Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

Ethics And Morals in the Prayer Of Jesus

Shea: This week we’re delving into one of your favorite subjects: bread in scripture.

Tim: I can’t wait. In the Bible, bread is always associated with divine provision. Manna falls from the sky. Ravens bring Elijah bread. The Gospels boast no less than accounts of Jesus multiplying a few loaves of bread to feed thousands of his followers.

Shea: And of course there’s the bread at the final dinner Jesus shares with his disciples.

Tim: Yes, that bread is also multiplied as we reach across the centuries to participate in the communal meal of bread and wine.

Shea: So when the Lord’s Prayer includes the petition “Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus is keeping bread front and center. But I’m guessing something very particular is happening in the context of this prayer.

Tim: You would be correct. The petition for divine provision of bread evokes the memory of manna, even as it presages the meaning of the Eucharistic bread. Even so, this bread is also a politically charged subject, because it’s really about the distributive justice that characterized the Jewish ethic of Jesus’s time. He’s asking God to do what, ironically, God expects us to do—to provide for those in need, to ensure no one goes without. This idea is (forgive the pun) baked into the ancient consciousness, imbedded in Jesus’s culture since the time of Moses.

Shea: So what about forgiveness?

Tim: Note how specific Jesus is about forgiveness. In Matthew’s Gospel, it’s tied to debt. This also comes from the Law of Moses and it leads to liberation, since what Jesus asks God to do (and expects us to do) is liberate those who are enslaved because of need. Luke’s version uses “trespasses” which solves a different legal problem, but nonetheless is tied to freeing people from the consequences of their struggles. It’s a powerful idea, because it’s the moral code of Christianity in a nutshell.

Shea: Our moral obligation is the liberation of those who are indebted and/or in trouble because they’ve crossed boundaries. I see what you mean.

Tim: To see someone who’s oppressed or struggling and offer no help is immoral. It’s that basic. And we don’t condemn them. We forgive them, learning how to do what we ask God do for us. We work to make them whole, another financial term that Jesus was fond of, even as we ask God to restore our wholeness.

Shea: I can tell you’re all fired up and ready to get into this!

Tim: I sure am! This Thursday is going to challenge us in very real ways and I believe it’s going to bring us much needed insight and comfort!

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Shea: This series on the Lord’s Prayer may be the richest yet. People are talking about how much they’re enjoying it. Who knew there was so much wealth packed into those 66 words!

Tim: This week we hit full stride with “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Have you ever noticed how, when you’re at church and folks are reciting the prayer, it gets a little louder with that phrase?

Shea: Part of it is the poetry. The prayer starts to turn a corner right there. But I also think it’s the first phrase that most folks feel attached to. Everything before “thy kingdom come” focuses on God. When Jesus introduces this idea of “on earth as in heaven” we think, “Oh, this is about us!” So we give it extra gusto. We’re funny that way…

Tim: But is it really about us? We’re still talking to God about God, still speaking in the imperative tense, still petitioning God. At best we’re vessels for God’s use. Do you think folks assume the terrestrial reference is about us and the heavenly mention is all about God and not us? God is everywhere and wherever God is, heaven is there too. God is

Shea: I see what you did there. Hmmm. Asking God to bring God’s kingdom to life in the world is a powerful idea. Of course, the kingdom of God is central to Jesus’s theology and ministry—this notion of achievable perfection, wholeness that arises from justice and righteousness. And it seems Jesus wants us to envision its possibility as an ideal we can replicate.

Tim: But the kingdom is also relational; it comes to life in how we treat one another and our regard for God. The greatest commandments are at the heart of kingdom theology: love God entirely and love your neighbor as yourself. God’s will is always tangled up in our relationships with one another.

Shea: I agree! That’s why I love when folks drop the “g” from “kingdom” to pray for the coming God’s “kindom.” The image of a householder with many heirs permeates this prayer. Kinship is its heartbeat. We belong to God. God’s will is what God gives and how God leads. We’re not alone!

Tim: Never alone! Amen. This week’s lesson has life-changing potential.

Shea: Isn’t that what the Lord’s Prayer is supposed to do? Change us?

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

The First Request

Shea: Continuing our conversation on the Lord’s Prayer, we come on the first request Jesus introduces, “Hallowed be your name,” or as the Common English Bible translates it, “Uphold the holiness of your name.” Interesting…

Tim: It’s easy to gloss over that when we pray this prayer. But its precedence in the prayer, coming at the top of the list of petitions, suggests we should slow down and give it closer consideration. What do you think is going on here?

Shea: Jesus is focusing first attention on God’s name, which was very important to first-century Jews. For Jesus’s students, God’s name was so sacred they refused to utter it. They wouldn’t even spell it out on paper, choosing instead to adopt a monogram—YHWH—that shielded God’s name from risk of being used frivolously.

Tim: Which goes back to the commandment that forbids taking God’s name in vain.

Shea: To this day, most Orthodox Jews won’t speak God’s name and if it needs to be represented in print, they render it as “G-d.”

Tim: Why so much concern about how we treat God’s name? It would seem our regard for God is more important than proper handling of God’s name.

Shea: You can’t separate them. Respect for the individual demands respect for the name and vice versa. That’s true in our own time. Your name and your reputation are one and the same. If God is holy, God’s name is holy and in Jesus’s day, “holy” meant “a thing totally set apart and protected from human tampering or corruption.”

Tim: So the holiness of the name isn’t dependent on ascribing reverence and honor that is clearly due God.

Shea: God doesn’t need us for that. God is holy all by God’s self. And that’s important because, as you recall from last week, this prayer begins by establishing God as the Divine Householder, the Lord of All Things. Jesus essentially prays that God will exercise divine privilege that is at one with God’s authority. The prayer, like all great prayers, quickly assumes a covenantal nature that embraces the collaborative nature of prayer: Holy God stands in agreement with us based on the integrity of God’s name.

Tim: God signs on the dotted line. God’s name becomes the leverage that makes the rest of the prayer effective.

Shea: It’s more than leverage. It’s the divine guarantee that liberates us to pray without condition or restraint.

Tim: I’m hearing something very powerful in this! I can’t wait to really dig into this idea!

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

What’s in a Name?

Tim: When I’m asked or expected to pray, a photoflash goes off in my head. In that half-a-second I mentally scan the room to gauge how I should address God, and how I should refer to God as I pray.

Shea: I experience the same thing and recognize why it’s important to do that. But I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Tim: If I’m asking folks to join together in prayer and call God a name that alienates some of them, I’ve defeated the purpose before the prayer gets started.

Shea: Parental God-names are tough. Thinking of God as a father or mother alienates some folks, even though scripture and tradition overflow with metaphors that picture God in those roles.

Tim: And we have to ask whether the metaphors are broke or if the problem is one we’ve created through family dysfunction, patriarchal stubbornness, and casual acceptance of sexism in modern culture. I actually think the ancients were much more sophisticated where gender and family were concerned.

Shea: Gender was much more fluid in biblical times. Sure, gender roles were sharply defined. Yet like so much in ancient thought, these structures were also malleable because people acknowledged no rules or roles could encompass every situation.

Tim: That’s why there’s so much gender-bending in scripture: mothers who step forward and take charge, fathers who forego authority to show mercy. In fact, it’s very hard to find fathers and mothers, sisters or brothers who conform to gender norms in scripture. From Miriam to Mary, from Jacob to Jesus, we see parents and children push gender envelopes in interesting ways that a lot of us miss because we’ve become so concrete in what gender means and how it works. We’re not nearly as enlightened or fluid as we’d like to think.

Shea: Our hardbound categories create problems, don’t they? Like the Lord’s Prayer, for instance. The instant you begin with “Our Father,” the modern mind kicks in and there’s a problem.

Tim: And the problem is real, because we’re at a pivotal time when abuses of masculine power must be reckoned with. We know God is not male, because a male God would be inadequate, the same as a female God would be. God is beyond gender. But some of us have fashioned a male image of God—in part because of the “our Father”—that has fueled patriarchy and misogyny for centuries. As we do the necessary work of correcting gender inequities we have to address this problem of thinking of God as exclusively male or supposing that referring to God as female is the quick fix.

Shea: How do we do that?

Tim: We start be retrieving what Jesus and his students actually meant when they prayed “Abba, Father.” That was their standard address for God, a bilingual name that ascribed gender-transcendent qualities to the Divine. It wasn’t that God was just any “father” prone to masculine weaknesses that habitually trouble human life. God was everything to first-century Christians. Their best metaphor was that of the ultimate parent, a SuperDad whose power was equaled by the love and care showered on the kids, a God whose behavior surpassed gender norms.

Shea: We need that God today.

Tim: Yes, we do! And we’ll talk about how our eagerness to rectify perceived gender inequities in God may cause us to lose what Jesus wanted us to claim when we pray, “Our Father…”

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.