Two weeks ago we explored the first half of the Lord’s Prayer. Today we’re going to focus on the second half. But first, let’s review a few things from last time.
Both Matthew and Luke report Jesus teaching his disciples this prayer, but there are some differences. Luke’s version is shorter and has fewer petitions. It’s Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer that Christians usually recite.
Both versions begin by calling on God as Father. The word Jesus used for “Father” was “Abba.” Abba is both respectful and intimate. It identifies God as our Tender Parent, not as a distant and authoritarian patriarch.
Last time we explored the first three petitions. These refer to God’s Name, God’s Kingdom and God’s will. This tells us that our priority in prayer is on God’s purposes to be accomplished in our lives and in the world.
Today we’re going to look at the next four petitions. These focus on our needs for food, forgiveness, help resisting temptations, and rescue from captivity to evil.
There are many ways to pray and many kinds of prayers. Jesus doesn’t mean that this should be our only prayer. But this special prayer is a helpful model.
Give us today our daily bread
“Bread” in Scripture has two meanings. Jesus says that he himself is the “bread of life.” Jesus is our spiritual nourishment. When we pray, “give us our daily bread,” we are asking for more of Jesus in our lives.
Diana has a small decorative towel for our kitchen that reads, “all I need today is a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus!”
Give us the bread of life today, Father. Help us to walk close to Jesus today. Form in us the character of Christ today. Bring forth in us the fruit of Christ’s Spirit today: love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness. Give us more of Jesus today!
Bread also refers to food in the ordinary sense. We ask God for food for us and for all who are hungry.
It may surprise us that there is enough food grown in the world for every man, woman and child to have more than enough to eat. But human selfishness, greed and injustice cause hundreds of millions of people go hungry every day. Whole families in Gaza, for example, are starving because of the war and because food aid is being blocked from reaching starving people.
It’s clear that the world too needs more of Jesus. More love, joy, peace, kindness. More compassion, more justice. Father, we pray, may we be your instruments, your hands and feet, to help create a more just world, a world where is bread for all the hungry.
Forgive us our debts . . .
Where Luke’s version says, “forgive us our sins,” Matthew says “debts.” Debts are a metaphor for sins. When we act unlovingly we incur a kind of debt. And very often it’s a debt we cannot pay. We can’t always undo the harm we’ve done.
The Good News assures us that no matter how harmful our conduct, our sins can be forgiven, our debts cancelled.
We might think of parents who sometimes take on themselves the costs of wrongs that their children commit, in order to save them from consequences too heavy for them to bear.
That’s what God has done in Jesus on the cross. Our heavenly Father, our Tender Parent, has borne in himself the cost of the wrongs we do to him and others. God loves us and his sacrifice for us on the cross is enough: we are forgiven!
God’s love and forgiveness, in turn, free us to be honest about the wrongs we commit and about the shadowy places within us. Acknowledging our wrongdoing, facing our flaws, isn’t intended to increase our feeling of guilt and self-reproach. Instead, our honest confession restores a healthy relationship to God and brings us inner peace.
. . . as we forgive our debtors
When we ask for forgiveness, we commit ourselves to forgiving those who have sinned against us.
We should not misunderstand what forgiving means. Forgiving someone doesn’t erase their accountability. It’s not a free pass for someone to keep on hurting us. Forgiving someone doesn’t remove the demand that they change. And if change doesn’t happen, we sometimes have to remove ourselves from that person.
What forgiving does mean is letting go of resentment, anger, and bitterness in our heart. And it means wanting what in God’s eyes and will is best for that person.
Some of us will remember the forgiveness given by an Amish community in Pennsylvania in 2006. A young man entered an Amish school building and shot ten girls, killing six, afterwards taking his own life.
Amazingly, the girls’ parents forgave the killer, attended his funeral, and consoled his widowed mother. They donated money to the mother and her other three children and embraced her as a friend. Instead of hating the killer and his family, they acted in love. Their forgiveness was the wonder of the world.
Similarly in 2015 the families of nine congregants killed in the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina expressed forgiveness for the killer.
Forgiveness is a miracle. We have the ability to forgive others because we’ve experienced God’s amazing grace in forgiving us. The peace and joy we feel in being forgiven empowers us to do the hard work of forgiving others.
Lead us not into temptation
We ask our heavenly Father to help us to do the right thing when we are tempted and not to give in to sin.
God is sympathetic to us in our struggles with sin. Jesus himself faced many temptations during his life on earth. God understands how the pressures of the world and our own damaged desires can pull and push us toward destructive behavior. “The flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” the Apostle Paul writes.
God helps us in many ways in this daily battle, and one way is by disciplining us. The author of Hebrews tells us that God disciplines us for our good as his beloved children.
One incident some years ago sticks in my mind. I thoughtlessly insulted and embarrassed someone in front of others. About an hour later, amazingly, I myself was insulted and embarrassed by someone else. That stung! But I immediately recognized God’s hand. God was disciplining me for my hurtful action.
As painful as it was at the time, to this day I remember that incident with wonder and joy at the love God showed me. Letting me know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of my hurtful action. So clearly and directly disciplining me to help me remember not to commit that kind of sin again.
Of course, God’s discipline is not always so dramatic. Sometimes we just feel bad for a while. But God is at work to help us resist sin and to mature in Christlikeness.
Deliver us from the evil one
We’re used to praying “deliver us from evil.” Many scholars think the better translation is “deliver us from the evil one,” that is, from the Devil. Either way, the point is that we can become ensnared by evil, enslaved to a pattern of harmful behavior that is hard to break.
So we ask our heavenly Father to keep us from falling into bad habits and destructive compulsions. And if we find ourselves captive in this way, we ask God to rescue us, to break us out of our prison. God has freed many people from damaging patterns of behavior, and he can free us!
Our prayer for rescue isn’t only for us and our loved ones. It’s also for the nations of the world. By yielding to evil, governments and nations create devastation throughout the world. Making war is especially diabolical, with its terrible hatreds and massive loss of life. So when we pray “Father, deliver us from evil,” we are also praying for wars to end in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere.
For yours in the kingdom and the power and the glory forever
This doxology, which is a word meaning an expression of praise, doesn’t appear to have been in Jesus’ prayer as originally reported by Matthew and Luke. Most modern translations don’t include it. Still, it is a fitting close to this special prayer.
Yours is the Kingdom
With these words we praise God as King – our King and the world’s King. Yours is the Kingdom, Father, and our loyalty belongs to you, above every nation and authority and claim on our life.
Yours is the power
We recognize that God’s power, the power of self-giving love that we see in Jesus, is the most potent force for good in the world. God is love, and God’s love in Jesus expressed today through our lives, is more powerful than any government or army.
Yours is the glory
We rejoice that God, above all the world’s glittering seductions and egotistic ambitions, is supremely worthy of all honor, praise, and thanksgiving.
Our Abba, our Tender Parent, yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen!