This week, I take on The Lord's Prayer as found in Luke (see Luke 11:1-13). The version in Luke is briefer and leaves out some of the language we are most familiar with. But it still covers the most important parts of this prayer.
Now, it would be possible to do an entire sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. Whole books have been written on these few lines of scripture. We can find everything from short devotionals like Roberta Bondi’s A Place to Pray to thick academic tomes such as C. Clifton Black’s volume in the Interpretation commentary series. So please bear with me as we do our best to consider this important prayer in such a setting as this.
There are several factors to consider as we look at this text from Luke today. Last week I mentioned my love for Luke’s gospel and talked briefly about some of the ways it stands out for me - from servanthood to the elevation of women to the sometimes contradictory statements that make us really wrestle with what God’s kingdom looks like. But today we are reminded of another key feature of Jesus’ life that Luke highlights for us - Jesus’ commitment to a life of prayer
Throughout this gospel, Jesus is seen in moments of prayer. Jesus begins his ministry in prayer at his Baptism. Jesus prays before calling the disciples. He prays before the Sermon on the Plain. He prays after performing miracles. He prays on the mountain before his Transfiguration. He is praying in the garden when he is arrested. He is praying on the cross as he dies. He prays with his disciples after the Resurrection.
At the beginning of today’s text we are told again that “Jesus was praying in a certain place” (Luke 11:1, CEB). After observing not only Jesus’ commitment to times of prayer but also the power with which he does his ministry in the world, it should come as no surprise that his disciples would ask him to teach them to pray. They had seen the effect of prayer on his life, and they wanted to follow his example.
Of course, Luke also notes that other teachers had taught their pupils to pray. “Teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). So the request itself is not that surprising or even unusual.
So Jesus obliges them. He says, “When you pray, say: Πάτερ, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου” (Luke 11:2). Just kidding. Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic which would make the initial word of the prayer Abba. (My wife says I should have included a joke here about "Dancing Queen" but I wasn't sure people would be able to "Take a Chance on Me" with that.)
Of course in English, we translate this as Father. Jesus starts the prayer off with an intimate address for God. God is not distant and impersonal. God does not require communication mediated through priests and sacrifices. God is as present to us as a father should be. I recognize this may not be everyone’s experience of their own father, but rather than judging God by our experience of earthly fathers, we should be judging our earthly fathers by the love shown to us by God.
Jesus is telling his disciples two things in this opening address. First, he is clarifying that God does not require an intermediary. He may not be the first to suggest it, but he is certainly making that clear here. The disciples are not required to go to a certain person to pray for them or even to go to a particular place to pray. Jesus prays all the time all over the place. It is his example they will be following.
Second, Jesus makes prayer about relationship. When we look at his use of father language, he is speaking to relationship. God wants a relationship with us. The closest earthly relationship that Jesus can think of to help the disciples to understand is to use the idea of family - specifcally a parent. A parent is not some third party with whom you have a merely transactional relationship. A parent is someone you have an intimate relationship with, someone you go to for more than simply asking for something. Hopefully, you don’t go to your parents only when you need money or last minute childcare. You don’t go to them just because you want something. You go to your parents because you love each other, because you want to spend time with each other. Maybe someone has certain needs met as a part of that, but that is not the only reason for the relationship.
Nor, as Jesus makes clear by teaching his disciples to pray this way, is being a parent solely about blood relationships. While Jesus naturally has a father-son relationship with God, by encouraging his disciples to use the same language, he is showing them how blood is not the sole determination of what constitutes family.
So Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray. He teaches them that God is someone with whom they are meant to have a relationship. God is not a cosmic butler and prayer is not just about a laundry list of wants and needs. Prayer is about that relationship between us and God. But what about the other words?
You may have noticed, but the language here is a little (okay, maybe a lot) different from the Lord’s Prayer as you may know it. First of all, even though Jesus says these are the words we are meant to use, we don’t typically pray this prayer in either Aramaic or Greek. We use our own language to pray this prayer. One of my most meaningful experiences of praying the Lord’s Prayer was in seminary chapel services when we encouraged people to pray in the language closest to their hearts. Some prayed in English, some prayed in Korean, some prayed in French or in Spanish. You could hear trespasses mixed with debts and sins. It was truly a blessing to hear people praying the same prayer in their own way. Each was using different words, but it was the same faith and commitment to pray as Jesus taught us that was present in each.
Additionally, as we’ve discussed before, every translation of a text involves interpretation. Some words in Greek may suggest multiple different things based on context. So where one word might mean trespasses in some cases, it could also mean debts or sins. Which word gets settled on depends on the assumptions we bring to the text and the meaning of those words in the present context. Even the same word in the same language can shift meaning, just as our usual understanding of trespassing is likely different today than during the time of King James.
And so we may be familiar with certain language that sounds flowery or religious to our ears, even though it is simply the common language of another time. This does not mean the words do not have meaning for us or that those words are wrong. But it also doesn’t mean that someone else’s words fail to have meaning or are wrong. Each translation and interpretation is done with the intention of being faithful to what it was Jesus was teaching.
So Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray. He shares a new intimacy with God and some words that are meaningful in that time and place. But you probably noticed that not only are the words in today’s translation a little different, but there are some that are missing altogether from our usual use of this prayer.
Now some of these words come from other ancient texts. The version of this prayer found in Matthew 6 is a little closer to the form we are familiar with. But even there, different versions and translations have somewhat different words.
And then there are the closing words of the prayer as we know it: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” This appears in the King James Version of the Bible. In fact, the prayer as many of us know it today is found in full in Matthew 6 in the King James Version. And yet, these closing words and some of the other familiar phrases in the prayer do not appear in other translations, even some from the very same time period.
So which contains the original words of Jesus? What about the words that are in neither Matthew nor Luke but that still find their way into our prayer?
In the end, we can’t know with absolute certainty which words Jesus said. Even our oldest fragments of these ancient texts available today come from the second century - at least 100 years after Jesus’ Resurrection. But what we can do is continue to pray to God out of our faith and our dedication to have a relationship with God similar to the one that Jesus modeled for us.
So Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray. He teaches a relationship with God that is based on certain principles. He teaches some words, and we have added others along the way. Even though those of us gathered here very likely do not pray in Aramaic or Greek, we still follow along with the pattern of the prayer that Jesus taught.
And so in the end, maybe this is Jesus’ point. Maybe the specific words themselves are not as important as what underlies the words themselves. What is it Jesus is teaching us with these words? Perhaps the shape of this prayer can give us some clues.
As I pointed out above, the first piece here is that Jesus uses an intimate, familial address for God. The identification of God as parent has profound implications not only for our relationship with God, but also for each other. For if God is parent to us all, that makes us all sisters and brothers. This plays directly into the teaching of Jesus and the understandings of the early churches.
Beyond the naming of God, we also acknowledge some characteristic of God. In this case, God’s name is holy. God is both close and intimate as well as holy and sacred. In Hebrew tradition, no one is allowed to speak or even write God’s name. So this statement is a way of acknowledging God’s name without using that name directly. In fact, some have suggested that a direct translation from Aramaic or Hebrew would be "holy is The Name," a shorthand way of referring to God without naming God.
After we address God and acknowledge God’s holiness, we turn to our petition. What is it we are requesting? In this prayer that Jesus uses, the focus on familial relationships continues as he teaches his followers not to pray for individual needs only. Instead, he teaches them to pray for God’s kingdom, a kingdom modeled on love for all people He teaches them to pray that our needs are filled. He teaches them to pray for our forgiveness. We do not pray only for individual salvation, individual needs, and individual sins. We pray for each other.
We close our prayer by naming the result of our petition. If God gives us what we ask, what do we expect the results to be? In this prayer, Jesus makes it clear that the result of God’s kingdom in which our needs are met and our sins are forgiven is that we will be saved from trial or temptation and delivered from evil.
This is the end result, to be saved from evil. And given that the petitions in this prayer are communal, we must assume that the deliverance from evil is likewise communal.
In teaching his disciples to pray, Jesus gives them a prayer that lays out a vision for a new world, one in which we are all one family connected through God. Jesus does not teach his disciples to pray for individual salvation or individual needs. Jesus teaches them that they are meant to have a family relationship with God and therefore with each other. And we still have the same thing to learn today.
It probably comes as no surprise when I say that language is always changing and evolving. None of us today speaks in Elizabethan English. I would bet few if any of us could even read something written in Old English. Few of us are reading the stories of the Hebrew people in ancient Hebrew. Few of us are reading the tales of Jesus and the disciples in Aramaic or Greek. But this doesn’t mean that God has stopped talking to us. God continues to speak to us through these words written 2000 years or more ago.
As our understanding of the context and the words changes, the one thing that doesn’t change is Jesus’ insistence on a relationship between us and God and between us and each other. This is the core of his teaching and ministry and rests at the core of the Biblical witness we have available to us. Even as we continue to quibble over what some words mean (there are even some Greek words that don’t seem to appear anywhere else so we don’t really know what they mean) and which words are the right ones, we should always fall back to this understanding of relationship that Jesus called us to.
And so, let us think about how we pray. When we pray, are we approaching God as a loving parent with whom we have a relationship? Or is God distant but sometimes benevolent? Are we including others in our prayers? Are we praying for their needs? Are we asking for them to be forgiven? Are we asking for them to be included in God’s kingdom?
At the end of the day, regardless of the words he actually spoke, this is the model for prayer that Jesus gives us. In keeping with his call to renew relationships, he gives us a glimpse into his own internal prayer life. He models for us what this relationship looks like as he constantly stops to pray in the midst of teaching and healing. He gives us a form of prayer that makes it clear we are not alone.
As we go forth today, let us do so in the knowledge that we are all sisters and brothers, united in one family through Christ.
As we seek out God in prayer, may we remember that God wants a relationship with us.