27th July 2025
This passage begins with what is surely one of the most familiar parts of the New Testament and of our own Christian lives. Today it is in its less familiar form: Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. We are more used to using the Matthew version both in our public worship and I suspect because of that in our own prayer lives.
It is good in our worship to take time and think about what we are doing when we pray. My own view is that on one level it is instinctive and sometimes a little self centred. Yes, when going into a busy car park in a hurry I am likely to send up an arrow prayer and say something like please God let there be a space! Such prayers are perhaps a normal response to a stressful situation, but they are not the entirety of our prayer lives. True prayer can feel illusive a quite difficult. It is an aspect of our relationship with God and like all relationships it needs work. This is something keenly felt by the disciples in this morning’s reading. In this morning’s reading the disciples say ‘Lord teach us to pray as John, taught his disciples. What follows is the Lord’s Prayer as it appears in Luke’s gospel.
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
Luke’s version is pared down, simpler than the prayer found in Matthew’s gospel. The familiar one has been developed from Matthew’s version. Yet, the core is the same. The Lord’s Prayer is short, this Lukan version is a mere 34 words, if ever you think I’m going on a bit remember that Jesus said all he needed in 34 words!!
New Testament commentator Tom Wright points out that the themes of the prayer echo right back to invoke the God of the Exodus. The God whose kingdom was coming, bringing bread for the hungry, forgiveness for the sinner and deliverance from the powers of darkness. The Lord’s prayer is the prayer for Christians following Jesus on a kingdom journey.
The first part of the prayer acknowledges God as Parent other yet also intimate; God is addressed as a loving father. One who wants the best for us.
The second part is a simple request for what sustains life. Bread was the essence of nourishment in the ancient world. Having bread meant one was not hungry. Not having bread meant starvation. “Give us the necessities for living; all else is superfluous.” This is quite a radical request. We can ask of God all that we need to sustain life, but for this day only.
Bread enough for all is a kingdom value, we should not ever grow used to seeing pictures of starving children and adults. The tragic stories and pictures this week from Gaza of starving children and medical staff to hungry to be able to function are heartbreaking. Both sides blame the other, but it is people who are dying of starvation and that is wrong on all levels. Lord have mercy!
“And forgive us our sins.” This concerns us is the need to forgive. “. . . for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” There is mutuality here, we have been forgiven, therefore we must strive to be people who live out that forgiveness by forgiving others. Without the grace to forgive our fellow human beings, we would not recognize, or even accept, God’s forgiveness of our own sins.
This then is the profound and simple prayer that binds all Christians together as we worship. I wonder how often you walk into this ancient parish church, and you get the sense that here is a building that has stood for centuries and carries the prayers, hopes and dreams of generations of villagers. I think of the Lord’s Prayer in a similar way. Those few simple but profound words unite us with past, present and future Christians, of all races and tongues.
The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer that forms the basis for all our prayers. Prayer is something that as Christians we are all called to do, it is not necessarily easy. Rowan Williams former Archbishop of Canterbury has a rather wonderful image of prayer being a bit like bird watching. The experienced birdwatcher, who is sitting still, poised, alert, not tense or fussy, knowing that this is the kind of place where something can happen.
I’ve always rather liked that image of prayer as birdwatching. You sit very still because something is liable to burst into view, and sometimes of course it means a long day sitting in the rain with nothing very much happening, and I suspect that most of us know that a lot of our experience of prayer is precisely that. But the odd occasions when you do see what T. S. Eliot called ‘the kingfisher’s wing flashing light to light’ make it all worthwhile.
Living in expectancy – living in awareness, your eyes sufficiently open and your mind sufficiently both slack and attentive to see that when it happens – has a great deal to do with discipleship. Interesting (isn’t it?) that in the gospels the disciples don’t just listen, they’re expected to look as well. They’re people who are picking up clues all the way through.
Whether prayer comes easily or not; and perhaps especially when it doesn’t, we have the gift of the Lord’s Prayer, in its simplicity it offers beautiful words expressing profound truths. Through it we receive words of comfort, hope, challenge, forgiveness and the hope for a more just world ‘Thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as in heaven.
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