Luke has explored with us several of the ways in which we as disciples should be active. But until now he has said relatively little about prayer. If you grew up in a home with parents who were disciples of Jesus, you may have heard your parent or parents pray aloud. You may have been taught by them how to pray. But if you didn't, and now you would like to pray regularly as a disciple of Jesus, you may—like the disciples in this story—feel in need of some instructions. "How do I go about talking to God?"
First of all, as you may already have suspected, God really wants you to talk to him. And so, he is not offended if you don't do it in a special way. Although he is the King of Kings and the Creator of the Universe, he is also your Father who loves you very much. And so, he hears you when you talk to him.
But, having said that, I am not saying that none of us needs any help in learning to pray. If that were true, Jesus would not have given the disciples this model prayer in answer to their request for help.
One of the most familiar parts of Christian worship is what we call “the Lord’s Prayer”. Some branches of Christianity call it the "Our Father" (or the Latin equivalent, the Pater Noster) after its opening words. Anyone who has attended a church, even those who have rarely opened the Bible, have some familiarity with it. In many churches it is recited every Sunday as part of the order of service. It is one of those strange facts of human nature that what we hear or see most often can be the least understood. Because we see or hear it each day—or in this case, each week—we think we have seen or understood everything about it. Whereas the truth of the matter is that we have grasped part of it and then decided it wasn’t worth paying attention to it further.
To guard against such familiarity leading me to ignore or fail to apply its lessons to my life, I try to slowly pray through this prayer at least once a week, along with the more spontaneous self-composed prayers that I use in devotions. I deliberately rephrase its parts and make them “contemporary” to my life.
Obviously, if he hadn’t thought this prayer was an important one for his disciples, Jesus would never have taught it to them. Yet, as many preachers and Bible commentators have stressed before, what Jesus actually said was: “Pray like this” (Matthew 6:9). Although Luke’s version omits the word “like”, he too understood that this was a pattern for prayer. Jesus intended his disciples to use it as a guide. It contains all of the elements that should figure in a person’s prayers, both public group prayer and personal private prayer.
One could spend a week of lessons on this prayer, but our schedule permits only this one day. So let’s be brief, but see if we can capture the essentials.
There are two versions of this prayer: one found in Matthew’s gospel and the other in Luke’s. Neither Mark nor John have chosen to preserve this prayer in their gospels. It did not suit their special purposes. The differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s wording are few and not terribly significant. Matthew preserves a slightly fuller version. To all appearances, it seems that Luke abbreviated the wording where he thought the extra phrases would not be understandable or helpful to his readers, most of whom were not Palestinian Jews.
The first thing to notice is that in the form Jesus gave the prayer it was intended to be prayed in a group. The words “our”, “we” and “us” show that clearly. That doesn’t mean we aren’t entitled to use it in private, but if we do, the wording is intended to remind us that we pray not as isolated individuals, but as members of a large family of believers all over the world who lift our voices to God. And what we ask for ourselves, we ask also for our brothers and sisters around the world.
Secondly, we address God as “Father”. In the Old Testament God has many titles. He is Creator of the Universe. He is King and Lord of heaven and earth. He is the Great Shepherd (which also stresses his kingly role, since ancient kings were spoken of a shepherds of their people). But he is not generally called “Father”. If he is, it is always as Father of Eternity, or Father of Israel. No individual Israelite ever called God his own father. This may have been one of the unique things about Jesus: that he called God his own Father. It was also one of the things that infuriated his enemies and led them to call him a blasphemer (John 5:17-18).
But here we see that he wanted his disciples to call God their Father in Heaven. Is this the same thing, as when Jesus did it?
It is true that God is our heavenly Father and that Jesus instructed us to call him our Father and trust and depend upon his fatherly love. But there is definitely a sense in which Jesus was God's only Son (John 1:14; 3:16, 18). So it is that Jesus told one of his disciples on the morning of his Resurrection:
17"Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, [Jesus said to tell you:] 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" (John 20:17)
The importance of calling God our Father is that it reminds us that he cares for us and will hear us, as no king or master who is not our father would ever do. It gives us confidence when we pray. And it reminds us of the intimacy we enjoy with the Creator of the Universe, who loves us like his own children.
When we pray “May your name be holy” (v. 2), we ask that we may always represent God to others as he is in truth: a kind, just and beautiful Person. The name of an ancient Near Eastern king expressed his essential character. As the King of Kings, God’s name is the way he is known by his subjects. And as his children we express by our words and actions his character to the world around us. When we pray this, we are asking God to help us by our words and deeds to accurately express his love, mercy and purity.
When we pray “May your kingdom come” (v. 2), we ask that the kingly rule of God be extended in the world through the lives of God’s children, including of course ourselves. Matthew records that Jesus explained this phrase by adding “May your will be done in both heaven and earth”. This is what characterizes a healthy kingdom: that the King’s subjects do his wishes.
This phrase may also express the earnest wish of God’s children that Jesus return soon to earth, as he promised he would, and establish at last a worldwide kingdom of justice and peace. The earliest Christians made this request a part of their daily prayers, using the Aramaic phrase marana tha, which means “O our Lord! Come!” I pray this every day. Although Jesus’ disciples live each day to spread the message of Jesus and to encourage obedience to God’s will, they also realize that the real establishment of God’s kingdom will come only when the king, Jesus, returns as he promised he would. Of course, as God he is present in the world today invisibly. But he promised that he would return visibly and gloriously to set up his eternal kingdom, and warned that it could be very soon and quite unexpectedly. For that reason, his disciples should not only be busy doing his work but also ready for that return at any moment (see Luke 12:35-48).
When we pray “Give us each day the food we need” (v. 3), we acknowledge that, although we may grow or buy our food with our own efforts, it is God alone who makes it all possible. He created the earth. He gives the sunshine and rain. He causes the grain to grow in the fields to make our bread. He created humans and gave us the ability to cultivate the ground and fish the seas. His giving does not stop with an initial act: he keeps giving each day. When we pray this, we acknowledge our dependency on our Father to feed us. When we pray this, we give him the thanks he deserves.
When we pray “Forgive us our sins”, we admit that our need is for more than physical food and shelter: it is for daily cleansing from the moral soiling of our lives by selfishness and greed, envy and hatred. None of us can claim to be completely free from hateful thoughts toward others on a daily basis. It has been said that the greatest of saints and holy people are the most keenly aware of their daily faults. Only God can forgive sins. Humans can forgive others for harmful things done against them personally. But every deed of hatred injures more than the human it was directed against: it harms God the Creator of that person. When we injure or offend others, we should, of course, apologize and ask their forgiveness. But we must not neglect to ask God for his forgiveness. And we must remember that all forgiveness is based on Jesus’ death to pay the penalty for our sins.
Receiving God’s forgiveness is intimately linked with our own forgiveness of others. On other occasions Jesus told a story about a man forgiven a very large financial debt who then went out and gouged a poorer person in debt to himself (Matt. 18:23-35). When his own creditor found out what he had done to the man who owed him money, he apprehended him and threw this merciless and unforgiving man into prison. God’s forgiveness is given to us freely, but if we have truly received it, we cannot be unforgiving to others. If we are, it is a sure sign that we never received God’s grace ourselves!
Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. It liberates us to be forgiving to others. But it also leads us to want passionately not to continue the offenses that have been forgiven. We want to break bad habits. And so we pray “Do not lead us into temptation”. Matthew adds: “But keep us from evil.”
Jesus goes on in verses 9 and following to assure his disciples that God will hear and answer their prayers. In verses 11-13 he returns to the importance of our relationship to God as our Father. Earthly fathers do not ignore their children who come to them in need. Neither will God ignore you. Earthly fathers give “good gifts” to their children. Perhaps not the exact items requested, but the ones that will do them the most good. And above all, Jesus reminds them, God will give you the Holy Spirit (v. 13). Of all the resources that God gives to us as his children, the most important is his own presence in us to guide, teach, comfort and strengthen us. This power and presence of God in us is expressed by the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. It is through the Holy Spirit living in us as believers that God the Father and God the Son work to guide, teach, comfort and strengthen us. You and I receive the Holy Spirit when we first open our hearts in faith to welcome Jesus into our lives as Lord and Savior. this may happen in childhood, or in adolescence, or it may happen to you later in live when you first realize your need for Jesus and his forgiveness. From that moment on the Holy Spirit lives in you. When you pray each day, God gives you renewed awareness of the Spirit’s living in you. It is the Spirit who helps you pray this Lord’s Prayer each day.
May we all enjoy daily intimacy with our heavenly Father, praying the prayer Jesus God’s Son taught us, and praying in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
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