The Prayer He Taught Us

Scripture: Matthew 6:5-15 (The Lord's Prayer)

This past week, our nation marked the seventh anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. If you attend church regularly and pray occasionally then, by my estimation, it is likely that in the course of the seven-year period since that day you have recited the Lord’s Prayer approximately four-hundred times.

I use the word “recite” advisedly but deliberately. After all, anything we do with such frequency can become tired, rehearsed, and mechanical. A fresh look at these words may help us rediscover their incredible poetry and power. And a close reading of them may help us understand why these words have a place at the center of our worship, and should have a place at the center of our lives.

One striking aspect of our experience of the Lord’s Prayer is that we almost always read, hear, and say it out of context. We treat the prayer as if it stood in splendid isolation from everything that comes before and after it. As a result, we miss some important messages that the gospel seeks to convey. Those messages become clearer if we return the prayer to its context within the Gospel of Matthew.

Biblical scholars have observed that the Lord’s Prayer comes at the precise structural center of the Sermon on the Mount. They point out that the Sermon is divided into three parts: a series of pronouncements, a series of instructions, and a series of warnings. The Lord’s Prayer appears in the second of these parts—that is, right in the middle.

Furthermore, this second part is itself divided into three sections addressing three acts of righteousness: giving to charity, prayer, and fasting. Again, the Lord’s Prayer appears right in the middle.

The Lord’s Prayer is therefore at the center of the center of the Sermon. This structure unmistakably emphasizes the centrality of prayer, and particularly of the Lord’s Prayer, in the most expansive single collection of teachings that Jesus offers us.

This placement of the Lord’s Prayer conveys a more important, if also subtler, point as well. For the Lord’s Prayer is not just surrounded by other messages; it is surrounded by other messages that may seem to us qualitatively different from his message about prayer.

After all, the Sermon on the Mount is a theological exposition: it describes the fulfillment of prophecy; it calls us to a life that transcends even the expectations of the Ten Commandments; it declares the primacy of love in our relationship with God; it uses abstract language, paradox, and metaphor. Sitting in the middle of all this theological grandeur is a very specific instruction about how to pray.

The passage may therefore strike us as a digression, a minor detour that Jesus takes in the course of making larger points. In short, the Lord’s Prayer may seem to us out of place because we usually think of theology as one thing and of prayer as something else. The centrality of the Lord’s Prayer, however, invites us to think differently.

One New Testament scholar puts it this way: “Prayer is theology; theology is prayer. Prayer is a theological act, the fundamental theological act. What one prays for simultaneously shapes and expresses one’s theology. Matthew’s decision to place the Lord’s Prayer at the center of the instruction of the Sermon on the Mount dissolves the line between worship and theology.” (M. Eugene Boring, The New Interpreter’s Bible (1995), p. 206).

The great theologian Karl Barth was not known as a man of few words. But with respect to this issue he succinctly declared: “The first and basic act of theological work is prayer.” (Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology (1963), p. 160)

Matthew invites us to put prayer at the center of our worship, the center of our faith, the center of our being.

There is another striking aspect of our experience of the Lord’s Prayer: we have become very comfortable with a text that includes some very uncomfortable passages. The prayer calls upon us to wish for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom and God’s will right here and right now—a prospect some of us might wish to postpone until we’ve made a little more spiritual progress. The prayer requires us to focus on our simple needs for today rather than our eager ambitions for tomorrow. The prayer demands that we confront our unforgiving natures.

And then there’s that last, extremely troublesome passage: “And lead us not into temptation.” We say this over and over again but rarely pause to ask whether this corresponds to our understanding of who God is and what God does. Do we really believe in a God who would try to tempt us? Does God lead us into temptation? Isn't that someone else's job description?

The meaning of this phrase has been hotly debated, but only for about two thousand years. As one scholar notes, “From the earliest times the church has been bothered by the apparent threat that God could lead Jesus’ disciples into temptation, and had to be supplicated not to do so.” (Boring, p. 205)

Indeed, this part of the Lord’s Prayer worried some translators so much that they simply re-wrote it. Thus, one early Latin text conveniently re-phrased the prayer to read “ne patiaris nos induce in temptationem,” which means “do not permit us to be lead into temptation.” This certainly sounds better. The only problem is that Jesus didn’t say it.

In my view, the most persuasive interpretation of what Jesus did say goes something like this: “God calls us to follow. But, when we follow God, we may end up in some trying and difficult places, places that will test us and tempt us. We pray that, wherever God leads us, God will also give us the strength to resist the temptations we find there.” This is, of course, only one interpretation and you may read the text differently. For present purposes, though, the point is not what you think about it; the point is simply that you think about it.

Of course, there are reasons we don’t spend much time thinking about the Lord’s Prayer—I’ve already mentioned the familiarity of the text and our frequent repetition of it. There is an additional reason as well. In this passage, Jesus tells us precisely what to say. We dutifully memorize the words—these are, after all, the praying instructions of the Son of God, so we can hardly be blamed for wanting to learn them. But, paradoxically, that memorization leads to a kind of forgetfulness. We remember the words. But we forget the point. We say it. But we forget to pray it.

Now, Jesus knew a great deal about ritual. He didn’t think much of it—of doing religion by rote. Indeed, throughout the gospels he argues with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the leaders of the Temple precisely because they elevate ritual over things that matter more—things like compassion, forgiveness, humility, and love. It therefore seems remarkable that Jesus would offer us something as easily memorized, as specifically expressed, and as essentially ritualistic as the Lord’s Prayer.

It is so unlike Jesus. Throughout the gospels, he speaks to us in parables and paradoxes. His language is rich with similes and stories and scriptural allusions. And yet, here, he offers very specific and explicit instructions—perhaps the most specific and explicit instructions Jesus gives us about how to do anything. Indeed, maybe you have occasionally wished for this sort of clarity on a few other issues as well. I know I have.

How can we explain this? Why did Jesus do it?

On its face, the text suggests that Jesus did this in order to move his followers away from the practice of engaging in elaborate, self-aggrandizing, public prayers that glorified the speaker rather than God. Providing a brief and specific prayer like this would certainly help accomplish that goal. But I don’t think that entirely explains what’s going on here. After all, in this part of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus also calls his followers away from demonstrative public alms-giving and fasting—but he doesn’t provide this sort of specific instruction about how to do those things.

So I invite you to consider an additional possibility. Jesus provided this sort of specific instruction because he understood what we do when we truly, deeply, sincerely pray. Jesus understood that real prayer is a mysterious process that transcends words, and for which words are not really even necessary. That is why Jesus prefaces his prayer by reminding us that God “knows what [we] need before [we] even ask.”

Jesus understood that real prayer is not about our words; it is about our heart; and it is about opening our heart to God. Jesus understood that real prayer is not about what we say; it is about our faith; and it is about how we put that faith into action. In this passage Jesus tells us how to pray, specifically. But, throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells us how to pray, generally. He invites us to make our lives into a prayer. In a sense, that is the prayer Jesus taught us.

But Jesus also understood human nature. He understood that we have times of sorrow and sadness, worry and weakness, anguish and anxiety. He understood that in the course of our lives we all spend some sleepless hours in the dark nights of the soul. He understood the importance of having somewhere to go when we feel lost—somewhere familiar; somewhere centering; somewhere that brings us back to what is essential; somewhere that brings us back to God; somewhere that brings us back home.

And that is the genius of the Lord’s Prayer. It distils our faith into a few easily memorized verses. As a result, on many occasions—no doubt, too many occasions—we will recite it absently, flatly, dispassionately. But on other occasions—often the most important occasions of our lives and of our faith—we will pray it eagerly, fervently, intensely. We will leave our wanderings. We will go home.

There is something that I cannot know, but that I can nevertheless say with confidence. I can say with confidence that on September 11 and in the days that followed many, many people went home to the Lord’s Prayer. I can say with confidence that this weekend—as terrible storms have borne down on the Gulf coast—many, many people have gone home to the Lord’s Prayer again. I can say with confidence that every minute of every day someone, someone who has nowhere else to go, goes home to prayer that Jesus taught us.

Today, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that, we will go out into the world called to the great adventure of living a life of faith. In our wanderings, we will meet triumph and disaster, happiness and grief, joy and despair; we will meet the unanticipated and the unimaginable; we will meet the magnificent and the mundane; we will meet our dear friend life and that old villain death.

Sometimes, in those wanderings, we will get lost.

But we can always return to the prayer that Jesus taught us.

We can always, always go home again.

Amen.