Lord, teach us to pray

 

 Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."  So He said to them, "When you pray, say:

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us day by day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,

For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one."

And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.

"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" 

- Luke 11:1-13 

 

Yesterday we read that, as they went toward Jerusalem, Jesus entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.  And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word.  But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?  Therefore tell her to help me."  And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.  But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her."

 

Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." My study Bible comments that the request, "teach us to pray," expresses a universal longing to be in communion with God.  

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  The Lord's Prayer given in Luke is almost completely identical to the one found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13).  Here we begin with the understanding of God's kingdom, and this essential Christian mission to manifest that kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.   Here in the prayer we are reminded of Christ's words from chapter 8:  "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it" (Luke 8:20-21).

"Give us day by day our daily bread."  In both Matthew's and Luke's versions of this prayer, the word "daily" is translated from the same Greek word, unique to the Gospels.  That word is epiousion/ἐπιούσιον.  Its literal meaning is something like "supersubstantial" or "above the essence."  It is clearly an allusion to the Eucharist, but also the spiritual nourishment of this Kingdom which we need for sustenance each day.  My study Bible comments that the expression daily bread indicates not just bread for this day, for earthly nourishment, but it is the bread for the eternal day of the Kingdom of God, for the nourishment of our immortal soul.  This living, supersubstantial bread is Christ Himself.  In the Lord's Prayer, then, we are not asking merely for material bread for physical health, but for the spiritual bread of eternal life.  This understanding is made most explicitly clear in John 6:27-58.

"And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us."  In Matthew's version, we read, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."  But the idea of sin and debt here are still conjoined to create the same understanding.  If we look at the law as a means to make restitution, we can see this relatedness between sin and debt.  But forgiveness here means that God is the ultimate broker and judge; our forgiveness becomes a way of giving everything into the hands of God, and seeking God's guidance for our daily lives.  My study Bible makes it clear that this request to be forgiven is plural, directing us to pray always for the forgiveness of others.  The term debts refers to spiritual debts (see Matthew 18:21-35).  

"And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."  My study Bible comments that God tempts no one to sin (James 1:13); temptations are from the evil one, the devil.  It notes that temptations are aimed at the soul's giving in to the sinful passions of the flesh (Romans 7:5).  No one lives without encountering temptations, but we pray that great temptations -- that is, tests which are beyond what we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13) -- should not come to us.

And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs."  My study Bible comments that this parable demonstrates God's faithfulness to those who are in need and who pray with persistence.  According to patristic commentary, midnight is interpreted as both the time of our death and a time of great temptation.  The friend, my study Bible explains, is Christ, who, as our only source of grace, provides everything we need.  

"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"    In Greek, the verbs which are translated as ask, seek, and knock imply a continuous action.  My study Bible says they would be better and more accurately translated, "keep asking," "keep seeking," and "keep knocking."  It says that God responds when we persistently ask for things that are good.  Bread, fish, and an egg are all images of life, and they symbolize the gift of the Holy Spirit (see John 14:13-14, James 4:3). 

In the Lord's Prayer, which it seems is meant to be used each day, our first prayer, and the one that follows it, are:  "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."   These first pleas in the prayer are highly significant for their prominent placement.  They form the basis for the rest of the prayer.  It is as if Jesus first teaches us to pray for this kingdom to be manifest, and then the rest of the prayer in some way expresses the conditions necessary and characteristic of that kingdom.  First we know this is the kingdom of "our Father in heaven," whose name is hallowed, or holy.  Our Father in heaven, then, becomes the understanding for the basis for all the rest that is holy, all the things we may understand as holy or characterize as holy -- for it is whatever is "in His name" that is hallowed or made holy.  But the real manifestation, or coming of the God's kingdom, is characterized in that God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  How do we know God's will?  How do we know what God's will is for us to do in our lives specifically, or our lives collectively in the Church?  One gets an intuitive sense that perhaps simply embedded in the prayer is a plea that God makes this will known to us, that God gives us the capacity for the discernment of that will.  Nonetheless, this plea does not specify that it is only about oneself doing God's will, or a group of people or a nation, but rather that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven."  This is an ontological plea without reservation and without restriction.  It's not defined by borders or boundaries, or time or space, or by specific people or beings or any worldly thing we can name.  It is a plea for the world, and that in the whole world God's will be done as it  is in heaven.  That is an unquestionably powerful plea to pray, for we consider that we pray as a Church (in the plural), as a communion, if you will, and that we pray for God's kingdom to be made manifest, and God's will to be done for the whole world, on behalf of all and for all.  Everything else is conditioned within these pleas.  We pray for our "daily bread" which is the bread of the kingdom, for this bread is Christ Himself (John 6:51, 1 Corinthians 10:16).  We ask for this bread to be ours day by day.  We pray a mutual prayer for "our" sins to be forgiven; that is, we pray on behalf of all, and at the same time this is conditioned within the forgiveness that we offer by giving up the "debts" we feel we're owed to God, and seeking God's will in how we will live our lives and especially live the righteousness that pleases God.  And the prayer does not leave out the difficulties of this world, and an understanding and awareness of the evil in the world, but takes everything into consideration.  We do not pray in blindness to the problems of this world, but rather the opposite.  We recognize frankly the difficulties, and we present them to our Father, and we plead that we may be kept away from temptations that are too much for us, but deliverance from those times when the evil one seems to have ensnared us in difficulties that are all-too-present in this world.  And we may recall in this prayer that it is Jesus who has come down from heaven and become fully human in order to experience both temptation (Luke 4:1-13) and a time of great evil  (Luke 22:53).   We remember that "a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40), and that He is our example for times we experience the same in this world, and He has gone before us as Teacher.  Let us consider all the ways that the pleas in this prayer teach us about God's kingdom, about Christ's way, about our lives and our world as well, and consider what it is to live it and to pray it fully, day by day, and for the life of the world (John 6:33).