Love and Justice

Matthew 6:9-13

In the coming weeks we will discuss the prayer that our Lord Jesus taught his disciples. It is appropriately called the Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer that we sing every Sunday with Yegmalian tune. It is a prayer that many of us know since our childhood. In fact, most Christians can recite this prayer by heart. Sometimes I wonder if we have lost the meaning of this prayer after so much repetition…

Some churches totally neglect this prayer. They don’t want to recite a prayer that is prewritten. They think people will pray just words. Our church recites or actually sings this prayer every Sunday. Personally, I love it I want to pray it every Sunday and why not everyday. The Lord’s Prayer should not be a recitation of words without meaning. It should come from our heart and mind. My plan for the coming Sundays is to present to you the prayer that our Lord taught us with the intention of going deeper into its theological understanding and making it applicable into our lives.

The Lord’s Prayer was written in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Luke’s version is shorter. It does not mean Luke made a mistake in writing a shorter version. On the contrary, I believe Jesus said this prayer on different occasions. I chose to discuss Matthew’s version.

It is interesting that in Luke 11, the disciples came and asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."” The Disciples were Jewish. They knew how to pray. They praying three times every day: morning, noon and evening. They had to recite twelve prayers each time they prayed. They used classical Hebrew in their prayers. What was happening? Why did they want to learn like the disciples of John the Baptist?

There are two explanations. The first will be, “Lord, teach us how you relate to the person you call ‘Father’ (Abba). We want to learn how do call God ‘Father.’”

The second explanation is, “Lord, we are tired of reciting prayers that are written in classical Hebrew. Can we pray differently?”

We need to be careful not to fall in the same trap as the disciples in reciting words, just words. Therefore, let us see what did Jesus taught them and what do we learn today from this important model of prayer.

Jesus spoke to the disciples in Aramaic. He said to them:

“Our Father who is in heaven. Let it be hallowed your name.”

The words are deliberately put in the order of the Aramaic language: (Abba bismiyak yedqedes shamak.)

Can you see the joy of the disciples when for the first time ever someone is teaching them to pray in their own dialect? It is like when Christians realized that Latin was not the only language for worship. Or King James Version was not the language God used to communicate with His people. Or classical Armenian (Kerapar) is not the only way Armenians talk to God. Jesus taught the prayer in their own language, the daily used language.

This prayer has six petitions. The first three use the pronoun your; the last three use the pronoun us. Your name… your kingdom… your will… Give us daily bread… forgive us… deliver us from evil…

Let us start with the first word: Our Father, Abba, daddy. Jesus started the prayer by addressing his Father, (Abba) daddy,( hayrig.)

For the first time Jesus uses a term “daddy” to address God. In the Old Testament, the writers mentioned God as father but as an adjective. King David in his psalms uses the image: “You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Savior.” (Psalm 89:26)

In Isaiah we read, “Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father” (9:6)

In the gospels, Jesus addressed God as “daddy”, “my father.” We read Jesus’ famous prayer in John 17. “¹Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you…..⁵Father, glorify me in your presence….¹¹Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name…. ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you… ²⁵Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you…”

Paul used it in his letters addressing God as Father, “daddy”, Abba: “⁴But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, ⁵to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. ⁶Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba Father." ⁷So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”

This indicates that our God is an intimate God. Such a God loves us as our parents do.

We will continue in English.