Tuesday, 20 October 2009

• The Lord's Prayer: A Closer Look

  Much of the following is based on the book Becoming The Answer To Our Prayers by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove who remark that "prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do."
  
  The Lord's Prayer is incredibly important to me. Not only have I begun to model all of my prayers after it, but it is a good reminder of some key components of the Kingdom. I have begun to say it when we are commanded to pledge allegiance. I find it to be a Jesus-style way of subverting the Empire; that is, mimicking it for God.
  Each line of it is a perfect reminder of what we believe.
  
  "Our Father in heaven, hallowed is your name"
  Forgive me for looking a little too deeply into this one, even the name of God is Holy, a microcosm of what he is unending. Truly, God is the only one worthy of being our King, for he is uncorruptable. He is perfect and good. When he came to Earth, he came as the lowest of the low. Son of a carpenter, most likely viewed by his society as a bastard child. He lived his life as a homeless vagrant and preached a message of love and forgiveness, of poverty and community.

  "Your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven"
  We are not simply asking God to bring the Kingdom, but we are asking that "his will be done." Who does his will? We do. And if Heaven is perfect, without poverty, war, or hate, then should this not be what the Kingdom looks like? The Kingdom is only as good as the way we choose to live.
  
  "Give us this day our daily bread"
  Let us trust in you, God. Too often today, the Church equates faith in God to simply believing that He exists. But it is so much more. The first is when Jesus tells us, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? '"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."' Faith in God means trusting God, and trusting him not for spiritual reasons alone but for physical needs. The second connection is to Exodus when God feeds the Israelites with manna, and tells them not to store up more than they need for one day. It's this, a "Theology of Enough",  that permeates the Kingdom. We should not horde or save, but trust God to feed us for the day. Today, much of the world starves, while America has become the fattest and most obese nation in history. A nation is dying from having too much, the world is dying from having too little. In our Kingdom, we live when we eat enough. And when we eat only enough, we can share with those who are starving.

  "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us"
  Just as much as God forgives us, we must forgive others. After the prayer, Jesus says, "for if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." I don't know if we should look at this as much as our Forgiveness is dependent on how we treat others (which clearly is a part of it,) but that we should treat others well and forgive them when they treat you badly, because it  is not beyond you to treat others badly. In Matthew, this line is, "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." This idea goes back to Leviticus 25:8-55 where God gives provision for Jubilee, a time when everything is reset. Everyone becomes evened out. Debts are forgiven, slaves are released. This was put into place to make sure that no one ever got too far ahead of anyone else. Of course, it was never really practiced to the fullest extent. It seems that Jesus came to teach us the principal of the Law so that we could live out the intention of the law. With this in mind, we should always be forgiving of sins and debts, lest we get ahead of anyone else.
  
  "For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever"
  If we open the prayer with a reflection on the holiness of God, then we must end it with an even grander one. We say that everything is his, he is the only one that is not perverted by Power, and he was great, he is great, and will always be great.
  
  "Amen."

  Do you look at the Lord's prayer differently now? Why or why not?
  

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