The Lord's Prayer: The Prayer and Teaching of Jesus

By Meredith M. Brown

The Lords Prayer the prayer Jesus taught to his disciples is so familiar that we say it by rote but its few verses sum up everything Jesus taught, and for which he lived and died.

Brown reviews each verse, in the context of the Gospels, so the reader can learn what Jesus prayer tells us about:

-- our relation to God

-- praying and what to pray for

-- the coming of the kingdom

-- our daily bread our physical and spiritual sustenance

-- forgiveness

-- temptation

--deliverance from evil

Meredith Brown applies his scholars mind and his faithful heart to this very useful appreciation of the central prayer of the Christian life.Whether read in solitary or in a study group, this is a book to deepen and enliven faith.

Hays Rockwell, ninth bishop of the Episcopal Church inMissouri(retired)

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 24, 2005
• ISBN: 9781463472481

Meredith M. Brown

Meredith M. Brown, a lawyer and writer, for many years co-chaired the corporate department and the mergers and acquisitions group at the international law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.  He has written articles on religion, ethics and professional responsibility, and American history, as well as hymns, carols and anthems.  He has also written many books and articles on mergers and acquisitions, securities law and corporate law, and has been a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School.

Book preview

THE LORD’S PRAYER

The Prayer and Teaching of Jesus

by

Meredith M. Brown

Title_Page_Logo.ai

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

© 2005 Meredith M. Brown. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 12/13/04

ISBN: 1-4208-1442-7 (sc)

ISBN: 9781463472481 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

CONTENTS

PART I

INTRODUCTION:

The Prayer and its Context

1.   Preface

2.   The Context of the Prayer

PART II

ADDRESSING GOD:

How Should We Address God?

3.   Our Father

4.   Hallowed Be Thy Name

PART III

THE PETITIONS:

What Should We Pray For?

5.   Introduction to the

Petitions

6.   Thy Kingdom Come,

Thy Will Be Done

7.   Give Us This Day Thy

Daily Bread

8.   And Forgive Us Our

Trespasses

9.   Lead us not into

temptation, but deliver

us from evil.

PART IV

CONCLUDING THE PRAYER

10.   For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the

glory, for ever and ever

11.   Amen

Appendix: Different Translations of the Lord’s Prayer

About the Author

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.

Jeremiah 15:16

PART I

INTRODUCTION:

The Prayer and its Context

1.   Preface

We all know the Lord’s Prayer. Or do we?

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

You may know it with somewhat different words and punctuation. You probably begin: Our Father, who art in heaven. Our Father, which art in heaven sounds like just plain bad English nowadays. Maybe you ask God to forgive us, not our debts, but our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Maybe you don’t add the last sentences about the kingdom, the power, and the glory, or the final Amen. We can learn by studying these variants. You can see several different versions and translations of the prayer at the end of this book. But the core is there, unchanging.

And you do know the prayer.

I suppose the prayer is said between five hundred million and a billion times a week. There are an estimated 2.5 billion Christians. If one in five goes to church each week, that’s already five hundred million iterations of the Lord’s Prayer. That doesn’t count the daily devotions of the clergy or of the laity. Nor does it count the times we pray the Lord’s Prayer spontaneously. Have you ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer lying awake at night? Waiting for a train? Waiting in a hospital for someone to come out of surgery or the delivery room? In a dentist’s chair? Lying in a metal tube having an MRI test done?

On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists connected with Osama Bin Laden hijacked United Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco. One of the passengers, 32-year-old Todd Beamer from Cranbury, New Jersey, an account manager for Oracle, reached a GTE operator on the Airfone. The operator, overwhelmed by the call, transferred it to a customer supervisor. Beamer told the supervisor, Lisa Jefferson, that three people had taken over the plane, two with knives who had gone up into the cockpit and a third standing in the first class cabin with what appeared to be a bomb strapped around his waist with a red belt. During the call, he learned from other passengers who had used their Airfones that other hijacked planes had been flown into buildings that morning. Beamer, who taught Sunday school, told the operator he wanted her to recite the Lord’s Prayer with him. They recited it together. He told the operator from that point on he was going to have to go on faith because they were talking about jumping the hijacker in the front of the cabin. He turned away from the phone to talk to someone else and she heard him say: You ready? OK. Let’s roll. The operator heard screams, commotion – then silence. The plane, which had been diverted towards Washington, D.C., crashed in western Pennsylvania, killing all on board. Beamer and others had evidently stormed the hijackers, who may have crashed the plane rather than lose control of it.

So we pray the Lord’s Prayer often – in normal times and in extremis. We pray the Lord’s Prayer so often it can be hard to think about it, to parse it, to follow its sense. It’s easy to recite it by rote. Its familiarity is soothing. Sometimes, I confess, I use it as a soporific if I have trouble getting to sleep.

But it is far more than a familiar anodyne. It is the prayer Jesus Christ taught us – and it sums up, in a handful of verses, the essence of all of Jesus’ teaching.

What can we learn from these few lines, about God, about Jesus, about our relation to God?

Questions

When did you learn the Lord’s Prayer?

How often do you say the Lord’s Prayer?

Have you said the Lord’s Prayer in a moment of crisis? In a hospital?

Have you thought about what each phrase in the prayer means?

2.   The Context of the Prayer

When did Jesus teach the prayer?

In Matthew, the prayer is part of the great teaching of the crowds we know as the Sermon on the Mount, which starts at the beginning of Chapter 5:

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

And Jesus continues through the Beatitudes – the wonderful list of those who are blessed, who are fortunate – those who thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who suffer for righteousness’ sake – and through an astounding setting forth of his teachings in relation to the teachings of the Torah.

I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets, he says, but to fulfill them. You have heard it said that whoever kills shall be liable to judgment; but I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery; but I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. You have heard, you shall not swear falsely. But I say to you, do not swear at all. You have heard, love your neighbor; but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

Before teaching the prayer, Jesus tells us how not to be pious and how not to pray. Don’t practice your piety before men in order to be seen by them. When you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do, that they may be praised