Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.
Luke 11:1
Last week we explored how important it is for us to be committed to the journey of maturing as followers of Christ—so that the word of God might be made fully known through our collective and individual witness.
I asked you to identify and strengthen spiritual practices that enable this kind of maturity, of which there are many!
Today we have at the center of our Gospel one of the fundamental practices that leads us away from the damaging immaturity that so much of the outside world confuses for authentic Christianity, and toward the maturity incarnated in Christ: the practice of prayer.
Now there are many ways to pray—from corporate worship like we are doing now, to silent contemplative prayer and meditation—but the words that Jesus teaches to his listeners today, which we know as The Lord’s Prayer, form the heart of our identity and orientation as maturing Christians.
While the words are pregnant with multi-layered meaning, it is not the specific arrangement of the words that matters most—as if uttering these words in a specific order or language makes the magic happen.
Instead, the Lord’s Prayer, in any iteration, language, or context is primarily about reorientation.
It is a prayer formula that allows us to turn from our penchant for going after seductive and often destructive idols and submit ourselves as fully as possible to the reign, will, and nature of God.
The structure of the prayer arises from the ritual of daily Jewish prayer[1] because the head of our Church—Jesus—was an observant Jew whose mission was not to ignore or belittle the covenant relationship between God and his forebears, but rather to call God’s people into deeper and more authentic relationship with the Lord of all[2].
As a rabbi, Jesus had a responsibility to teach his followers how to pray in this fashion.
And in this Lukan version of his teaching of the Lord’s Prayer[3], Jesus’ instruction reaches beyond the original borders of his native faith into the greater world of the Gentiles.
The more time you spend reading the Bible and exploring the contours of the history of God’s relationship with Israel, Judah, and the wider world, the more you will begin to see the importance of the reorientation aspect of the Lord’s Prayer.
The original sin in the Garden of Eden is less about eating a banned fruit, and MORE about substituting something less than God’s fullness and abundance for the real thing.
While children rarely have this problem, we adults have a difficult time being satisfied with the provisions and guidance of God.
And whether it is a golden calf in the wilderness, a seductive fertility God like Baal[4], a flawed human ruler[5], or some other human tenet or ideology[6]…when we exalt those idols in the place that God alone can occupy, our lives are diminished and our relationships as a whole suffer.
The Shema Israel, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” and certainly the First through the Fourth of the Ten Commandments[7] given on Mt. Sinai to Moses are about turning away from idols and reserving ultimate allegiance to God alone.
The prayer that Jesus teaches his followers to pray has this reorientation in its DNA, because unless we give ourselves fully over to God, we will remain trapped in a world of delusion.
The Lord’s Prayer is not some kind of “one-and-done” prayer nor a rote recitation, but a frequent prayer that opens our eyes and minds to the more subtle ways that idolatry infects our lives.
It is God’s reign that we pray will come—a reign that we Christians believe has already broken into our world through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ—and we ask the Lord upon whom our life’s compass is set to provide daily bread for the journey of seeing in break in even further.
Just as God provided manna and quails to our newly freed forebears in the wilderness, so we too ask for and rely upon regular provision from the abundance of God’s bounty.
Sometimes that means real bread and water to sustain our bodies, and sometimes that nourishment comes in the form of words of encouragement or acts of service.
Regardless of the form in which it arrives, as receivers of God’s provision, we are not only empowered to journey on, but we also gain a greater capacity to give as God gives and to forgive as God forgives.
Both the reading from Hosea and the reading from Colossians reference the way in which the God we follow and serve is not about perpetual punishment, but rather about renewed relationship.
Just as God does not hold our failures, our communal shortcomings, nor our most egregious sins committed under the spell of false idols as an impediment for restored relationship, neither should we who have been forgiven of so much perpetually hold hostage the sins committed against us by others.
This orientation does not nullify the need for reorientation, justice, and truth-telling as the first steps in any process of true reconciliation.
But it does always leave the door open to the kind of restored relationship that only the grace of God coupled with sustained human commitment can produce[8].
It is within the deepest nature of our God to turn the tables on our human conceptions of law, consequences, and punishment.
Look no further than the cross if you doubt this is the case.
Such innocent suffering is the ultimate “time of trial” that we pray to be saved from, much like Jesus’ own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane for the Father to “take away this cup, if it be your will.”
And even though it is impossible to avoid suffering if we insist upon God’s reign, God’s way, and God’s place over and above all lesser idols and reigns in our world, we know that resurrection, not crucifixion, is the final Word of God in the story of relationship and salvation in which we live, move, and have our being.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be, world without end.
What a gift it is to participate in this story of redemption through the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
When we give ourselves over to the reorienting heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and any other form of prayer that channels its substance into our lives, the Lord we call upon begins to break the chains that bind us to lesser idols.
Being so freed, even if such freedom is incremental and never fully obtained in this lifetime, we are fed with the daily bread that allows us to serve as mature members of God’s body who can help others wake up to the saving power that only our Lord provides.
I encourage you to follow Christ’s instruction of how to pray as you pray the Lord’s Prayer today, and to make the reorientation it facilitates your highest priority in your personal prayer life.
It not only yokes us to the perennial tradition of our forebears, but it is the Way, beginning in our own hearts and community, that leads to the renewed, restored, and reconciled world for which our souls long.
[2] Matthew 5:17
[3] The other is in Matthew 6:9-13.
[4] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baal-ancient-deity
[5] King Saul is the prototypical flawed monarch in this vein, but history has proven that any disoriented allegiance to human leadership can devolve into idolatry.
[6] Capitalism, Communism, The “law” of compound interest, Nationalism, etc. There is no end to the ways in which often meaningful and helpful philosophies and theories can shift from being fertile grounds of discussion and thought to destructive and imprisoning idols.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments
[8] This dynamic is what Jesus references in his example about the friend asking for bread at midnight.