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.
Thanks for this entry - it reminded me of Professor James Whyte, who said that the creeds made more sense to him when using "we" rather than "I".
Posted by: Endlessly Restless | March 05, 2009 at 07:46 PM
Thank you. this is a question I have had for a long time. I have been praying the Lord's prayer in the singular for a long time because I felt my relationship with God is personal. now I understand the need for plurality. thank you.
Posted by: Alice Dilley | December 14, 2019 at 04:08 PM