“Father, hallowed be
your name.” In addressing God as
“father” we claim an intimacy with God that speaks of a loving and yet
authoritative relationship. Jesus called
God “Father”; he bids us, as God’s beloved children, do the same. At the same time we establish intimacy in
that relationship, we also acknowledge the holiness of God – hallowed be your name – and we acknowledge
the fact that we expect God to live up to that (much as Abraham does in Genesis
18:20-32, the Hebrew passage that accompanies this pericope in the alternate
RCL cycle); we expect that God will be
God. We hear it throughout the Hebrew
scriptures – God’s name is holy – so
holy that it cannot be said or written in its entirety. God’s immanence and God’s transcendence are reflected
in one short petition.
“Your kingdom
come.” God’s will and God’s desire
for ourselves and our relationships, for our communities, for our world,
becomes our desire as well. In praying
this petition we acknowledge that we will try to structure our lives according
to God’s rule, God’s way. In asserting that
God’s kingdom, that is God’s sovereignty and ultimate fulfilling of the divine
purpose for all of creation is paramount, we also commit to being partners in
that fulfillment.
“Give us each day our
daily bread.” The people who heard
Jesus would have understood daily as
meaning either ‘that day’ or possibly ‘tomorrow’. First century peasants were not prone to
worrying about the long-term future; just getting through this day and the next
was enough. But this might also be taken
to mean ‘give us what we need’. What if
we sincerely and faithfully asked God only for what we need, and no more? Might we begin to be satisfied with that, and
no more? In a world where the privileged
– and that includes us - demand and usually get near-instant gratification, how
would that shift the balance of have and have-not? What would our world look like if we who have
so much were content only with what we need – not just in terms of material
commodities and food but emotional goals as well - knowing that in God’s
abundance everyone’s needs, including our own, were being met? A huge number of world crises could be solved
right quick if that were our reality.
“And forgive us our
sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” (Do we?
In our better moments, at least, I suppose we try.) God is a forgiving God. God is a merciful God. And God has entrusted us, as the Church, with
the ministry of reconciliation and justice.
When we say that we forgive everyone
indebted to us (and Jesus does say everyone) it means forgiving the hurt
inflicted on us by others, repented of or not; it means letting go of grudges, ‘justified’
or not; it means that we live free of the notion that others ‘owe us big
time’. There was a common understanding
that if one had wronged another person, he or she was in that person’s debt
until repayment could be made or retribution exacted. In many cases a monetary debt was the wrong. That’s how we get the word ‘debt’ for ‘sin’
and why rich nations are often entreated to help struggling ones by issuing
‘debt forgiveness’. It’s difficult if
not impossible to live in the light of God’s forgiveness of us if we cannot
share and show that forgiveness to others.
Letting go of anger and resentment – the debts others owe us - is
tremendously freeing. Once again, think
how the world would look – individually, communally, corporately, nationally,
internationally – if we would learn to live that way. Another huge number of world crises might
just disappear if we did that.
“And do not bring us
to the time of trial.” Finally, we
ask God to help us live lives that are free of anything that will tempt us away
from God and God’s ways, not because God is prone to ‘lead us into temptation’
but because only with God’s help can
we live a life that is free of selfishness, despair, violence, un-righteous
anger and all those things that, in the words of our Baptismal liturgy, ‘draw
us from the love of God’, and keep us from being heralds of the Good News of
the kingdom.
Amen?