In all this talk of "postmodernity" and "we have to do church differently" today, I fear we sometimes throw the baby out with the bathwater. With little or no reflection we turn our back on anchors of the faith that have served the Church well for centuries. For instance, with little or no reflective thought, some criticize the praying of the Lord's Prayer in our worship services, calling it merely vain repetition. Can it be that? Sure it can. But it doesn't have to be. Praying the "Our Father" can be a prayer of intentional warfare, a prayer of revolution, and a prayer of hope.
As I had my coffeetime with Jesus this morning, here are a few thoughts I read from N.T. Wright that may help breathe some freshness into praying the Lord's Prayer in your worship services this week:
The first occurrence in the Hebrew Bible of the idea of God as the Father comes when Moses marches in boldly to stand before Pharaoh, and says: Thus says the Lord: Israel is my first son, my firstborn; let my people go, that they may serve me (Ex 4:22-23). For Israel to call God “Father,” then, was to hold on to the hope of liberty. The slaves were called to be sons.
When Jesus tells His disciples to call God “Father,” those with ears to hear will understand. He wants us to get ready for the new Exodus. We are going to be free at last. This is the Advent hope, the hope of the coming of the Kingdom of God. The tyrant’s grip is going to be broken, and we shall be free. The very first word of the Lord’s Prayer, therefore (in Greek or Aramaic, “Father” would come first), contains within it not just intimacy, but revolution. Not just familiarity; but hope.
The national hope seemed to have slipped away for Israel; yet they clung on to the fact that God had said He would set them, His first born son, free. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Syria, and now Rome; when would the tyranny of evil end? When would Israel be free? The very first word of the Lord’s Prayer says: Let it be now; and let it be us. Father…Our Father…
The word “Father” concentrates our attention on the revolutionary message and mission of Jesus. It is the Exodus-message, the message that tyrants and oppressors rightly fear. But it isn’t a message of simple human revolution. Most revolutions breed new tyrannies; not this one. This is the Father’s revolution. It comes through the suffering and death of the Son. This revolution comes about through the Messiah, and His people, sharing and bearing the pain of the world, that the world may be healed.
At the end of John’s Gospel, Jesus says to His followers: As the Father sent me, so I send you (John 20:21). We live between Advent and Advent; between the first great Advent, the coming of the Son into the world, and the second Advent, when He shall come again in power and glory to judge the living and the dead. The first and second Advents are actually what Christianity is all about: celebrating the decisive victory of God, in Jesus Christ, over Pharaoh and the Red Sea, over sin and death – and looking for, and working for, and longing for, and praying for, the full implementation of that decisive victory.
Beloved, to pray the Lord’s Prayer in integrity, is not only a prayer of intimacy, it is a prayer of intentional warfare. To pray the “Our Father” is to be kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. Let us join with millions upon millions of Christians around the world this week and pray this prayer of warfare. Let us recapture this anchor of our faith, breathe new life into it and continue to pass it on to new generations to come that we all may increasingly experience now between the Advents the benefits of God's Kingdom way of living life.
