God In Daily Life

July 29, 2007     Proper 12 C

Hosea 1:2-10             Psalm 36:5-10

Colossians 2:6-15         St. Luke 11:1-13

In general, prayer is a form of communication with someone who is considered to be in charge of life. For most believers, God is in charge of life and everything. Americans, who take pride in their scientific abilities and achievements, have gradually reduced the areas of life of which God is in charge.

Only in extreme cases do Americans turn to God regarding needs in the economy, health, space conquest, and so on. This is one reason why American believers sometimes find it difficult to pray.

In the Mediterranean world of our ancestors in the Faith, peasants?constituting about 90 percent of the population?realized only too well that they were not in charge of anything. Nature determined their weather and climate. The landowners determined what they might plant and how much they might keep.Rome determined the taxes they should pay?in crops, not in cash! What could a peasant do?

Above all, the peasant could pray, that is, communicate with anyone, including God, who was controlling one or another part of life and hope to obtain benefits from that person.

In other words, prayer is a form of communication intended to influence the decision of a patron, someone who looks upon and treats a client, the one praying, as if that one were a family member.

This is what the disciples ask Jesus to share with them. "Teach us how you communicate with and have an influence upon God."

Jesus encourages the disciples to address God as "Father," just as he does (see 10:21; 22:42). In other words, Jesus says: "Consider God as a Father, as one who is as near as and behaves just like a father toward his children."

In the Middle East this kind of relationship is called "patronage" and someone who behaves like a father to people who are not his children is a "patron."

The patron can get things for clients that the client could not obtain by personal ability, or on better terms than the client could manage by personal ability. This is the appropriate context for interpreting the five petitions of Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer.

The first two petitions praise God as children would praise a father. These first two petitions concern things no human could achieve but that God can easily achieve with divine power. "To hallow one's name" is to "be in truth who you really are": Father, patron, truly in charge of life. "Your kingdom come" urges God to achieve and establish kingly dominion once-and-for-always, definitively, over all of life.

Next Jesus highlights three human needs. The plurals in these petitions give the prayer a communal rather than an individual dimension. This accords with the Mediterranean cultural preference for groups over individuals. Having praised God, the community can now ask for daily sustenance, forgiveness of sins, and preservation from temptation to apostasy. Jesus encourages petitioners to present these petitions with confidence that they will be granted.

The additional petitions of Matthew ("Thy will be done" and "But deliver us from evil") are probably liturgical expansions, each of the extra clauses being elucidations of the petition immediately preceding it. The simple address "Father" (Abba) was characteristic of Jesus. "Our Father in heaven" (Matthew) is again a formalized liturgical expansion.

A Jew of Jesus' day would have shrunk from calling God "Abba," for this was the familiar address of the child to his or her father. But here lies the unique filial consciousness of Jesus, which is the foundation of his own life of obedience and of the Church's later Christological interpretation of his person.

"Hallowed be thy name" is usually called the first petition, but it is probably a glorifying of the name of God, which in Jewish prayer always precedes petition. Each of the succeeding petitions is susceptible of an eschatological interpretation.

Obviously this is the case with "Thy kingdom come." But the "bread" of the third petition (literally, "tomorrow's bread") quite likely means the messianic banquet. These two petitions pray for a foretaste already here and now of the blessings of the end.

"Forgive us our sins" in the fourth petition refers to the last judgment but is likewise anticipated in our justification. Our forgiveness of others does not earn God's forgiveness for us but is the condition of our continuance in forgiveness (see the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matt 18:22-35).

In the next petition, "temptation" (Greek: peirasmos) is a technical term for the messianic woes. It is a prayer, not that God would stop tempting us to sin (for God does not do this, as St. James correctly observes), but rather for our preservation during the messianic woes, the final great tribulation, anticipated in the trials of faith during the Christian's life.

Matthew's comment on the Our Father takes up the petition for forgiveness; Luke's takes up the whole idea of petitionary prayer. Some modern devotional writers are squeamish about petitionary prayer, but in Jesus' teaching petition is prayer par excellence.

Prayer in the Bible is primarily not mystical experience but working with God in carrying out his purposes in salvation history. The supreme petition of Christian prayer is for the Holy Spirit (v. 13).

It is interesting that some ancient texts of Luke read: "Let the Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us," instead of the petition for tomorrow's bread. This is unlikely to be the true reading, but it is a significant early interpretation that supports the eschatological interpretation of "tomorrow's bread."

The prayer that Jesus taught his first disciples and teaches us is not grand and glorious literature. This prayer is a demonstration of encountering God in daily living. The God we serve is interested not only in the outcome of world history, but also the daily needs of his people. The God of history is also our Father, listening to our cries and responding to those cries.