The Lord

The Lord’s Prayer

Sermon on the Mount # 9 a sermon on Matthew 6.7-15 by David C. Mauldin Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

What is the greatest political manifesto ever written? The word manifesto makes one think of the Communist Manifesto, and that is almost enough to taint the word so that we wouldn’t use it anymore—the way parents stopped naming their children Adolf or Judas. But manifesto is a perfectly good word, even if Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was a disaster. It caused unimagined suffering to hundreds of millions of people over the past century, and all because it was based on bad theology—it failed to account for humanity’s Fall and consequent sinful nature. The word manifesto, however, simply means “a statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.” A political manifesto, then, is such a statement about the common life of a society or of humanity as a whole.

Some political manifestos have been glorious. The second greatest, in my opinion, states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …” That, of course, from the United States Declaration of Independence—which, as I say, is what I consider to be the second greatest political manifesto of all time, and the second most radical. So what is the first?

You know where I am going with this. I teach it to preschool children every Wednesday during chapel. I lead you in it every week during worship. It is the Lord’s Prayer. And, people, let me tell you, when you pray it you are handling dynamite. No, it is more powerful than that—more powerful, in fact, than a hydrogen bomb. If you do not realize this, it is because you have not paid attention or discerned what Jesus has given you.

I call it great because it comes to us from God himself, and because of the comprehensive scope of its vision. It aims at the transformation of all creation and the unity of earth and heaven. What could be more sweeping than that? It aims not to order any one society, but to change human nature itself! I call it radical for that very reason. Can you imagine what the world will be like when this prayer is answered in all its fullness? Only the brave and those with faith dare to dream such things!

And … I call it political because it is just that. It comes out of the Old Testament prophetic promise of God’s glory being revealed to all nations and God’s kingdom becoming a reality on earth. It is about all of creation becoming what God intended it to be. Our call to worship [Isaiah 65.17-25] is just a tiny fragment of that prophetic legacy. Its language is poetic, but its vision is clear. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of justice, peace, and above all God will be revealed, not hidden, so that he will be known and adored.

If you haven’t understood the terrifying potential in the Lord’s Prayer, you are in good company. Jesus’ followers have made two opposite errors about the political nature of the Lord’s Prayer. His first disciples—Peter, James, John, and that bunch—thought it was merely political, that if God set up a new order in Israel then the prayer would be exhaustively answered. Jesus’ modern disciples—folks such as you and me—accustomed as we are to separate religion and politics, cannot see how it is political at all.

The original disciples erred by understanding the Lord’s Prayer as overly physical and only political. They knew it was about God’s kingdom, and they imagined this as Israel’s independence from Rome. God would raise up a leader who would lead Israel to freedom, and a new era of blessing and prosperity would begin. Right up until the end, they did not perceive the true scope of Jesus’ mission. He did not kill Romans. He let them kill him, because his death was for the sake of the whole world. His disciples were partly right. As long as people oppress one another God’s kingdom is not fully here. But their vision of the kingdom was far too small.

Disciples today in the Western world make the opposite error. We err by understanding the Lord’s Prayer as purely spiritual and not political at all. We know it is about God’s kingdom, and we imagine that as something inside us or in heaven, but not here and now on the ground. If that is what you think, you have missed something important in Jesus’ message. When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he had a lot more in mind than the state of your heart or heaven when you die. He was talking about God’s sovereign rule taking force everywhere, or as he said it, God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven.” The kingdom of God is bigger than the political, but it is also bigger than the spiritual. It comprises both, in a way that Jesus’ followers have always had trouble imagining.

The kingdom of God, as we see in the Sermon on the Mount—right in the middle of which is the Lord’s Prayer—the Lord’s Prayer is like the engine that makes the whole thing go—as we see, the kingdom of God means everything as God desires it. It means God keeping all those promises he made through the Old Testament prophets. Because it is so vast, it sweeps up everything, including how we treat one another, how we live, how we order our lives, and what is worth living for. Tom Wright describes it this way: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer “we are praying for the redemption of the world; for the radical defeat and uprooting of evil; and for heaven and earth to be married at last, for God to be all in all. And if we pray this way, we must of course be prepared to live this way” [The Lord and His Prayer, p. 31].

Praying the Lord’s Prayer means giving the whole world to God, especially the part of it over which you have the most control, yourself. It is a kingdom prayer for kingdom people. It can change your life. It will change the world. How do I know? Because God will keep his promises, and his kingdom will come. God’s love, power, and faithfulness guarantee it. Otherwise God would not be God, and that is impossible. So the kingdom will come. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we welcome it; we anticipate it; we surrender ourselves to it.

You may have expected a sermon about the Lord’s Prayer to be dull, but this is something to get excited about! This prayer is Jesus’ prayer, and Jesus is never dull. No one who met him ever thought he was. No one who knows him could think that either. Once again I am preaching through this series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And once again Jesus is turning everything upside down.

As we move into the heart of my sermon, let me take care of a couple of housekeeping details. People always ask two questions about the Lord’s Prayer, so I had better answer those if I want to preach a good sermon about it. The first is the old debts verses trespasses question. Why two versions? This is only an issue for English speakers because it has to do with translating the original Greek of Matthew’s gospel into English. Trespasses comes from the Great Bible of 1539, which was primarily the work of Miles Coverdale, who followed William Tyndale in using trespasses. The Great Bible was the first authorized Bible printed in English. King Henry VIII ordered a copy to be placed in every church in England. The 1559 revision of The Book of Common Prayer drew its scripture from the Great Bible, as did every revision of the prayer book until 1928. Thus trespasses became etched in the hearts and minds of Anglicans and Episcopalians by their prayer book. Methodism originated as a renewal movement within the Anglican Church, so Methodists share this heritage.

Presbyterians and most Baptists say debts because that is the word used in the King James Version. Which is correct? Debts translates the Greek word better, but there is nothing wrong with saying trespasses because it gets at the essential idea, namely that in order to be forgiven we must be forgiving.

The other question is: Why do Protestants say “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen” and Catholics do not? I am actually not sure why Catholics do not, but I know why we do and why those words might be omitted. You see, in the original version of Matthew’s gospel, that line was not there. It does not go back to Jesus. It was added later by Christians who used the Lord’s Prayer in worship. How do we know this? Because the best ancient manuscripts of Matthew do not have it. You may have noticed our pew Bibles print that last line as a footnote, saying, “Other authorities [they mean manuscripts], some ancient, add, in some form …” and then it prints the line. Why, then, do we say it? Because both the Great Bible and the King James Version were translated from inferior manuscripts. In fact, some of the best manuscripts we have had not even been discovered when those translations were made. Should this concern us? Not at all. We should rather be amazed that even the worst of our manuscripts are as accurate as they are. The differences do not amount to much. This is one of the main examples. Does the meaning change? No. We just end the prayer a bit more poetically than Jesus did. There is nothing wrong with that.

Now I want to get more practical and tackle the two important questions. What did Jesus mean in the Lord’s Prayer? And what does it mean when we pray it? I will end by giving you two helpful pointers for making this prayer your own.

It would be fun and illuminating to go through the Lord’s Prayer line by line listening for echoes from the Old Testament, then go through it again listening for echoes from the ministry of Jesus, then go through it again listening for echoes from the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Try this sometime and you will be amazed. Then we could go through it again examining each line carefully for Jesus’ meaning and what it means for us to say it with him. Since we do not have time for all that, I will go through it once, hitting the highlights.

“Our Father, who art in heaven …” Does this remind you of God’s relationship with Israel? “Out of Egypt I called my Son,” God said through the prophet Hosea. Does it remind you of Jesus’ baptism? “This is my Son,” said the voice from heaven, “with whom I am well pleased.” Does it remind you of what Jesus has done for you? If you have faith in him, he includes you in God’s family and makes you God’s own dear child. All of this meaning fits nicely into the first few words of the Lord’s Prayer. To pray it makes a bold statement about God’s greatness, about our dependence on God, and about our standing before him based on his grace. Already we can see this is a prayer of trust and submission! We are not bargaining with God or making demands. We are coming to him as a child comes to her father. And, the only reason we can be so presumptuous as to approach our Creator in this manner is because Jesus gave us this prayer. His relationship to the Father he shares with us.

“Hallowed be thy name …” The Old Testament prophets desired with agonizing frustration for God to be known and his majesty to be acknowledged by the whole world. I share their angst. Why is God hidden? One answer is that he does not want to overpower us. He wants us to learn to love and trust him despite everything that seems to count against him. Another answer is that God’s glory is there for us to see if we were not spiritually blind. I get that. But wouldn’t it be nice if God revealed himself with irrefutable proofs? No more atheism. No more arguing about religion or what God wants. God would just show up and tell us. That would be great. Habakkuk promised a day when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” [2.14]. Jesus is the clearest revelation of God because he is God. God-in-the-flesh. He promised to return to make his revelation not only clear but complete. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, that is what we are asking, that God will be known and loved and worshipped.

“Thy kingdom come …” I could spend all day on this, but we have covered it already. God’s kingdom was the vision of the prophets and the mission of Jesus. Although it had been promised, Jesus still took everyone by surprise with his vision of the kingdom. It is political, but it is spiritual first, and then because it is spiritual it is also political. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are asking God to set creation right, and you are committing yourself to live as a kingdom person. For more information about being a kingdom person, see Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5—7.

“Thy will be done …” Does this remind you of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane before his crucifixion? Does it remind you of how Jesus took Old Testament laws and made them a matter of the heart, interpreting them according to God’s intentions—God’s will—saying, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you”? Again, this is a prayer of surrender.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” There is a translation question here. Behind our word daily is a Greek word that does not appear anywhere else in ancient literature. It is unique to the Lord’s Prayer. It might mean “beard for today” or “bread for tomorrow” or “the bread necessary to our existence.” Does it remind you of the manna in the wilderness? Of Jesus feeding the 5,000? Of the Lord’s Supper? Of the banquet Jesus promised us when the kingdom comes? Of Psalm 23 and the table prepared for me in the presence of my enemies? And you thought you were asking for lunch? Well, you are … but also much more. Again, when you pray this prayer you confess God to be the source of your life and every good thing that sustains it. You look to him for simple sustenance and for the bread of life.

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors …” Jesus told a story about that. A servant who was unable to pay a large sum was forgiven by his lord. Then he turned around and abused a fellow servant who owed him a tiny amount. Hearing this, his lord had him thrown into prison until he should pay his impossible debt. To be a kingdom person, you must be forgiven. Your sin has no place in God’s presence. To be a kingdom person, you must forgive. You cannot hold on to old hurts and desire for vengeance in God’s presence. God is the one who sets things right and establishes justice in the universe. You must trust him to do so.

“Lead us not into temptation …” A better translation would be, “lead us not into trial.” This goes far beyond “I’m tempted to steal some money. Help me resist.” Remember what Jesus told Peter, James, and John in the garden of Gethsemane? “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” They did go into it, and they failed, particularly Peter. The time of trial or testing is a crisis moment when your faith and commitment to God hang in the balance. Every time we are tempted to do wrong, our commitment to God is tested in some way. Yet I think Jesus has a greater testing in mind. I think of Christians in China or North Korea who are imprisoned for their faith. I think of Christians living in Muslim countries facing constant pressure and harassment. But we dare not think our liberty in this country makes us immune. The time of trial surely takes many forms. Jesus taught us to pray that we will not face it, knowing that if we do, he will be with us.

“Deliver us from evil …” This could also be “deliver us from the Evil One.” And it is not clear whether Jesus had in mind evil in the abstract or evil personified, namely Satan. If we go with “the Evil One,” we are reminded of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. I prefer simply “deliver us from evil” because I know that the evil within my heart is a greater danger than the evil that is out there, personified or not. Jesus taught about the evil within the human heart. Evil means all that is opposed to God and God’s will. Evil means everything that destroys the good God intends for us. The first step toward being a kingdom person is to be rescued by Jesus from evil. This is also the last step, as he removes the last traces of evil from our hearts in our death. When we are raised to live with him, we will be totally free from evil at last.

Very quickly, now, I want to offer two practical tips for praying the Lord’s Prayer. First, you can use it as an outline. After you pray each line, fill it in with specific requests. For example, “Your will be done …”: “Your will be done in Iraq, where people are killing one another; in our church, where we are seeking to reach out to people in your name; in my family, where I am trying to be a good parent;” and so on. Use Jesus’ words as the outline, and add your own specific concerns as you go.

Second, receive this prayer as Jesus’ gift to you. That is what it is. When you get baptized, you get at least two gifts. The church gives you a Bible, if you are a child. And no matter who you are, Jesus gives you the Lord’s Prayer. It is his baptismal gift to you. It is now your prayer. Make it your own. Pray it as your prayer. Put your heart and soul into every word. Mean it when you say it. And of course, if you pray this way, be prepared to live this way. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
January 28, 2007

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