I preached a funeral to an avowed group of agnostics and atheists a few years ago. Since I was close to the deceased, I was not dissuaded from preaching the message I had prepared in order to accommodate the lack of belief in the room. But I wasn’t worried. When I started to recite The Lord’s Prayer, they all joined in as if was the most natural thing to do. When I lead Amazing Grace, they all sang with…amazing grace. Such is the nature of tradition. The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-11) is made of 57 words in the original Greek language. Words translated into every language under the sun that have brought laser precision to our Christian faith and worship. Identified first and foremost is the ‘Who’ of our worship, ‘Our Father.’ Then comes the ‘Where’ of his presence—He is ‘in heaven.’ The ‘How’ of our expression is our cry, ‘Hallowed be your name.’ ‘Your kingdom come’ reminds us of Jesus’ mission to establish his church on earth, starting on the day of Pentecost. ‘Your will be done’ takes us forward to Jesus prayer in Gethsemane where he gave over his will to the Father, and the salvation of man was done (and continues to be done) ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ Daily provisions are promised but must never be taken for granted. Thus, we humbly ask: ‘Give us this today our daily bread.’ We also meekly seek forgiveness from our God before whom we have amassed piles of transgressions and we plead: ‘Forgive us our debts.’ But Jesus insists that we add on a personal mandatory condition: “as we also have forgiven our debtors.’ When we pray: ‘And lead us not into temptation,’ we are preparing for our daily Christian walk. Though lead by the Spirit, we have free will to step where we will. We are asking God to deliver us from the ultimate test—falling into sin. Satan dogs our every step, so we add, ‘but deliver us from the evil one.’ And he does.
0 Comments