THE OUR FATHER: IMPLICATIONS OF JESUS' 1ST PERSON PLURAL
The Our Father is easily the teaching of Jesus we hear most often and with which we are best acquainted. If prayer shapes our souls, how did Jesus intend the Our Father to form us?
19thCentury English theologian, Frederick Dennison Maurice, began his commentary on the Our Father, not emphasizing the intimacy of Father (Abba) – though that is a worthy point – but by Jesus’ choice of the first person plural, Our. Jesus did not just say Father. He did not say My Father. He said Our Father. In that Our, he made our relationship with each other part and parcel of our relationship with God. He defined our Source, our Destiny, and our Meaning in terms of our moral and relational bonds to one another. He put our brotherhood/sisterhood on the table first thing.
It was common in the Early Church to gather for prayer three times a day. The Church bell invited people to the Church, but those who could not leave work still heard the bell and stopped in place to pray the Our Father. It isn’t a private personal prayer of an individual, by an individual, for an individual. We pray it not only for ourselves but on behalf of humanity.
After we, on behalf of all humanity, offer to God the praise due our Creator and invite God's gracious rule onto the earth, we begin asking for things. The first person plural now does an odd thing. Petition and intercession are interwoven. Give us this day our daily bread. In years past, that did not resonate with me because I was already pretty confident of my daily bread. But recently, I have noticed the us. Not all of us are so confident. I have these days been praying Give us this day our daily bread, especially those of us in Yemen. And I have noticed that way of praying is somewhat different from an intercession, God send food to those people in Yemen. When I pray for us, I acknowledge a connection to the emaciated mothers and children, realize that their hunger is not so far off from me. Any man’s death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind. (Donne).
Then comes the toughie, the prayer that makes us stumble. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. We don’t like that because it seems to make our petition for forgiveness conditional on our forgiveness of those who have done us wrong, and we fear we cannot do that. Well, there is reason to be uneasy on that count. The parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18: 21-35) says we have been forgiven, so our failure to forgive each other is a whole new sin, a worse sin, which can land us in a lot of trouble.
I can’t make that easy, but it may be more possible than we think. To forgive does not mean to drop our guard with a dangerous person. We are to forgive, not necessarily forget. We can forgive and still keep our boundaries. To forgive, does not even mean we stop being hurt and angry. Those are feelings, natural feelings. Forgiveness is a moral act, not a feeling. Forgiveness may free us up so that our feelings change over time. It may open the way in the direction of reconciliation and restoring trust over time.
But forgiveness itself does not necessarily include those things.
So what is this moral act called forgiveness? It is to cancel a debt, hence the translation, Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That debt is like a karmic bond. If someone has wronged us, in the moral scale of the cosmos, we have a right to their suffering, a right to retribution. If we cannot avenge ourselves, we can cry out to God demanding that the one who has wronged us pay for what he did.
Forgiveness is cancelling the debt. As the victim, we have the moral authority to cancel that debt. I don’t say it is easy, but we can cancel the debt and still keep a safe distance and still feel the hurt and even the anger. We just forego our right to act on it. Releasing the mindset of woundedness would be healthy, but that takes time and we cannot force it or rush it. But the moral act of forgiveness needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. So let it be a first step with regard to the psychological process, while it is the only step with regard to the moral process. Forgiving is possible, but not easy and we would do well to pray to God for the grace to forgive.
Now back to the Our Father, let’s look again at the difference the first person plural makes. I do not pray Forgive me my sin as I forgive those who sin against me. It doesn’t begin with that individual quid pro quo. I have already prayed Forgive us our sins. . . .In saying the Our Father, I have already prayed for the forgiveness of humanity including my enemies. The prayer does not go on if we forgive but rather as we forgive. We are already forgiving in the very act of praying the Our Father.
Sin in this prayer is not understood as an individual bad choice. It is understood as something intrinsic in human life and social intercourse. I cannot find the source of the expression plenty of blame to go around perhaps because it has been used so often of so many situations. That may tell us something about moral reality. It isn’t new. Isaiah said, All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. (Isaiah 53: 6) For God has shut up all in disobedience so that he might show mercy to all. (Romans 11: 32) There is none righteous. No. Not one. (Romans 3: 9)There is no one who does not sin. (2 Chronicles 6: 36) Augustine called it by a term that is out of favor, original sin. Perhaps we might feel more at ease with universal wrong-headedness. Whatever we call it, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and beneath the ground the roots are all tangled up. Our wrongs are woven into a fabric. The only way to resolve it is to throw up our hands and forgive everything at once; hence, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
The next petition/ intercession was long translated regrettably as Lead us not into temptation. The better, more accurate translation is Save us from the time of trial. By trial Jesus may have meant the prophesied ordeal that would come to pass in two waves of Roman oppression in response to Jewish insurrections in 66-70 CE and 132-135 CE.
But it seems we always live under the shadow of dreading some disaster befalling our people. At the moment, I fear collapse into civil disarray, I fear automation wiping out gainful vocations for most people, I fear the collapse of democracy in the face of widening income and wealth inequality and the disintegration of social institutions. The list goes on. Perhaps it is the 2ndNoble Truth, change; or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, entropy. It is the thundercloud hanging over the horizon in all times and all places.
Again, notice this could have a micro dimension of personal catastrophe. But the focus is broader. It is the catastrophe of our people. It includes my house catching fire from bad wiring, but the focus is on the wildfire that incinerates the town. Save us. The common threat is by no means a good thing. But it does pull us together. Save us! That is a primal communion and God has made it holy.
Deliver us from evil echoes save us from the time of trial. It is like the ancient poetic form of strophe/ anti-strophe. Evil here is not some demonic wickedness. It is all the bad stuff. It is disease, misfortune, heartbreak, all that wounds and diminishes us. Of course we pray to be delivered from that. But note that we pray for it on behalf of everyone, including those who are too obtuse to pray it for themselves.
When Moses gave the Great Commandment to his people, he began, Sh’ma ‘srael. Hear Israel. In those words, Hear Israel, he constituted 12 tribes as one people. Jesus echoes Moses when he teaches us to pray Our Father. Communion means we are all in this together. In a sense, that is just how it is. Our fates are intertwined by the nature of reality. But there is an intertwinement that consists of being stuck with each other and an intertwinement that consists of caring for each other. The first is enmeshment. The second is Communion. Jesus’ ancient prayer converts enmeshment into Communion to the glory of God.
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