Lightning bugs in a jelly jar with holes punched in the top.
Wet grass and playing in the sprinkler in the front yard.
Coppertone and beach towel lunches that put the sand in sandwich.
Twelve year old boys in a ramshackle fort in the woods, a stack of Mad magazines and that one girlie magazine Chip stole from his father, all of us uncertain, especially me.
These were the halcyon days of summer, at least as seen through the romanticized lens of the past, and that is the lens most of us use
Of course, that romanticized past isn’t the whole story, not even close. My own childhood was marked by many of the same trials as the childhoods of others: loss, grief, abuse, disease, not to mention what I would come to understand as racism, fundamentalism, and homophobia, hateful things that were woven into the fabric of my life. True stories are always complex and multi-dimensional, subject to interpretation, because real life is complex and multi-dimensional, subject to interpretation. Not that we like it that way. We’d prefer things simple, clear, happy, so we pretty up the past, dream of the future, and occasionally live in the now.
While technology has changed, while we have moved toward an more open society, while fewer starve or die of preventable disease, while we are slightly less tribal, in the end, human behavior hasn’t changed that much over time. The crimes of powerful politicians today look a whole lot like the crimes of powerful politicians a half century ago, though political break-ins now occur in cyberspace rather than at the Watergate. The scapegoating we see today looks a whole lot like the scapegoating of eighty years ago. The dreams of a better world two millennia ago look a whole lot like the dreams of a better world today, dreams for nation and race, mostly, but sometimes, too, for world peace and justice. The community gathered around Jesus longed for God to fix the world, for the Hebrew people, but also to bring peace and justice, in a final divine revelation, just as some today long for the rapture, a climactic battle between good and evil, convinced that they will be counted among the righteous.
This is the context for the ancient prayer in today’s reading, a prayer we say weekly in worship, that many say in private daily. In Matthew’s version it is part of a larger teaching about personal piety, while in Luke it is in response to a request, for John the Baptizer had given his followers a prayer, and the followers of Jesus wanted one too.
The two versions are slightly different, though not nearly as different as the two versions of the Beatitudes we read last week. This suggests that this prayer, what we now call “The Lord’s Prayer,†was in such widespread use throughout the early church, so standardized, that when the gospel authors borrowed from this portion of the lost Gospel Q, they did not tweak or modify it to align it with their different agendas.
And so we say it, the Matthew version to be specific, again and again, but is there anything left, any power left, in a prayer that has become so rote, so mindless?
As we wrap up our five-week “Great Texts†series, we wrestle with this passage, hoping to breathe new life into this, our common prayer, the shared prayer of generation after generation, to make room in this prayer for the Spirit to work, to break and to heal our hearts.
The Lord’s prayer was meant as a personal prayer, not meant for liturgy or worship, something made clear by the context in Matthew, which is all about personal piety, is all about secret piety, really. Even in Luke, there is no indication of the prayer’s use in corporate worship, for Jesus was a good Hebrew, following the prayers and rites of the synagogue, celebrating the high holy days. It is not until the Last Supper that Jesus creates a distinctive rite for his movement.
There is no mention in the prayer of a Messiah, nor any mention of Jesus himself. The closest it comes to his messianic message is the longing for the kingdom, what we might call eschatological hope, something we will come back to in a few moments.
Native English-speakers, at least most of us, know the prayer from the Authorized Translation, also known as the King James Version, in the English of four centuries ago, of Marlowe and of Shakespeare. We often forget that Jesus did not actually speak English, Jacobin or modern, and that the prayer has always and always been a translation for us, likely spoken by Jesus in Aramaic, recorded in an ancient dialect of Greek, and for so many Christians passing through Latin along the way.
In fact, European Catholics in French, Italian, and German-speaking countries have been wrestling with translations of the Lord’s Prayer for the last year, as reported in “The Christian Century†in February.
The problem is that the Latin translation renders the final word of the sixth petition, “lead us not into temptation,†as tentationem, but the original Koine Greek reads peirasmos, which means “trial†or “test of faith.†This is a theological problem, for what sort of God would intentionally lead followers into temptation? Catholic bishops in France changed the sixth petition last December from the French equivalent of “Do not submit us to temptation†to “Let us not enter into temptation.†Italian bishops are considering a similar change, but German bishops, have said “Nein!,†have rejected the change outright, saying that it will disrupt ecumenical relationships. Better to be wrong than to make people uncomfortable. Sadly, those who wish to continue to use the mistranslated version are good at finding rules and procedures to prevent change. In 2001, with different leadership in the Vatican, a directive titled Liturgiam authenticam was issued that required translations come only from the Latin, effectively preventing national and linguistic authorities from going back to what we now know is our most reliable source, the received version of the original Greek. An open battle has erupted between Pope Francis and ultra-Conservatives, one of many fissures crippling the church and preventing it from moving forward, from embracing this pope’s vision of a faith that adapts and speaks the gospel in new ways to new generations.
This portion of the Lord’s Prayer, the sixth petition about temptation, appears to come from an ancient Jewish evening prayer that we find first recorded in the Babylonian Talmud over five centuries later. That prayer includes a much extended passage, “Lead my foot not into the power of sin, and bring me not into the power of iniquity, and not into the power of temptation, and not into the power of anything shameful.â€
This is closer to the Latin than to the Greek, but we know the Greek is closer to the source, is the source for our purposes, for no one made a secret recording of Jesus on their iPhone. We also know that Jesus was an innovator, explicitly making God a loving parent, and the idea that God would intentionally lead us into temptation doesn’t square with a parent-God, is not the forgiving parent who welcomes the prodigal, or even the compassionate shepherd seeking the one lost sheep. The shepherd does not lead the sheep into the wolf’s den to test it.
Jesus’ unique use of the word Abba, best translated as “poppa,†sets up the entire prayer, so this is all about that loving parent image. We have lost this intimacy and the daring that comes with it when we say “Our Father,†so stilted and formal.
Even modern translations of the prayer use words that don’t occur in every day speech. Hallowed? What the heck does that mean? The Harry Potter series has given us back the word “hallows,†but even those who know that Halloween is All Hallow’s Eve don’t always know what that means, that it has to do with the state of being sacred, or set aside as special and holy, that in the case of Halloween “hallows†refers to the saints, to those believed to be special examples of holiness in some Christian traditions.
Linguists and theologians can argue translation word by word. We have this prayer and its not going anywhere. It should be as alive as our faith, though I often fear that that is actually true, that the prayer has become dead and empty, and so has our faith. So let’s try a little Lord’s Prayer CPR…
Here is one possible way to think about the prayer:
Poppa,
Reserve your name as sacred!
Establish your rule on earth!
Help us do your will.
Give us today the bread we need to survive tomorrow.
Forgive our sins just as we forgive the sins of others.
Do not lead us into the time of trial,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Remember that names were powerful things in ancient belief, that names had magic, and the name of God was the most sacred of all. Hebrew religion used other titles for God to avoid saying the name, often referring to God as El or Elohim, borrowed from the Canaanites, or Adonai which means “My Lords,†found 450 times in the Hebrew Testament. Even today, the most conservative branches of Rabbinic Judaism will not write down the name of God, not just Yahweh, but even the word God. “Reserve your name as sacred†is a reminder that we are not calling on a friend, but on the source of all that is.
The prayer asks for bread, and we who rarely go hungry have turned this into a metaphor, but it was likely to mean exactly what it said, for those who listened to Jesus were often hungry, poor, over-taxed, with famine and drought all too common. If you lost your land, as so many did, then you depended on work as a day laborer, the reason day laborers show up in Matthew’s parable of the workers in the vineyard, where the generosity of the vineyard owner is at odds with the stingy justice of some workers. A day laborer would often be paid one denarius, just enough to supply food for a family for a day, so no work today meant no food tomorrow. The prayer is a petition for employment, not for a handout. There is no reason to believe that Jesus is suggesting mana fall from the sky, as it did during the Exodus.
Three of the petitions have to do with the eschatological hope I mentioned earlier, a longing so central to the teaching of Jesus. Eschatology is theology of the last things, the belief of many that there will be a divine fix-it job when evil will be removed from creation, when death will be no more, when all shall be perfect as intended by the Creator before corruption, sin, and brokenness infected the world.
Establish your rule on earth! This is end times, the kingdom, or God’s rule, at hand. It isn’t about us. We do not cause God’s kingdom, do not set the schedule, though some fundamentalists seem to think they can trigger it by converting all the Jews and having the Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem, or by starting a nuclear war.
Even Jesus says he doesn’t know exactly when this final act of creation, this fulfillment of divine will, will occur. Jesus does say it has already started, that the process of divine re-creation is ongoing. “Thy kingdom come†is a petition for upheaval and chaos as all systems of sin are destroyed, as the righteous are rewarded and the self-righteous punished. It is the blessings and woes of Luke’s Beatitudes made real in the world. I’m not sure most folks realize exactly what it is they are asking for when they say “thy kingdom come,†unless of course, they think God thinks like they think, in which case what they worship is not God but rather themselves. The Lord’s Prayer should be terrifying! Which of us is worthy to walk in that kingdom? We all depend on grace.
Deliver us from the evil one, for they believed that evil was so powerful, so cunning, that it must be personified, must be a supernatural foe. Today, we are not so sure that we need an adversary, a Satan in the ancient tongue, for we have seen evil ones, unspeakably evil ones, in history books, on the nightly news. We don’t need a devil clawing his way to the surface from the earth’s molten core when there are devils aplenty already here.
The prayer does ask that God help us do the divine will in our own lives. If, as so many believe, if, as so central to the message and ministry of Jesus, our conduct fails to cohere with God’s will most of the time, then the prayer asks for divine help. “Thy will be done one earth as it is in heaven†makes it sound like we are talking about society at large, but this is a personal prayer. This is about asking God to help us be more righteous in our conduct. Again, those who believe they are righteous, or are happy just the way things are, should not pray this petition, for this is a petition for change, for a nearer walk with Christ, to borrow a trope from a beloved hymn.
The prayer seeks forgiveness for the ways we have sinned, and reminds us of the connection Jesus makes between our willingness to forgive others and God’s willingness to forgive us. Note that I said “sin.†This isn’t about debt or trespassing, words that have completely different meanings in contemporary English. The word here, hamartia in the Greek, is translated as sin everywhere else. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
We don’t like that term… sin.
This prayer, routine, communal, emptied, should terrify and comfort us every time we say it. We announce once again our relationship with God. We align ourselves with the kingdom message of Jesus. And we ask God to do something in this world, to help us change the world in the ways that we can, to change the world in the ways that we cannot, that only God can.
It is a prayer that is almost two thousand years old, yet it still points to tomorrow, to a better world. It is not just ancient, it is timeless, lifting us out of own time, a prayer to a God that began before beginning, that we choose to trust is still alive and powerful. Like lightning bugs on a summer night, we are brief, beautiful, and amazing, miracles of existence, mysterious and impossible, part of God’s story spoken into the void. May God’s will be done. Amen.