Paternoster: Or: the Upsidedown World of the Lord's Prayer

By Georg Retzlaff

The Our Father is so much more than a simple, rather harmless prayer, suitable for saying Grace, ending meetings, or - due to the apparent absence of recognizable Christian theology - Interfaith conferences.

This book does away with this innocuous approach and examines this prayer as what it originally was: a succinct summary of the
Lords teaching, more akin to a creed than a petition. It represents a radical break with the theology prevalent at Jesus time and proves thus another substantive piece of evidence why its author was accused of blasphemy and sentenced to die on the cross.

Here is a book which removes the debris of centuries, digs deep
to get to the Pearl and restores its glorious luster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481755436

Georg Retzlaff

Georg Retzlaff has been a priest and teacher in the church for almost forty years. Educated in Europe, he earned a doctorate in Church History from the University of Bern, Switzerland, taught at colleges, universities, and seminaries in the USA, Liberia, and Tanzania. His previous books, articles for journals and weekly newspapers were published in Germany and Switzerland. Retzlaff has a passion for teaching on all levels, academic as well as congregational. He is presently serving as rector of an Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

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© 2013 Georg Retzlaff. 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.

Published by AuthorHouse 5/21/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5542-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5543-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909335

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Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Amen

Deliver Us From Evil

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

As We Forgive Those Who Trespassed Against Us

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

Thy Will Be Done

Thy Kingdom Come

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Who Art In Heaven

Our Father

Preface

T he Our Father is, undoubtedly, the most beloved prayer in all of Christendom, a best-seller, so to speak, alive in the minds and hearts of unnumbered people most of whom know it by heart, have used it since childhood days, and are so familiar with it that its true meaning no longer seems to matter. It has become a sort of mantra: it is said, in the Roman-Catholic tradition, as a prayer of penance after confession (three to ten or more depending on the gravity of the offense); it is a convenient and agreeable way to conclude meetings of all sorts, and even commends itself as the spiritual common ground for Inter-Faith Conferences since it appears to be innocuous enough not to offend adherents of other religions as no mention of Jesus is made and the standard tenets of the Christian faith seemingly have no place in it. It is, thus, the prayer for all seasons.

I beg to differ. Indeed: I protest against this glaring misuse and abuse of powerful and liberating words which, somehow, on the way from Jericho to Jerusalem, fell among robbers while priests and Levites walked away from the apparent casualty. The purpose of this slender volume is to lift up the Our Father, heal, restore, and nurse it back to full strength, for which we shall have to pay a price: forgetting much nonsense, much studied piety, much subservient magic, in short, unlearning the Our Father is the precondition for understanding and loving it, for returning to the inn to gladly embrace the healed and restored friend who now can give us more than we ever invested in him.

That which is rote, routine, pedestrian, and obvious is not of Jesus. But that is precisely what the Our Father (or: Paternoster, in Latin) has become. There is still a number of European cities in whose high-rises a Paternoster operates: a passenger lift which moves continually and slowly in a loop, for people to jump on and off at will. In America, there is a similar reference to the continuing, monotonous nature of the Our Father when a fishing line, studded with beads and hooks, is called a Paternoster. The Our Father is just one bead of many in the rosary: it goes round and round, is said because one says it, has always said it.

In 1974, the pop music Billboard Hot 100 chart of the US featured the Australian nun Sr. Janet Mead and her guitar-accompanied crooning of the Our Father as number four!

It won her a Grammy nomination. People love the Our Father, how could they not if it seems so innocuous, so uniting, so user-friendly. I can only hope and pray that you, the reader, will catch a glimpse of the beauty, truth, and goodness of this singularly powerful prayer and will make it the personal treasure it once was.

Georg Retzlaff

Introduction

T he very fact that there are countless books on the market, from the second century up to ours, bespeaks the timeless and continuing popularity of the Lord’s Prayer. Moreover, the bewildering multitude of varying interpretations reveals more than any author’s imaginative powers but also the astonishing bandwidth of understanding which is bounded by century, culture, race, gender, political agenda and more. For some, this spiritual gem is a focused rephrasing of the Sh’mone Esre , the Jewish prayer of Eighteen Blessings. For others it’s a guide to personal perfection or societal, revolutionary change. As with all texts, no one can really know for sure what the authors actually meant (unless they are alive and allowed to comment). It may be suggested that Jesus deliberately left this prayer so open that it could become anything to anyone at any time. While I would not wish to dispute the felicitous ambiguity which constitutes the enduring allure of poetry, I feel compelled to set boundaries without which the Lord’s Prayer is open to blatant misunderstanding and calculated abuse. By offering yet another interpretation I am obviously making a statement: what I have read I find wanting. And I have read many books on the Our Father some of which I deem insipid, boring, uninspiring, predictable, and, above all, way too religious, i.e. nearly irrelevant in the big scheme of things.

My starting point is the fact that this prayer was an arcane text for much of the first three centuries. Arcane meaning: together with the Creed and the Eucharistic Prayer it was used only by communicants, it was not released or shared with a wider audience. It belonged in that part of the service which was closed to guests, newcomers, and penitents who were asked to leave the assembly at the time of the Peace. The Our Father was, thus, seen as something very precious indeed, as a text which enshrined the very essence of the new religion. In other words: the Lord’s Prayer ranks among the texts constitutive for nascent Christianity. One must not throw this pearl to the swine, one must guard its integrity and see it for what it is: a brief, prayerful summary of the Lord’s teachings, something already mentioned in the early 3rd century by Tertullian: For it embraces not merely the particular functions of prayer, be it the worship of God or man’s petition, but as it were the whole of the Lord’s discourse, the whole record of his instruction: so that without exaggeration there is comprised in the prayer an epitome of the entire Gospel. ( De Oratione, 1).

This may come as a