The Lord’s Prayer: Our

We are continuing our look at Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Today, we start our meditations on the Lord’s Prayer itself, and we start right at the beginning with the first word of this prayer: our. As all of you grammar nerds know, this is a plural personal pronoun. The form of this first word, matches other plural personal pronouns in this prayer. It’s ‘our daily bread’, ‘our debts’, ‘deliver us from evil’ and all the rest.

Now, is this significant? Obviously, it is. When a Christian prays, he is not to pray merely for himself. He is also to pray for the rest of the group. That may not sound like anything new. But it is my hope that I will be able to help you to see more clearly important aspects of what this means so that together we will be able to pray thoughtfully for each other.

Let’s start with this. Jesus does not prove that there is a group for us to pray for. He simply assumes it. And He is also assuming that there is good reason for the people in the group to pray for each other. Are these assumptions valid? Clearly, they are. And it becomes obvious why they are when we put a name to this group. It’s the Church. Jesus is teaching us, His Church, how to pray. And one big part of His teaching is that we are to pray not just for ourselves but also for each other.

However, before we get to how we are to pray for the others in the Church, we’re going to look at some of what the Scriptures have to say about some other, related things.

First, let’s spend a little time reviewing some things about the Scripture’s teaching about the Church.

Consider Paul’s metaphor. He calls the Church ‘the Body of Christ’. And as you know, he builds on that metaphor by describing how each Christian is a body part. We are each a body part connected to the other body parts in Jesus’ body. We are, as Paul puts it elsewhere, members of one another.

I used to be a Boy Scout. I joined because I thought it might be a good thing to do. And after several years as part of that group I decided that it was time to leave. Today, I am no longer a Boy Scout. We all do that sort of thing with the various groups that we are or have been a part of. And that’s okay because of the nature of being a part of those groups. But being a part of the Church is different. We have become body parts in Jesus’ body not because we thought that it would be a good thing to do. We are body parts of the Church because of what the Spirit did. Again, from Paul:

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:13

The Spirit did something special, something that we might call mystical, when He made us a body part of the Church. Something supernatural happened, something invisible and yet very real.

It’s like marriage. In last week’s Gospel Reading we heard Jesus describe marriage.

… they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. Matthew 19:6

Marriage is not a social contract between two people. It is the result of a supernatural act of God, something mystical. And as a result, those two people have experienced a profound change. They used to be merely two individuals. But now they are bound together in such a way that they have become one.

The Spirit does the same sort of thing when He makes someone a hand or eye or whatever in the Church. He created an invisible and yet very real bond. Something supernatural happened.

There is a reason I went through all of that. It’s has to do with why Jesus makes His assumption about our praying for each other. There is a bond, an invisible but real bond, that exists between us. We are tied together in ways that go way beyond being a Boy Scout. The Spirit has done something supernatural in creating that bond. And so, in Jesus’ mind, it only makes sense that we would be praying for each other. We have been made one.

Let’s use a different Scriptural image to fill this out. The Church is a family. God is our Father. We each are His children. That makes us brothers and sisters. That makes us a family. There are bonds within a family. And while, sadly, there are too many who neglect or even reject the bonds that they have with their biological families, those bonds still exist. They are real. They are the bonds of blood. I will always be a Ben‑Ezra. I may change my name, but that won’t change who I am. And that means that the family I was born into will always be my family. Those born into my family will also always be my family.

But the bonds of family go further than blood. There are also the bonds of affection. If you think about it, there are a number of TV shows and movies that are responding to the breakup of the American family and its emotional debris. They portray what might be called a substitute family, people unrelated to each other who have bonded together. There isn’t the bond of blood, but there is the bond of affection. So, each one lives thinking, ‘These are the people that I can count. I can count on them because they really care about me. And they can count on me for the very same reason.’ These shows are trying to reproduce this trait of a real family.

So, along with being a body of various parts, the Church is also a family with deep and enduring bonds. And if they are wise, that’s how the members of a local church will act.

We are the body of Christ, members of each other. We are the family of God, brothers and sisters together. These are the reasons why we pray for each other.

That was the theory behind the practice. We’re ready now for some ideas about how to do this praying for each other. How do we make that happen? What are we to do?

Here’s the first step. Believe the Gospel. To be more specific, believe this part of the Gospel, the part about the bond that we have with each other. Believe that we really are as connected as the parts of a body are. Believe that these other people really are family. Believe the Gospel.

Why do I put this as the first step when it comes to praying for each other? If the motivation to pray for each other doesn’t come from the Gospel then it will come from somewhere else. That is, if the Gospel isn’t the reason for our efforts at prayer, then those efforts are just some more works of the flesh. There are lots of reasons why people pray for others. They want to have friends. They want to be thought of as especially religious. They think that God will like them more if they do this. Those motivations aren’t just evil. They are worthless because they will fail. You cannot succeed in obeying Jesus - whether we are talking about prayer or anything else He commands - if you are motivated by some sinful desire. To quote Paul again, it is always about the ‘obedience of faith’.

Also, if your motivation to pray is believing the Gospel, then your hope of being able to obey Jesus in your praying will not be in your own efforts. It will be in the grace of God, that grace that created the Gospel. We will either depend on God’s grace to live, or we will depend on ourselves. If we are going to obey Jesus in the way that He wants when it comes to praying for each other, then we will have to depend on His grace. Nothing else will work. So, the first step in praying according to Jesus’ teaching is to believe this part of the Gospel. And that, of course, is something to pray for.

Now, what’s next when it comes to praying for each other? This may sound unrelated, but I am convinced of its crucial importance. You need to be able to listen well. There is an art to listening, and it is an art that fewer and fewer people know anything about. If you are going to pray for others you need to listen to them. How can you pray for others, really pray for them, if you don’t know what’s going on in their lives?

Here’s the basic idea when it comes to listening. When you chat, you are more concerned for the other person than you are for yourself. You want to hear from him more than you want him to hear from you.

This is some of what James was getting at when he wrote,

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak… James 1:19

That’s just a different way of talking about love.

Think about this. The person you talk with has issues, concerns, hopes, needs, worries, joys, sins, desires, dreams, struggles, victories and defeats. They are all in there, in that person’s heart. And the fact of the matter is that he or she would love to express them to someone. But doing that is scary. All too often, when we have tried to do that in some way or other, we’ve been shot down. Instead of finding a listening ear that comes out of a concerned heart, we have been teased, rebuffed, ignored. How often have we been half listened to, listened to enough so that the other person could slide over to something that he wanted to talk about? The response we were hoping for just wasn’t there. We took a little risk, and it didn’t work. And now we wonder whether we will ever find someone whom we can trust with what one person has called ‘the fine china of our lives’. And so, we have learned to keep it pleasant and pretty superficial.

If someone is going to open up to you, you will need to make it abundantly clear to him or her that you are safe. You really do care. You will try your best to respond well. You are worth the risk. You need to listen in such a way that you communicate all of that.

This will take time and effort. And, as is always the case, it will take prayer. You will need to pray that the Spirit will give you the qualities of a good listener, that He will teach you how to listen. You will need God’s grace. You will need to pray for it.

So, there you are, say after worship, having a conversation with someone. And you ask the question that we all ask. How was your week? A fine question. What you need to do now is listen. Listen to the words. But also listen for the heart that is behind the words. At first, you, likely, won’t be able to hear the heart. But as you develop a relationship with that person you will notice bits of the heart’s affections peeking through the words: little expressions of concern, a dab of excitement, a hint of hopefulness, little bits of what’s going on in the heart. Listen for it.

Then, follow up on what you’ve heard. The next time you chat with this person you might say something like, ‘Last time we talked you sounded a little concerned about (whatever). How is that going?’ Be sure that you are doing this because you really do care. Do it because you are believing the part of the Gospel that says we are family.

After you’ve shown that person that you listen well, that you care, you just might be granted the privilege of asking somewhat deeper questions. And you can do that because more of the heart’s affections of the other person are peeking out through the words. That person is beginning to trust you. You just might be someone who is safe, someone who really listens, someone worth the risk. You just might get an honest answer to questions like, ‘What was the best thing about your week?’ and ‘What was the worst thing about your week?’ The heart’s affections will be more clearly expressed.

And as this whole process develops - and this is the point of all that I have been saying - you will be able to pray thoughtfully for this other person. You will have more than some vague, generic items to pray about. You’ll be praying about some of the deeper issues of that person’s heart. That’s when you will be living out how the Gospel describes us as a church. And that’s when you can begin to satisfy Jesus’ expectation when He used plural personal pronouns in the prayer He taught us all to pray.

Now, a couple of things to note. Doing what I’ve described just might feel uncomfortable at first. That’s okay. Learning something new usually feels uncomfortable. But this is where all those things that I said about how we are the Body of Christ, the family of God, fit. Who is that person you’re having a conversation with? He or she is the eye that needs you, since you are a hand. He or she is your sibling, a member of your family, with whom you have important bonds. He or she is a person who has needs, needs that you just might be able to help with. It may well be that the Spirit has placed you in this part of His Church for the express purpose of helping that brother or sister.

Here’s another thought. You are all called to work on developing as a listener, as a good listener, so that, among other things, you can pray for the others here. But that means that you all are also called to develop as a good talker. And by that I don’t mean developing the skill of filling the air with words. I’m talking about learning how to allow the affections of your heart to peek out. And yes, that can be scary. But if we are going to be a church of listeners we will also need to be a church of talkers. We need to learn how to trust each other with the fine china of our lives.

Last thought. The key is believing the Gospel. That is something that always bears repeating. And being able to believe any part of the Gospel always depends on prayer. And that’s because becoming freed from our sins and the affects that they have had on our lives - not trusting each other, not living as the body that we are, as the family that we are - is not something that we can bring about on our own. We cannot rescue ourselves even when it’s about becoming good listeners and good talkers. This is something that we need the grace of God to accomplish. And so, as we pray for others about their needs of grace we need to pray for our own needs of grace. But as we do that, as our belief in the Gospel deepens, we will see the Spirit of God do wonders among us that we would never have imagined.