Luke 11 v. 1-13

 

The Gospel reading for Sunday contains the giving by Jesus of the Lord’s Prayer.

 I am often in mind of a scene broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network in America when I say or hear this prayer.  It is of the first English settlers who landed at Virginia Beach in April 1607.planting the Cross and reciting the prayer. They were the forerunners who were joined by others to make that such a great and powerfully Christian nation

 We read that a disciple asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. This is a reasonable request for praying is hard for a lot of people.  I had a Vicar who was masterly at praying at any given time for any possible reason, but others find it hard to do so without a book of set prayers.

 Jesus gave His disciples and by extension us, a model prayer simple in its composition but profound in its teaching.  The prayer begins with us thinking about God and our relationship to Him, and then moves on to our own concerns.

 We have to remember that prayer is talking to God, who we are encouraged by Jesus to call Father, so we begin by recognizing God as ‘our’ Father who cares for and loves us just as an earthly father cares for his sons/daughters.  The Jews would not recognize such intimacy, and not until Jesus spoke to us had anyone ever done so. 

 We recognize His holiness and that He reigns in heaven, and approach Him in reverence.  We also acknowledge that in being holy, God is above and beyond us.  In Jewish thought, a name reflected the character of the person, so we recognize God’s holiness and seek to display it in our lives. We cannot see God, but He is present in heaven and all authority is His.  If we trust in Him, He is always ready to hear us in time of need.

 In saying ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done’, we are praying that God’s rule be established more and more. We want God to be fully present in life, and not just an invisible hope. We want to see more and more people converted and obey His will, and that those who disobey and hate His commands will decrease.  We are praying that all God’s plans and purposes will be fulfilled.

 We pray that God will provide for our daily needs, bread being the basic food which sustains our physical life, so we are asking God to supply for us as He did for the people of Israel, when in the wilderness and He sent manna from heaven.  This reminds us of our dependence on God, and approach each day as a separate entity in our life.

We recognize God’s grace, as we seek forgiveness for the debt we owe to God for sinning, and lay our sins on Jesus Christ. The Bible states ‘there is no one righteous, no not one, we all fall short of the glory of God’, so here we confess we are in fact sinners. There is the need to forgive those who offend us, forgiving the person not the sin, for only God can do that.  This is a hard call for many people and even harder to put into practice. It is important to remember that the word ‘sin’ has a far greater meaning than just sexual matters, which people usually have solely in mind.

 Finally, we plead with God to so order our lives that we do not face temptation beyond our ability to resist.  God will never lead us into temptation, but we face this every day of our lives and will do so as long as we live on this earth. At this point we also want Him to protect us from evil which abounds so much all around us, and so order our lives that we may not be faced with anything we cannot bear.

 The words of this prayer have passed over our lips many times.  How many who recite it, sometimes automatically, really desire is petitions to be granted.  Do we really see God as our Father and truly care for His will and name, and wish for the kingdom to come.

 This prayer is read at almost every funeral service and said by people who have little if any religious faith and do not appreciate its wonder or meaning.  The prayer is factually for believers who are entitled to call God ‘Father’, for Jesus stated no one can come to the father except through me.