Sermon: The Lord's Prayer

We’ve read in our gospel reading this morning how Jesus taught the disciples what we now call the Lord’s Prayer.  Presumably they then learned it and repeated it frequently, and that’s how we now say it so often.  This made me wonder what it must have been like NOT to know the Lord’s Prayer.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember NOT knowing it.  It’s just something that’s always been a part of me.  It’s practically as instinctive as breathing.  I remember, at school, being taught in biology that there are three different types of action – there are things like breathing, which we do automatically, without thinking about it, things like walking, which we learn when we are very young and that then become automatic, that is we can, mostly anyway, walk without thinking about it, and there are things like, perhaps, walking on a tightrope, that we could learn to do, but would always be very aware that we were doing, that would never really become automatic.  For me, saying the Lord’s Prayer is definitely in the same category as walking: I can’t remember learning it, though I suppose I must have done, but it’s now something I can say without thinking, that’s such a part of me that it’s instinctive. 

In one way, that’s very comforting: no matter what happens in my life, I’m pretty sure it’s something I’ll never forget – I may well forget which day of the week it is sometimes, or what it is I went upstairs to get (when I get there) but I will always be able to say the Lord’s Prayer – it will always come instinctively out of my mouth when I want it to.  There is, of course, a slight danger in this as well – because I can say it without thinking, then I might actually say it without thinking about what it means.  So perhaps it might be an idea to spend a few moments considering just what Jesus taught us in this prayer.   

Jesus taught us to start by addressing God as Father.  How amazing is that?  If we have been fortunate enough to have a loving Father in this life on earth, then we know how reassuring it is to be loved and cared for by a father, yet few have a father throughout all their lives.  But in God, we do have a father for ever – a loving father who will always be there for us when we need him, someone we can talk to whenever we need advice, or comfort, someone who loves us no matter what we do or what we are like.  In return, we cannot help but recognise God’s power, glory and majesty – in other words, we hallow God’s name.  To do this, we have to live the life he wants us to – we cannot hallow his name if we do not follow his teaching.  So just in these first few opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, we recognise God’s love for us and the need for us to live according to his will.  And it is his kingdom that we pray for, not any little kingdoms we might have invented on earth.  If we were to change the words to “Thy politics come,” or “Thy economics come”, we might realise just what it is that we are praying for here.  We are praying for a kingdom of love, peace and justice, but a kingdom not just outside of us, for the rest of the world, but within us as well.  We are asking God to rule all our desires, so that we exist to do his will, so that we are no longer selfish or worldly but live simply to do what he wants us to – if we could all do that, then his kingdom would indeed come to the whole world.   

We then ask him to give us each day our daily bread.  In doing so, we are recognising that our needs for each day are met by God; we do not provide for ourselves, but are provided for by Him.  He gives us life and the means to live.  Like the good Father that He is, He is taking care of our every need.   And the bread we are asking for here is not just food, but all our needs, material and spiritual.  Jesus identifies himself as "the bread that comes down from heaven." and so the bread we're asking for is the presence of God, sustaining us with life itself.  We only need ask, therefore, for what we need today – we do not need to ask for enough to store up for future use, we do not need to worry about tomorrow.  If we trust Him, then we know that those needs will be met. 

We then go on to ask God to forgive us our sins, as we forgive others.  We trot out these words so easily – yet just think for a moment what we are saying.  We are asking God to forgive us in the same way that we forgive others.  We are saying that we want to be judged by how we judge others.  Presumably we all want to be forgiven, so in effect we are saying that we do forgive everyone who may ever have wronged us.  That’s a pretty huge statement to make, if you think about it.  Can we all, honestly, put our hands on our hearts and say that there is no-one against whom we bear any sort of grudge?  No-one we haven’t forgiven, no matter what they might have done, to us or to those we love?  Yet that’s what we must be prepared to do and that’s exactly what we are saying we do every time we say the Lord’s Prayer.  It’s a tall order, but if we just think of the agony Jesus went through when He died for us on the cross, how can we be so petty as to not forgive any earthly sin against us?  Perhaps that’s why we then go on to ask that we be delivered from temptation.  It’s all too tempting to judge others without recognising our own faults, but if God can forgive us, if we but ask, then surely we must be prepared to forgive others also. 

It’s so easy to say The Lord’s Prayer – it’s not so easy to live what we say.  At the beginning we compared saying the Lord’s Prayer to walking.  When we were little we learned how to walk and then it became automatic.  Anyone who has at some time found walking difficult knows how easy it is to take something we have learned for granted.  This is something we should never do with the Lord’s Prayer – if we do, we fail to recognise the love and care our Father has for us each and every day.   So, let’s make a promise to ourselves to think about what we are saying each time we say the Lord’s Prayer, to focus on the words as we say them, and then to feel God's love and support as we say those well-known words, to become aware of God’s comforting presence in our everyday lives and to connect each day with our Father who loves us, each and every day.  It’s such a wonderful gift that is offered to us – how could we possibly refuse it?

Preached by: Alyson Goldstein at St Meugan's and St Peter's, Ruthin on Sunday, 29th July 2007