Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Preface
1. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name
2. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
3. Give us this day our daily bread
4. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us
5. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
6. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever. Amen

Appendix: The two versions of the Lord’s Prayer

Extract from PREFACE
The Lord’s Prayer is perhaps the best-known part of the Bible. Even in our supposedly ‘post-Christian’ world, it is till widely taught and learned, even by people who seldom enter a church. Those who remember the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 6 September 1997 may recall how the two million mourners who lined the route of the procession were asked to observe complete silence in her memory, and then to join together in reciting this prayer – and how many of that enormous number were able to do so without hesitation. It is true that modern-language Scriptures and forms of worship have created something of a generational divide, with older people knowing the traditional words and younger ones using more modern forms. However, the inconvenience of this is such that the familiar sixteenth-century version continues to be used, even in modern worship services – a unique survival that bears witness to the extent to which this prayer has become part of our common culture. It is even used in purely secular contexts, particularly by linguists, who have chosen it as their model text for comparing the features of one language with another. Its familiarity and universality appear to make it appropriate for this, as of course does its relative brevity.

Were the words as we know them ever intended to be used as a prayer? In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells his followers to pray ‘like this’, which is somewhat ambiguous, though the parallel passage in Luke omits this qualification (Matt. 6:9; Luke 11:2). The snag is that virtually nobody has ever used Luke’s shorter version in actual prayer! But by the end of the first century Christians were being advised to use Matthew’s version at least three times a day (Didache 8.2), and it has always figured somewhere in virtually every form of publicly approved liturgy. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer’s service of Holy Communion it occurs twice, once at the beginning (without the doxology) and then again near the end with the doxology added, possibly because its note of praise and thanksgiving is an appropriate conclusion to the sacred feast.

In a recently published book on prayer, the late Huw Parri Owen devotes an entire chapter to the Lord’s Prayer, which he, like so many others before him, saw as the ‘pattern prayer’ of the Christian church. It has undoubtedly been the most widely used Christian prayer, but whether it has provided a model for other prayers is more debatable. There is no other liturgical prayer that can be said to reflect it in any significant way, and Christians who pray in their own words seldom if ever use it as a guide. It retains its prominence in the Christian consciousness, but it remains unique – unimitated and perhaps inimitable. How far it can be used as a pattern for our prayers is difficult to say. Of course its statements are unobjectionable enough, but most people would want to include far more than just these few lines in their own prayers, and other forms of prayer cannot be interpreted merely as a development or an elaboration of the Lord’s Prayer. In short, though it is known and used in worship, it is not the source of our other prayers and if the church’s liturgical tradition is any guide, nobody has ever thought that it should be.

Practically speaking, the Lord’s Prayer is not a model for prayer in general, but if that is not what it is meant to be, what is its purpose? Surprising as it may seem, there has been very little serious reflection about this. Books on the Sermon on the Mount (which contains the Prayer) are fairly easy to come by and they obviously deal with the subject to some extent, but commentators tend to concentrate on the simplicity and straightforwardness of Jesus’ approach to God and seldom venture much beyond that. That is an important emphasis, to be sure, but to a generation unfamiliar with the elaborate rituals of Second Temple Judaism, the practical impact of this analysis is likely to be weak. Preachers and teachers can tell their people that they ought to be grateful to Jesus for having simplified our approach to God, but those who have never known anything else are liable to get the impression that relating to God is so simple that it hardly requires any thought at all. Those who attend modern services know how well that message has been communicated, and it may be somewhat paradoxical that in contemporary styles of worship the supposedly ‘simple’ words of the Lord’s Prayer are seldom used, perhaps because many people think they sound formal and legalistic!

A new approach to the Lord’s Prayer is required if it is to regain the place in our worship that its intrinsic merit and the universal tradition of the church suggest it ought to have. Many years ago I discovered that preaching on the Prayer, or parts of it, was a rewarding exercise, because its familiarity meant that even poorly taught congregations could follow along and deepen their spiritual understanding by relating to it. So when the invitation came to deliver the Moore College Lectures in Sydney in August 2006, and I was asked to choose a theme at once biblical, theological and pastoral, the Lord’s Prayer immediately sprang to mind. ...

As I have reflected more deeply on the Lord’s Prayer I have become convinced that it is essentially an embryonic form of
systematic theology. That theology is not expressed in the syllogisms and philosophical language of later ages; it is not even couched in the form of a creed! But the Prayer’s structure and layout follow a clearly discernible pattern, beginning with God the Father who is the Creator Lord of heaven and earth, moving through the kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ to the blessings of both physical and spiritual nourishment which that brings, and concluding with the substance of the Christian life, which is the chief work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. The Prayer does not cover every subject, but it is surprising how many vitally important matters are touched upon, once the deeper meaning of the text is sought. It is unnecessary to ‘spiritualize’ or allegorize Jesus’ words in order to bring these out; most of the time, logical reflection is enough to make it clear what they are and it is left to us only to take the words into our souls and let them do their work of spiritual transformation within. It is my hope and prayer that the thoughts about the Lord’s Prayer that I have put down in print will stir others to further reflection, so that together we may rediscover what a treasure we have in those words that are on the lips and in the hearts of all Christians. ...