Prayer in the Pantry
Before Jesus teaches his disciples what to pray, he tells them where to pray, and why.
Jesus doesn't open his teaching on prayer with words to say. He opens with a warning: don't pray like the people who "love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them." Their reward is the audience, and that is all the reward they will ever get.
Instead, Jesus says, go away by yourself and shut the door. Craig pointed out on Sunday that the room Jesus has in mind is the inner room of the house, usually the storeroom: "like the pantry. You know, go into the inner part of the house where nobody can see you, when you're alone. It's a humble place." Jesus isn't banning public prayer. He is taking away the one thing that turns prayer into a performance, which is people watching. What's left is you, God, and whatever you actually mean.
- If nobody ever knew you prayed, would your prayer life look any different from how it looks now?
- Where is your "pantry," the ordinary, unimpressive place where you can be alone with God?
Against Babble
More words don't make a better prayer, because God already knows what we need.
One commentary introduces this section of the Sermon on the Mount as "Against Babble." Jesus says not to "babble on and on," as though repeating ourselves, using big words or whipping ourselves into some kind of frenzy to impress someone else, will get God's attention. Jesus invites simplicity and sincerity. God listens.
Then comes the line that changes what prayer is for: "your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!" If God already knows, prayer can't mainly be a way of passing on information. Craig described it as a relationship where you can express honestly the longings of your heart, and God listens. And in the speaking and the listening those longings will be tested by the presence and love of God. They may be affirmed or they may be challenged, but whatever comes out of it, you will be changed. Prayer isn't mainly a way of informing God. It is time spent with God who already knows us.
- Do you ever pray as if you had to convince God, or explain things he doesn't already know?
- Which of your deepest longings do you need God to affirm, and which might he be challenging?
Our Father, Not My Father
The prayer opens by telling us whose children we are, and who we're praying alongside.
We've prayed it so often that the opening word slips past us. Craig said what caught him this time was the very first word in the English translations: "Our Father." Jesus doesn't teach us to say "my Father." We are not alone in our prayer. We have a common parent and therefore we address God in prayer as family. Those who pray alongside us are our brothers and sisters. Jesus uses the cultural framework of the day to describe our relationship with God. God is the one who gives rise to our identity, our very life. God is the head and originator of our family, and we are God's children. We're not praying to convince a distant and uninterested deity; we are praying to God who knows us inside out!
The next line, "may your name be kept holy," asks first that God would be known and honoured as the Holy One. But from a household point of view, we who carry our father's name should carry his identity. So praying for God's name to be honoured is also asking that who God is (his character, ethos and priorities) would show up in us, his children.
- What changes when you picture yourself praying alongside the rest of God's family, not on your own?
- Where would people who know you see God's character in you this week, and where might they struggle to?
Bring Heaven to Earth
Jesus doesn't ask God to take us out of the world. He asks God to bring his rule into it.
Many of us grew up thinking the whole point of faith was to get to heaven. However, that is not the direction of this prayer. Jesus prays, "May your Kingdom come": that God's reign be here, and God's will be done here and now.
That makes "your will be done" a much more personal prayer than it sounds. We are not approaching God as some kind of cosmic genie granting wishes to those of us who call ourselves Christian until such time as we are whisked away to a better place where God's will is done as a matter of course. We are not only asking for God's will to be done on earth. We are asking for God's will to be done in us too, now. May we be changed and transformed, so that God's will be done in and through us. May we reflect our family identity and participate in God's work in the world. Heaven reaching earth usually starts close to home.
- When you pray "your will be done," whose life are you usually thinking of changing?
- What is one part of your own life where God's will is not yet being done, and you know it?
Enough for Today
A one-line request for food that goes back to the manna in the wilderness.
"Give us today the food we need." It's the simplest line in the prayer, although commentators still debate the unusual Greek word that describes the bread: "needful," "daily" or "for tomorrow." In Exodus, the Israelites experienced God's provision of bread (manna) each day. As they navigated the wilderness, God fed his people every morning. They gathered what they needed for the day, and when some tried to keep extra overnight, it went bad. They had to trust God again the next morning.
God ensured that they didn't go hungry. What is needed is all that is needed. Praying for today's bread means trusting God with tomorrow, and not holding on to more than we need while others go without.
- Where do you tend to measure God's blessing by how much you have?
- Where might you be looking for security in the stockpiling of things, rather than in God?
Forgiven People Forgive
The line in the prayer we'd most like to end halfway through.
"Forgive us our sins," we ask God in prayer, but that is not the end of the sentence that Jesus teaches us to pray. Jesus keeps going: "as we have forgiven those who sin against us." How comfortable are we praying, "Lord, treat me the same way that I treat everybody else"?
Jesus is not saying we buy God's forgiveness by forgiving well enough. Rather, God is embedding his character in us, so we should resist the temptation to seek forgiveness willingly but be reluctant to offer it. Later in Matthew, Jesus tells of a servant who is let off a debt of ten thousand talents. Using an estimate based on daily wages, that is roughly $9.6 billion in today's dollars. The same servant then refuses to cancel a fellow servant's debt of a hundred denarii, about $16,000 on the same rough estimate. Next to what we've been forgiven, what others owe us is small. If you are going to be about the work of the kingdom, then you'll be the kind of person who seeks to practise forgiveness and reconciliation.
- Is there a claim you're holding on to against someone?
- How does remembering the size of what God has forgiven you change how that debt looks?
Never "I," Always "We"
The prayer ends by asking for protection, and it asks for it together.
"And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one." Craig noted that the Greek can be read either way, as "the evil one" or as evil in general. Either way, we are asking our Father to keep us from times of trial and to get us through the ones that come. As in the psalm, we may still have to walk through the darkest valley, but not alone.
Then Craig asked the question that pulls the whole prayer together: "have you noticed that everywhere in this prayer, it's always 'us,' and it's always 'we'? It's never 'I.' It's never 'me.'" Our Father. Give us. Forgive us. Rescue us. "We watch out for one another, and we encourage one another, and we help each other when we fall down."
This closes the Honest to God series. Over nine weeks we've heard Hannah, Elijah and Moses pray from the depths, Nehemiah and Paul pray in the middle of their work, the early church pray for boldness instead of safety, and Mary sing about God's great reversal. Jesus gathers all of it into a few lines that anyone can pray, as Craig put it: "a simple prayer; it's a beautiful prayer," one "that reminds us of who God is and who we are."
- Looking back over the series, which prayer has actually changed the way you pray?
- Who in your church family could you pray "us" and "we" with this week, out loud, together?