Luke 11:1-2
A Sermon Preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 4th July 2021
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
Philippe—not his real name— completed his studies at George Whitefield College and returned home to Mozambique, where he has worked ever since as an evangelist and church planter. I visited him in 2015 and he introduced me to Priscilla. Priscilla was an enthusiastic Muslim and had an important government job. She told me she was corrupt and also that her husband had gone away and she was living with a boyfriend. Someone tipped her off she was about to be investigated, and she realized she faced many years in prison. She went to her imam, but he couldn’t help. In desperation she phoned Pastor Philippe. She had met him at her office and was offended when he tried to speak to her about Jesus. She told her staff they should deal with him in future; she did not wish to speak with him again. But now she was desperate; could Jesus help? She phoned Pastor Philippe, and they met. She asked could he help. He couldn’t see how, but offered to pray. “I could teach you to pray,” he said. “Would you like that?” She said she would, so he taught her the Lord’s Prayer. She gave her life to Jesus and began to pray his prayer—in earnest and with understanding. For some reason the plan to prosecute her never went through. Pastor Philippe visited her Muslim husband, and he too began to follow Jesus. The two were reconciled. Priscilla and her husband are now leading a church in Mozambique.
We say the Lord’s Prayer most Sundays, but I wonder do we really know why, and what we are asking. Luke begins:
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
There was a time in Perth where every second church was having a workshop on prayer. Mostly it was about methods of prayer. You start with adoration, then comes confession, next thanksgiving, and then supplication—whatever that is. But Jesus doesn’t answer his disciples with a method of prayer; he told them what to pray.
The fact is, when his disciples posed their question, this was probably what they wanted. John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray—not a method, but a prayer that summed up the vision of their movement. We don’t know what it was, but you can be sure it was a prayer that Messiah would come and bring his kingdom, and that Israel would repent and be ready for him. And now Jesus’ disciples want to know, “What is our prayer?” The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of the Jesus-movement. That’s why we pray it so often: it is the prayer of our movement.
Luke cuts it down to its essentials. In Matthew it is longer. That is because as the prayer of the Jesus movement it was prayed often, in many situations, and in different ways. Matthew’s version looks like it is meant for praying in a group. It starts formally, “Our Father, who are in heaven …” But Luke just says, “Father.” That’s more like you’d pray it on your own. Perhaps it’s what Jesus prayed when he was alone.
Jesus is inviting us to share his relationship with his Father. This is amazing. Jewish people know that God is the Father of their nation, but they did not approach him individually as their individual Father. Jesus did; in the Garden of Gethsemane he even called God “Abba”. “Abba” is an intimate form of father; it is the way a child addresses its father. Jesus invites us to enter a new and intimate relationship with God as our Father, even as our “Abba”, and that is where true prayer begins.
This is sensational. Muslims don’t pray to Allah as Father. They think it is blasphemous. It would be, if we hadn’t been invited to do it by the Son of God himself.
Not all prayers please God. They may even offend him. Wouldn’t you be offended if someone asked you for help with something, and you knew that behind your back they were badmouthing you, and trying to get you fired from your job? Why would God listen to someone who doesn’t love him, doesn’t trust him, doesn’t obey him? Many believe in God and pray, but don’t pray to him as Father, because they don’t know him. They just hope that there may be someone out there who will give them what they want. If he doesn’t, well perhaps that proves he’s not there at all. There is no relationship. We need to ask, “Is God my Father?” Bilquis Sheik, a Muslim who found Christ, called the story of her journey, I Dared to Call him Father. Since through Jesus God has asked us to address him this way, it is insulting to approach him any other way.
Think then: Jesus invites us to discover our long-lost father. The father we think we have is not our true father. You may love your father or hate your father, or perhaps you never knew your father. In South Africa many people are raised by a grandmother. Whoever brought you up was a guardian appointed by God to care for you until the time you discover him, your true Father, who planned you, gave you life, brought you safely to this day, and wants to be part of your life—to return his love and be loved—forever. I asked Priscilla’s husband what drew him to Christ. “Love,” he said. “I never heard of that in Islam. Most of the early Christians made this journey—from a distant God to a loving Father. “When you pray say, Father …” This is the first lesson from the Lord’s Prayer. Next comes lesson two:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Here we find that we are overhearing a son’s greatest wish, that everyone in the world could see how great his father is. Those of us who had good Dads love to talk about them. My Dad worked at a factory that made iron and steel. There was a tunnel which was supposed to have been flushed with steam, but there was still carbon monoxide there. When two men went in, they collapsed, and the alarm was raised. It takes about two minutes to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Men hurried off to find gas masks; my Dad dropped into the tunnel, got one man onto his back and brought him to the manhole. He then ran back to get the second man and collapsed himself. The men with the gas masks arrived and pulled them both out. The first man my Dad rescued recovered, they revived my Dad, the third man died. When I went to work in that factory as a young man I didn’t need to tell the story; people remembered, and it made me feel good. It gives me pleasure now telling you.
But what if your Dad was in gaol for abusing children. Imagine how you would feel carrying that knowledge in the school playground. Or what if he was accused of something shameful, and you knew it wasn’t true?
Jesus has a father who is misunderstood, accused of all the bad things in the world, shunned, and his name used as a swear word. What does that do to a son who knows his Father made every good thing, filled the world with colours and sights, and music and sounds, and feelings and tastes, and the smell of gum leaves burning far away. His laws are to promote human happiness, and even if he must do hard things in his role as governor of an erratic world, yet everything he does is for good, and his every action is inching the world forward to a glorious destiny. What does it do to a son who knows his father is the most generous, kind, forgiving, loving person in the universe, to see him avoided and hear him bad-mouthed?
It pained him. It burned him up. His deepest desire – and here it is his first request – he wants it to be our prayer too – is that everyone in the world should know the truth about his Father. He longs, as Isaiah did, that the earth should be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.
Why does he say, “Hallowed be your Name”? I was approached by a couple from a Hindu background who asked me how I visualized God. They thought that to connect with God they needed some visual image. The handle God gives to connect us to him is his Name. We cannot grab God himself, and do to him what we want. We could once, and we crucified him. But now, what we want to do to God, we must do to his Name – be it praise or blasphemy. What we do to his Name we do to him. Just like, if you want to hurt someone badly, you don’t have to shoot them, you just say evil things about their name. If you succeed in destroying their name, as people constantly try to do to their political opponents, you destroy them, and make it impossible for them to do their job. How can God rule the world when his name is misused and abused and misrepresented and vilified? Many of the world’s ills can be traced back to misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the holy Name of God. So, you want to connect with God? Name his Name! What is his Name? Father! Cry out “Father,” and he will be listening!
But is that really God’s name? Does God not have many names? He does, and his real name no one knows. The important thing is, whatever you call him—God, Allah, Jehovah, Nkulunkulu, Lord—that the name you use is filled with the true knowledge of all that he is, and is precious to you.
It’s a pity there is no other English word to translate this strange word “hallowed”. Holy means totally special. There are some names that when you hear them, you are immediately filled with emotion. It may be good or bad, depending on the name. The year before last Lorraine and I travelled around with Nelson Mandela’s bodyguard. People have never heard of him—Rory Stein was his name—but Mandela’s name they knew, and it filled people with admiration. When they heard his name, it filled their mind with everything they knew about him. When they’d heard Rory, they knew a whole lot more; his name got bigger. When I hear someone mention “Peter Seccombe,” my mind is suddenly filled with my father—all that he was. But I always called him “Dad;” that was my privilege. And that is our privilege as the sons and daughter of God.
So, Jesus first and great concern is the Name of God. As members of his movement he asks us to share it with him. I would love to explore with you how we can not only pray for it, but work for it too. But I must hurry on.
Will this prayer ever be answered, and how? That is the next question. When we think of the secularists and new-agers, and the new atheists and Islamists, the many feuding Christian groups and the clerical child abusers, and the huge amount of misinformation and confusion about God, it seems impossible that it ever will. But Scripture promises that one day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. The reason Jesus came into the world was to make that happen. The way he will do it is by his kingdom. The kingdom of God is a renewed world in which Jesus will be king, and where God will be known and honoured and loved by all. So, the Lord’s Prayer is a revolutionary prayer: it is asking God to change the government—all governments—and establish his own king; put the world under new, God-appointed management. Jesus invites us to pray:
“Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.”
The whole prayer, when you understand it, is a prayer for God’s kingdom to come, so that God will be known for who he is. Jesus at the start of his ministry announced the dawning of God’s kingdom. He taught about the kingdom, gathered people for the kingdom, and now he gives them a prayer about the kingdom. For Jesus and his disciples much of what needed to happen for the kingdom to come in its fulness lay ahead of them. They may not have known it, but when they prayed, “Your kingdom come,” they were asking God to keep Jesus true to his course. When he asked them to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was asking them to pray along with him that he would be true to his mission, and not turn away from the cross. Jesus determination to establish the kingdom led him to the cross.
We stand on the other side of all that. Jesus proclaimed, taught, did miracles, stilled storms, healed sick people, fed the hungry, brought dead people to life, died himself, was brought back to life by God, ascended to heaven, is pouring out the Holy Spirit; that is how he established the kingdom. It is quite a thing, then, to realize that so much of what the disciples were praying for back then has actually happened. Jesus death dealt with sin, his resurrection blazed the trail into life, his Holy Spirit released God into the lives of his followers.
So, what are we asking when we pray his prayer? Although the kingdom has come in part, it has not yet come in its fulness. Jesus is still at work, growing his kingdom in the world. Through his servants he is spreading the message of his kingdom throughout the world, and men, women and children, one by one, are acknowledging him as their king. You may wonder what is happening in this country, where so many are turning their backs on God. You may think Christianity is going backwards. But as Jesus said, the things of God may be hidden from the wise and powerful, but little people are always responding. Whenever you hear of a new person coming to Christ, you can know that God is doing the miracle of rebirth, and you can be assured that the kingdom is growing. And if it is numbers that impress you, know that there has been more growth just in Africa in the last century than anywhere else in the world in 2000 years! If you add China and Korea and South America and South East Asia, well, Patrick Johnson reckons more people have come to Christ in the last century than in all the other nineteen centuries together. God is continuing to answer Jesus prayer. When the last of God’s lost children comes home, we will see the Lord Jesus return to his world—sweep all evil and suffering away, and reveal the kingdom in its full glory. Everything will be made new, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. This is what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer.