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This past little while we’ve been working through the Lord’s Prayer and I would like to wind it all up and highlight a few things as a matter of summation just so they are in writing for posterity’s sake. So, the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave it to his disciples to pray when they pray, not if they pray. It occurs in two places in the Bible: Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel. Oddly, you will notice they are different from each other just as you will notice that the Lord’s Prayer, we pray on Sunday morning is different than either of those. Matthew and Luke aren’t all that different so I’ll let that sleeping dog lie. But it is important to note why the Prayer as we pray it is different from what it is in the Bible.
The Prayer as we pray it today is the product of a church that had become established. In the 300’s and 400’s persecution of Christians by the state had ceased making it so that the Lord’s Prayer wasn’t so much a prayer for bringing in the Kingdom of God. But rather, the “atmosphere” of the Prayer became daily life.
Jesus gave this prayer to his disciples under the expectation that they would be persecuted for their loyalty to him. They lived in a world oppressively governed by arguably insane Roman Emperors who lived in a faraway place called Rome and thought themselves to be gods. They loved being called Lord, Saviour, and Son of God. The coinage minted during their reigns to be circulated all over the empire bore pictures of themselves and those titles; little pocket idols. They extended their rule along with a system of taxation throughout the Empire by means of corrupt political leaders who wielded the power of the most brutal and efficient military the world had ever known.
The early Christians went forth into the world to spread the Kingdom of God embodied in the fellowship of the Church. They proclaimed the message that Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews, was the world’s true Lord and Saviour and really was the Son of God. He was crucified but God raised him from the dead. His death was for the forgiveness of sins and by his resurrection death, sin, evil, and the Evil One had all been defeated. Jesus ascended into heaven to be crowned Lord of all creation and took his place at the right hand of God, his Father, awaiting the Day that the Father says “Enough” and sends him back to establish God’s kingdom on earth once and for all. God’s kingdom will be known not for oppression, corruption, military thugs, and taxation but for justice, peace, economic equality, unconditional love, and forgiveness. On that Day, there will be Recreation and Resurrection. There will be a great feast, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, as well as a great judgement from which no one is excluded. Loyalty to Jesus and the extent to which we have loved and forgiven others will be factors in how that process goes for each of us.
The first Christians also believed that behind the scenes of the reality that we can see, there is another one full of principalities and powers that have sway in what happens in our reality. There are angels and there are demons. In the unseen realm, God gets his way unhindered. But it also needs to be said that what goes on in the unseen reality has to take into account what we do here in the seen reality. God in love for us has given us free will and that, dear friends, complicates things with respect to the appearance of whether or not God is really in control. For, too often it appears as though that dastardly enemy, Satan, the Evil One is in control even though he was defeated by Jesus by means of his death and resurrection. Yet, the Evil One still hangs around because of us and our free will and God’s respecting of that. But it won’t go on forever. The early Christians believed their true struggle was against the behind-the-scenes powers that Satan was using to influence every individual person as the line between good and evil runs through each of us. As they went throughout the world proclaiming the Gospel, the Church spread and Christians were persecuted for it.
Well, that’s about the best I can do to paint the Biblical worldview of the early church. That was the context in which they lived and in accordance with it Jesus taught them to pray to God, his Father as our Father in heaven – a very unusual way of addressing God. No other god would tolerate that kind of familiarity. God, our Father, his name is hallowed meaning holy which means different from all the others. A name is a reputation gained from the way one has exercised their power. Our Father, unlike anything or anyone else we might make into a god to worship and serve, actually loves us. He is for us. He gives life. He heals, renews, restores, reconciles, forgives, even resurrects. He listens and answers. He even gives us his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, as a deposit on the Good that is to come when Jesus returns. Anything else we could make into a god – money, power, celebrity, sex, a substance, work, even family – will only take life from us.
As the early church went into the world to proclaim the Gospel that this good God was saving the world through the Lordship of Jesus the Christ made evident in Christian community, they prayed “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” God’s Kingdom comes through prayer and prayerful people just as we sing in that old hymn, “Thy kingdom come on bended knee.” Praying for the coming of the Kingdom and for God’s will to be done helps us to focus on it, desire it, and realize it when Kingdom things happen.
We pray for a taste now of that feast to come – the joy, the new life, the fellowship of Love. “Give us today the Bread of the Day.” The bread of that Day is Jesus himself, the new life he has to give through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Presence of God with us is that small taste now of the good feast we will have in his kingdom.
The way of Jesus and his kingdom is most poignantly felt and displayed when we forgive those who have hurt us, even those we would call enemies. Forgiving is so important that Jesus tells us to pray that God forgive us in accordance with how we forgive others. The alternative is bearing a grudge and we know that if you bear a grudge long enough, it will eat at you like a cancer. Forgive!
Jesus then tells us to pray that our Father not lead us or bring us to the time of trial: not temptation as we know the prayer, but trial. A trial is something that happens that is bad enough and undeserved enough that it could make us walk away from Jesus and our loyalty to him. These trials are orchestrated by the Evil One and carried out in ways personal to us…our worst fears, our weakest moments…and yes, God lets them happen as he did in the story of Job. But God wouldn’t let them happen to us if he didn’t have faith in us. Moreover, our awareness of God’s Presence with us and his strengthening sees us through.
The last line of the Lord’s Prayer as we pray it on Sunday is actually not in the Biblical Prayer. It’s a doxology, a praise – For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. It was customary back then for prayers, especially prayers in the Bible, to end with a doxology and it would seem odd that Jesus didn’t include one. So, as this doxology isn’t biblical, so to speak, I guess I have license to say what I will about it. So, take what I say with a grain of salt.
I see this doxology, this moment of praise at the end of the Lord’s Prayer as a sort of reminder. First, it is a reminder to us that no matter what, come what may, throughout it all things are in God’s hands and at the end of the day God will be praised. Second, it is a reminder as well as a snub to Satan to pray this prayer and say this doxology while in the midst of the trials he has orchestrated in an attempt to destroy our faith in God, our loyalty to Jesus.
I have lived through trials, through nightmares in my life from which I could not wake up. Nightmares that only God can end. I have learned that in the midst of these trials it is best to just keep praying. When my thoughts get buried in rumination, dwelling on the hurt, carrying on silent conversations in my head directed at those who hurt me, pointing blame, wondering where God is, I stop myself by praying the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over and over. Pray without ceasing Paul tells us. I make myself ruminate on how God in his hallowed-ness has been faithful in love towards me and made his kingdom and will arise in my life time and again and will do so again and again even when all Hell has broken loose. I sit still in the peacefulness of his Presence knowing that God is God, knowing that I am his beloved child. I pray for the strength to forgive those who have hurt me and pray that God will bless them. I pray for God to strengthen me through the trial reminding myself that ultimately it is Satan just trying to beat me and we can beat him because Jesus already has.
And now the final reminder that arises from the doxology. I know that the kingdom and the power and the glory belong to our Father in heaven. I know I am God’s beloved child. But when you’re in the middle of a trial, living a nightmare that you can’t wake up from, a nightmare only God can end, a nightmare you don’t understand, you just know it’s not deserved, and it hurts…in the midst of a trial you just want God, whose truly is the kingdom and the power and the glory,…you just want God to step up and be God. Like the disciples on the Seas of Galilee in a violent windstorm in the swamping boat with Jesus sleeping on pillows in the stern, you want your Father to wake up and do the God thing. To pray “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory” can be for us a way of reminding God of who he is and it’s okay to do that. Moses did it. Many of the Psalmists and prophets did it. It’s okay to be angry with God. But remember, he will in the end prove himself faithful to you. You will yet again praise him. His power is made perfect in weakness. God’s Presence will be with you. He will strengthen you to the end…and it will end. Amen.