Sometimes we have unpleasant things we have to do.
Awkward situations we would rather avoid.
People we would rather not meet.
Tasks we put aside and hope that they will go away.
One such task is writing a difficult letter – to a friend or relative who has recently been bereaved.
Where do you start especially if you haven’t been in contact for a long time?
Or you might have to give a speech at a wedding reception – you want to be light hearted and interesting, complementary and wishing the best to the happy couple.
But how do you start – how do you hold interest in the middle and end on a high note?
Its almost as difficult to write a sermon – hopefully I’m starting OK but how am I going to finish, how am I going to hold your attention in the middle?
We shall see!!
All of this is particularly difficult for the person who isn’t very articulate, they find it difficult in putting their thoughts and more importantly their feelings into words.
Finding the right word with the right meaning at the right time!
One solution is to ask for help from someone who understands our problem.
Its too easy just to say, ‘Oh, just sit down and write – that’s what I do!’
They could help us in 2 ways – dictate or even write down what we should say and we amend it - but is that really the answer for us?
Its still their letter, their speech – its not form my heart nor from my mind!
The best way our helper can assist us is to give us an outline, to discuss with us the main points that we want to say.
Then we weave these points together bringing in our thoughts, our expressions and our feelings to give it that personal touch.
This will enable us to say the RIGHT things but to say them in our OWN way.
It is the same with anything that we do, the best help that we can give or receive is to show and guide.
If we do it for them – that’s the easy way and at worse it leaves them demoralised and at best none the better off because they haven’t learnt anything.
It is the same with prayer and that is why when Jesus was asked ‘Master, teach us to pray’ - the disciples were given the Lord’s prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is God's gift to humanity… God’s gift to us!
• It encompasses all that is essential in life and
• it embraces our needs and all our hopes,
• it communicates our longings and our convictions,
• it roots us in the family of God and
• it invites us to embrace a radical way of living, saturating us with beauty, integrity and fruitfulness.
The Lord's Prayer is as close as we can come to a common currency - a universal language capable of uniting people at a fundamental level.
It contains a grammar of life, defining the contours of our most vital relationships.
From what we can gather, this prayer has been a part of Christian worship from the earliest times and continues to be so to this very day.
Strange as it might seem the Lord's Prayer is not specifically Christian.
It contains no reference to Jesus or to the Trinity.
It is not a prayer we pray to Christ, the eternal Son of God, nor through the mediation of His atoning death; rather, it is a prayer Jesus invites us to pray with Him.
The Lord's Prayer is the prayer of Jesus Himself.
It follows from this that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and He offered the Lord's Prayer (Luke II: 1-4), He was doing much more than giving them a new formulation.
He was inviting them to inhabit His faith:
• to share His relationship with God,
• to experience the world through His eyes,
• to engage with His vision of the kingdom and
• to work towards its fulfilment.
This is where the capacity of the Lord's Prayer to change lives resides: in the gift of a new identity bestowed upon those who make this prayer their own and, through doing so, come to indwell the faith of its author.
They become ONE with the LORD.
What kind of a prayer is the Lord's Prayer? It has been described, among other things, as
'a summary of the whole gospel'
'a compendium of the heavenly doctrine' - as it contains a framework of belief.
It is a remarkably adaptable prayer, equally suited to public worship or private devotion and owes much to Jesus' Jewish heritage.
In fact, it is a prayer almost any Jew would feel comfortable in praying.
The central themes and convictions –
• the holiness of God,
• addressing God as Father,
• yearning for the coming of God's kingdom,
• the need for forgiveness and
• daily sustenance—
all of this can be found in the Hebrew OT scriptures and characterise other Jewish prayers at the time of Jesus.
Consider, for example, the following petitions taken from the Kaddish and Tephillah (Eighteen Benedictions) - prayers regularly used by the Jews in first-century Palestine (translations by J.J. Petuchowski):
Exalted and hallowed be His great Name in the world which He created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom (and cause His salvation to sprout, and hasten the coming of His messiah) in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the whole household of Israel, speedily and at a near time.
Forgive us, our Father; for we have sinned against You.
Blot out and remove our transgressions from before Your sight, for Your mercies are manifold.
You are praised, O Lord, who abundantly pardons.
Bless, O Lord our God, this year for us, and let it be good in all the varieties of its produce.
Hasten the year of our redemptive End.
Grant dew and rain upon the face of the earth, and satiate the world out of the treasuries of Your goodness; and grant a blessing to the work of our hands.
You are praised, O Lord, who blesses the years.
There is a great danger for us in reciting the Lord’s prayer, Sunday by Sunday; day by day in that we can loose its real meaning.
There is a danger that we recite without understanding, mere words passing through our lips without the slightest thought.
The Lord’s prayer must not be taken for granted, we should
pause for thought on each phrase and think it though and in this way:
We pray the Lord’s prayer with the Lord as He meant it to be!
