Matthew 6:9-13
Is there a prayer that has been more prayed than this one? The sad truth about the Lord’s Prayer is that it has probably been often repeated but rarely prayed. Both St. Augustine and Martin Luther said that nothing was more important in the Bible than the Lord’s Prayer. Unfortunately in our culture I fear that we view the Lord’s Prayer as the church version of the Pledge of Allegiance, it’s something that everyone knows, that has often been repeated but that only a few hold as dear and important. The saying is that familiarity breeds contempt, if we do something often enough the beauty and majesty of it can be lost on us. We go through the motions and we miss the mark. The Lord’s Prayer has now been relegated to congregational unison in which much of the congregation is repeating words without any real heart involvement, prayerfulness or worship. I don’t believe that it is wrong to pray in unison, I don’t believe it’s wrong to repeat the Lord’s Prayer as we did today but I do believe that the Lord’s Prayer has far more weight and value to it than we have given it. There is also another side to this, many of us have become proud and we actually have contempt for the repeating of the Lord’s Prayer as if it is elementary or has somehow lost its great weight, if we even believe that it had weight at all. Both views are wrong, the vain repetition is in direct disobedience to Jesus’ command to not be like the heathen and the proud dismissal is dangerously closed to the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees that is not worth of the Kingdom of heaven. Luther and Augustine were closer to being right about the Lord’s Prayer than those who have contempt for it because of how they view others as using it or those who simply liturgically repeat it so they can move on to the next part of the service; the Lord’s Prayer has weight, it has value and it has incredible importance, my hope today is that we will take hold of it and allow the Spirit of God to inspire us to pray this prayer even as He inspired Jesus to teach it to the multitudes, later His apostles and now, each one of us. Whether we like it or not, understand it or not, or even agree with its use or not, the Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ teaching on how we should pray.