Lord's Prayer

 

Today I draw our attention to two different hymns.  First is Glory, Glory Hallelujah which has this great verse:

I feel better, so much better, since I laid my burdens down.  I feel better, so much better, since I laid my burdens down.

You may think, wait that doesn’t mention God at all?  What does this have to do with our imaging God? But there is this sacred, subtle sense that God is the burden bearer and breaker.  God is the One we can surrender all the stress and strain and struggle to life.  Of course, I usually only loan my burdens to God and then quickly want to take them back.  Like when my wife hands me her purse to hold for a few moments.  Often I am like, “Thanks God for holding that hurt, but I got this now.”  After all, I don’t want to be a burden to God…God has enough without me.  But the is exactly the kind of perspective this Spiritual is trying to confront.  You don’t just ask God to hold your burdens for a while, you surrender them fully.  You release your clinging and controlling and need to look competent. 

What if you prayed, “Our Burden-Bearer and Breaker, holy is Your name” today?  What if you tried to both say and live those words today?

The other hymn is right next door in our New Century Hymnal, “Many and Great, O God, Are Your Works”.  The first verse of this hymn is profound and powerful as Glory, Glory Hallelujah.  Say these words aloud to yourself,

“Many and great, O God, are Your works, Maker of earth and sky; Your hands have set the heavens with stars, Your fingers spread the mountains and plains.  Lo, at your word the waters were formed; deep seas obey your voice.”

I love how the hymn writer prayerfully leads us from the vast galaxies above our heads to the places our feet touch the ground.  The images I hear in these words are God our Creator; God our Artistic Director; God our Companion; God whose singing voice stirs our souls.  What do you hear or experience?  How might these two hymns influence and impact the way you pray the Lord’s Prayer today?

Continue to let the words of our hymns shape the ways we pray the Lord’s Prayer.

Prayer: Thank you, O God, for powerful and poetic words of hymns that can open our hearts and whole lives to new understandings of Jesus’ Prayer.  Amen.

Lord's Prayer

 

Today, we turn to the hymn, Praise to the Living God to engage and encounter ways we might deepen our relationship to the divine.  We are letting the words of the poetry and prayers of hymns help us encounter the Holy.  All four verses are worth slowly savoring and seeing what stirs within you.  But I draw your attention to the fourth and final verse:

Praise to the living God, around, within, above.  Beyond the grasp of human mind, but whom we know as love.  In these tumultuous days, so full of hope and strife, May we bear witness to the Way, O Source and Goal of life.

Pause, what images of the divine are within these words?  Name them aloud right now to your computer screen.

I hear God who swirls and stirs; dances within me and beyond me.  I hear God as love that can hold the tumult and tension of these days.  I hear God who is both the Source – the One who breathes in the breath of life – as well as the Goal of my life.  That last one really sets my soul in new directions.  How can God both Sustain my life right now and also let my relationship with God be the Goal of life?  What if how I connect with God today is the way we measure faithfulness as a church (as opposed to how many people attended worship or budget or other outward ways we define success)?

I invite you to read all the verses of this hymn with open hearts and imaginations.  Find ways to let the hymn impact and influence how you pray the Lord’s Prayer.  Find a prayer partner who you can converse with so that prayer isn’t just an isolated and individual activity.  I pray you are finding heart-warming and soul-stirring ways to let our hymnal shape your prayer life this week. 

Prayer: Let praise be woven into our prayers today, O God.  Let the Lord’s Prayer fall from our lips with new emphasis and enthusiasm and energy, as if we were excitedly learning how to pray right from Jesus.  Amen. 

Lord's Prayer

 

Last week, we explored and examined various translations of the Lord’s Prayer.  We prayerfully pondered which words settled and sung to your heart.

This week, I invited you to open your prayer book also known as your hymnal to listen and learn and lean into the images of God found there.  Often you might miss the vast variety of ways we describe and define the divine in hymns.  This week, you can connect the words we sing with the ways we pray the Lord’s Prayer, especially focusing on the first few words that fall from our lips as we open the prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven, holy is Your name.” 

How might hymns help us explore and expand our imaginations as we pray these words each day at noon this week?  I am so glad you asked!!

We will begin with one of my favorite hymns, Bring Many Names by Brian Wren.  The first verse is:

Bring many names, beautiful and good, celebrate, in parable and story, holiness in glory, living, loving God.  Hail and Hosanna! Bring many names.

What do you hear in that first verse about who God is and how God is at work in the world/in your life?

I hear that God is evolving and elastic and embracing many names.  I hear God loves story.  I celebrate God is living, which is to say, organic and changing and growing.  Remember, put your responses in the comment section.

As you prayerfully read through the rest of the hymn, Wren refers to God as, “Strong Mother” at work who is a “Genius at play,” which is a wonderful turn of phrase meaning God’s work is play and God’s play is work.  In another verse, God is a “Warm father” who embraces us especially in our wounds and wants.  God is an ancient one who has participated in the good, the bad, and the ugly of human history.  God is youthful crying out for justice.  God is never fully known or what Karl Barth called, “the Holy Other” and yet is also as close as the breath you are taking right now.

How might Wren’s beautiful lyrics evoke a way for you to pray the Lord’s Prayer?  You could, for each day this week, use one of Wren’s verses to inspire and image ways to call upon your relationship with God.  Our Mother; Our Playful Embracing Eternal One; Our Aching God wiser than our despair.  I know it gets a little wordy, but the point is that we are fostering a relationship with the Eternal.  I encourage you to find a prayer partner who might imagine/talk/dream/discuss with you.  May our hymnal/prayer book encourage and evoke from us this week ways we can connect with the One who Creates, Sustains, and Redeems.

Prayer: God who responds to many diverse names, help us find the words so that the meditations of our minds and what is stirring around our hearts would find expression to You.  Amen. 

Lord's Prayer

 

Today, I want to offer you three versions of the Lord’s Prayer.

“Whoa,” you say.  “I didn’t sign up for the advanced placement class on the Lord’s Prayer.”  I want to offer three versions to deepen our exploration.  Insert your mumbling about homework here.  Or your thought that these meditations were so much better last month.

You can engage these versions in whatever order you’d like.  You might read all three right now.  You might read just one today, another tomorrow, and the third this weekend.  However, as you encounter and engage these words, I invite you to continue to notice and name what happens as you pray these words.  

As I said earlier, often the first time through a different version of the Lord’s Prayer might seem too strange to stir the sacred.  The words below might feel like a tight shoe on our soul.  I offer these versions for you, as always, to hold lightly and see how God might be found in the syllables and spaces of each translation.  Prayer: May God’s presence hover and hold together our hearts each day we continue to pray the Lord’s Prayer at noon each day.  Amen.

 

Nazarene Transliteration of the Lord's Prayer

Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes, who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration. May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest. Your Heavenly Domain approaches. Let Your will come true - in the universe just as on earth. Give us wisdom for our daily need, detach the fetters of faults that bind us, like we let go the guilt of others. Let us not be lost in superficial things, but let us be freed from that what keeps us from our true purpose. From You comes the all-working will, the lively strength to act, the song that beautifies all and renews itself from age to age. Sealed in trust, faith and truth, I confirm with my entire being.

 

A womanist version used at Grace Cathedral at the Beyonce Mass. Author: Rev. Yolanda Norton.
Our Mother, who is in heaven and within us, we call upon your names. Your wisdom come. Your will be done, in all the spaces in which you dwell. Give us each day sustenance and perseverance. Remind us of our limits as we give grace to the limits of others. Separate us from the temptation of empire, and deliver us into community. For you are the dwelling place within us, the empowerment around us, and the celebration among us, now and forever. Amen.   

 

Ben Franklin’s Version of The Lord’s Prayer.

Heavenly Father, may all revere thee, and become thy dutiful Children and faithful Subjects; may thy Laws be obeyed on Earth as perfectly as they are in Heaven: Provide for us this Day as thou hast hitherto daily done: Forgive us our Trespasses, and enable us likewise to forgive those that offend us. Keep us out of Temptation, and deliver us from Evil.

Lord's Prayer

 

We have covered the two places in the Gospels that record the Lord’s Prayer.  Unfortunately, neither Mark nor John has a version of Jesus’ prayer for us to ponder.  Fortunately, many others do!  Today I want us to pray aloud the New Zealand Version of Lord’s Prayer.

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven: The hallowing of your name echo through the universe; The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world; Your heavenly will be done by all created beings; Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth. With the bread we need for today, feed us. In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us. In times of temptation and test, strengthen us. From trial too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. Amen.

With three versions of this prayer now swirling in your mind, stirring in your heart, and singing to your soul, what insights or ideas do you have?  Pause with that question.  Pay attention and turn your intention toward asking what is awakening within you three days into praying the Lord’s Prayer.

I continue to encourage you to refrain and resist rating or ranking these versions.  We can get so caught up in wanting to name our preference.  The problem for me with this is two-fold.  First, we name our preference as the best and want to argue with others who hold a different perspective.  That is, I will emphatically state that clearly Luke is the most faithful, awesome, accurate, and the best version ever.  And if you don’t agree with me then I feel compelled to try to change your understanding.  Why do we do this?  There is another way to listen and learn, to deepen and bridge what divides us through appreciation and affirmation. Second, when we rate and rank, we are operating in human realm not God’s realm (this contradicts the very prayer we just prayed!).  Humans want to know who is on first, what is on second, and (I can’t resist), I don’t know is on third (thank you, Abbot and Castelo).  We want to know what is trending on Twitter and who has the most “likes” on social media.  This prayer declares there is another way.  It is my prayer that the more we pray these words, the more we will let God’s wisdom get a word in edgewise that can challenge and change our lives. 

Prayer: Go back, and pray the New Zealand version again, and observe/be open to what shifts in your soul as you do.

Lord's Prayer

 

Today is Luke’s turn to teach and tell us the Lord’s Prayer.  Read aloud the New Revise Standard Version of how Luke includes and interprets the Jesus prayer from chapter 11, verses 1-4.

 

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” ² He said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
    Your kingdom come.
³     Give us each day our daily bread.
⁴     And forgive us our sins,
        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
    And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

Pause with me.  What stuck out to you as you read this translation?  Did you notice and name the differences between this version and what we say typically on a Sunday morning?  Maybe something different from Matthew’s version or something the same?  Was there a phrase you found particularly meaningful in what you just said?

Now, same passage only this time from Tree of Life Version.  Note, this version uses Yeshua Hebrew for Joshua.  Which the Biblical nerd in me has to say that Jesus, is the GREEK form of Joshua/Yeshua.  Why we have left Jesus un-translated when every other Greek word we put into English, I am not sure.  But this might be helpful as you read.

Now Yeshua was praying in a certain place. When He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Master, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

² Then Yeshua said to them, “When you pray, say,

‘Father, sanctified be Your Name,
Your kingdom come.
³ Give us each day our daily bread.
⁴ And forgive us our sins,
    for we also forgive everyone indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”

What stood out or struck you?  What is different between the two versions?  What seems similar?  Try not to evaluate, rate, or rank one as better.  How can you appreciate and affirm the beauty in both translations?  Does this cause you to want to look at other versions?  Go ahead!  Let loose your inner detective on biblegateway.com to read several other translations.

Prayer: May each reading of the Luke’s version awaken a sense of the One who seeks a life-giving and life-changing relationship with you and all of us in these days.  Amen.

 

Lord's Prayer

 

We begin our month of centering on the Lord’s Prayer with Matthew’s version.  Here is the way the scholars of the New Revised Standard Version translate Matthew 6:7-14.  I invite you to say this aloud!!

⁷ “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. ⁹ “Pray then in this way: 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 this day our daily bread. ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³ And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.  ¹⁴ For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Push pause right now.  Breathe.  Let those words you just read sink and settle all the way down to your soul.  What stuck out to you as you read this translation?  Was there a phrase you found particularly meaningful in what you just said?  Did you notice and name the differences between this version and what we say typically on a Sunday morning? Was there a new insight that is starting to form within you from praying these words outside of the usually time of Sunday morning?

Now, the same passage from The Message translation.

^7-13 “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:

Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what’s best— as above, so below.  Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes. ^14-15 “In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can’t get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God’s part.

Again, what did you notice?  What is different between the two versions?  What seems similar?  Try not to evaluate, rate, or rank one as better.  How can you appreciate and affirm the beauty in both translations?  Does this cause you to want to look at other translations?  Go ahead!  Let loose your inner detective on biblegateway.com to read several other translations.

Prayer: May each reading of the Matthew’s version awaken a sense of the One who seeks a life-giving and life-changing relationship with you and all of us in these days.  Amen.