Pray in This Way
Matthew 6:5-15
Introduction
There is one passage of Scripture that I have heard more than any other and it is not even close. It is not the 23rd Psalm and it is not the Ten Commandments. The one passage that I have heard more than any other is the Lord’s Prayer. Not only did the church I grew up in pray it every Sunday but we used to have to pray it in school everyday as well. That’s not to say that the frequent listening to the prayer meant I understood it. It was just one of those things that you are supposed to listen to.
As I have gotten older, have become more serious in my faith and have studied the Bible more, I am amazed by the depth of meaning in this familiar prayer. I hope you have experienced that as well.
Here is the basic context. The disciples noticed that Jesus was a person of prayer. Being his disciples, the expectation was that they become more like Jesus. But prayer seemed to come much easier to Jesus than to the disciples. They did a wise thing and asked Jesus for help in their prayer life.
But here is where the confusion comes. Many Christians believe that what Jesus did was to give the disciples a special prayer that they were to repeat. It is good for us to pray this prayer but what Jesus really did was to give them a pattern of how to pray. When Jesus says, “Pray in this way,” he does not mean you have to use these exact words. Jesus wants this prayer to inform our prayer life not be a replacement for it.
When we look at this prayer carefully, we see that it has two parts: one aimed at God and the other aimed our needs. Jesus then has three parallel requests for each of those two sections. Let’s take a closer look.
For God
The first phrase is “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Notice that it is Our Father and not My Father. I remember attending a new church that was much different from the church I grew up in. They repeatedly told me that Christianity is about having a personal relationship with God. There is truth in that but there is a danger that we see Christianity in too individualistic of a way. The focus in both the Old and New Testaments is on community. We relate to God together. He is our Father. The actual prayer is that the Father’s name would be hallowed. That means that God’s name would be made holy. How can God’s name be made more holy? What Jesus actually means is that we are to pray that the world would recognize God as he is, that those who reject God would turn and see his glory and see him as worthy of worship.
The second phrase is “Your kingdom come.” Many Christians see that as a reference to heaven. That’s why we talk about an explosion as “blowing people to kingdom come.” The kingdom must be either when we are in heaven or when Jesus returns and brings this world to an end. There is some truth in that but Jesus also saw the kingdom appearing in his ministry. The kingdom is not a geographical area, the way we would talk about the United Kingdom. It is about the reign of God and this prayer is about desiring God’s reign to expand more and more each day. It is not just about the conversion of more Christians but the increase of truth and justice and love and all of the things that God values.
The final phrase in this section is “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In some ways, this is expanding what is meant by the kingdom coming. We will know that the kingdom comes when we see God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, God has complete sovereignty and nothing happens against his will. When we look at our world, we can see plenty of things that go against God’s will. If we provided a list, we wouldn’t leave this place for weeks. There is something implicit in this prayer. It doesn’t just mean that we pray that other people start doing God’s will. It also requires a willingness on our part to live according to God’s will. People get caught up on God’s will as being about what spouse or job God wants for us. But Jesus boiled it all down to loving God and loving people. When we pray this prayer, there needs to be reflection on if God’s will is being done in our life as it is in heaven. This includes how we can encourage God’s will in our community as well.
For Us
Many people have confessed to me that they feel guilty praying for themselves. It is okay to pray for friends and family, it is okay to pray for missionaries, it okay to pray for the persecuted church, but it is selfish to pray for ourselves. When thinking about this, we should remember that Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion, prayer for himself.
But the other part to recognize is that Jesus uses in this prayer the pronoun “us” rather than “me.” We as individuals are included in these prayers, but we are included as a prayer for our community.
The first phase for this section is “Give us this day our daily bread.” The disciples would have immediately thought of the Hebrews in the wilderness in the time of Moses. That large group of people needed provision and God provided with manna. That manna appeared each day, except for the Sabbath. God provided for them the daily bread. They were in a place of full dependence on God. We also pray for daily bread. Bread may include food but it more widely refers to whatever we need to survive. It is good to pray for God to provide, but we pray as a community. My prayer is not answered if my pantry is full and yet the rest of my community is going without. Pray for our daily bread.
The second phrase for this section is “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” In this passage, debts are being used to refer to things that have been done to us that we are struggling to refer. However, there is a place for us to forgive financially as well. We want forgiveness. This forgiveness is not just a repentance when an individual becomes a Christian. We all need ongoing forgiveness. But again, is forgive us our debts. There has been some debate as to whether churches should ask forgiveness for the evils of the residential schools if we were not directly involved. We repent for our community, not just for ourselves. Jesus received baptism from John. John the Baptist was offering a baptism for repentance. Jesus had not sinned but he stood in solidarity with his people and repented with them. This one also includes a role for us. Our forgiveness is linked to our forgiving others. We might ask, would God really withhold forgiveness if we refused to forgive? But the better questions is, what is making us hesitant to forgive others?
The final phrase is “And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” We might think this is silly as God would never do this. And yet we see that at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tested by the evil one. We have been looking at the focus on the community rather than the individual. What does it look like for a community to be in the time of trial? What are the temptations that we face as a community? And from what situations do we need rescue from the evil one? When we look at this, the temptations are much more than having too much to drink or watching a bad movie. We have seen the collapse of churches and ministries in recent years. Looking at those stories, it was never just about one bad leader. These communities gave into temptation, whatever that might have looked like. Lead us not into temptation.
Conclusion
The Lord’s Prayer. The Our Father. The Disciple’s Prayer. Whatever we want to call this, this prayer has impacted the Church for centuries. There is a reason. It goes to the heart of who God is as our Father and who we are as his people. We are going to pray this prayer but consider letting this prayer inform the rest of your prayer life. What would that look like? And how can we include our faith community more in our prayer life?
