My church prays the Lord’s Prayer (or we call it “Our Father” at our gathering) every Sunday. We started praying it in old english at the whim of some of those who grew up rehearsing it in that fashion. Old english is new to me but the Spirit has helped me embrace this practice by encouraging me to live out its meaning in our neighborhood – regardless of which translation we celebrate it in.
Found in Matthew 6, this prayer has been meaningful to me in so many ways. I have prayed this, with passion and seriousness, on more mornings than I could tally. I’d often pray,
“…Your kingdom come, Your will be done – on Earth… in the United states… in Washington State… in the Puget Sound [region]… in Tacoma… in this neighborhood… on this street… in this house… in me – as it is in Heaven…”
With every level I’d imagine a picture of it and think on or pray for specific issues or people associated before carrying on with the rest of the prayer.
Another reason this prayer has been meaningful is because in it Jesus isn’t merely teaching how to pray, he’s teaching the essence of how to live. And place finds itself at the center of it all. Lets break it down starting in Matthew 6:9.
This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
He says this is how we should pray and then starts the passage off with “Our.” We often miss the plural context of the “you’s” in the Bible – it’d be much easier in Greek since a plural “you” (ὑμεῖς) and a singular “you” (σύ) are totally different words. But here Jesus, way back in 26 AD(-ish), left us hyper-indiviualistic Western Americans a clue for interpreting biblical ecclesiology. By saying “our,” he says we should pray together as believers. And there’s more. Skipping ahead to “Give us this day our daily bread,” he gives us yet another clue. We are suppose to pray together daily.
In my experience, it doesn’t take long for most people who try to pray together daily with their church to lose steam. At best it can be done for short seasons. From my perspective the reason is that passion will never be enough. It’s like pouring gas into a vehicle with flat tires and no steering wheel. We need better working ecclesiological framework1 that’s worth investing our passion into.
Looking at the context of the passage, Jesus is speaking to people who were together every day. Both his disciples, who were with him 24/7, and the large crowd of jews, who each came from towns with a synagogue in walking distance.2 In fact to this day orthodox Jews will only live within walking distance of their synagogue so that they can travel there on a sabbath.3
Given the impracticality of modern American living – we use 25% of the world’s oil, which is in decline, for 6% of the world’s population – we may want to consider new ways of thinking about church. Especially one that doesn’t depend on cars.
There are some already in the works. Parish Collective has championed sharing the same neighborhood. For PC “neighborhood” means an area large enough to live a lot of life in (work, play, sleep, etc) while small enough to produce a high amount of shared relational intersection (my barber is yours too and you, me and the barber live close to each other). It’s typically an area that could be reasonably walkable. The New Monastics have pointed out the power of shared housing situations and may be some of the best examples of people who practice daily prayer together.
One final thought on the prayer, it’s worth noting Jesus follows “Our” with “Father.” This may be the biggest clue of all to how we re-imagine (read: rediscover) a new framework for what a church looks like in practice. If I think about sharing the same neighborhood, let alone the same resources, with people I’d say “hi” to on Sunday morning at the church I attended in high school, it sounds a little weird. I may - may - call them “Brother” or “Sister,” but to actually live life with them as if they are a brother or sister is another story. Yet to pray with someone every day, side-by-side proclaiming God to be each of our Father, bespeaks a lifestyle much more akin to kin than we usually see worked out practically. The status quo church, in this context, may be more like a club than a family.
This prayer has much more significance for the life of the average church and the average believer than what we can cover here but it all has implications for the local church located in a particular place. As does it depend on it.
