PRAYER:

THE OUR FATHER

 INTRODUCTION

The theme I’d like to reflect on once more is prayer—or more specifically on “The Our Father.”

Today’s gospel - Matthew 6: 7-15 - calls us to reflect on prayer—to reflect on Jesus’ simple words and simple teachings on prayer as found in The Our Father.

And I would like to use for all my comments a sermon by Gerd Theissen entitled “The Our Father” in The Open Door, Variations on Biblical Themes. It’s on pages 62 - 66.

LUKE

Today’s gospel gives Luke’s Our Father. Today’s gospel  gives some good teachings on prayer—both in simple teachings of Jesus about  prayer as an introduction to the Our Father and the Our Father itself.

Luke has the disciples coming up to Jesus and asking him on how to pray.

Suggestion: bring this section of Luke—Chapter 11 -- to prayer over and over again. I have been using it for prayer for a good 36  years now.

Go up to Jesus and ask him to teach you how to pray.

I like Luke’s introduction to the Our Father and these simple teachings of Jesus on prayer. Luke has the disciples coming up to Jesus and asking him on how to pray.

GERD THEISSEN

Gerd Theissen in a sermon entitled “The Our Father” in The Open Door, Variations on Biblical Themes  begins his homily with the theory that the motivation of the disciples was not how to pray, but to distinguish themselves from others.

Here in Luke it was to have a prayer that will distinguish them from the Baptist’s followers. In Matthew’s version it was to distinguish themselves from the Gentiles. In the Didache, it’s was to distinguish themselves from the Jews  with the help of the Our Father.

Theissen then states that the joke is on everyone who tries that because “the Our Father is the least suited prayer conceivable for distinguishing us from others. Any Jew and any Moslem can recite it, and probably it would not be difficult for many Hindus to say it with us. It is a quite basic prayer which concentrates on the important things between cradle and grave.” (p. 62)

A CHRISTIAN PRAYER—A TREASURE

Theissen goes on to say that it has become a Christian prayer—a special treasure entrusted to Christians.

It is a treasure because it contains the essentials.

It provides a treasure we can bring to every dialogue with all religions—to Jews, Gentiles, believers and atheists.

But we better first have introduced this prayer into our own life first—giving us convictions we would live and die with and for.

FATHER

Theissen says that the word “Father” is significant. When he was born, his dad was away at war and was a prisoner of war.

He says that he only knew his dad by stories. He didn’t get to know him till he was 6 and a half.

His analogy is to bring out various points. In his book it’s one long paragraph. Let me present his actual words but with a paragraph space after  each sentence.

 “God may be like that to some people.

God is absent.

Many people know God only from stories.

And they hope that God will enter their lives later so that they can feel that something in these stories will ring true.

It rings true that we do not owe our existence to chance, but to a power who wanted us with love, who gave us the task of living, who affirms us and supports us in good times and in bad.

Some people may say that with our parents, father and mother, we remain within our sphere of existence.

But with that father we go beyond it.

What can we already know of him?

How can we trust him?

Let me recall something very simple here.

Even in the case of earthly parents, one thing radically escapes our experience: the story of the love between our mother and our father, that story in which our own existence has its common ground.

We can only hear of it.

Indeed we even have to take the identity of our father and mother on trust—on the basis of stories of others.

But it is reasonable here to believe and trust that it was love—or at least the longing for love—which helped us to exist.

If we trust that, then in later life with our parents we shall find much to confirm and justify this faith, and we shall also not allow ourselves to be led astray by the inevitable conflicts with parents, or even by long alienation.

But if we are full of mistrust, if we suspect that we owe our existence not to a love story but to something else—calculation or chance or thoughtlessness—then we shall  also find much to justify our mistrust.

That is how I imagine our dealings with God: we relate to him as we do our father and mother.

If we trust the accounts which tell us that we owe our existence anew each day to a love story, then every day we shall have new experiences in which the trust is confirmed.

And it is quite reasonable to have this trust—even through deep crises and catastrophes.” (pp. 63 - 64)

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME

God is present everywhere. But where is God praised? Where is God recognized?

Well here we are recognizing him, praising him, giving him a name, not allowing him to remain anonymous.

Theissen uses the analogy of self—we often spend our days unaware of ourselves—wrapped up in our routines. Then a moment happens that wakes us up—that tears us apart from the regular routine. I am irreplaceable. I am one person between birth and death—who has to make decisions which no one else can make—and encounter joys and sorrows that on one else can have.

So too God in our lives. God is always present in our life.

“But only in a few situations does he emerge from his anonymity, does he disclose himself, so that we ourselves become the answer to his call, with body and nerves, ideas and actions—and at the same time terrified that we owed him this response.

Where God emerges from his anonymous, nameless present, we experience one thing above all: that we must change profoundly, that we must `hallow’ ourselves (as one can say in biblical language) in order to correspond to him and to hallow his name, so that he is not driven out, not forgotten, not despised.” (p. 64)

THY KINGDOM COME

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Thy Kingdom Come”.

“That’s not all.

We go on to pray, `Your kingdom come.’

That means that to correspond to God not only must we change ourselves, but the whole world must become different, so that it emerges from its anonymous present and can be lived in.

That was one of the great discoveries in the Bible and in Judaism: the world which corresponds to God, in which his name is acknowledged and hallowed, cannot be the same as the world which now exists, which seems to be so final—and which is nevertheless only a transition in the great process of reality.

This new world, which will fully reflect God’s presence, is not something incomprehensibly remote.

It already begins in hiddenness here and now. It already began in Jesus.

And also in Francis, in Gandhi and in Albert Schweitzer.

In all these figures something is present of that kingdom of God in which God’s will is done not only in heaven but on earth.” (pp. 64 - 65)

GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

He states that we live in a

“problematic world which is different from that world in which God’s will prevails.

In this world we must pray, `Give us each day our daily bread’—or, as we should probably understand the phrase, `Give us each day tomorrow’s bread’, so that we are freed from tormenting cares about life.

For precisely that is the great temptation to which we are exposed in the world.

Bread is scarce.

Material goods are limited.

We are born into a hard struggle over the distribution of resources, a struggle at the heart of which is deep distrust that there may not be enough for everyone.

If we trusted that there was enough for everyone, it would not be so hard for us to give something away.

But as it is we fight over the scarce goods of life—between classes, between nations, between generations, between developed and underdeveloped countries.

No one escapes this oppressive  context: we all live at the expense of other people.

Indeed, we now discover to our horror that as a human species we live at the expense of all other kinds of living beings.

We have spread over this earth so successfully that countless species are already extinct and many more die out each year.

That is what I call the inexorable struggle over distribution. In it we have a right to life, to the bread we need to live.

We also have right to tomorrow’s bread.

But what we are doing is more: we are consuming the bread for the day after tomorrow.

We are plundering the planet so that those who live after us will not find much left, and we are letting the hungry beside us go away empty.” (P. 65)

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Forgive us our sins.”

“So it is necessary to pray, `Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.’

We are guilty in this struggle over the distribution of food and opportunities, for even if we are personally innocent, we are caught up and entangled in a system of unfair distribution.

We darkly suspect that there is a close connection between the catastrophes of famine on this earth and our luxury.

We also suspect that our ordered (and perhaps indeed successful) life and study are connected with the failed and ruined lives in our society: where there are winners there are also losers.

The rules of the game are often unfair.

 But those who take part in the game confirm them—even involuntarily.” (p. 65)

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Lead us not into temptation.”

“Precisely this insight is a great temptation to cynicism.

And we pray: `Lead us into into temptation.’

The tempter approached Jesus in the wilderness loaded with biblical quotations.

It’s the same with us: incontrovertible truths become our temptation.

It is an incontrovertible truth that life is a struggle over distribution, that we have great difficulty in escaping this struggle, that all civilization limits it only up to a point, that it would be too much for the conscience if we felt personally responsible for all that goes on.

And then along comes the tempter and whispers all these truths in our ear—and suggests that cynicism which says, `If you personally share in this struggle over distribution (your share of food, education, possessions and status) -- why bother about the fate of others?, and he goes on to whisper, `It’s really time that you rid yourself of your post-pubertal dreams and faced reality.’

We are mostly tempted by truths, sometimes even by truths supported by science.

But the temptation is that we forget the most basic things.

“We forget that we owe life to the power of God. Before God and through God we all have the same right to life.

“We forget that we are constantly called to repentance, so that his name is hallowed through our actions and thoughts.

“We forget that we are caught up in that process which is aimed at changed of the world, so that everyone can experience God’s goodness.” (p. 66)

CONCLUSION

Theissen ends his homily this way:

“`And lead us not into temptation.’

Today, that means, `Lead us not into temptation to deny the reality of God.’

For in that case everything could basically remain as it was.

In that case we could persist in our laziness, and the world in its remoteness from God. Amen.” (p. 66)

So those are some ideas about the Our Father and Prayer—almost all stolen for Theissen.