What Do We Mean When We Say the Lord's Prayer?

Matthew 6:7-15

Sunday Sermon, April 19, by John Turner

The Most Quoted Scripture?

The Lord’s Prayer is probably the most widely repeated set of words in all Christendom. Most churches that I have attended in my lifetime say it every Sunday. We may say it in our private devotions as well. We often say it at gravesides. Some among us can sing it. Most of us have had it memorized since early childhood. But do we know what it means? Do we understand the meaning of the words that we say so readily? If you have been wondering what the prayer means or have been simply going through the motions of reciting it without attempting to understand what you are saying, then this is your day.

Our Father

In the culture in which we live, we have not gone past two words into the prayer when we have already introduced controversy. Let me immediately say that I have taken the trouble to understand the reasons some people are unhappy with calling God, “Our Father,” and with other male language for God, but I have concluded that the dangers of all the alternatives are greater. Yes, I know that God is Spirit and that he is more than what we mean by being male. I know that all human beings, male and female, are created in the image of God. I know that the Bible has a few feminine figures of speech for God alongside all the male ones. But that does not justify our dropping the language we have been taught by Jesus Christ. It is indeed dangerous for us to think that we are more intelligent, more sophisticated, more sensitive, more compassionate, or more fair-minded than our Lord and Savior. Jesus, in his native Aramaic, called God Abba, roughly the equivalent of Papa. It is dangerous for us to give up this warm, natural, human term for an impersonal, abstract, or contrived term of our own invention. When we start down that road of invention, I have seen that the result is that we soon are re-creating God in our own modern image, and we are left believing in no God capable of saving us from ourselves.

I understand with great sympathy that some people have had bad experiences with human fathers, and that it is difficult for them to use father imagery for a loving God, but that is precisely why it is so important to do so. God enables us to be born again. God can re-parent us, giving us a new start and making up for the failings of our human fathers. Viewed in that way, calling God, “Our Father,” can be therapeutic, healing, freeing for all of us, and especially for those who human fathers have been abusive or negligent. None of us had perfect human fathers, and there is something to be healed within each of us by having a perfect heavenly Father.

I am certain that calling God Father is not opposed to the progress of women. I recently read that the strong women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the women who paved the road for women’s equality, almost all had influential human fathers who took an active interest in their intellectual development and in their preparation for their careers. How much more does our heavenly Father want strong, fulfilled human daughters as well as sons! Women, whether your leadership is to be domestic or public or both, your heavenly Father is not your opponent, but your strongest supporter. Men, you too have a strong divine Father who models for you what real strength is like, not macho, but confidently purposeful, courageous, loving, and nurturing. This is not the time to be taking such a model away from our young men. Let our Father God be a source of strength for men and women alike.

Who art in heaven

Heaven refers to another dimension of space and time, the realm from which God spoke to create the visible universe of our space and time. By speaking of God as in heaven, we mean that he is not confined to the visible universe, and is not to be totally identified with any force within the universe. Rather, God has brought the whole universe into being and is able to enter the universe and to reveal himself in it as he chooses.
“Hallowed” The word hallowed means holy. Someone who is holy is totally dedicated to a perfect purpose. God is totally dedicated to the perfect purposes for which he created the universe. On the one hand, a holy God cannot forever overlook the sins by which we have distorted his purposes. On the other hand, he cannot destroy those purposes. God’s holiness obliges him to judge the universe, but also to restore the universe.

Hallowed be thy name

Some of us think that this means, “Do not use God’s name as a curse word or as a casual exclamation of surprise.” Indeed, we would do well to pay attention to that meaning. It seems that our culture can hardly speak at all without irreverent exclamations referring to God. But the meaning of keeping God’s name holy is much, much bigger than that. In the biblical world a name referred to the whole character and purposes of a person. For God’s name to be kept holy, it must not be used in any way that is inconsistent with God’s perfect purposes. We are not to use God’s name to bless and curse things without consideration of how such an action fits with God’s character and purposes. We are not to use God’s name for our lesser causes and preferences, like politics, for instance. Obeying that restriction would cut down a great deal of our religious conversation…and make what we do say more important.

Thy kingdom come

Some people mistake the term “kingdom of God” as referring only to end-times perfection. Of course, end-times perfection is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s kingdom, but God’s kingdom exists here and now whenever and wherever God reigns, whenever and wherever in our experience it is clear that God is in charge. Jesus said, “If by the Spirit of God, I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” In other words, anytime the Spirit of God is beating the devil, then the reigning power of God is present. That is true wherever there are miracles. That is true wherever there are conversions. That is true wherever worshipers know that they have been in the presence of God. That is true wherever Christians show extraordinary generosity or mercy. That is true wherever Christians love their enemies. That is true wherever the church effectively serves God.

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

In short, the kingdom of God is present whenever and wherever God’s will is done in the visible world just as it is done in God’s own dimension of reality. We are asking that this be an observable fact in human experience.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Scholars are not sure of the proper translation here. This phrase could mean that we are asking God to meet our daily needs just as he provided manna to Israel during its forty years in the wilderness. But it is possible that a better translation is, “Give us this day our bread for tomorrow,” and tomorrow could refer to the end-times perfection. The meaning might be that we are asking God to do whatever is needed to keep us on the path to the perfect future. For the Christian, being sustained for today and being sustained for the promised future are not contradictory. We do not have to decide between these two possible translations so long as we understand that people of faith never merely survive to stay in one place, but survive to continue their pilgrimage toward a city not made with human hands, but a place whose builder and maker is God.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Neither Matthew’s nor Luke’s report of the Lord’s Prayer contains the word trespasses. Matthew reports, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” whereas Luke reports, “and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” We do not know why the early church dropped from its written prayers the language of debts and sins and replaced it with the language of trespasses. They borrowed the trespass language from Matthew 6:14-15, immediately following the Lord’s Prayer. Perhaps some people were misunderstanding the figurative debt language as applying only to economic matters. The Campbell-Stone heritage of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) began with a determination to use biblical language wherever possible, and so the debts-debtors version has prevailed in our congregations except where we have been influenced by the more liturgical churches. Some of our churches have opted for the plainer and more generic sins. Whatever language we use, the point is that, if we wish to receive God’s mercy, we must offer God’s mercy for others.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

People are troubled by this verse because it seems to imply that God would tempt us, which James tells us that he will not. God will however put us in trying times and allow Satan to tempt us while God waits for us to ask for divine help to deliver us through the trials without sin. That is what happened when the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Mark puts it this way: “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.” It was in response to Satan’s tempting that Jesus faithfully set the course of his ministry, deciding the kinds of things that he would do and the kinds of things that he would not do. But notice that God sent angels to minister to his faithful Son as he resisted temptation. God will supply what is needed for uas to resist temptation if we are asking and looking to resist.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God to deliver us from Satan’s deceptive temptations and to keep us on the path of faithful mission whenever we are in trying times.

Translators are not sure whether we are to be delivered from evil or from the Evil One, but it makes little difference. Deliverance from evil is deliverance from the Evil One, and deliverance from the Evil One is deliverance from evil. Either way, it comes to the same thing.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

This language is not in any version of Luke’s report, and it is not in what most scholars believe are the earliest versions of Matthew’s report. It was probably a marginal notation designed to help worship leaders put a fitting ending on the prayer. The language seems to be borrowed and abbreviated from 1 Chronicles 29:11, where David prays, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.” In any case, it is an appropriate ending for the prayer, fitting nicely with the themes Jesus has set forth.

What it all comes down to is that the Lord’s Prayer is a model for how all of our prayer is to be aimed toward the reign of God both now and eternally. Repeat after me:

All of our prayer
is to be aimed
toward the reign of God
both now and eternally.

As a practical step, I would like to suggest that we all make a practice of using the Lord’s Prayer from time to time as an outline into which we fill details from our own lives and concerns. We will practice that today in our congregational prayer time.

Recently, some of us were meditating together on the Lord’s Prayer. The group clearly preferred dynamic translations such as the New Living Translation or paraphrased versions such as The Message. The group, which included young adults and senior adults, longtime members and newer members, traditionalists and non-traditionalists, impressed upon me that many of us, even long time church members, do not understand the Lord’s Prayer in its current wording. They asserted that our young people hardly understand it at all. So far as I could tell, they unanimously recommended that we adopt for use in worship a version of the Lord’s Prayer that is in more current English usage. We cannot let this go on without a remedy. I will be asking our elders, our Worship Ministry Team, and our Discipleship Ministry Team to consider what we might do to fix this. I ask that all of you pray about this.

For now, as a summary to today’s sermon, let us pray together the following extended paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. This is not a proposal for wording we would use on a regular basis in worship. It is too wordy and too rough for that. But it serves well to remind us of what the Lord’s Prayer is really saying.


Our Father in heaven,
May we use your name only for your perfect purposes.
May your reign come in, through, and around us so that your will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us all that we need to sustain us until the total fulfillment of your reign comes.
And forgive us for missing and messing up your goals for us,
as we forgive those who have missed and messed up your goals for them in their treatment of us.
And, in trying times, do not let us fail to trust and obey your revealed truth, but rescue us from the deceptions of the evil one.
For to you belongs all authority, power, and glory.
So be it!