I’m not the first person and I certainly won’t be the last to point out that the Lord’s Prayer is largely in the first-person plural. “Our Father… give us this day our daily bread… forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us… lead us not into temptation.” It’s as though Jesus was reminding the disciples and us that you really can’t pray for yourself by yourself without somehow praying for others. Put it another way: When you pray for yourself, you’re also mystically involving everyone else who has needs. We’re all in this together. As Elaine St. Johns, once wrote, “There is no way to pray this prayer for one person or one family alone. The minute I consciously addressed “Our Father,” I was including my family, friends, strangers, enemies. I was praying for them as well. I realized the universal intent of Christ when he gave the prayer to us. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” we make supplication not only for our own known and unknown needs but also for the needs of his children everywhere.”
Prayer can’t limit itself to one small universe. It’s generous, indiscriminate, compassionate. It knows no bounds. The Lord’s Prayer appears in two places in the Bible. In Luke, Jesus was praying, apparently by himself, and when he had finished one of the disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us how to pray the way John taught his disciples,” referring to John the Baptist. Jesus responded, “When you pray, say” and he gave the disciples the familiar words. But Matthew, during, unsurprisingly, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns the disciples against praying ostentatiously with long empty phrases and lots of words. “Do not be like them,” he says, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way…” and he gives his followers the Lord’s Prayer. “When you pray, say” and “Pray then in this way.”
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but he seems a little exasperated that he has to point all this out to the disciples. Haven’t they been watching? Haven’t they been listening? Do they really need words to pray when they’ve been living with a man who lives his whole life as prayer?
Well, yes, we really do need words to help us. An outline to hang our different concerns and fears on, a guide so that we cover all the basics. It’s not very long, it’s not the great poetry of the psalms or the passionate expressions of Paul, praying for all those little churches he’s visited or intends to visit. Jesus gives us just few words. A few words we can’t live without. “Our Father… give us this day our daily bread… forgive us our sins…” For all of us together. As pastor Adam Hamilton wrote in his study of the Lord’s prayer, “We know it, but often we don’t know it. We pray it, but all too often we don’t actually pray it.”