Sunday Morning’s Sermon: Prayer (1): The Lord’s Prayer

Luke 11:1-4

Introduction
Today is one of those rare Sundays when you have the misfortune to hear me
preach twice. Not only do we have this morning service, I am also the preacher
at tonight’s united service. That means two things: firstly, you have advance
notice, and if I see fewer than usual Methodists present this evening, I shall
guess why! Secondly, it means I have to write two sermons for today!

Now since both services are taking today’s Lectionary Gospel
reading of Luke 11:1-13, I
have decided to divide the passage in the following way. This morning I shall
explore the first four verses, where we have Luke’s account of the Lord’s
Prayer. This evening I shall look at verses five to thirteen, where Jesus gives
further teaching on prayer: the parable of the friend at midnight, and the
ask-seek-knock poem.

I feel encouraged to spend two sermons exploring prayer
after comments someone made last Monday night at our open meeting. I gather
several preachers have been mentioning prayer recently. Prayer has also been an
important theme in our discussions about mission, and we agreed on Monday
evening to set up regular gatherings for prayer, and explore occasional church
‘quiet days’.

So, then, this morning, to the Lord’s Prayer. But how can
you deal with the Lord’s Prayer in one sermon? In the past I have preached a
series of sermons on it; I have given a seminar on what it might mean in
today’s [post-modern] culture[1];
and I have given an academic lecture
on one petition in a series. There is so much in the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps
we shall never plumb all its depths before glory!

However, the approach I am going to take this morning is
simpler. Much as I would like to preach a series on it, that is not practical
when I only get to preach here once a month. And I can’t split the Lord’s
Prayer into two halves, one this morning and the second tonight: that wouldn’t
be fair on the Anglicans and Salvationists this evening. I have opted to do
this: I simply want to examine what Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer tells
us about the character of God. I have identified six characteristics of God in the
Lord’s Prayer. That means only very brief comments about each of them!

1. Father
‘When you pray, say: Father’ (verse 2).

You can’t read the word ‘Father’ as applied to God in the
New Testament without the background of knowing that Jesus and Paul interpreted
this as the Aramaic word abba, the
affectionate word a small child used for their father. ‘Daddy’ might not quite
capture it in English, but it’s as close as we might get.

So for me, as one who came to fatherhood later than most, I can’t
help but think of a smiling daughter or son exclaiming, ‘Daddy!’ and running to
kiss me, throw arms around my legs or jump on my lap. Sometimes I think there
is nothing better in the world than those moments.

In that respect, I see Jesus introducing prayer as an
address to ‘Abba/Father’ as a sign that prayer is not a duty but a welcome. Not
that prayer is always exciting, but it is a place of warmth, a place of the
Father’s embrace.

But sometimes prayer to the Father does mean joy and
excitement. On Friday morning, Rebekah came back with Debbie from the end of
her weeklong summer holiday swimming crash course with two certificates. Her progress
had been fantastic. We decided to reward her with chocolate for one certificate
and an ice cream for the other. So, too, when members of God’s family come to
the Father, it is a place to celebrate joy, to weep together in pain and to
embrace mundane things. In that simplicity prayer begins.

2. Holy
Just because we begin with the welcoming nature of the Father does not mean
that we reduce prayer to a chatty mateyness:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
(verse 2)

To hallow God’s name of ‘Father’ is, perhaps, the positive
New Testament restatement of the Old Testament prohibition of blasphemy. God’s
name is to be honoured, not defamed. For that we pray.

What exactly are we praying, though? It’s more than our
upset when someone uses the name of God as a swearword. It’s more than the
casual way in which we might attribute something to God without being careful: ‘God
said this’ – are you sure?

We pray that God’s name will be hallowed in our lives and
among us as a Christian community. It is thus prayer that we might have a
credible witness. It is prayer that we might be more worthy ambassadors for God’s
kingdom, that we will bring credit to his name, not dishonour.

And it is prayer for God’s name to be hallowed by others. In
that sense, this is a prayer for evangelism. As I said, it isn’t simply a
prayer against blasphemers; it is a
prayer for blasphemers and others – a
prayer that will find the joy of this wonderful Father. And when they do, they
will want to honour him in word and deed.

If we want to hallow God’s name, we shall want to be people
who are good news to others, good news in the name of the Father. Can we pray
that for our lives? Who are the people in our orbit for whom we are praying
that they might find the Father?

3. King
Let’s take it a bit further:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
(verse 2)

The Father whose name we honour because it is holy is also a
king. He has a kingdom. He is the focus of the kingdom of God. The kingdom,
which we long to see coming, is not so much about us as about the king acting
with kingly power.

This is to say, Lord, there is nothing we desire more than to
see everything in creation line up with your will. (Which is why in Matthew’s
version, ‘Your kingdom come’ is paired with ‘Your will be done on earth as in
heaven.’)

‘Your kingdom come’ is language of petition and intercession.
We petition the Father that we might have the grace to do his will. And of course,
he answers that! He does not call us to do something and leave us without the
spiritual resources in his Holy Spirit to fulfil his desires for us. To pray ‘Your
kingdom come’ and mean it is to take our oath of allegiance to our Father who
is also our King.

Granted, ‘kingdom’ language may be more difficult today when
monarchs have only symbolic power. Brian
McLaren has
suggested we speak instead of the ‘revolution
of God’. We are signing up for the revolution. That is a revolution in our
lives, and a revolution for the whole of creation. It is prayer for healing,
justice, and an end to poverty and war. The kingdom has begun to come in Jesus
himself, and we see it coming more when God performs his will; we pray for its
fuller coming.

4. Giver
Next we pray,

Give us each day our daily bread.
(verse 3)

Daily bread?
Surely God isn’t that concerned with physical and material things, is he?
Shouldn’t we just pray about ‘spiritual’ affairs? Should we not see this as a
request for the bread of heaven, the bread of life?

If you think that, let me take you to a village rubbish tip
just west of the River Nile, at a place called Oxyrhynchus. A hundred years
ago, some papyri were discovered. In 1925, a Swiss professor found the word
translated ‘daily’ here on a shopping list that also included chickpeas and
straw. As Jesus called people to pray for their daily bread, mothers were
sending teenage boys on errands to the baker’s, telling them to make sure they were
sold today’s bread, not yesterday’s stale bread.[2]

Jesus and the Father are very
interested in our material needs being met. Do not be ashamed about bringing
those basic needs to God. It is all part of his fatherly concern. I would not
see my children lack food or clothes. The heavenly Father feels the same, if
not more.

And in that respect, he often enlists us in answering these
prayers in others. Therefore, as we
struggle to
find good news in the midst of the current floods in the UK,
it was heartening to see news footage the other night of a church giving out
free bottled water. The Father longs to meet the needs of his children, so he
encourages us to pray. However, he also enlists us as his agents to take what others
need to them, and to change those structures and policies in the world that
prevent others receiving what they need.

5. Forgiver
And so to perhaps the hardest words Jesus ever uttered (and there is plenty of
competition for that accolade):

And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(verse 4)

I could spend a whole sermon on these words. I find it
curious but understandable that it is easy for us to pray, ‘forgive us our
sins,’ and we do that regularly – not least in confession during public
worship. However, rarely do we connect our confession with our commitment to
forgive others. Although one is sure to exist, I have yet to find a liturgy for
confession that ties the two together.

How do we tie our desire for forgiveness together with the
call for us to forgive? Our forgiveness is not just something we experience in
the present: it is something we shall hear at the Last Judgment. Because we
know we shall be forgiven, we forgive now.

But that still needs grace! How many of us find it easy to
forgive? Few of us, I would guess. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive’ can be a
way of asking the Father to show us things from his perspective. When we look
at the Cross of Christ, and when we think of what God has forgiven us, then the
barriers begin to tumble. So we pray for that divine insight, that heavenly
revelation that puts our petty refusals to forgive into the perspective they
deserve. And when we forgive, we are a sign of God’s grace to the watching world.

6. Deliverer
The final petition is,

And do not bring us to the time of trial.
(verse 4)

I think that’s a preferable translation to ‘Lead us not into
temptation’ (which at very least requires the corresponding ‘But deliver us
from the evil one’ that is missing from the best manuscripts of Luke). However,
even these words have their problems. What kind of trials? Are we always
delivered from them? Clearly, Christians do go through trials in their lives,
and some of them quite vicious – note the missionary nurses and teachers from
South Korea being held hostage
by the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the twenty-three has already been executed.

Certainly, God sometimes allows us to face trials we would
have ruled out beforehand, but he graciously sustains in ways we could not have
imagined. Perhaps this prayer is that we might not face trials beyond our
ability to endure. If so, it is a salvation prayer – not salvation from our
sins, but salvation from being sinned-against.

God our Deliverer is in process of bringing a comprehensive
salvation as he ushers in his kingdom. Deliverance is not only in terms of
forgiveness, it also comes in the shape of holiness, as we are delivered from
the practice of sin, and in terms of justice and righteousness as he delivers
his creation from the presence of sin and its effect on victims. ‘Do not bring
us to the time of trial’ unites us with Christians around the world and down
the centuries, the majority of whom have suffered for their faith, but who one
day will be vindicated by God.

Conclusion
And that is where it ends: the prayer that began with a child sitting on Daddy’s
lap ends with the new creation, where there will be no more mourning or crying
or pain. May it be so soon. Come, Lord Jesus.

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