Surprised by the Lord's Prayer

Lord, teach us to pray—not just with words but with wonder. Help us rediscover what we’ve grown too familiar with. May the prayer we think we know become new in our hearts again.

Whenever we come around to this passage in our lectionary cycle, the passage that includes Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, I am reminded that this passage was what was assigned to me for my first of two senior sermons in seminary. I also remember that my reaction at the time was how underwhelmed I was to write and preach on this passage.

I was handed the Lord’s Prayer and thought…really? That prayer? The one we mumble in unison and maybe haven’t really listened to in years? The prayer that when we teach it to children we have to clarify that, “No, God’s name is not Harold” and “this prayer is not about tresspassing on other people’s lawns”. That prayer? I felt like there are so many other challenging, interesting, preachable moments throughout the Gospel, and this one just doesn’t seem that exciting… and maybe you feel the same way…

But I wonder if you have ever struggled with the idea of prayer. Of how to pray, as the disciples ask Jesus for. I read something this week, by writer Amy Fryholm, she writes “What no one told me when I was growing up and being taught to pray is that prayer is not a check mark on a daily to-do list. Prayer is a way, a path. Prayer makes a whole world, transforms a small self, and it takes a lifetime of learning.” I wonder if you can think of a moment where you learned something about prayer, about how you pray. Maybe it was a moment you felt very lost or alone, maybe it was washing dishes, or a rock bottom moment, or a moment of incredible joy or thanksgiving, or driving in the car. Mine was early on in my pregnancy with Mac when I had some complications in the midst of my senior year retreat that had me in an ambulance through the winding Texas hill country, in an ultrasound room alone, wondering if I was losing my child. That evening, I prayed in a transformed way, a way that makes me wonder now if I ever really prayed before that night.

I imagine many of us have had moments like this. Moments where prayer transforms the one praying, where we are simultaneously presented with deep fear and deep relief somehow existing side by side. In returning to the prayer that Jesus gives us after a moment like this, we might recognize, perhaps for the first time, the radical and profound nature of this prayer.

Jesus introduces the disciples and us to this prayer by addressing God directly, as Father. We sometimes incorrectly name, as Christians, that we were the first to call a deity Father. We were not. But perhaps, what is revolutionary for Christians and those following Jesus at the time, is not the naming of Father, but the relationship that Jesus invites us to. According to theologian Sarah Coakley, when we pray, we are drawn into the very life of the Trinity. We step into Jesus’ own place as the Son, speaking to the Father through the Spirit. Prayer, then, isn’t just words—it’s participation in divine relationship. In a stunning way, by encouraging us to name God as Father (or Mother or Creator) Jesus invites us into the dynamic movement of the Trinity, swept up in ceaseless invitation, prayer, and intimacy with God.

As we move to the next phrase, Your kingdom come, we have not yet been instructed to ask for anything for ourselves. We have named this stunning relationship with God. In this next line, we name the hope for salvation in a kingdom to come that is not of this world. If we allow it to be, this is a political statement. And I don’t mean political in a partisan way, I mean political because it deals with people. Children of God. Humankind. We are professing a hope, not for the limited and limiting kingdoms and powers of this human world, but of the world that God imagines for us. As the Indigenous translation of the New Testament states this line this way: Bring your good road to us, where the beauty of your ways in the spirit-world above is reflected in the earth below. We ask to imagine this kind of world alongside God.

In just these first two lines, we experience Jesus’ giftedness with prayer. He has set us up to dwell in the dynamic relationship with God, invites us to imagine alongside God what kind of world God desires for us, and only THEN do we start asking for what we need. And good ol’ Jesus, he encourages us to keep those requests tiny in number but mighty in the depth of our own accountability.

Give us each day our daily bread. The Greek word translated here as ‘daily’ only appears in Luke and Matthew’s versions of the Lord’s Prayer. While the different translations vary from ‘sufficient’ to ‘what is enough’ to ‘necessary for today’, to ‘necessary for tomorrow’ the meaning is clear:  Give us what is needed for the present. Jesus instructs us to ask only to be provided with what we need for the exact moment we are in. Not to relieve us of our anxieties for next week, or our regrets for last year. But to give us in this moment only what is sufficient. I am struck by how many times I have said those words and not meant the full depth of what Jesus is naming here.  I’m overwhelmed by the faith and the trust that it takes to truly ask for just what I need in this moment.

Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. First, what this line of the prayer doesn’t say: It does not say ‘God, forgive us, and then we shall go do likewise’. Nope, this use of the word ‘for’ between the two phrases points out that Jesus is working from an understanding that we are already doing the work of forgiving before we even ask for our own forgiveness from God. This is perhaps one of the most difficult parts of this prayer, and yet one of the most important. Gregory of Nyssa, a voice influential in the early Church, says that it is not simply that we are called to be imitators of God: God is asked to be an imitator of us: “Forgive me. I have forgiven”. What does it mean for us—perhaps particularly those of us who hold privilege, who have power to hold debts or things to be forgiven over other people— to do and begin that work of forgiveness first? To name to our God, I have begun the act of forgiveness, of relationship restoration, forgive me for where I have fallen short. Jesus invites us into the radical hope that forgiveness begins with us. That we are to lead with mercy before we ask for it.

And do not bring us to the time of trial. Luke’s final line feels very abrupt. I can’t help but think of those who have come before us who have faced their own trials: Job, Hagar, the Israelites, Jesus. Perhaps, when we ask not to be brought to times of trial, we can think on these experiences. Perhaps what we are asking, more than to not face challenging times at all, is to not face them without God. In my experience in that ultrasound room, I was surprised to find that I was not asking for the hard thing that was happening to not be happening. What I needed and asked for most was a reminder that I was not in this alone. Perhaps that is what we can all be praying for, not an avoidance or removal of the challenges we face, but instead for God’s presence to guide us through those times.

As we move toward Eucharist today and say these words prior to receiving the body and blood of the one who gave them to us, don’t rush past them. Recall the times where prayer has been transformed for you, and in so doing has transformed you. Wonder about how your prayer life has been a journey, wonder about where you are on that journey. Be curious about how often you approach this prayer from a place of underwhelm. Let’s allow ourselves to be surprised again. Let’s allow ourselves to be overwhelmed—by the beauty of being invited into such an intimate, courageous, radical way of being in divine relationship, a holy journey with God.