Small Catechism: The Lord’s Prayer                                                                            W 3^rd Lent Midweek

The Prayer of the Church

In the name of him who taught us to pray to our heavenly Father, dear friends in Christ: Thus far in our evening Lenten devotions as we have been revisiting the Small Catechism, we have considered the first two of the Six Chief Parts.  Two weeks ago we looked at the Ten Commandments, which we saw were given to us primarily for the purpose of diagnosing the problems of fallen humanity so that we could see our lost estate and hopeless condition.  The commandments show us what God requires, how we have failed to measure up, and they warn us of the temporal and eternal consequences of those failures.  In short, of the two parts we’ve reviewed so far, the commandments are the bad news.

Then last week we looked at the Apostle’s Creed, which we saw is a confession of faith that summarizes all that the One True and Triune God has done and continues to do for us.  The Creed is a confession of our belief in the good news.  Such a confession of faith is essential because we recognize that the Church is nothing else but that group of people who all believe the truth about who God is and what he has done—and who speak together, that is, confess what they believe.  As St. Paul writes in Romans [10:10], “It is with the your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”  And so the Creed is the Church’s joint expression of its saving faith; it’s the Rock that is the foundation of faith that the Church is built upon.  And as we examined the Apostle’s Creed again, we recalled that it is divided into the three major articles:  the first that acknowledges our creation by God the Father and how he continues to preserve us each day; the second that confesses how God the Son completed the solution to our sin problem by becoming a man and paying the penalty of our sin, and how he then rose again to life and ascended to the Father’s right hand pending his return to judge the earth, and finally there’s the third article in which we state our belief in the Holy Spirit and his work of sanctification; that is how he calls us by the Word of truth and creates faith in our hearts to believe it, and how he continues to preserve us in this saving faith through the ongoing ministry of the Church.

And so it is that tonight we come to the third Chief Part, which is the Lord’s Prayer.  And as we come to it, what I want you to see at once is that it stands on the Apostle’s Creed.  Those who pray the Lord’s Prayer – the only ones who can truly pray it – are those who already confess the truths contained in the Creed. You must first recognize God as your Father and Creator, and know that you can approach him in the sinless perfection achieved for you by the Son, which knowledge and faith come by the sanctifying illumination of the Spirit, before you can pray the prayer.  So you see that there’s a logical progression here, and why it is that we did not begin our study of the Catechism with the Lord’s Prayer.  And to take it just a step further, recognizing that the Lord’s Prayer depends on the Creed, we see that for the most part it pertains to issues included in the third article.  It’s primarily about sanctification:  that is, keeping the faith, growing in it, and bearing the fruit of the Christian life that flow from the faith expressed in the Creed.

Now, about the prayer itself, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about the individual petitions.  Luther did a fine job with that in the Catechism, and I’ll not attempt to improve upon them.  Instead I’d like to make a few general observations.  The first is that like the Creed, the focus of the Lord’s Prayer is God’s work.  He’s the active one.  It’s all about what we’re asking him to do.  And we can be sure that he will for he has promised to hear and answer our prayers, and we recognize that he is the only one who has the power to do it anyway. Unfortunately, some folks don’t quite get it.  I keep hearing well-meaning Christians say things like, “prayer releases God’s power”, or “prayer allows God to act”, or I’ll hear people refer to “the power of prayer”, which is an expression that most of you know I really hate. The problem with these ways of speaking is that they move the focus away from the God who answers prayer to the prayer itself – and therefore the pray-er of the prayer. They suggest that the words of a prayer or that the person doing the praying commands great power, sort of like Aladdin rubbing his lamp to make the Djinni appear. So let me make this as clear as I can: your prayer is not powerful.  The Lord who loves to answer your prayers is. And it’s wrong to think that the Lord sits helplessly on his hands up in the heavens thinking to himself, “Boy, I’d sure like to do something wonderful to help that poor guy down there.  Too bad the poor slob doesn’t have the sense or piety to pray about it so I can be permitted to do it.”  It just doesn’t work that way.  Rather, prayer is expression of faith – sort of like the Creed in that sense.  The difference is that the Creed stands primarily on God’s great works in the past while the Prayer looks forward with expectation to what the Lord is going to do in our lives.  And again, we can be sure that he will for he has told us that he wants to answer our prayers, and in this case he’s even told us what to pray for so we can be sure that he wants to do these things.  But again, it’s all his work.

Secondly, we observe that the Lord’s Prayer is to some extent its own answer.  As we said together in the Catechism’s explanations to the first four petitions, the Lord is going to do these things anyway. Whether you pray or not his name is hallowed, his kingdom is coming, and his will is being done, and he gives daily bread even to the unbelievers and wicked.  The prayer is that we may be aware of it, and participate in it, and so be thankful for it; and the point is that the act of praying actually makes us participants in the things being prayed for.  People sometimes ask the question, “Why should I pray?  God is going to do what he’s going to do whether I pray or not.”  True enough; but praying causes you to recognize God’s work and believe in it and so be a part of it.  Praying to the Father shows that his name is holy to you – that’s why you’re praying to him.  Asking for his kingdom to come is evidence that it is coming to you, and so on.  And to a certain extent the prayer sensitizes we who pray it to be agents through whom the Lord acts to answer it.  For example, we know that the kingdom comes when the God sends forth his Word.  So, having prayed, I’ll want to be where the Word can come to me.  And in the same way, I know that if I share the Word with someone, the kingdom is coming to that person and he too is being included in it. Likewise, when I pray for our daily bread, it alerts me that I may be the means that the Lord intends to use to give daily bread to someone because I have it in excess and my neighbor does not.  So like I said, in some ways the prayer is its own answer.

A third general observation is that the Lord’s Prayer addresses predominantly spiritual concerns.  Of its seven petitions, six focus on the needs of the human soul.  Specifically we pray that we will honor the Lord’s name and worship him, that we will receive his Word and Spirit, that we will be forgiven of our sins, that we will receive the Lord’s guidance and strength to avoid and stand against temptation, and so not fall into evil.  In the prayer we don’t deny the needs of the body – we pray for those things too – but we acknowledge by stressing our spiritual concerns that that’s where our greatest needs and dangers lie.  We usually have this emphasis exactly backwards in the prayers we come up with on our own.  We tend to pray mostly for material concerns, for the trappings of wealth and for good health, and for the things that we think will makes our lives more fulfilling and enjoyable.  But we remember that Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the things that pertain to our bodies would be added.  Our Father in heaven knows that we need them; but he wants us to have our priorities straight.   And so we see that the prayer our Lord gave reflects the same emphasis. 

Moving on then, a fourth feature of the Lord’s Prayer that I’d like to mention is its remarkable brevity.  Its seven short petitions get right to the point.  There’s no friendly chitchat, flowery fanfare, or wasted words.  And that’s especially interesting when you consider the context in which the prayer was given.  What happened was that the disciples noticed that Jesus was a man of prayer.  He would often go off on his own for hours on end to commune privately with his Father in heaven.  And I’m sure that the disciples were impressed with his devotion and the amount of time he spent at it.  It was this observation that prompted them to ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  In response he gives them the Lord’s Prayer. I think that is very significant. On one hand because it says that there is a lot packed into this short prayer.  It contains all our deepest needs, and the Catechism’s explanations we went over earlier only start to open them up for us.

But more than that, it tells us that the prayers the Lord longs to hear from his people are not to be feats of endurance.  You don’t get extra points or get a more ready hearing by talking for a long time. Sometimes I’ll hear people – usually pastors and Bible teachers – going on about how many hours a day they spend in prayer.  Of course, they say, they never mention it to impress people with their piety.  No, no:  it’s only to encourage others to spend more of their hours in prayer. Why, I’m not sure; it’s as if the Lord can’t hear the first time you say something.  He has to be nagged like a lazy husband.  In the same vein, sometimes I’ll hear of churches holding all night prayer vigils for this or that cause.  They have the members of the congregation sign up to take certain hours throughout the night so that there will be this continuous and steady flow of prayers to the Lord, which, they claim “bathes the matter in prayer” – somehow making it more holy, I guess.  It all smacks more to me of what Jesus said about the pagans who go on and on in their prayers thinking that their gods will hear them on account of their many words.  This is the sort of mindset that makes prayer a work of man rather than an expression of faith in the Lord.

How very different is the prayer the Lord gave us that with but handful of meaningful words expresses all of our deepest needs.  And with this in mind, I’ll ask you to turn again to your hymnals to page 305 (bottom right column under section 2) where the Catechism gives the morning and evening prayers.  I just want you to see what’s recommended here.  It says, “In the morning, say the invocation, the Creed, the Lord’s prayer, presumably anything else that’s especially on your mind, and then, if you want, this little prayer … but then, “go joyfully to your work”.  It’s the same thing at night.  Say your prayers and go to sleep at once and in peace. The idea is to commit your concerns to the Lord, trust him to take care of them, and then go about your business without worrying about whether he heard you or if you prayed long enough about the matter.  And please don’t misunderstand me:  I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to pour your heart out to God and spend large amounts of time in prayer when you feel the need to do that.  It can be very helpful; but on a day-to-day basis it isn’t very practical for most of us.  And the Lord knows our weaknesses and how our minds tend to wander.  Far better it is that you take a minute or two and actually pray than to avoid it because you think that in order to be effective it has to be a terrible, time consuming burden.

And finally, one last point I’d like to make about the Lord’s Prayer is its corporate character. Unlike the Creed, which is always spoken in first person singular: “I believe”; the Lord’s Prayer is spoken in the first person plural.  It’s addressed to our Father.  And it asks that he give us, forgive us, lead us, and deliver us.  The idea is this:  I state my personal faith.  It’s something that no one can do for me.  But it’s what makes me a part of the Church.  And in view of my confession of faith, I recognize myself as a part of a greater whole.  I’m part of the family of God.  And in this family we collectively pray for God’s blessings upon the whole body of Christ. The Lord’s Prayer shows us our responsibility for each and all of the others.  Praying it reminds me that I’m not alone; that I am indeed my brother’s and my sister’s keeper.  And so praying the Lord’s Prayer is not just an act of faith, it’s also an act of love for through it we are asking for God’s greatest blessings for all of us, and so we really are loving our neighbors as ourselves as we pray it.

And this is why the Lord’s Prayer is often more accurately called the Prayer of the Church. The Lord Jesus gave it to us.  May we use it as he intended:  for the glory of God’s name, for the strengthening of our faith, and for the good of us all.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!