’t. Sins are our thoughts, words, and actions that damage and break relationships. We sin when we violate trust. We sin when we damage our relationships with our true selves by being inauthentic, and when we disvalue others—family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers—and thereby violate our commitment to foster the will and reign of God in our world. We need to make amends, and we need to pray—not so much that God will pardon us, because our Father is not a condemning God—but that we might be capable of receiving and taking to heart the forgiveness that’s always there for us from God.
That being said, although God’s gift of forgiveness is absolute and unconditional, our reception of it isn’t. We can only receive the forgiveness that’s there for us if we ourselves are free from the shackles of resentment. Our forgiveness of those who owe us physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual debts is what releases us from the deadly prison that our own resentments have created for us. So, when we pray this prayer, asking for God’s forgiveness and to have that relationship we talked about at the beginning of the prayer restored to its full force, all we’re really asking for is the courage to trust God enough to let go of our resentments. “For we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.”
It isn’t easy to interpret the final petition of this most powerful of all prayers. “Do not subject us to the final test.” A moment ago, we heard that this is an eschatological prayer, that is, one that takes the long view into the future, toward the culmination of all things. Each of us has their own personal eschaton, their own personal culmination that waits for us on the horizon, be it far or near. Every such culmination winds up with a post-mortem—quite literally. Whether we view it as a trial or not, we always want to know, when all is said and done, “How did we do?” We can’t define who a person is; we can only judge who they were. There’s a final judgment awaiting all of us. God won’t be judging us. Even Christ, sitting at the Father’s right hand and separating the sheep from the goats, won’t be judging us. He’ll simply hold a mirror up for us to see the people we were meant to be, all the gifts and graces—the people, places, things, and opportunities—provided us, and what, after all, we did with them. In that mirror, we’ll see only who we really are, and not who we pretended to be. We pray that God will deliver us from the condemnation we so frequently and freely lay upon ourselves.
After all is said and done, what did Jesus teach us about prayer? First of all, it’s grounded in an intimate relationship with our Father, Yahweh, the God of all creation, time, and space. Next, it requires both patience and perseverance, for God plays only the long game, gently guiding all things toward their ultimate culmination. Being in relationship with the Father in his long game requires trust—not just trusting that the universe is unfolding as it should, but also trusting that our loving Father will provide for all our needs along the way. That trust, in turn, requires forbearance, so that we can go forward through that “valley of the shadow of death” and fear no evil. Finally, we pray for the courage to release our resentments against anybody and anything, and embrace forgiveness of others, so as to be free to receive the Father’s forgiveness for the times we’ve violated trust and damaged or destroyed the relationships we need to survive. In the end, when we shall see ourselves as we really are, we pray that we’ll find there only joy in the people we’ve become. Let’s try, whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, to remember what Jesus taught us when we asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
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