Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
A better understanding of the kingdom of God is the key to getting a grip on this prayer from the Sermon on the Mount. When we see that Jesus died on the cross, not only for the sake of defeating sin but also of defeating death, we see that this prayer is the central concern of the Christian walk, summing up the struggle that we, as Christians, face daily and how that daily struggle fits into the larger schema of God's plan for earth.
We start with the Father, the creator of heaven and earth. His name is holy above all else and is the source of all comforts. In our prayer life, we need to start here, by acknowledging the holiness and lordship of the Father. When we begin in this way, all of our problems, goals, and visions are seen through a new filter. We understand how little our problems are in the hands of a caring and holy God. This section is also where I began to have my old problems with this prayer. When our problems are seen as small by God, He seemed to be uncaring and unfeeling. This problem continues into the next section, which is also where the bigger picture starts to make sense.
In the next section, we see the request for God's Kingdom to come and will to be done in earth as it is in heaven. Continuing the problem from the earlier passage, many have thought that, since our problems are so small in the eyes of God, our request for God's will to be done was a request for our problems to disappear and the later prayer for daily bread as just enough sustenance to keep our bodies moving in pursuit of higher, more spiritual purposes. Instead, a better theology understands that the Father's role as creator continues into the present. He is working through us to bring life into the world in anticipation of the real life that will arrive with the second coming. With this new understanding, we realize that our daily lives, with their little quirks and problems, are the plain within which the almighty and holy God acts. He arrives on the scene, not to trivialize all things, but to affirm their value and reorient their value within the larger picture of the Kingdom of God. He defeats death not just with justification and the atonement, but also with his call to deeper character, a renewed life, and a reassertion of creation's inherent value. Instead of coming as a ghastly apparition, Jesus arrives in a human body and lives a human life, bringing healing and wholeness wherever he goes. His life not only keeps the soul from the fires of hell, but also helps that new life enter into the physical plain.
Our call to sanctification is not a call to abandon our bodies and hopes. They are a call to enjoy them beyond our imagining through the Kingdom of God. This call is not a call to the health and wealth gospel. The world we live in lies to us by making us believe that we can preserve life by hoarding wealth, experiences, and pleasures. This pursuit is attempting to use death to find life. The health and wealth gospel is not much better. It seeks to use God to find the same instruments of death. Health and wealth become death when they steal the love reserved for God alone. True life comes from realizing that the beauty of the world points toward God, not the other way around. Moving forward, this theology means that the beauty of the world is revived and reconciled to the Kingdom of God. The old interpretation meant that the beauty of the world was killed and named as an evil distraction from the non-physical kingdom of God. However, the prayer itself denies this idea! God's will is done on earth because earth itself matters! We see this opposition of ideas in discussions of sex. Some Christian groups have denied the value of sex because they thought it pulled people away from worship of the true God. Instead, they should have seen that sex displays the glory, beauty, and power of God. Our enjoyment of married sex in this present time worships God and anticipates the coming beauty that will be fully restored to the earth, although it will come in a wildly different and more powerful form.
Thus, when we get to the portion about asking for daily bread, we see that we are humbly asking God to enter into our daily losses and victories, looking for God's presence in the mundane as well as the dramatic. Prayer hits the pause button on life, and opens the heart to see where God is around us and what He might be up to. With hope, we recognize the lordship of God, His love enacted through His invasion of the world, and the hope we should have that God is acting to restore beauty and holiness to our lives. The prayer shows the realism to know that God's will and kingdom, while having the victory in hand, have not taken full dominion of the world yet. God has asked us to anticipate his kingdom here while it is also on the way (otherwise known as the "already but not yet").
Moving on, we see that God's concern does not just stop with beauty in this world, but also comes in the formation of character. We ask God to forgive us of our shortcomings as we forgive the same failings of those around us. In a world where God's will has not come to full dominion yet, we see rebellious man (including ourselves) fighting to hold on to control. God's kingdom includes our daily fight to resist sin and forgive the sin which is committed against ourselves. This character is part of the beauty being restored to the world.
Finally, we see that this formation of character is not a matter of willpower (thank God!), but is a partnership between ourselves attempting to put on holiness and God helping us to avoid temptation. Our living testimonies are fights to bring the kingdom of God here and now.
In conclusion, we pray because our Father has fought his way into our world and defeated its master, death. Just like at the beginning, where life came out of nothing, with the coming of Christ, life comes out of death. Death is defeated and tossed aside, never to hold dominion ever again. In the meantime, there is a strange twist in time, where the victory of God has not arrived yet, like the Yankee soldiers who were still fighting battles in the South before news of their victory had yet to arrive. This prayer pauses our lives in the midst of the battle and recalls the story, the struggle, and the hope we have that this life does matter and that help is on its way.
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