Teach us to pray

A (re)beginners' guide to the Lord's prayer

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. (Luke 11:1-4)

Those raised in a broadly Christian society or taught at a Christian school learn the Lord’s prayer by rote at a young age, and say it so often that we risk forgetting its meaning, if we ever really gave it any thought in the first place. The Church of England’s historic liturgy prescribes it at least six times a day, twice at each office of Morning and Evening Prayer and at Holy Communion. Yet it remains the fundamental prayer that Jesus taught His disciples and bears greater attention.

I have already written an extended meditation on the Lord’s Prayer as an exercise of spiritual ascent, but thought I might share some briefer notes for readier consumption this morning.

Our Father

Christ tells His followers to begin their prayer by addressing God as “Father.” Not as Mother or Creator or even Lord, but as the male parent. God is beyond being and beyond sexual differentiation, but nonetheless reveals Himself primarily in masculine images. He is the Lord of Hosts, a warrior who defends His children, a King and judge. He is not a mother who carries children in the womb and brings them forth from her body, but a Father, whose relationship to His offspring is at a greater distance. God transcends creation.

Nor is He only “my Father,” but “our Father.” By addressing God thus, we acknowledge not only our filial relationship to Him, but our relationship to one another as brothers and sisters. We begin our prayers by recognising our bonds to God and one another.

Which art in heaven

We acknowledge too that God is “in heaven.” This recalls Genesis 1.1, and the primal binary of creation: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” We are things of earth, made from the dust and imbued with heavenly spirit. But God is not of earth. He is pure Spirit. When we address Him in prayer, we turn the eyes of our hearts upwards to the realm of invisible things.

Hallowed be thy Name

Next we recognise the holiness of God’s Name. Though God is ultimately beyond being and hence beyond names, He revealed Himself to Moses as YHWH. This name is so holy that even now, Jews will not say it. He is sometimes called simply Ha Shem, “the Name.” The sacred four-letter name known as the Tetragrammaton is not written in English bibles, but is replaced by the word “Lord” in capital letters. Sometimes it is translated as “He who is,” but this is a simplification. The Hebrew word is a causative, meaning something like “the one who causes things to exist.” As the cause of all being, God is revealed in His whole creation, and can be named by anything in existence. His Name is the origin of all names. Hence the preponderance of images by which He reveals Himself in Scripture, ranging from such abstractions as “good” or “Father of lights” to the earthy “worm and no man” of Psalm 22. Yet above all, the Father has revealed Himself in the person of His Incarnate Son, who bears His perfect image, and bestowed on Him “a Name which is above every name” (Phil 2:9), the Shem ha Shem, Name of Names, even the Name of Jesus, which means “God Saves.” Hallowed indeed is the Name of the one who causes all things to exist in order to save them.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven

To this end, we beckon His Kingdom down to earth. The Kingdom here, in Greek basileia, is not a place, but the state of being ruled by God’s will. His Kingdom is His reign. Recalling again the fundamental binary of heaven and earth, we are praying that God’s will manifest in the heavens be replicated here below. Bear in mind that for the ancients, as in many modern European languages, “heaven” and “sky” were the same thing, represented by the same word. Caeli in Latin, ciel in sky and Himmel in German refer to the same thing: English is unusual in the distinction it makes. Nor, for the ancients, were stars and planets inanimate balls of flaming gas or rock, but were gods and angels. Their movements were harmonious and predictable, governed by unchanging heavenly law. Our prayer is that we here below on earth may also live in such harmonious order. The Law of the Torah is a reflection here below of the heavenly Law by which the celestial bodies are governed. And as Jesus revealed, the heart of the Torah is love of God and love of neighbour: this is what it is to recognise each other as children of the one heavenly Father. It is His love, Dante concludes his Paradiso, that moves the sun and other stars in heaven, and now we on earth pray to be ruled by that same divine love.

Give us this day our daily bread

Only once we have acknowledged our true relationship to God and neighbour and submitted to His law of love can we request anything from Him. The first thing Jesus tells us to request is “daily bread.” At the literal level, this is the basic food our bodies need to live. Yet we know that “bread” has deeper symbolic resonances than this in Scripture. Fr Kringelbotten has recently argued that the rare Greek word epiousios, which we translate as “daily,” need not have any supernatural implications, but I would rejoin that both a natural and supernatural (or spiritual) reading are possible and necessary. For Our Lord was born in Bethlehem, “House of Bread,” says that “man shall not live by bread alone,” and gives Himself as “Living Bread” to be our spiritual food. We depend on God both for our physical nourishment and for our nourishment by the Word of God in Scripture and in Sacrament. The one gives us our short life on earth, the other eternal life in heaven.

Forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us

Transformed by the realisation of our dependence on God for our creation, our continued physical existence and the hope of eternal life, we recognise our need of forgiveness from Him for our daily ingratitude and errings from the celestial law. Seeing that we are children of the same heavenly Father, and knowing our own lapses in love against Him and our sibling neighbours, we become able to forgive them their errors and lapses against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

To sin, that is, to do evil, is to stray from the path of God’s Law of love, as though a star or planet suddenly wandered from its course. We pray God not to test us beyond the capacity of our weak wills to resist: that if, like Adam and Eve, we were confronted with the forbidden fruit, God would strengthen our resolve not to take and eat it. But some of those shining spheres in the heavens have fallen. One fell into Eden in the form of a serpent. At this point, we might note the ambiguity of the Greek word for “evil” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, for it can equally be translated “the evil one.” We pray for freedom from evil both in the abstract sense of wandering from God’s will, but also in its concrete instantiation in the Devil and all the evil spirits that prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

We might conclude by praying through an extended form of the Lord’s prayer:

Our Father - Lord of Hosts, protector of all your children, our brothers, sisters and neighbours whom you call us to love as you love us;

Which art in heaven - Lord of Spirits, Father of Lights, raise the eyes of our hearts to invisible things;

Hallowed be thy Name - you who give us and all things being and life, and who make yourself known in the Name of your saving Son, Jesus;

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven - order our lives here below according the same harmonious Law which moves the angelic hosts and lights above;

Give us this day our daily bread - feed us with all we need for life, in this world and the next; bless us with the Living Bread of your Word in Holy Scripture, and with the inestimable gift of the Body and Blood of your precious Son;

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us - we have erred and strayed from your path, but judge us not, and let us not judge others, but forgive us and restore us to right relationship with you and with our neighbours, through Him who came not to condemn the world, but to save it;

And lead us not into temptation - keep us straight on the Way you have set before us in the Cross of your Son, strengthen us to carry it;

But deliver us from evil - send your holy angels to ward off the assaults of those jealous spirits which would lead us from your path of love and drag us into hatred and to Hell.

Amen.