The Our Father

The Our Father, or Lord's Prayer as some call it (actually Jesus said a lot of different prayers) is one that many of us have known since childhood.  I grew up with the incorrect notion that the material was original with Jesus.  Certainly not.  Remember that Jesus said he came, not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.  He wanted to make the religion more genuine and end the games and loopholes which had developed around the Law, allowing superficial compliance while skirting the spirit. He called for  the Torah to be torqued-up (read the Sermon on the Mount), loopholes closed, games discontinued.  He also tended to simplify many elaborations of his religion.

  Every observant male Jew in Jesus' time recited the Amidah each morning.  The Our Father is a thoughtful abbreviated version of that ancient prayer.  His followers in the Jesus Movement recited the Our Father in place of the Amidah.  Let's look at key elements.

Our Father --  Jesus uses the intimate word abba, Daddy.  That was never before done in Jewish worship and never used in Jewish scriptures.  Jesus asserts a new and personal relationship with God.  How might your prayer life change if you were in a conversation with your heavenly Daddy?

Hallowed  --  It's a passive verb.  We do not hallow God's name, God alone sanctifies God's name, by blessing his people.  Instead we are called to honour that Name.  But many times we don't.

Kingdom  --  The term first appears in the Jewish Kaddish learnt in childhood.  It's about striving for a victory for God.  May we have more small victories of justice, love, and peace day by day.

Daily bread  --  Here we pray for our needs.  That's countercultural, as we are trained to pursue all the stuff that marketers makes us think we can't live without, by created needs that don't exist, in order to consumerize us.   The rendering in most translations calls for bread for today, reminding us to live for the moment and to trust God in everything.  However, the Bible manuscripts in Aramaic (the language that Jesus spoke), read "bread for tomorrow."  It's ok, I think, to look ahead just a little.

Forgive our sins --  This is a fundamental principle in Jewish theology:  you release the people who have offended you, then God will release you.  And not until.  Many people seem to dislike the modern version, preferring "trespasses," which sounds rather like walking on someone's lawn, to "sins," which is very direct and uncomfortable.  We need to be uncomfortable.
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The time of trial  --  Unlike the old translation "lead us not into temptation," this more accurate rendering does not imply that God somehow sets us up for failure.   To be saved from the time of trial, or hard testing, is important because we do need grace to persevere.  Jesus says that it is only the one who hangs in there until the end who will find salvation. 

Saint C. S. Lewis, the great Anglican theologian, said that the purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind but to shape our own.  I hope these reflections on Jesus' most famous prayer will help us do that.
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