When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he uttered words almost any Christian can repeat at the drop of a hat. But somehow, we lose the significance of the first few phrases of that prayer.Maybe we're anxious to get to the "give us" or "forgive us" sections. Maybe we're awestruck by the poetic quality of the prayer.
I don't know what the problem is. But just about everyone I've heard preaching on the Lord's prayer has missed what the Third Quest theologians have kindly brought to our attention.
In a nutshell, they teach us to note what Jesus didn't say.
He didn't say, "Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Please take us out of this dirty mess of a world up to Heaven, so we don't have to deal with it anymore.".
Way back in the old days, we sang "I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away" - but as you can see, he didn't teach them to pray for an escape route.
In fact, it was to be the other way around.
Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven...In other words, he taught them to pray that heaven and earth would become one.
I wonder, my friends, should this change how we pray, what we hope for and how we invest our lives? Just askin'!
1 comment:
Nice. I know that I have been challenged by this philosophy of the Messiah's (which I started learning from you Mike). I try to work "Your Kingdom Come" into all of my prayers now. I have come to believe that it is more then just a desire to get through with the pain of the current kingdoms on the earth; I am trying to assimilate my own story into the story of the Kingdom.
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