I was driving home yesterday after dropping Diane off with her sisters in Yuma, Arizona where Carol and Jack spend their winters. We had to cut our road trip short by two days as the Grand Canyon was being visited by a rather large blizzard. I wouldn’t have minded being hunkered down and we certainly had the gear but I didn’t relish driving in those conditions. Not at all. Regardless, it was a wonderful trip and the adventures proved all manageable as requested. It’s never a bad thing having to come home to San Diego, even with a storm raging outside.

Anyway, back to the driving along. I was listening to a playlist when a song I hadn’t heard in awhile popped up. My mind wandered a bit and I thought of the Lord’s Prayer.

Now, prayer is something to think about all on its own. Maybe I’ll get the call to write about it. But, now, I just want to focus on this most famous of all prayers. I suspect that many non-Christians are quite familiar with it. It’s just one of those things that persists, and for good reason.

After all, when his disciples asked Jesus to show them how to pray, this what he said. He followed up with a lot of other advice on prayer, but for now, I’ll just look at the core of his teaching.

Interestingly, it was common for Jesus to take a question and pitch it back as a parable, designed to frustrate the listener into deeper understandings. He masterfully wove stories that forced people to wrestle with the most compelling themes, hopefully breaking through to great insight. Not so with this request.

Jesus simply said in Matthew 6:9, “This then, is how you should pray.” Period.

I’ll come back to that.

But, first, a word about perfunctory prayer. At the risk of stepping on toes, I have a bias against repetitive liturgies (formulaic worship) to the degree that the words are expressed as a requirement rather than from the heart with the full force of meaning. I am of the mind that God is much more interested in what and how we’re actually thinking and feeling, rather than demonstrating the ability to repeat over and over again certain words because, well, that’s what we’re supposed to do.

Put a little differently, when we speak the words and own them as “our” words, then we are in relationship with God rather than as automatons dutifully performing a prescribed ritual.

Now, just because I’m saying I’m biased doesn’t mean I don’t recognize certain value in repetition and formulaic expression. When we enter into a rhythm that allows us to set aside much of the world’s distortions, we are able to focus much more clearly. And, it’s not the repetition that’s the problem. It’s the fact I believe we get lulled out of a place where the words or practice can cut to the very core of who we are, who God is and how we’re called to live our lives. It’s the lulling that’s the problem. And, this holds true for the most well known Christian prayer … the few lines we collectively refer to as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

So, there are no two ways about it. When Jesus responds simply to the disciples’ request on how to pray, I’m of a mind that he means what he says. And, if you’re of a mind that he is, in all actuality, God, then I suspect we ought to really try to wrap our heads around where he goes with it.

Disclaimer: Let’s set aside dispute over translations and how Catholics and Protestants tweak the language. The basics are the basics. Also, I am not even close to being an expert on either prayer in general of this one in particular. So, I will probably butcher my interpretation in some eyes. But, this is how I see it.

Back to Matthew 6-9: “This, then is how you should pray: Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

He sets the stage right out of the gate. I’d like to think I can go there when I pray this prayer, although I normally fall pretty far short. But, if I’m really of a mind to “pray” this prayer, then I need to start off well. And that means recognizing who I am and who I’m speaking to and with.

He is “our father.” Not “my” father but “our” father. I am one of many, bonded via our relationship with God. He is “father,” creator, protector, giver of life, and font of love and grace. That means I am as a child, receiver of life, beneficiary of unconditional love and grace. I belong to him.

Oh, and while he’s “here,” he’s also not “here.” There is the reality of this world and there is the reality of God’s Kingdom, a term we use to mean that “place” under which he reigns and rules.

Now, this can rub modern sensibilities terribly. The sensibly modern will bridle at archaic language and images that reflect ancient monarchies, made obsolete by obviously superior systems such as democracies. And the sensibly modern will also object to a concept that someone or something has the right to reign or rule over us. How primitive!!

Well, they have a point. In fact, this was a really big sticky thing for me for quite a long time. I couldn’t fathom a reality that was this non-egalitarian. As a freedom-loving modern, I wanted no part of kings reigning and ruling. No part at all.

Until a switch got flipped and it all made complete sense and I awoke from a dream.

I awoke to a reality that this thing called heaven is not some place of clouds and harps and streets paved with gold. It isn’t behind pearly gates with a saint standing guard. It is the realm wherein God is real and obvious and we exist fully in his presence. I have many thoughts about what heaven really is and what my life after death could be like but I know it will be both different and vaguely familiar. So, we pray to a God that is in “the heavens,” a place dramatically different than what we experience mostly, day to day.

And, now we get to the next piece in that brief phrase: “… hallowed be your name.”

The word “hallowed” really means “holy.” And, holy is a big deal. Even if it’s not a topic for polite dinner table conversation.

Something that is holy is sacred, set apart, pure, worthy of intense respect. I am not holy. Not by a long shot. God is holy. In fact, he is not us, he is set apart, pure and worthy of respect. And, here’s something I find interesting: Jesus didn’t introduce the prayer by saying, “hallowed are you.” He said, “hallowed be your name.” Now, we can split hairs but the distinction causes me to pause. In fact, the mere name of God is hallowed. Holy. How much more the whole deal?

As I write this, I’m reminded of something very personal.

I used to have a pretty foul mouth. I can date its origin pretty much to working on the docks of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography my second summer at UCSD. My friend, Bruce, and I were summer workers, pulling down $2.24/hr to be grunts around the ships and fork trucks and cranes and welding machines. It was hard duty and the regular guys were pretty coarse, to put it mildly. Former military or Teamsters, with names of Sonny, Killer and Tex (the ones I recall) they rarely completed a sentence without cursing. And they cursed with vehemence. While I later restrained my language for the most part except around people who knew me, I still let loose on many an occasion. And, I didn’t even think about it when others used similar language. It was just a natural part of communicating. Along with the F bombs and the S word or its amplified “That’s B… S…!,” I frequently resorted to “J…. C…..!” when really frustrated or “G.. D…..!! You get the picture. The name of Jesus was a swear word and I didn’t think a whit about it.

Many Christians pray fervently that God will change us and relieve us from bondage to this or that addiction, habits we recognize as destructive and not a reflection of the person we realize we were meant to be. After making the choice to follow Jesus and when everything changed in the blink of an eye, a number of very specific changes happened. Within a few days at most, I realized I couldn’t swear. I don’t mean that I realized it was wrong and I needed to restrain myself. I mean I couldn’t swear. Physically. Any inclination just vanished. It was taken away. I didn’t pray that this would happen, as in, “God, I now belong to you. Would you please help me with my foul mouth?” The thought never crossed my mind. I just couldn’t. And, for the past twelve years, nothing has changed.

And, while I do not judge others for their use of foul language (there but for the grace of God, goeth I!), I have a visceral reaction when I hear the words. And the hardest part is hearing the Lord’s name taken in vain. Diane agrees with me on this. It’s like a body blow. Some who read this might think I and we are overreacting … that we’re being Puritanical. OK. But, let me ask you this: Would you think a black person is overreacting if he or she is confronted with a loud “N…..!?” I suspect not. It’s the same thing. We learn to live with it but it hurts.

Holy are you. “Hallowed be your name.”

Now that we’ve recognized who we are addressing, we move to a declaration of fact:

Matthew 6:10, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

I’m purposefully not accessing commentaries to help guide me in this essay. I want to just call it as I see it, recognizing that many others have explored this phrase in great depth. So, what does this declaration say? Jesus tells us that the wait is over. God has arrived. No longer do either his Jewish listeners or any of the peoples of the world have to go to a temple or “sacred” place to find God. He does not reside in a church or in places of great natural beauty. He is here. By becoming the flesh and blood of a man, God has burst fully into the world we know.

On a high place in the city of Jerusalem, sat the Temple. The Jews reserved the innermost room of this extremely large facility for the residence of God. It was called the Holy of Holies. Only one person was ever allowed to enter it, the High Priest, and then only once a year on Yom Kippur, the sacred Day of Atonement. On that day, the High Priest would basically appeal to God for mercy for the sins of the people. There was a gigantic curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the rooms. Surviving documents indicate  it was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and four inches thick. Imagine that! Christians believe that this veil, the physical device that separated the people from God, was completely torn in two at the moment of Jesus’ death. Doubters may doubt. For those who believe, the tearing or “renting” of the veil signifies that God is present to each of us, without the need for mediating influence or physical separation. And, he is as present and real in our world as he is in the heavens. And, being present, his will is manifest.

This latter statement is a hard one to grasp and I’ll defer from addressing it now as it can get really complicated. I’m not hedging, just deferring for now. But I will say this:

I firmly believe that I have one foot in this world and one foot in the other world. They are separated but connected. There are times when it’s hard for me to see or know the other world … the world of the heavens. And, at other times, the veil of my perception which can be rather thick and opaque, becomes as gossamer. I am granted a glimpse of the Holy of Holies and it is like nothing I could have imagined. For whatever reason, these moments are rare but they cannot be denied. They arrive unbidden and confirm what the decals on the back of our two cars say: “Not of this World.” We are in this world but not of it. Jesus tells us bluntly to acknowledge that God’s will is undeniable. Our task is to do whatever we can to determine it. Fortunately, Jesus’ entire ministry was build around telling us what God’s will is. And, that’s a very cool thing.

We now move from recognizing who and where God is to the most important requests we should make of God.

Matthew 6:11: “Give us our daily bread.”

Whoa there.

Jesus does not tell us that we should ask almighty God for happiness or for prosperity or to relieve suffering as our very first request. He says we should go before God and ask for the most basic form of sustenance. He is telling us to be content with the most basic of things. Yes, I think this is about contentment, something we hardly embrace in this material and fast paced world. I know I struggle with it. We have such wealth and are surrounded by bounty.

Bread is life. If I had time, I could really dive into the heart of what Jesus is saying here and how he is the bread of life (see communion) … our sustenance. But, in the simplest sense, this request is about realizing what is really important. There are many ways we are fed, metaphorically. Let us focus on what really sustains us. What brings us contentment and joy.

And, here we move deeper into the meaning of life as Jesus tells us. Here, we move into the nature of the Kingdom of God that is present on earth as it is in heaven. Here, we shift from a request for simple sustenance to a request that we be freed from bondage. And the first bondage is one of sin … a bad word in certain circles.

Matthew 6:12: “And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors.”

(I am using the version common in Protestant churches. Catholics will insert the word “trespass” for “debt.” But, it’s the same thing.)

It is the recognition that we are the cause of offense. Our actions frequently run counter to what God wants for us. We regularly make choices, in both thought and deed, that hurt others, ourselves, and even God. Yes, God can be hurt. See the cross. Jesus cites many examples during the course of his three year ministry. The adulteress, the woman at the well, the judgmental Pharisees and keepers of the law. The Prodigal Son who denies his father and squanders everything. The Apostle Paul (formerly the murdering Saul) covers a lot of this ground in his advice to the various new communities springing up as Christianity began rapidly spreading. Yes, we need to recognize when we mess up. And, when we do and actually experience the pangs of guilt or shame and wish we had not done what we’d done, that is called Repentance. It is remorse. But, Jesus teaches that we should bring that recognition before God and seek his forgiveness. We understand that there has been a tipping of the balance. The hurt is an injury to another, to ourselves, to God. It is a debt. And, in honestly bringing these things to God … honestly, not perfunctorily … we are promised forgiveness. That’s sweet.

But, there’s a catch. It works both ways. It’s one thing to recognize when we mess up and desire the slate to be wiped clean. It’s another thing to act in Christ’s place and do the same for those who offend us. In the post script to the prayer, Jesus warns us that, should we choose to look at this thing as a one way street, we will be sadly found wanting. We have a choice on whether to live in this “Kingdom” that is defined by love and grace, forgiveness and redemption. Or we can choose to live outside of it. Forgiveness is the key to the exit door from bondage to sin … for living a life outside of the one God desires for us. For which we were created. The key is both a head and a heart thing. And, it’s very hard. While it’s hard, it’s not impossible to grow in the right direction. Freedom from debt is remarkably liberating, both for the one who carries the debt and the one who owns the debt. A burden is released and both sides are free. This is what Jesus is teaching.

Finally, we come to the last part of the prayer which, in my mind, is an extension of the part just mentioned.

Matthew 6:13: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

Heavy sigh.

There’s nothing like concluding his too-the-point lesson on how to pray with this one-two punch. The first phrase, in my mind, is a plea to help us avoid temptations that pull us away from God and his will for us. And, boy, do they exist. Just a quick glance at the traditional “seven deadly sins” is a good place to start. Or, the Ten Commandments. Or, ignoring Jesus’ condensing down to two commandments. How about the oft-cited Sermon on the Mount? All of these and more help illustrate the nature of temptation … the call away from God’s will for us. So, this plea is for help to avoid those pathways, but to lead us toward him.

And, then the prayer gets really blunt. I can almost read this plea as a crying out. It seeks deliverance. Not avoidance but deliverance. I read a lot into this, although I know it’s risky to speak of this to modern sensibilities.

I’ll step out on a limb but I’m being transparent and honest. There is a widely held belief that God is Love. They are synonymous. While I believe there is a lot that is correct in that, I don’t believe it’s actually that simple. God is God. And love is his character. For some who believe that God is Love, the logic goes that evil is the absence of God. So when people do really bad things that some could characterize as evil things, the belief is that they are simply acting contrary to the nature of God. End of story. I don’t subscribe to this.

I have testified many times to the thirty odd years I wrestled and even fought with God, all the while sensing the truth of his existence. One of the areas of my greatest difficulty was reconciling an all-powerful God who is loving but who could simultaneously allow evil and suffering to exist. I was not alone in this deep reservation. It’s one of the most common reasons people reject the Christian framework.

Now, people who do not believe in evil probably don’t have this problem. Of course, the Naturist cannot believe in evil. Evil implies a moral force. A distinction that is universal and absolute. If one ascertains that an act of another is evil, no argument from the other that it is perfectly acceptable (not just justified but acceptable or even good) will hold water.

Do we have to look far to find examples of evil? Jeffrey Dahmer. Dachau. Sadism. Something told me long ago that there was such a thing as evil. Transcendent evil. The lusting after pain and anguish. No one has ever described an animal as evil. But, man, yes.

My battle was between my innate recognition that there was such a thing as transcendent evil (a force for destruction that existed outside of nature and was absolute) and my resistance to believe that it could be personified. I struggled with this immensely.

For a variety of reasons, I no longer struggle. I will not take the time here to detail how this came about. But, it did. And, I am completely convinced that there are what we can call demonic forces that influence human behavior.

Now, that statement alone might cause some to be repelled. But, as a literate and fairly scientific rationalist of the 21^st century, I can honestly say that I fundamentally believe in angels and demons. And, I believe my belief, or faith, is completely supported by reason. This places me at odds with modern sensibilities but I think I deserve the right after thirty years of looking at this from every angle. Yes, Evil exists and it exists to distract us from God. It exists to whisper and tempt that we are as good as God and do not need him. He is irrelevant. It exists to tell us that there is nothing greater than self-love (narcissism). That forgiveness is unnecessary and that grace is a sign of weakness. That the world exists for our benefits, for our personal pleasure and that we have a right to be happy however we decide to realize that happiness and at whatever the cost to others.

This concluding phrase of the prayer is commonly read as “deliver us from evil,” not, “deliver us from the evil one.” I opt for the latter translation. God has an antithesis and it is a battle, something I may write more about at some point. Regardless, the plea is for deliverance. Please pull us away from evil’s grasp. Please free us from its seductive tugs that tell us that the violence visited upon others (Dahmer and Dachau to suggest the extreme) is a good thing. And, for all of the lesser whisperings that tell us we are really not unconditionally loved, that we are masters of our fate (the world be damned), that we deserve all we can get, that everything is relative and nothing true … please deliver us.

Now, the public rendition of Jesus’ prayer adds this conclusion“For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.” The record doesn’t include this but, instead, Jesus goes on with his teaching on other matters.

Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one.

Amen.

Maybe some day I’ll pray this prayer with the discipline it took to record all of these thoughts.

Lord, thank you for helping us to know you better and to understand and live your will for us. Please forgive us when we rush right through the most basic of things, neglecting to pay them the attention they and you deserve. We are grateful that you are both holy and accessible. You, better than us, know that we face many difficulties and challenges in this life. Thank you for the simplicity of this prayer that simultaneously cuts to the core and shakes the world. May we honor it and you fully. Amen.