Something Luke Timothy Johnson taught me about The Lord’s Prayer

Read it first if you don’t know it by heart:

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

thy 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 evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.

A-men.

What Luke Timothy Johnson taught me: The kingdom comes to us, we don’t go to it.

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Something I discovered myself: Prayer is meant to be said corporately.

Consider the red:

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

thy 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 evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.

A-men.

Even if Jesus was providing an example and not a mold, his language indicates that prayer should, at least on some occasions, be shared.

And when we share prayer, what do we do? We repeat the same words, sometimes multiple times each day.

In my Baptist boyhood home (and my home today), a common formula for grace was “Dear Jesus, bless this food to our bodies,” in other homes it’s “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive.”

Christianity can be intensely private, and that's a good thing, but among like-minded believers, it’s also something shared. IMHO it doesn't matter so much what you say or how, but the intent.

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This may seem trivial to you, but among Baptists, I think the insight might be like discovering a new photo of a departed family member, or a $20 bill in the laundry, or a sitcom episode you never saw from an old TV series you really liked.

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Luke Timothy Johnson is a historian of early Christianity and Robert W Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology. Learn more >

If you allow for some value to documentary analysis, The Lord’s Prayer is considered part of Q and probably something Jesus really said. See the article at Wikipedia >

Read some early Christian prayers ; look for the 3rd person plurals.

[2013-10-11]

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