The Prayer of Jesus #3 The Most Important Word
Attending: Williams, Genet, Catron Kellett, Galbreath, McDevitt, Reed, Moreno-Brown, Simon, Roberts, and Moody (14 people from six states!)
The Purpose of this class is (1) to support you and coach you and help you in your spiritual journey. As a convener and teacher, I don’t have all answers. I have many questions, as do you. I want to hear and honor what interests you, what intrigues you, what confounds you, what troubles you. In class or out of class; and (2) to promote the use of The Prayer as a guide to praying, a guide to believing, and as a guide to living. To this end we will use the Prayer as a launch pad for ranging far and wide…in the Bible, in history and culture, and in our own lives. No corner of the universe is out of bounds; we will allow the Prayer to take us where our needs, our curiosity, our imaginations, our irritations want to take us.
So hang on!!
Use the chat function of Zoom to write the most important word in the Prayer. We will discuss again in a few minutes. Next, who has a testimony of an encounter with the Prayer this week? Tell us now, or use the chat function, or write me an email. There were no new reports.
Let’s take a look at the three forms of the prayer, on the chart I sent? Let’s follow the expansion of the Prayer, from short, to longer, to longest. In many newer translations, there is an effort to return to original wording, at least original to the particular document (the Gospel of Matthew, or the Gospel of Luke, for instance.) The Didache was written near the end of the first century but was not incorporated into the list of accepted documents, the canon, the New Testament, the Christian testament. A question was asked about the Orthodox in Egypt and the many manuscripts in their monasteries; which launched me into a long rant about Orthodox: my student Lucas Rice and his conversion to Orthodoxy, the book The 21 about the murder/martyrdom of the 21 Coptic migrant workers in 2015 (see my review at themeetinghouse.net/books), the AoP preacher Gabriel Alemayehu and his ambition to translate these documents, and the lectionary text for next Sunday—Acts 8—and the story of the “transgendered” (eunuch) Ethiopian and his identification with Jesus who also had no offspring.
Now comes, a change in wording and meaning in the Catholic use of The Prayer: Instead of saying, “Lead us not into temptation,” Catholics will say, “Do not let us fall into temptation,”
Now, let’s look at what you think is the most important word; choices were: kingdom, forgive, and our; and we had a good discussion about the ubiquity of alienation and the need for forgiveness—by children, friends, enemies, even communities, countries, and ethnic groups (as the history of north America demonstrates!)
And my choice: OUR!
Let’s read through the prayer and note all the first person plural pronouns: our father, give us, forgive us…and we forgive, lead us…but deliver us. Who is the US?
It developed in a liturgical setting, meaning a worship setting. And initially functioned to pull the people together in a common prayer. But to whom does it refer: the congregation? your family? Your community? Whomever is on our mind when we pray? The wider human community?
Put another way: who is excluded from this prayer? This is the most important question we face when joining in this prayer and lifting up this prayer. We will examine this angle throughout our reading and reflecting on this prayer.
Next week (session #4, May 3) we will take up the word “Father” and explore what it means and what it does not mean; and how both of these have impacted Christian community right down to this very day.
Blessings.
(April 2021)
