Father of Us All

A Series on the Lord's Prayer.

Lord, Teach us to pray.

When Jesus Christ came, he came to establish a kingdom, not a religion.
This kingdom operates through prayer.

Prayer is the operation of God's will on earth
through the indwelling Holy Spirit in the lives of believers
who speak into this world the realities of the Kingdom.

In other words,
we agree with Christ in us,
and speak out of this agreement.
Prayer is not talking to God,
but coming into unity with God to establish his will.
And this reality is woven through the prayer Jesus gave us.

God spoke creation into existence,
and in speaking,
God created man and woman.
And God gave humanity authority over the created earth,
and we as baptized members of the royal priesthood
have  been given authority 
to speak into this earth
his will.
We do this in relationship with God,
because everything God does is relational.
So when we pray,
our primary calling and goal is to extend and advance the Kingdom 
in the earth.

And because this is the nature of prayer,
we can be fruitful and multiply.
Prayer, 
more than any other undertaking
is a creating act.
And this is why 
prayer is so important for artists and creative professionals.

I think it is important to note
that the first direction Jesus gave his disciples
was to wait in Jerusalem and pray.
He said to do nothing but to pray for the promise of the Father.

And it is not until the middle of the book of Acts
before we see anything like a doctrinal statement.
Prayer is the foundation.
By nature our Kingdom is a 
supernatural expression 
of our relationship with God.

Everything that Jesus Christ said and did was about the Kingdom.
And so when we he taught us to pray, 
the prayer was about the Kingdom.
The Lord's Prayer
is first about the King
then about the Kingdom
then the resources we need
in building the Kingdom.

Larry Lea in his book Could You Not Tarry One Hour?
said the that the Lord's prayer is an outline of how we should pray.
There is a lot of truth in that.
The Lord's Prayer can also be a declaration.
And the Lord's Prayer can be a meditation.
The earliest document outside the New Testament, 
the Didache,
instructed Christians to pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day,
at morning, noon, and night.

For most of this series 
we are going to be using the version of the Lord's Prayer
found in Matthew's Gospel. 
This is the version we recite when we celebrate the Eucharist,
and it is the version used universally in worship and common prayer.
Matthew's gospel is summed up in Matthew 5:17:
Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets.

So in Matthews gospel, 
Jesus is the fulfillment of Moses:
he goes up on a mountain,
and speaks to the people like Moses did in the book of Deuteronomy.
Matthew organized his gospel thematically--
he put all the teaching together, 
the miracles together,
and the parables together.
And so in Matthew's gospel,
the Lord's Prayer appears in the sermon on the Mount,
and within a series of teachings on how we should pray.
Matthew doesn't give us context.

And as we have said many times before,
in the Kingdom and in the New Testament,
Context is Everything.

To get some context we have to look at Luke 11.
Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer,
like his version of the Beatitudes,
is much shorter and more direct.

Luke 11 begins with Jesus praying,
not preaching.
Jesus is not telling them how to pray,
he is praying.
And when he stopped,
one of the disciples asked him to teach them to pray.

And this is one of the keys to the life of prayer.
Prayer is a living, dynamic, organic thing.
The disciples saw that Jesus was praying in a unique way,
and they wanted to know how to pray like Jesus.
Real prayer is caught not taught,
and real discipleship is about transformation, not information.

As an aside, I spent decades in various prayer movements.
In retrospect, the fruit of most of it wasn't very good,
because they were not praying like Jesus taught us.
The purpose of the Lord's Prayer 
is to come into agreement
with the Father.

In Matthew 7, 
the Sermon on the Mount ends with 
Jesus telling them 
of the many who will come to him 
on the last day and say
"We have done all these great things in your name,"
and Jesus answers them,
depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of iniquity."
The people who came to Jesus were 
prophets and people who cast out devils.

These were good people
deceived into believing their ministry activity 
was building the Kingdom.
And Jesus sends them to hell.

This is a serious warning,
more prayer is not necessarily good prayer,
and prayer from an earthly perspective without the Father 
can be counter to the Kingdom.

Now remember, 
Jesus is not about starting a religion, 
or a rabbinical school.
Jesus is laying the foundation for a Kingdom.
It's clear from Luke 11,
that the disciple is asking Jesus to give them prayers
just like John gave his disciples a way to pray.

And Jesus responds in a way that is a bit surprising.

He does not begin his prayer 
using the conventions of Jewish Prayer.
Almost all Jewish prayers begin with 
"Baruch Atta Adonai . . ."
Blessed are you Lord.
This is an outside in perspective.
Jesus prays from within the Trinity.
Inside out.

And this may be why the disciple asked how to pray,
because Jesus wasn't speaking to the "Other, unknowable, Adonai.
with the unrepeatable name."
He was talking to someone he knew,
personally and intimately.
And so he begins his prayer in an unusual way.
If you want a barometer for someone's relationship to God,
listen to how they pray.
The disciple recognized that Jesus prayed differently than everyone else.

Jesus says (in the Greek), 
when you pray,
say
"Father, of us."
The word order in this case, puts the most important word first.
Father.

There are a lot of implications to this.