“When you pray say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come…’ If you who are wicked know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Luke 11: 1-13
While both the Hebrew and Jewish peoples had an abundance of prayer formulas which they recited in groups and as individuals, today’s first reading and gospel give us a glimpse into how Abraham and Jesus approached God in prayer in their personal lives.
Taking up the cause of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and despite hearing that God was only going to see if the allegations against them were accurate, Abraham stalled God by launching into a burst of haggling and bargaining similar to the exchanges that took place between buyers and sellers in a village market. I suspect that God would have been more than a little amused with Abraham’s tactic to convince God to spare those twin towns from destruction even if only a total of ten decent and good-living people could be found in them. Abraham was determined not to be denied.
In the gospel-reading we see just how different was Jesus’ style of praying. We are not told what it was that prompted the disciples to ask him how he prayed to God in private when he went off to pray alone in a secluded place. I wonder, however, if his earlier risky questions to them about who the gossips thought he was, followed by who they thought he was, gave them the courage to ask him to teach them just how he went about praying to God. That was a question that delved into the sensitive matter of his private relationship with God. Clearly, Jesus did not see the disciples’ question as indelicate and responded with an answer that has given us Christians a prayer formula with which we are now so familiar that we can sometimes rattle it off without concentrating on the words.
It is a prayer that probably shocked those first disciples. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time, and all those since then, traditionally prayed three times daily a prayer they knew and know by heart. It begins with a lengthy address to God: “Lord God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob! Most High, Creator of heaven and earth! Our Shield and the Shield of our fathers!” Now that’s a long way from Jesus’ intimate address:”Abba” (Daddy) – a word that we can hear every day coming from the mouths of Muslim children to their fathers in shopping centres around Sydney (and in other cities of the world).
Jesus, however, quickly proceeded to remind the disciples not to lapse into being over-familiar with God. He added a need to acknowledge that we should hold God in awe and respect, with the words: “Hallowed be your name”. They are a reminder that God is the Creator of all that exists, the very source of all being. At the same time, Jesus was pointing out to the disciples, and to us, that the God who created the universe and all it contains still invites all to approach with the greeting: “Abba”. We have comfortably learned to combine those two forms of address when we pray before Communion in the celebration of Eucharist: “Lord, I’m not worthy that you should come under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” In other words, we are stating: “Your word, Lord Jesus, will heal all that is awry in us.”
But we are still only at the beginning, for Jesus proceeded to add words which describe what is to be the central focus of the mission of all Christians: “May your kingdom come, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. By daring to utter those words, we are promising to commit ourselves and our energy to building the kingdom of God and pursuing God’s cause for our world, wherever we live, work and worship. We are articulating our intention to be faithful to the God who has loved us into life.
The prayer then moves another step to acknowledge our total dependence on God for all we need to nourish us physically and spiritually. The Greek word epiousios (“daily bread”) suggests both the food we need for bodily nourishment and super essential food for our spiritual lives, offered to us in the Eucharist.
This is followed by a petition to God for forgiveness, with a request for God to forgive us in the same measure as we extend forgiveness to those who have offended us. That’s simply a promise that we will take care not to withhold forgiveness from all who have done us physical or moral harm.
This prayer, which we now label “The Our Father”, concludes with a final plea to God to protect us from losing faith and trust whenever we are tempted to despair. That plea anticipates what Jesus himself was to face when he was tempted in his agony to feel that God had abandoned him. Luke, however, was able to record that Jesus had said to his Father: “Not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22: 42)
This prayer, then, has not been idly named “The Lord’s Prayer”. It is a synopsis of the relationship Jesus had developed with his Father. In giving this prayer to his disciples, he invited them, and all of us who follow them, into the very same kind of relationship he had with God.
Whether or not we dare to pray this prayer, let’s not forget that the private prayer we pray reflects the image of the God to whom we direct our prayers. I would do well to reflect on the way in which I pray in order to see if my prayers are directed to a God who I know really loves me dearly or to a God of whom I am afraid. The way in which I pray will tell me what kind of God is mine.