A Layman's Guide, part 1: The Lord's Prayer

This is intended as the first in a series of sketch posts exploring the basic texts and tenets of Christianity. These are designed mainly to help me set my own thoughts in order.

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Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

(For thine is the kingdom,
(and the power, and the glory,
)for ever and ever.)

Amen.

This short and simple prayer is perhaps the most basic and ancient text of Christianity, shared universally among almost every congregation. It is known from its first line as the Our Father or Pater Noster, and also as the Lord's Prayer, reflecting that it is identified in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and in the liturgy of the Church, as being taught by Jesus Himself.

It begins as an address to God that proclaims the holiness and authority of the Creator, and then becomes a prayer for "us", paired with a reminder to be kind and generous to others. In so doing, it serves to express the two Great Commandments - to love and honour God, and to our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12.18-34, Matt. 22.34-40). In its simplicity, it seems straightforward and economical.

Yet if you look closely, there is a depth of complexity in this short, familiar prayer. The most obvious question is why there's a section I've printed in brackets - this is a type of prayer coda, known as the doxology (Gk. doxologos, "statement of glory"). It represents a very early textual variant in the text of Matthew, but it leads into wider topics about the development of the New Testament, which I want to discuss more in a later sketch - so for now, it's simply enough to note that the Lord's Prayer was used in diverse ways from a very early date: some Christians integrated the concluding doxology, while others didn't use it at all.

There are also two very hard-to-translate words in the underlying Greek text: firstly, the word usually rendered as "daily", which in Greek is epiousion, a very unusual word that means literally "more than immediate"; it is not wrong to understand this as "daily", but there is something more here, a mysteriousness that is sensed but not fully explained - something that is captured in the technical Latin translation, supersubstantialem. This is a word that reminds us that God's presence in reality is more than we can understand or define, and anticipates the mysterious reality of Christ's presence in the bread of the Sacrament.

The second unusual choice of words is the references to "trespasses", which would be more accurately translated "debts" or "legal obligations". Luke, but not Matthew or the liturgical version, has a different word for our own "trespasses", meaning more explicitly "faults" or "sins", but there is an unexpected emphasis here on freeing people from obligations, rather than on the simple forgiveness of wrongs.

I suspect that this can be better understood by comparing the Lord's Prayer with the dedication prayer said by King Solomon at the consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Kings 8.15-61, 2 Chronicles 6.14-42). This is a far longer text, but the essence covers the same topics: it proclaims the majesty of the God of Heaven, and establishes the Temple as a place of justice for those accused of trespass against their neighbours, and as a place of redemption for the people's sins, which might otherwise lead them into hunger and captivity.

So, the Lord's Prayer looks back to the Old Testament - but there is also an important change in emphasis. By accepting this prayer from Jesus, we implicitly proclaim his identity as the Christ, the successor of David and Solomon - renewing the relationship between God and man that was embodied in the Temple in Jerusalem.

But the Lord's Prayer is not simply about renewal - it is also about transformation. While Solomon spoke his prayer alone, we are in a sense praying alongside Jesus, here. "Our Father", in these words, is both the heavenly Father of the divine Son, and the universal Father of all.

As such, as a prayer to be said regularly by everyone, the Lord's Prayer reflects an important change, the move from the Temple and its ritual obligations and law codes, to the community of believers, the new teaching of Jesus, and forgiveness through love and grace.

In this sense, indeed, the conceptual joining of the forgiveness of sins and the freedom from ritual obligations becomes very central indeed.

In this short, simple prayer, there is, in short, an expression of all the basic precepts of Christianity. It is close to the basis of the heritage shared by all Christians, in ways far beyond the simple fact of its early position in our canon.