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Precis of address on the Lord's Prayer
ALL SAINTS CATHERINGTON
SUNDAY 10TH FEBRUARY, 6PM.
On the wall in the little vestry next to my Chapel at Bishopsgrove is a plate with the words ‘Our Father’ in the centre, and the rest of the prayer spiralling outwards in what seems like a never ending circle. I often stand in front of it and gaze at those words and their arrangement to prepare myself to preside at the eucharist. But the plate is another way of saying that the Lord’s Prayer bears a huge weight of interpretation, because it is so central to the Christian Faith, and can carry every single kind of human experience offered to God. And that is why there’s a sense of unravelling something very rich and complex every time we look at it in detail – and that’s despite its wonderful simplicity. I want in this address to begin by clearing the ground with three general suggestions, and then in the second part make three observations about those opening words ‘Our Father’.
To begin with the preliminaries. First of all, don’t get worked up about which version is used. I know it can be irritating not quite knowing which is going to be used, and perhaps using one that you don’t like because you prefer another. It’s true that the old version is much loved, but it was once upon a time new, and it appeared in the First Prayer Book in the sixteenth century after a long time of different vernacular versions in English that were used outside public worship, where only Latin was allowed. And that evolution had been going on since the fourteenth century, as the English language developed. Every version was once upon a time new. For myself, I was brought up on three, no less. We used the Prayer Book at church, but at Primary School, we used the old Scots-Genevan version with ‘forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’, and the doxology was ‘for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever.’ Those differences from the Prayer Book, with ‘trespasses’ and ‘trespass against us’, made me sit up and think, which was a good thing. To describe sin as a debt that you owe to someone is a very rich image, just to describe sin as trespassing on someone else’s space is equally vivid. And then on holdays, every August we were in Denmark, and it was the Danish version - I’m afraid I can’t resist introducing this part of the story! At first the language was unfamiliar, and yet I was listening to it all the time, and those Danish rhythms, so similar to the English, helped me to appreciate other languages and other cultures.
Secondly, do get worked up about its position in public worship! These things matter, and are not to be taken for granted, and certainly not messed around with. At the eucharist, the tradition position is between the eucharistic prayer and Communion. If you look at all the ancient liturgies – Latin, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, the lot – you’ll find this is the position adopted. And why? Because we recite the prayer in the context of Holy Communion, and you can’t make it more plain than that. So daily bread becomes the bread of Holy Communion; forgiveness is experienced at the Lord’s Table; and it’s also food for the future, in temptation (committing evil) and deliverance from it (experiencing it). At morning and evening prayer, and Compline, the Lord’s Prayer is traditionally at the end of the actual Office, clustered around the prayers. Why? Because the Lord’s Prayer is a model for all prayer, and perhaps helps some of those endless intercessions that go round the world again and again with a certain universality and objectivity.
Thirdly, there is the prayer’s shape. The first three petitions, are about God – hallowing his name (which is about God in himself), the coming of the kingdom (which is about his role as king of all creation), and the doing of the will (which narrows the focus to ourselves, in daily discipleship). That, if you like, locates the prayer in eternity. But then it moves on to locate us in history, as we pray for bread for today, forgiveness for yesterday, and protection in the future. These are basic needs. It’s so easy not to let go of the past, and if we don’t, then we simply become fearful in the future. The second half of the prayer is to help us to live more honest and more authentic lives in Christ.
Now, we can move on to those two opening words, ‘Our Father’. What can we say about them?
First of all, they’re often used as its title, as in the Latin, ‘Pater Noster’, and also the Danish, just to take another example, ‘Fader Vor’. Both these words belong to the whole congregation, and they should not under any circumstances be highjacked by some Cleric or Reader! I really do object when this happens. And history comes in to support us. For this is the prayer that (uniquely) has had its own words of introduction for centuries, in all the ancient liturgies. We pray as our Saviour taught us. And apart from signalling the prayer’s uniqueness, why indeed should it have a special introduction? So that the congregation is able to join in with those opening words! The prayer’s uniqueness is that it is what Christ gave us, that is why, for example, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, who was Bishop of Winchester in the time of King James I, used to describe this prayer as ‘the prayer of charity’ (i.e. love), and all other prayers, however cherished, as ‘the prayers of nature’. That’s why it was so remarkable after the Second Vatican Council the Roman Catholics were able to join the rest of us in reciting the prayer. We take that for granted now, but I can remember when it was exciting and new, and not uncontroversial.
Secondly, ‘Our’. Here is the corporate nature of Christianity signalled. Oh yes, we’re individuals, but it’s not a case of ‘me and my Lord’. We are really a bit of ‘me’ generation, consumerising Christianity to meet people’s needs, so that they only come along when those needs seem to be met, instead of having the patience to realise that what might not mean anything on this particular occasion could well benefit from a bit of patience, to come back for more. I sometimes suspect all those hymns that are all about me, however wonderful they are, like ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’. But it’s not me on my own – it’s me in the company with other people, and not just those who happen to be in church on that particular occasion, but the whole church, worldwide, and history deep. I remember lying on my hospital bed and never feeling cut off from the rest of the church because it was ‘Our Father’ that I was praying, rather than ‘My Father’.
And thirdly, we come to that word ‘Father’. St. Paul refers twice to the fact that we have the Spirit of adoption, whereby we can cry ‘Abba Father’ (Gal 4:6 and Rom 8:15), and some people think this could have been a kind of code for the Lord’s Prayer, because Paul doesn’t mention the text of the prayer anywhere else. The text we use comes from the one given right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 6: 9-13). And Jesus addresses his father as ‘Abba’ in Gethsemane (Mk 14:36). Previous generations sold the notion that Abba means ‘Daddy’, in a rather informal and perhaps superficial way. But the traditional Jewish use of ‘Abba’ is supposed to express both respect and intimacy – in an equal balance. It is that mixture of respect and intimacy that is how we approach God in this prayer. And his fatherhood is who we are approaching: we are adopted as his children. Of course that fatherhood must be seen as an image, far greater than earthly fatherhood – which meets those who have not had an earthly father, as well as those whose experience of earthly fatherhood was not very positive at all. It embraces, too, the whole of parenthood, for there are a number of occasions in the Old Testament when God is likened to a mother – so the radical modern feminist critique of the image of father isn’t saying something all that new after all! How we approach God is in the context of both respect and intimacy, and who we approach is our Heavenly Father, whom Jesus comes to reveal to us, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
