Dear friends,
I have been thinking about the well-known Lord's Prayer,
Or as it's also known,
The Our Father.
This is a prayer common to all branches of Christianity.
It has been recited for two thousand years.
Bearing in mind its association with Jesus and Christianity,
I have been trying to work on a commentary by which the words of this prayer might be made relevant to people of all denominations and none.
Jesus is one of a handful of inspired teachers whose words have reached every corner of the world.
The life of Jesus has been an inspiration to all of us,
Regardless of our backgrounds.
And wasn't it Gilbert K.
Chesterton who said that the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting,
It has been found difficult and left untried.
We think if only we all lived lives of love for others,
As urged by Jesus,
What a different and wonderful world it would be.
For this reason,
This prayer which Jesus asked his listeners to say is worth thinking about,
And that is what led me to the idea of this reflection.
So first of all,
Let's hear the prayer itself,
And then we'll take a look at its different parts,
Piece by piece.
Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Our Father In Christianity,
God appears as a Father figure in the sense that we understand Father.
God appears as a loving,
Larger than life version of ourselves.
And for the most part,
God is considered to be somewhere out there.
I'm told that Jesus,
When talking about God,
Used the word Abba,
Which is more in the nature of our word Daddy.
It represents an even more intimate type of relationship than the more remote word Father.
Now let us leave aside questions about this male word Father.
Some people will have difficulty with gender-based words,
But let us not be deflected by that 2000-year-old historic reality in the case of this prayer.
Sometimes we lose more than we need to lose in our attempts to be politically correct.
The question is,
How can this expression our Father be made meaningful to people who do not see the Creator,
If any,
In that light?
Especially when seen as someone up there or out there.
Can we try instead to extend this and look upon the word Father as representing the underlying basis of reality?
An energy,
Presence and spirit that permeates all things.
Something that is both immanent and transcendent.
This is something that can be validly described as Father.
It involves even more than a fatherly presence because it goes far beyond all our notions of closeness.
Hallowed be thy name.
May the name of this mystery be held holy,
Because by its nature it must be beyond anything that can be expressed in human terms.
How can the finite describe what by nature must be infinite?
And how can the temporal attempt to describe what must by nature be eternal?
In these attempts to name and describe ultimate reality,
We are like ants attempting to describe the workings of a spacecraft.
Thy will be done.
May we live in harmony with all that is.
The fact is that we are all,
Each and every one of us,
Part of an interdependent web of all existence.
May we be at one with the purpose of life.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Here we express the wish that we shall have today the needs of today,
And tomorrow the needs of tomorrow.
What more do we need?
What more can we ask for?
If we have this,
We have everything.
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
This reminds us to understand the karmic nature between our willingness to forgive others and the willingness of others to forgive us.
It reminds us that,
As we sow,
So shall we reap.
What we plant in the spring comes to fruition in the autumn.
We can't harvest what we haven't planted.
And,
As it's put in the Buddhist tradition,
We cannot escape the consequences of our actions.
Our actions are the ground upon which we stand.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
This expresses the hope that we will not fall from our highest ideals,
That we will be preserved from ultimate loss.
What is this ultimate loss?
Simply this,
Our failure to respond to our existence in a way that will allow us to look back at the end and feel that we've tried to do our best.
I'll leave you now with some more words of Jesus.
When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment,
He put it very simply.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it.
Love your neighbour as yourself.
Love your neighbour as yourself.
A challenge for all of us and a formula that could change the world.
Let us all try to take this to heart.
Namaste.
Thank you.
