Teach us how to pray. The disciples wanted to know. We want to know. Lord, how should we pray? It’s not that we don’t pray. As I was reminded this week at Davidson College where pastors, students, and scholars gathered around the words of the Lord’s Prayer, people pray all the time. We pray for a good parking spot. We pray for medical tests to come out OK. We pray for our favorite basketball team to win this week’s game. We pray for the value of our stock or IRA or home to go back up. There is no shortage of prayers when it comes to those prayers that focus on our preoccupation with ourselves. I pray for me, for my needs, wants, and desires. We love prayers of supplication – asking God to grant us the things that we want, and we also like prayers of intercession – asking God to intercede on behalf of someone we care about.

The Lord’s Prayer is something different. The pronouns alone begin to tell us something about how different. Split into two sections, the first section is all about God and who God is. God is our Father, not just my father. God’s name is special. We pray for the coming of God’s kingdom and that the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. Not too surprisingly, we pray to God in the second person singular: Hallowed be YOUR name. YOUR kingdom come. YOUR will be done. But as we do so, we turn our attention to God who is the parent of us all and then are encouraged to begin our prayer by addressing God both directly and personally. I recognize that the parental image can sometimes be distracting because of our relationships, good or bad, with our earthly parents, but the identifier preceding that particular metaphor serves to remind us that God is also unlike our earthly parents. According to Jesus, God, the creator and orchestrator of the universe, accepts each and every one of us as beloved children. That’s not quite like any earthly parent I know! It is also clear that the petitions that we make in this part of the prayer are meant to focus our attention, not on ourselves, but on our relationship with God. We don’t start out with a brief salutatory remark like “Dear God” and then launch into some sort of laundry list of what we think it is we need. Jesus instructs us to pray first by simply asking God to be God and do the sort of stuff God does like being sovereign over all the world and everything that exists in it.

The second set of petitions is the part where we do get to ask for what we need, sort of. However, Jesus’ prayer teaches us specifically what to ask for rather than encouraging us to ask for whatever it is we want that day. Jesus tells his disciples that they ought to pray for daily bread, forgiveness, and the ability to resist temptation and turn from evil. We pray these prayers in the first person as one might expect, but Jesus asks us to do something radical and pray in the plural, not the singular. These are prayers about US, not prayers about ME. Therefore, when I pray this prayer, I may not be praying for anyone else in particular, but I cannot pray it alone. Let me say that again – the Lord’s Prayer cannot be prayed alone, in isolation, somehow between just me and God. When I pray this prayer, when you pray this prayer, there’s always an “us” involved. Give US this day our daily bread. Forgive US our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead US not into temptation. Deliver US from evil.

I have prayed this prayer forever, every Sunday in worship and frequently as the closing part of my own personal prayers. You would think that point I just made would be obvious, but it took going to a three day conference where pretty much all we talked about was this prayer in order to have it stick. I also learned while I was there that the German theologian, Karl Barth translated the kingdom language of this prayer as God’s Revolution. Perhaps it is revolutionary to pray this prayer long enough and deep enough to recognize what Jesus is trying to tell us about the importance of human community. I can’t ask for my daily bread without also praying for your daily bread. I can’t expect that God will forgive me unless I am also praying for God to forgive you. I can’t ask for the ability to resist temptation and be rescued from evil unless I pray exactly the same for you. By praying this prayer, we admit that we are intimately connected to the whole human family, maybe even as dependent upon each other as we are upon God.

In this way, the Lord’s Prayer is not only a particular prayer that we memorize and pray as part of our worship and liturgy, it is a way of prayer that Jesus is teaching us. If you look at the two contexts of the Lord’s Prayer in Scripture (Luke 11, Matthew 6), both times the prayer is deeply embedded in a “teaching moment.” For Luke, it is explicit. One of the disciples says to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray” so Jesus gives them this outline. In Matthew’s gospel, the text is dead center of the Sermon on the Mount and is immediately preceded by his instructions that say, “Beware of practicing your piety before others,” and “Do not be like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray at synagogues and the street corners so that they may be seen by others.” Jesus is telling us something about the attitude of prayer as much as giving us a formula for what we ought to pray.

Now much, much more can be said about the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, three hours of lecture, and two workshops later, I still feel like there’s a lot left to learn. But for today, I am reminded that this prayer is inclusive in a way that challenges us deeply. If we are praying give us this day our daily bread and someone comes to this church hungry, what will we do about it? If we pray forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, will we really let go of our grudges so that God can free us from sin’s stranglehold? If we pray for the abilities to resist temptation and to be delivered from evil, will we rise to the challenges of confronting those forces in our midst? And Jesus, just how big is this “us?” In my family, in my congregation, in my community alone these petitions can be hard to put into practice. Starting with my husband and kids, I already can bear witness to a need to pray the prayer for forgiveness each and every day. We don’t have to look far, not even in Oak Ridge to notice that there are people in our community that struggle to have their basic needs met. And when we pray for deliverance from evil, we need to remember that it’s not a prayer to deliver those other evil people from their sins, we are praying for God to fight the temptation and evil in us.

This prayer has both the now and not yet qualities inherent in much of Jesus’ spiritual teaching. Praying this prayer is intended to be something we act on today and every day. The word “today” is emphasized in the Greek text in a way that the English versions do not. And at the same time, this prayer has also been interpreted as one that bends toward the Kingdom, the Revolution of God that will only be known in the fullness of time. We pray it, we act on it, but in our limited abilities hunger, and sin, and evil continue to exist. Christians around the world pray this prayer in about every language imaginable, and yet we continue to live in a world of excess and hunger, in a world of tightly held opinions and things we see as unforgivable actions, in a world where we allow temptation and evil to push and pull us in every direction.

Lord, teach us to pray, not just words on a page, but write these petitions on our hearts. Remind us that we are never, ever alone in this prayer. And God, Our Father, may we truly accept your will and learn to work always in the service of your kingdom here on earth.

Amen.