Prayer
Praying the Pattern:
the Lord's Prayer as framework for prayer and life
By Andii Bowsher.
Introduction
I may have missed it but it does seem that there is not a great deal available that takes the Lord's Prayer as a pattern and framework for prayer and tries to explore how to make that work in our praying and to push out into developing the Lord's prayer as a pattern for spirituality.
I want to make a strong appeal for the Lord's prayer to gain a more central place in our devotional lives. I think that we should take seriously that it is the Lord's prayer, and that as such, it should command a greater degree of time and usage in our praying singly and collectively than it probably does. To all intents and purposes the Lord's Prayer is peripheral to our praying and usually only gets employed when it is considered an appropriate moment, like ending or beginning a prayer meeting, or because it is in a particular liturgy at a certain point. I have rarely, if ever, attended a prayer event where the Lord's Prayer is at all a shaping influence on the proceedings or even exercises any discernible influence on the prayers of individuals themselves.
It seems that the Lord's Prayer does not significantly shape the praying consciousness of Christians. It is the real Cinderella of Christian praying; it should be the Belle of the ball but tends to be left behind while the step sisters Acts and Cats go instead. The lack of use of the Lord's Prayer in ordinary practice as a pattern or framework prayer seems strange given that we are meant to be following Christ's teaching and that this is a twice-repeated piece of practical-example teaching from Jesus himself.
I find myself wondering why, when I was being taught Christian basics as a newish disciple, it was that so many outline frameworks for prayer were commended but the most Dominical and scriptural one of all wasn't. In short; how is it that we have so often missed using the Lord's prayer as a pattern prayer?It looks, at first sight, as if quite early on the Lord's Prayer cameto be treated as a set prayer to be used in a similar way to the recitation of the Shema by faithful Jews, rather than a pattern. There does seem to be some reason to take this a plausible origin for the
practice of treating the Lord's Prayer as a set-piece prayer.
There does seem to be some reason to take this a plausible origin for the practice of treating the Lord's Prayer as a set-piece prayer. Jewish practice was to say the Shema ("Hear O Israel the LORD our God is the only Lord and you shall love ....") three times a day, morning, noon and afternoon, and there is evidence to suggest that Christians took to saying the Lord's prayer three times a day morning, noon and afternoon, probably in imitation or continuation of Jewish practice (and encouraged by finding that pattern in the book of Daniel). In such circumstances it seems likely that needing an equivalent to the Shema, the Lord's prayer was felt to be a suitable substitute recitation.
The effect of simply seeing it as a 'set-piece' prayer seems to be to marginalize it by placing it in a mental category along with other set-piece prayers like that of St. Francis ("Make me a channel of your peace...") or of St. Richard of Chichester ("... to see you more clearly , love you more dearly, follow you more nearly day be day..."). It is then only really used for moments when a set-piece prayer is called for or when it is felt appropriate to give some kind of sense of connection to Jesus's teaching on prayer, such as in the Communion services of a number of churches where it is introduced between the Eucharistic prayer and the receiving of communion with words like, "As our Saviour taught us, so we pray" or similar. It appears that the net effect of this is to make the Lord's Prayer an occasional feature of our praying rather than a vital in-former of our praying.
And perhaps now, even when books and research on the Lord's Prayer indicate that it is intended in all probability to be a structuring framework, we lack the resources to begin to explore how to make it a living and active part of our regular praying.
There are two passages where the Lord's prayer appears; one in Matthew (6.9-13) in the sermon on the mount; the other in Luke (11.2-4) in a different context of less fully public teaching. The wording is not quite the same and the presented occasion of the teaching is likewise not the same.
There is a lot of similarity between the two instances of the prayer. They follow the same order and deal broadly with the same topics. It seems reasonable to use them each to illuminate the meaning of the other and to presume that the same basic principles underlie them.
Let's look at the two versions together.
[Mat 6:9]"Pray then in this way: [Luke 11:2] He said to them, "When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Father, hallowed be your name. [10]Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Your kingdom come. [11]Give us this day our daily bread. [3]Give us each day our daily bread. [12]And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors [4]And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. [13] And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one." And do not bring us to the time of trial."
This shows clearly that they are from a common source yet expressed differently - they have a common structure but some variation. All of which suggests strongly that the exact form of words is not as important as the basic outline and the theme of each clause.
It may be that Matthew's version reflects a more Hebrew sense of 'sacred poetry' , where saying the same thing in a different way occurs. We see this kind of ‘rhyming' of the meaning or the sense of a line rather than of the sound of words in the line in many of the Psalms. For example towards the end of Psalm 139, the words "Search me O God and know my heart" is paralleled by the following line "Test me and know my anxious thoughts". Note how they cover roughly the same semantic ground but develop the meaning slightly differently to reinforce and explain the other line. It is as if it is a kind of semantic rhyme rather than a phonetic rhyme.
Looked at in this way, what Luke writes down as "Your Kingdom come" is given more elaboration in Matthew, where the addition of "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" enables us to understand better how to pray "your kingdom come". Likewise, not being brought to the time of trial is explained further by Matthew's extension: "but rescue us from the evil one". These are not extra ideas so much as explanations or supporting phrases of the one preceding.
Let's now go through the prayer phrase by phrase, looking at the things which can help us to make use of the prayer for ourselves.
'[Our] Father'. Almost certainly underlying this phrase is Jesus's fairly distinctive personal use of the Aramaic "Abba" to address God. It has proven difficult to translate it into English since our usual main alternatives are either likely to fall on the side of being too reverential or formal in feel - "father" -which few of us would normally use to address our fathers- or too childish in the wrong kind of sense: "Daddy" normally doesn't feel quite grown up enough for most users of standard Englishes. We seem to be encouraged, then, to aim for a sense of intimacy along with a sense of reverence.
Luke simply has "Father/Daddy". Matthew adds "Our" which points us to the solidarity both with Christ and with one another. We do not pray this prayer alone: it is prayed with Christ first of all; our praying is at the heart of Godhead in Christ. And in Christ all our brothers and sisters are ‘with us.'
'Hallowed be ...' The force of this part of the prayer lies, I suggest, in the way that it is used rather than the literal word-for-word translation. Sometimes we have to be quite careful of literalism because it can end up hiding from us the meanings which are to be found not in the words but in the phrase. The story was told that in the early days of machine translation a computer was set the task to translate some English into Russian. Faced with the phrase 'out of sight, out of mind' the machine produced the Russian for 'invisible idiot'.
We can see too how sometimes it is necessary to translate by paying attention to the way a word or phrase is used. For example, in another aspect of life other than praying, the phrase, "I wonder if you could tell me the time" we would take not to be a disinterested enquiry about our ability to read a clock or watch and whether we would be able to communicate what we read in a way the enquirer could understand. A literal understanding would suggest that as the meaning but it would have missed the point. We take it in practice to be a polite way of saying "tell me the time"; the function determines the meaning more than a word by word literal understanding.
There is a Jewish prayer which was almost certainly being used in Jesus's time which begins, ' blessed and hallowed ...'. It seems to me that the way that 'blessed and hallowed' is used indicates both that the 'blessed' and 'hallowed' are being used in parallel, each forming the other's meanings. This kind of parallelism was not at all uncommon in Hebrew prayer.
In the Magnificat, Mary uses the phrase 'and holy is his name,' which in the context [praise and exaltation] seems not just an item for praise but a way of voicing the praise; a kind of 'I praise your name' phrase. While it is not identical to 'hallowed be your name', it gives pause for the thought of taking 'holy/hallowed' phrases as ones that may function as 'giving praise and thanks' terms. So, I have taken this phrase in the Lord's Prayer as inviting us to give expression to our praise of God and our thanks to God.
'...your name.' When Moses encountered God in the Burning Bush, God gave his name not only as 'I am who I am' but also as '... the God of Abraham, ... of Isaac ... and Jacob.…’ Then later in the Moses saga (Exodus 34.5-7) the name is proclaimed by God as: 'The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.' (NRSV)
What we can take from this is that the name is about the qualities of God, the things that are admirable and awe-inspiring and describe something of who God is. To hallow God's name would be to recognize, speak out, be inspired by the qualities of God that we find revealed in scripture, history, nature, life etc. And these qualities are displayed in what God does and so thanksgiving for God's acts is also appropriate. Any naming of God will be partial and incomplete, we need to use lots of titles and names in order to remind ourselves that God is bigger than all of our attempts at naming and titling.
'Your kingdom come ...'. In many ways this is the heart of the prayer. Following what has been suggested earlier I take the phrase 'Your kingdom come' to be explained and 'meaning rhymed' with 'Your will be done on earth as in heaven'. In fact the prayer at this point can be a good way to begin to explain what God's kingdom is in the Gospels: it is where God's will is done on earth as in heaven. It has a 'now' dimension to it: that God's will should be brought to bear on the here-and-now of our lives and the life of the world. It has also a 'not-yet' dimension too: that God's will may one day be fully realised and not just present in patches, so to speak, but in a renewed creation where the whole underlying fabric of reality is transfigured and transformed.
This part of the prayer relates most readily to what most people in our society seem to understand first of all by "prayer" -asking God for things. However we should note that it actually brings us into the kind of praying that proves the most difficult and yet most fulfilling when we take it more seriously than presenting a shopping list of wants to God. Essentially, if we are to pray for God's will to be done, it involves becoming acquainted with what that will might be. Here we are on the edge of intercessory prayer proper and because of that we should note there is a link to listening prayer too. There is an implicit call in this not to simply make a request that seems good to us but to hold a matter consciously before God, not just in the mind but in the heart and with a growing awareness of the various human, natural and divine dimensions involved. This requires an attitude of waiting upon God, searching the scriptures, openness, hearing what others have to say (even those who may not be particularly faithful -God uses all sorts of people and things to communicate) and striving to get inside of God's concern for whatever it is. In scripture, we see God communicate through a donkey (to Balaam) and through astrology (to the Magi) so it may be that we have to be attentive even to the possibility of surprise communications!
'Give us today our daily bread.' This follows prayer for the will of God to be done. Praying for God's will to be done involves us in aligning ourselves with God's will and encourages us to be giving ourselves into God's will. In moving from seeking God's will in prayer to asking for God's provision we actually echo Matthew 6.33 'strive first for the kingdom of God ;and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well', in the prayer, at this point, we have just been striving for God's kingdom in prayer and so now we pray for 'all these things' to be given to us. 'These things' in Matthew 6.33 are food, clothing, the kinds of basic needs. Indeed it could be thought of as praying for what we need in order to remain people who are continuing to pray both in words and deed that God's will may be done.
What has just been written presupposes a wider meaning for 'daily bread' than simply 'baked, yeasted flour dough' and it also takes something of a view on the meaning of 'daily' which has exercised no small amount of discussion - the issue being that the word is only found here and it isn't quite clear whether it means ‘today' or 'tomorrow'. At the end of it all we are, I believe, left with the idea that we are asking for provision for the very immediate future. That is, just as we are praying 'into the future' as we ask for God's will to be done, so we are asking that we will be provided with what we need for and in the next step that we take into God's future which we are making ours, -or is that into our future which we are taking from God's hand?
I am concerned that we are careful with this aspect of prayer. It would be a tragedy if we allowed it to be co-opted by the prosperity teaching that goes on in some Christian circles and in various parts of the world. By this I mean the kind of teaching that has at various times been characterised as 'name it and claim it' or 'God wants you rich'. As with most bad ideas and like successful lies, there is enough truth in it to carry conviction for those who take it on board. In this case the truths it picks up and uses are that it is God's will that we should be provided for, and that God's world reflects God's will for provision to be made and God's love and care for humanity. The difficulty is that these true observations are then made out to be inflexible laws, wrested from their context and end up serving human pride and veniality quite apart from the actual will of God.
We live in a world where many faithful Christians have starved to death in famines and have not seen God's provision of food. I would argue that this is because, at least in part (no claims to solve the perennial questions about evil and a God of love here), the promise of provision is set within a context of an ecosystem and social systems that have largely worked in a providing way. However, if corporately we flout too much the will of God in areas touching on environment and social justice, we will find that this will have impacts on provision which will fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable in the world.
So it may seem to certain groups of Christians in affluent societies,that God provides all they need and many of their wants, but the reality is often that they (we) are working the system to our advantage: diverting God's provision meant for answering the prayers of the poor for daily bread to our own use. The fact that 'we' can name it and claim it may be saying more about a privileged position in the global web of trade and power than supernatural aid. We should see this petition in the context of gospel calls to redistribute to the poor. In our global context, praying 'your will be done' in conjunction with 'give us our daily bread' means praying and working for a world where the global systems of production and distribution are fair and sustainable. And it means being prepared to act with restraint with regard to our own desires. Prosperity gospellers should take note of their ecological footprints, and take in the fact that for everyone in the world to live at their level, it would take three to five planet earths. Then they might explain to the rest of us whether they really have faith that God is going to multiply the whole planet like the bread at the feeding of the five thousand.
'Forgive us ... as we forgive ...'. It seems to me that the basic meaning is clear enough: we are both to ask for forgiveness and to offer forgiveness. It seems strange that the forgiving others aspect of prayer is not more fully represented in liturgies and prayer meetings, given that it is such a strong strand of the teaching of Christ as we have it presented in the gospels and that it is given place in the Lord's prayer. Along with the deceptiveness of wealth, forgiving others is up there as the most frequent topic of conversation in Christ's teaching as we have it in the gospels. This is surely something we should pay attention to. It is a matter of concern then, how we make sure that this appears in our corporate worship. We need to find ways to encourage ourselves to forgive as well as to be forgiven when we pray together, whether informally or in more formal liturgies.
I'm also interested to note that forgiving comes quite late in the prayer; many prayer outlines and indeed a lot of liturgical praying tend to put confession among the first 'prayer acts'. Jesus seems less keen to do so in this pattern prayer. Perhaps starting with confession is actually an unhelpful thing to do because it positions us far more centrally in praying than perhaps the emphasis on the love, glory and will of God in the prayer requires.
Perhaps the implicit questioning of starting times of prayer with confession is something else we should take more seriously as an implication of the Lord's Prayer order and pattern. Might it be that the psychological and spiritual effect of starting with confession of sin is to make an unhealthy focus on sin and and the individual sinner?
'Do not bring us to the time of trial ...'. this clause is an invitation for us to recognize our weaknesses as far as we are able and to pray that we may be guided away from situations that 'trial' us in case we fail to stand up under the trial and stray from the path of God's will. It could also be stated positively as committing our ways to God and recognizing that we cannot do God's will in our own strength and by the light of our own eyes. 'Deliverance from evil' recognizes that when we are in situations where we are frail and liable to fall, God may deliver us, restore us to fellowship and re-establish us in right paths.
To close I have written in other places of all sorts of ways that we can turn the Lord's prayer into practice; praying with the body, with organisers, scrapbooks, stones, cards, labyrinths, lifestyles and liturgies. There are different types of personality and stages of life that call for us to pray in different ways. If you visit the website of “Praying the Pattern” you will find a number of different ways suggested following up ideas in the book and adding still others. It's an interactive site and so further ideas are welcome and can be added.
Copyright © Andii Bowsher 2005,
Book available from
http://www.pabd.com/2005/books/praying_the_pattern
www.abbeynous.schtuff.com
