The Prayer that Jesus Taught
A SERMON GIVEN BY REV LINDA HART AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
This address grew out of a few moments over this summer that performed their own little connect the dots and started me thinking about the prayer, as we in the religion biz like to say, that Jesus taught.
I’ve never really been on friendly terms with that prayer. Initially, it was because I never quite knew it. I don’t know if I was as lost as some teens were in a story that was reported to me some years ago. This person was checking on the level of Biblical literacy of a group of Unitarian kids and asked if they knew the Lord’s Prayer. There was much scratching of heads and pulling faces at each other around the room until one of their number came said, ‘Wait, I know that one,’ and began: ‘The Lord is my shepherd....’ More remarkable to the person telling me the story was that all the young people in the room nodded their heads in agreement.
No, I think even then I could recognise the prayer when it was uttered but have to admit to being grateful for the words taped down to the podium at a church where I took a service. They always said the prayer of Jesus, the minister told me, and he kept it there just in case.
Yet, this summer, on the first day of the International Ministers' Conference while leading worship, I invited all those present to say those words together. Well, not exactly together. This was, as I say, an international gathering and included ministers from the Netherlands, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Transylvania, Canada the United States, the Philippines, and three or four African countries (and of course, the United Kingdom), and my invitation wasn’t for us to speak in English – the working language for the conference – but for us all to speak it in our own language.
The invitation offered, the room erupted in the sound of people speaking in all kinds of languages. What was interesting to me is that the sound of the voices all speaking in different languages was framed by that familiar cadence, the particular musicality of that prayer that most of us would know if no words were even said along with it.
Starting and stopping at different times, unrecognisable rhythms, words that I couldn’t understand, and yet we truly joined in the prayer. We were united in a way that I rarely experience in worship with Unitarians. Dropping any defensiveness I might have had about the prayer, its role in traditional Christian worship and what it meant for me, not a Christian in a conventional sense, to be making the invitation and to be reciting it along with all the other English speakers in the room, dropping all of that allowed me to simply be present to the words and the unity that came from the stunningly simple and basic prayer. Not doctrine nor dogma to be argued, just that lovely rumble of our words tumbling all over each other. It was a magical sort of moment.
Home from the conference for a few weeks, I was picking out readings to be shared at a service in which we recognised the anniversary of the falling of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Leafing through prayers for peace, I came upon the version of this prayer written by Parker Palmer. In it, Palmer transforms the prayer by shifting the language from that of hoping or wishing for the Kingdom to come to a prayer for the reign of peace.
Now we could get into a pretty quick conversation about whether or not this is true to the text as it has come down to us but, in some measure I think at least, it would be beside the point. We can, of course argue historical facts and fine points of translation but what we’re talking about here is so simply a prayer, and if we are able to shake away the layer upon layer of meaning that has encrusted it, we might find that there are ways in which the world opens for us.
It intrigued me, then, what this prayer was and did and said into the world if we – if I – stopped to listen.
A quick word about prayer, too, a topic that could easily fill a year of sermons: the quick definition that works best for me is to understand it at best as authentic speech. That is, it is an attempt to speak plainly and truly what is in your heart. Someone once said that there are only four prayers when you get down to it. They are ‘Wow’ ‘Ouch’ ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’. As we consider the familiar words of this prayer, I invite you to try on what meanings might be there for you.
Let’s take a meander through the prayer together, pausing to consider the words and the meanings. First, let’s just try to shake it out of its typical rhythms. Let us say it aloud but not together. Using the traditional words, simply try to say it aloud. Read it, and don’t fall into that automatic cadence. Leave out a word or two if you wish or need. See if something new shines through.
It is a simple prayer, acknowledging simple things, asking for simple things. Let’s take a few lines and ideas.
It begins with by calling out to the divine with a familiar term: Father. While it is widely abroad (I’ve even said it!) that the first word of the prayer – ‘abba’ – is like the modern ‘daddy’, it isn’t quite right. The word as it was used then indicates a level of intimacy, but not quite that which is described by ‘daddy’. Still this beginning, that address that speaks to a someone indicates a relationship of some closeness. This is not the magesterium to which we speak, but something, someone more related to us, even if at a distance, that is, in heaven. The simplest version in Luke doesn’t include the indication of the heavenly location, but simply notes that the name should be revered, held up in respect and honour.
It is worth mentioning that the only word of this prayer that the scholars of the Jesus Seminar agree is likely to have been spoken by Jesus is that first word: Father.
(Spoken together: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven).
There are thousands upon thousands of pages of considered argument about what those lines mean. Some believe that they indicate the future arrival of God’s kingdom on earth, some argue that Jesus was proclaiming that the kingdom had already arrived but wasn’t totally known as yet. It is a question that lurks under the surface and that it is not in our power to make any judgement upon.
For me, these sentences present a mystery: what does it mean for there to be God’s Kingdom? What does it mean for the will of God to be done? Another year of sermons looms in those simple phrases, or more importantly, a lifetime of spiritual considering: what would God’s will be if it were to be done? And how would I know? An all powerful God who directs such trouble and pain to the planet and its inhabitants wouldn’t be one I could revere, save for the beauty sprinkled about and the reality of love in the world. Yet that reign of peace of Parker Palmer is one my heart cries out for, his longing or good will to be enacted mirrors my own longing.
Let’s get a little more: (.....Give us this day our daily bread.....)
The Jesus Seminar translates this to be ‘give us our bread for the day,’ or ‘bread day to day’ and take it to mean that we should ask for nothing more than we need each day. It is a simplicity prayer: give us nothing more than we need for our daily sustenance, and I hear a trust in there that what is needed will be provided. Like the reference to the Kingdom, this asks as many questions as it answers: is there something that we can fundamentally trust? Will what we need be provided? Surely, sometimes the answer is no. Yet, I take this as a moment of authentic speech, a longing, if not a lived reality.
Not far to go in our brief meander through this prayer. (....forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors....)
There’s a loveliness in these lines, for while they seem to be a request for the removal of sins or trespasses or debts, they indicate a relationship that is closer to companionship than that of servant and master, or of lord and serf. ‘This is what we do, mate,’ it might be. You forgive, and we forgive. It is in the nature of things, not something that only You can grant, but something we all enact. I find it refreshing rather than diminishing, pointing to an interrelationship.
(...and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil....)
Mae West’s reworking of these lines always pop up for me when I speak these words. ‘Lead me not into temptation, I can find the way myself....’ Other renderings of these lines illuminate a different notion. It is not so much of temptation, but of testing: ‘please don’t subject us to test after test’. It is, as I hear it, a plea for a path that isn’t overly arduous, and in which we receive some measure of safety. It is a recognition of our fallibility, the truth that we won’t – we can’t – always live the life we intend and says plainly that we hope we won’t be tested more than we are able to endure. And it speaks the truth of what abides also in the world. It can be a dangerous place, we can lose our way so easily, and we are more often than we acknowledge in harm’s way.
Let’s finally end it off: (....for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen....)
These words don’t appear in the Bible. They are not part of the prayer that Jesus taught, if he ever did, but they provide a tidy end to the prayer, and a final word of praise and depending upon how you might take it, submission. They are not authentic to the text, but offer a final ‘wow’ as it were, reminding us that we are not ultimately in charge of what happens in the world, that there are forces and powers that are beyond our pleadings and command.
This is a quick romp through a familiar prayer. I have always said it with a degree of suspicion, and sometimes have declined to say it at all though around me the words intone. Perhaps you have, too, in dispute with the words or simply finding them empty.
But old familiar words can take on new meaning when looked at more closely, that which is rote can become alive when we choose to breathe life into it. This prayer doesn’t really answer much, but expresses longings and possibilities. In its expression of the place of humanity in the world, it is the work of the very human Jesus, not the godlike Christ.
So let us say it again together. If you wish, say those traditional well worn, well used words and allow them to open for you. If you wish, speak the rendering that is truer to you, perhaps one printed on the sheet you received today. Or in true Unitarian style, select the lines which speak to you, and say them in your own time, in your own order. I will say it again, too, once more with feeling.