The memorial tablet of Michael Ramsey, 100th Archbishop of Canterbury reads,
"The Glory of God is the living man and the life of man is the vision of God."
Ramsey's best book was The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ. It isn't so much a book of technical NT scholarship as a study that opens up the Gospel text with studied reverent care. In it a young Ramsey reflects on the ambiguity of that glory which both reveals and obscures the presence of God, but which in Jesus compels such attention as judges us all.
Out of his own praying he wrote this scholarly meditation on one of the most mysterious and transformative stories of Jesus. In Ramsey's own spirituality he grew in later years to contemplate further on this Christ-enriched sense of glory. And by glory he meant the shining splendour of love diffused with holiness, and that dazzling holiness incarnate in the One in whom all the fullnes of God's love was pleased to dwell.
"The Glory of God is the living man and the life of man is the vision of God."
"Yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever...."
Fib: a poem of
20 syllables in which the number of
syllables in each line is the total of the two previous lines - thus
1,1,2,3,5,8. You can of course continue upwards so that the next line
is 13, then 21, then 34 after which it gets too silly I think.
Fib poems are based on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence.
This one could be better. But I still find the discipline of word control an effective way of clarifying some of the thoughts that come when praying the Lord's Prayer regularly, with eyes open to the world.
Praying the Lord's prayer three times a day is a spiritual exercise. I don't mean that in the quietly grudging way that we sometimes refer to those spiritual disciplines and devotional habits that give shape and substance to our spirituality. I mean it more in the sense of knowing the day after unaccustomed exercise, that muscles I didn't know I had, actually and achingly exist.
Pronouns are an intriguing quality test of prayer. The first person plural is counter-balanced by the second person singular throughout the Lord's Prayer. So three times a day I'm forced to ask - excuse me, but who are the others whose presence turns my into our, and me into us? Who are the ones who gate-crash my prayer and turn I into we? The very first word of the Lord's Prayer displaces the ego, dismisses the singular, incorporates my individuality into something outside, beyond and more than me. To pray the Our Father is to be drawn into a life immeasurably richer than the inner life of the singular self.
In the same way the address to God is second person, but always the possessive "Your", never the direct address "You". It is God's name, God's kingdom, God's will - and the three petitionary verbs are said to God - give, forgive, deliver. And yet again the counter-balance - because the giving, the forgiving and the delivering are, to use the old fashioned words, asked usward.
So every time I pray this prayer, I utter the insistent reminder that I share my life with others - with family and friends, with colleagues and neighbours, with the community of faith to which I belong, with strangers and foreigners, with Western and Eastern, Northern and Southern, men and women, young and old, all colours, all languages, people of many faiths and no faith. Our Father - the plural means I pray as a member of a vast family of humanity. And this vast family needs daily bread, daily forgiveness, daily deliverance from those tests of humanity that are so strong they could destroy us. And the One we ask is Our Father, whose name is to be reverenced, whose will is to be done, whose Kingdom comes secretly, subversively, unexpectedly....but surely.
So I go on praying persistently, noting the pronouns, allowing them to become the heartbeat and pulse of the prayer. Our Father ...your name...your kingdom...your will...give us...forgive us...lead us not... but deliver us...for yours is the Kingdom.
On a day when another wee boy's murder is national news, and child protection provision and overloaded social workers come under scrutiny yet again; when international cricketers are attacked and seven people, six policemen and a bus driver are killed; when Obama and Brown talk about how to prevent global meltdown without reconfiguring the model of global capitalism; on a day like this, I've said Our Father...give, forgive, deliver....for yours is the Kingdom. And done so as a follower of Jesus.
Simon and Tony in the comments on a previous post reflect a fairly pervasive resistance to the regular use of the Lord's Prayer, whether in Sunday by Sunday services, daily or even three times daily as private or personal prayer. Coming from a non-liturgical tradition, Baptists are almost inherently suspicious of anything that sounds like vain repetition. I hope you don't mind Simon and Tony, if I quote some of your words from your comments in order to explore them here:
I think it's worth qualifying those hesitations, even subjecting them to some gentle criticism -as in fact Simon and Tony acknowledge in their comments. So these few observations are not so much directed at Tony and Simon's hesitations. Their comments provide an opportunity to say more about why I think regular use of the Lord's Prayer is an important and specific formative practice for those whose life goal is following after Jesus.
1. My experience of extempore prayer in many non liturgical services (in Baptist churches and other traditions) doesn't persuade me that they are a more spiritual, sincere or worthy offering in worship than prayers carefully crafted, formed into language that has beauty and rhythm, and read or spoken from memory. To speak from memory, or read from a text doesn't preclude the heart's responsive love to God nor the mind's thoughtful adoration. Conversely, extempore prayers can themselves become mere repetition of phrases and cliches shared in a particular evangelical sub-culture.
2. The Lord's Prayer in particular is placed in the Sermon on the Mount precisely in the context of contrast with mere repetition. A double irony is possible here. Either we refuse to use the Lord's Prayer lest it be mere repetition; or we use it unthinkingly and make it mere repetition. Both I believe misrepresent the meaning of Jesus' command - "after this manner pray ye....". To pray the Lord's Prayer regularly and meaningfully is nearer the stance of intentional obedience.
3. I trust the instinct of the early church where early on, daily praying of the Lord's Prayer was a formative practice.
The phrase Dunn emphasises, "they knew it because they prayed it", along with that important clause earlier, "the living liturgy of community worship", (Baptists like me take note - liturgy can be living), surely provides sufficient safeguard against reciting the Lord's Prayer from an empty heart and bored mind.
4. I trust also the practice of the church catholic through the centuries, across the world. As a Baptist I belong to a tradition that honours scripture - but then ironically balks at repeating the words of Jesus because they are liturgically embedded. But surely in approaching God as a forgiven sinner who is a follower of Jesus, I also do so as a self- concerned, earth-bound, horizon limited, ethically challenged, trying to be hopeful human being. And at such a time I confess I am more helped by the Lord's Prayer than the ad hoc meanderings of many an extempore pray-er.
5. As a young christian I learned the Sermon on the Mount by heart. I can still recite chunks of it in the Authorised Version! Amongst the benefits of repetition and regularity in reciting Scripture, especially the Lord's Prayer, are the slow absorption into mind, heart, conscience and will, of those essential values that define our discipleship and the way of the Kingdom of God.
These are just some of the reasons why it's important not to devalue repetition of scripture and prayers by prefacing them with 'mere'. Nor is it the case that such repeated enunciation of prayer and praise need be meaningless - in any case, meaningless to whom? It's God who sees most clearly into the hearts of those who mumble prayers - and whatever residue of meaning and genuine longing is there, midst the mumbling, we can be sure will be noticed, and blessed.
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Reverence
Your Kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in
heaven.
Obedience
Give us this day
our daily bread
Trust
Forgive us our tresspasses
As we forgive those who tresspass against us
Reconciliation
Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
Resistance
For yours is the Kingdom,
the power and the glory,
forever
Doxology
For several years now, from birthday to birthday, I take a passage of the Bible and try to find ways to weave it into the way I live throughout the coming year. I try to live with, and live, the text. This isn't done in a pretentious or self-help way I hope; but as a form of prayer rooted in Scripture text, and within which to practice a life of deliberate response to the grace and mercy of God.
This year I want to try to live the Lord's Prayer. I don't want to "practice praying" by praying more. I want to align my life with what I pray when I pray the Lord's Prayer. So I've tried to distil each petition into what I think is its core value, or principle of action. The terms used are convictions intended to guide attitude and action rather than sounding like the non-disruptive aspirations of the vaguely pious. Values, practised as virtues, shape character.
So what demonstrable difference would it make to pray the Lord's Prayer by practising it?
What would happen if I let this brief and condensed text shape daily practice and everyday action?
Would the Lord's Prayer said each day, - morning, noon and night, - so remind me daily of the values of Jesus, that slowly, incrementally but definitely, life would be shaped to text, and heart shaped to practice?
What these values are, how they are to be lived, the existing attitudes they call in question, the life habits they must convert, the new life they make possible, the relationships they change - it is all an experiment in prayer, not as praying but as living what is prayed. To pray without ceasing may only be possible if understood as the orientation and daily re-orientation of the whole life towards God
by reverence for the holy,
by obedient practices,
by daily trust,
by intentional reconciliation,
by resistance to evil,
and all this framed by doxology.
Been blogging now for over two years. Mostly I'm happy doing random postings from the lengthy serious to the shorter fun stuff, from theology to poetry, from unabashed baptist stuff to the essential correctives from other Christian traditions, from book reviews to political and cultural comment. I'd like to stick with the spontaneous and unpredictable daily diet - that way personal interests, daft impulses, serious reflection, can be combined with generally directive rambling around theological ideas.
At the same time there's a couple of bigger projects I'd quite like to play around with. I've already started a weekly Brueggemann conversation Friday by Friday. During Lent I'll start another regular weekly posting as an experiment with biblical text. Nothing ambitious - just an attempt to exegete the chosen text by performative practices! And the chosen text is the Lord's Prayer.
Instead of trying to exegete the meaning of the text first - supposing I try to live it while also trying to understand it, allowing reflective study and reflective practice to shape each other?
It could be an experiment reflecting on and recording the cost and consequence of living out of a text that is itself living, and active, and pierces to the marrow - to the core of who I am, and to the heart of what's important.
Anyway my plans for Lent are to live daily with the Lord's Prayer. I'll say more about why and how in the next post.
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