Today's Gospel reading features the Lord's Prayer. Luke's version is shorter than the version in Mathew 6:9-11. According to the Interpreter's Bible, it may be that in the early days of the Church, Matthew's version of this prayer was used at Eucharist, while Luke's version was used in informal group settings and in baptisms. The two Gospels have different settings for this prayer. Matthew's is part of the Sermon on the Mount. Luke's is an isolated incident, where a few apostles see him pray, and then ask him to teach them how to pray.

Reading this scripture, it sounds like this was never meant to be memorized as a prayer,per se. The apostles asked Jesus how to pray, not which prayer to use on a daily basis. In response, Jesus gave them a thumbnail sketch of the qualities prayer should have. In other words, this is a prayer template. According to a book entitled "The Gospel of Luke," from the Daily Study Bible Series, though, rabbis often gave simple prayers to their followers, so His teaching them a prayer to recite would not be unlikely.

There are definite sections to this prayer, whether it is a template or not. The first part is concerned with God, the Father, Himself. Notice that Jesus starts with praising the Father first. The word for "Father" is a Greek translation of what Jesus prayed. He probably used the word Abba, just as He used it in Mark 14:36, at Gethsemane. Abba is closer to "Daddy" in translation than the formal "Father."

Jesus says "Holy is your Name." Names had meanings in Biblical times. Jesus' name was probably pronounced "Yeshua," which is the Hebrew form of Joshua, or Hoshea. "Yeshua" is Hebrew for salvation. The four letter name for God, the tetragrammaton, is so holy that only the High Priest could pronounce it, and then only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Even before the temple fell, it was the practice of ordinary Jews to maintain that reverence by using other ways to refer to God. They would have said "Adonai," or "Elohim," because God is so awesome, so magnificent, and especially so unimaginable that no name could really define the infinite unmanifest. This is how the mistake was made that lead German scholars to try to pronounce the tetragrammaton, YHVH, as Jehovah. The diacritical markings telling readers to say "Adonai" were taken to mean the missing vowels. Since Hebrew has no vowels, the scholars were confused.

The prayer continues, asking that God's kingdom come. According to a book entitled "The Lord's Prayer," by Joachim Jeremias, the Lord's Prayer was used at baptisms at the beginning of the second century, with a variant of Luke 11:2, as "Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us," in place of "in heaven."

Jesus continues, asking that God tend to our bodies' need for food, but it may well be He also meant spiritual food. An eleventh-century Irish manuscript reads, "Panem verbum Dei celestem da nobis hodie: Give us today for bread the Word of God from heaven." After all, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word uttered from the mouth of God."

Jesus then asks for forgiveness--but simply requesting forgiveness is not enough. In order to be forgiven, we must also forgive others, which is often a most difficult task! I have been bothered for years by this section. I grew up saying "trespasses," and I always wondered whether trespasses meant sinning, or something else. When I heard the version that used "debtors," I became even more confused. It seemed to me that there is a huge difference between a sin and a debt.

Sometimes I felt my interpretations were about as good as the child who was heard to recite: "Forgive us our trash baskets, as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets." The Greek word used here for sin is amartia, and conveys the meaning "to miss the mark," but the line reads, "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those indebted to us." The line translated "those indebted to us" reads: panti ofeilonti imin, which is translated, "everyone indebted to us". The word used here for debt is ifeili. Matthew's version of this prayer uses the word for debt in both places.

According to the Interpreter's Bible, the word "debts" is a Jewish figure for "sins" because whoever sins is under special obligation to make amends, and is not free until he has fulfilled that obligation. This brings a whole new perspective to this passage.

Jesus then adds a request that God not bring us to the time of trial. I learned this as "lead us not into temptation." This has always bothered me. Why would God want to lead us into temptation? Why would God want to try us? It makes me think of what someone I knew said about the reasons he abandoned Christianity. His image of God was of someone frightful. He pictured God as a mean old man, setting snares for people, and when they tripped up and sinned, He would jump out of the bushes, shouting, "Aha!!" This is not the image of the loving Father Jesus proclaimed.

Jesus told his apostles they would be refined like steel in fire, and in a sense, we are all put to the test. God, however, does not lead us into temptation. We blunder into temptation without need of help. As Christians, we strive to be like Jesus, and often fail, sinning against God and our neighbors. In this prayer, then, we ask that we not be given temptations, or that we not be tested in such a way that we would fail and be excluded from God's kingdom.

In other sources for this scripture, the line, "but deliver us from evil," or "the evil one," is added. These are included in Matthew's Gospel, if not here. The notes in the Eastern Orthodox Study Bible on "deliver us from the evil one," say that this means salvation from the evil one, rather than from evil in general.

According to the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, the doxology, "For Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever," or some similar wording, was added to the end of the Lord's Prayer as a liturgical development, possibly as a response by the people. It appears to have been in a short form, originally, and expanded later. According to my Oxford Study Bible it was added by the early church. The doxology can be found in Matthew's version, in some Bibles. It may have been inspired by King David's farewell prayer in I Chronicles 29:11-13, which reads:

"Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might; and it is in your hand to make great and to give strength to all. And now, our God, we give thanks to you and praise your glorious name."

What a beautiful prayer! It deserves to be put to music.

The "Lord's Prayer" is a beautiful prayer, whether it was meant to be recited or to be used as a template for our own individual prayers to God. It is amazingly short, if you consider how much meaning is packed into such a small space. If we simply recite by rote without paying attention, though, we might as well be reading a laundry list. This is probably why this prayer was modernized, so that people would pay attention to the meaning while reciting it. This is probably also the reason, in Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, just before he gives this prayer to them, that they should not "heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they shall be heard because of their many words."

While change is good, C. S. Lewis said some interesting things about maintaining traditional liturgical prayer in "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer." Lewis cautions, "Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service, but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question 'What on earth is he up to now?' will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, 'I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even Teach my performing dogs new tricks.'" Lewis said he could make do with any kind of service, if it would only stay put. Lewis did not mind change if it was done slowly, and with caution.

I think a healthy balance can be struck, in which some change can be like a breath of fresh air, while not completely confusing people by changing too often, or too much.

The Lord's Prayer in Luke is followed by a parable about perseverance. Did Jesus mean that we were supposed to keep asking God over and over again, never giving up, because if we bug Him enough he might just cave in and give us what we want? I don't think so. After all, I still don't have that concert-size harp. Just because we want something doesn't mean it's good for us, and Jesus explains that the Father knows what is good for us, even better than we do.

The parable in today's reading is one of several Jesus told with the theme of perseverance. There is also the story of the woman who kept bothering a judge until she got justice, and the story of the woman who lost a coin and searched her whole house until she found it.

Jesus continues on this theme about persistence with the admonishment to keep asking; keep searching; keep knocking. We are not to give up, but to continue, because God knows what is best for us, and will give us what is good for us.

Notice, though, that in telling today's parable, Jesus does not say God will give us everything we want, but that the heavenly Father gives "the Holy Spirit to those who ask him," which is a far cry from that chateau on the Riviera. The Holy Spirit is a lot better than any chateau, though we might not realize it.

We don't need to pound on God's door persistently, trying to get what we need. We do need to keep asking, seeking, and knocking, because the silence we may encounter may be a test of our faith, but God always answers, even though we may not notice the answer, or like it. Sometimes the answer is "no," because God has something better in store, or because we ask for something harmful to our spiritual growth.

Jesus would not have encouraged his apostles to call the Father Abba, Daddy, if he did not mean for us to have a close, loving, intimate relationship with our God. Why else would He have given the apostles a prayer that begins with calling the awesome, unimaginable God "Father?"

The Lord's prayer intimately connects us to our loving and forgiving God, by honoring God first, and asking that His will be done, not ours. It focuses on God above all worldly details. Having done so, it asks God for our needs, and for forgiveness for our sins, without forgetting that in order to be forgiven, we must forgive others. It then asks for protection from temptation and trial that might lead to wrongdoing and evil.

Amen