The Greatest Myrtyr on Earth

The Greatest Martyr on Earth (February 22, 2004)

[First of five sermons on the Lord's Prayer]

Martin Luther, the great Reformer, called the Lord's Prayer “the greatest martyr on earth.” Everyone, he says, tortures and abuses it. The Lords Prayer, he said, is the very best prayer, even better than the Psalter, and it is surely evident that a great master composed and taught it. “What a great pity that the prayer of such a master is prattled and chattered so irreverently all over the world.” That is, many pray it without thinking, by rote, and with no meaning.

Today I begin a five part series on this great prayer. Part of the greatness is exactly that it is brief. Every word counts. In Matthew's version the prayer is prefaced by Jesus' injunction not to “go babbling on like the heathen who imagine that the more they say the more likely they are to be heard. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

In one of the little books we call the Apocrypha called the Wisdom of Sirach written in the years between the Old and New Testaments there is a little verse which says “do not pile up words when you pray.” So this thought is not original with Jesus, but it is clear he was fully in accord with it. In fact, there is nothing in the prayer which a good Jew would not have agreed with. What is novel, though, is the way it is put together and the brevity, such that a child can memorize it, and its profundity – there is material here to claim the attention of the greatest philosophers.

Like the 10 Commandments, in which the first four are about God and the following six are about our relationship to our fellow man, the Lord's prayer is equally divided. The three opening petitions are about God – God's name, God's kingdom, and God's will. And the second are about human needs – for daily bread, for forgiveness, for deliverance from temptation or trial, and deliverance from evil.

Thus this prayer is a good summary of most of the basic teachings of Jesus, about God and our relation to God and to one another. God is here described as Father, as King, as Governor, as Provider, as Pardoner, as Guide, as Deliverer. It's hard to know what more is needed to describe God than is right here in this prayer. Here also Jesus deftly balances the concerns of the world to come – “thy kingdom come” – and the concerns of this world – “our daily bread”. Our right relationship to God is tied inextricably to our right relationship to our fellow men and women. Thus Jesus is fully within the prophetic strain of Judaism which declared there is no right relationship with God which is divorced from our relationship to our fellow man.

The Lord's prayer is meant as much for prayer in private as for prayer with others, corporate prayer. When prayed in private we cannot help but be aware that we do not stand alone before God. The very first word “our” draws us out of ourselves – if we think about it. The first word is not “my”. At the same time, when we pray this prayer within corporate worship we feel the words, if we are saying them meaningfully, speak directly to us as individuals and we are strengthened inside.

Sometimes strangers are drawn together by the power of this prayer. Remember the scene in the movie “A Night to Remember”, which was the good movie about the Titanic. The ship is going down and the band is playing “Nearer My God to Thee” and suddenly a passenger in the life boat says “we must pray” and people pray the Lord's Prayer.

Years ago we had a young member of the church, Bethany Cook. One day she was caught in a shoot-out in the subway, literally. She found herself ducking down beside an African-American woman behind a pillar and Bethany heard the woman praying the Lord's Prayer. Suddenly, Bethany felt she had known that woman all her life.

If the first word reminds us that we are part of a great company of believers, that we are not alone, the second word reminds us to whom we belong: a loving, heavenly Father. In an increasingly impersonal world, this must be said clearly: the Christian faith believes in a personal God, who loves us and calls us by name, who guides and nurtures and disciplines. The name Father is Jesus' best name for God. It is clear this name dominates his own thinking about God throughout his ministry. “My father is working still, and I am working,” he said. “In my Father's house are many mansions….” “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and many others.

We must be careful to say to people today that this does not mean God is masculine. The new catechism of the Presbyterian Church makes that perfectly clear. The question would not have occurred to any one in Jesus' day, but since it occurs today we must be clear in answering. God is above gender. But God is also very personal and Jesus' clear way of saying this is to call God Father. In fact, he doubtless used the Aramaic word abba , which is the most personal word, not unlike “Daddy” today. This is the preeminent teaching of Jesus regarding God. Not everyone agrees. Albert Einstein admired Jesus but he rejected the concept of a personal God. Today many agree with Einstein, or they certainly live as if they agree more with him than with Jesus.

Only such a term as Father can set forth the claim that God is sovereign love. No term can also set forth the basic idea that we are dependent, as a child is dependent. The added phrase “which are in heaven” clearly distinguishes God from our humanness, and thus frees it from any idea of gender, and the phrase “hallowed be thy name” means to sanctify the Name of God in every way possible, by living according to his commandments, following his ways, rejecting sin, and glorifying God in how we live – all of that is to “hallow” or sanctify the name of God, who is our heavenly Father.

Leslie Weatherhead said “The comfortable thought in all of this to me is that I believe that I am in the hands of a loving, wise, finally undefeatable Power whom I can call Father, and that, like every other human being, I am dear to Him and cannot fall out of his hands.”

In the New Testament the idea of the Fatherhood of God is clearly not simply a mere article in a creed or just another title for God, but is a burning conviction. It is a spiritual experience which gave new meaning and value to life, and brought new peace and joy to human hearts.

Some have said that the opening words of the Lord's Prayer – “Our Father, who art in heaven” are the most revolutionary words ever written. In the days of slavery many slave owners refused permission for their slaves to be baptized. They didn't want them to get the idea that God was their Father, too, because that would imply that the slaves were on some sort of equal footing with the Almighty as were their masters. And if that were the case, the whole basis for slavery – that slaves were only worth 2/3 rd of a white person – would be undercut.

In the 19 th century the Danish Christian philosopher and writer Soren Kierkegaard wrote this little prayer: “Father in heaven, when the thought of you wakes in our hearts, let it not wake like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.”