The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s prayer
July 24, 2022
Luke 11: 1 - 13
The Lord’s Prayer: we all know it; we memorized it as children. Some of us say it frequently. But we have two forms of it, one with trespasses and the other with debts; how does that happen? And have you noticed the substantially different new translations of the Prayer – like the one in the Gospel reading this morning? What’s going on here? How does this happen?
Maybe you haven’t noticed these changes in The Lord’s Prayer. A few copies of The Lord’s Prayer are on one of the bulletin inserts; please turn to it. I would like to discuss this prayer this morning more than “preach” on it.
As the several translations are named, you may notice that I have not included the word “Version” in the name of the translation – e.g., the King James Version. That is no accident because the word “version” in common usage in our American English language is not the appropriate meaning in this usage.
We use “version” to represent a partial understanding of an incident. Two boys (or girls now) got into a fight. The school principal asks each participant what happened and why. Each provides his or her (what do we say?) side of the story. That is a version of the event.
But each of these printings of The Lord’s Pray is simply a translation of the Greek New Testament text. It is a translation of the Greek words. It should be the best possible rendering in our common language of the prayer attributed to Jesus – that was written down by the authors of Matthew and Luke about year 85 or so, reporting what Jesus said some 45 years before that.
The Lord’s Prayer is included in only Matthew and Luke. It is not in either Mark or John. Like a number of other pieces of the New Testament texts, accounts in very similar wording in just Matthew and Luke are thought to have been available to Matthew and Luke from a probably written source that is no longer preserved, the hypothetical Sayings Gospel Q (Q for Quella – a German word meaning source). Since Matthew and Luke seem also to have had copies of the Gospel of Mark, we can see how Matthew uses Mark’s information and how Luke uses it to speculate on how they use the Q materials.
Let me make several observations which I am bring from the Jesus Seminar’s comments. (Let us turn to the Scholar’s Version of the Lord’s Prayer on the bulletin insert so you can see what I will be sharing as we go.)
Matthew has expanded the address by adding “in the heavens” to the simple “Father.” The added phrase is one of Matthew’s favorite expressions.
Matthew has expanded the second petition by turning it into a couplet. The second line, “enact your will on earth as you have in heaven,” is parallel to the first and expands slightly on it (“Impose your imperial rule”). Most scholars regard this as a Matthean addition.
Luke, on the other hand, substituted “sins” for “debts” in the first clause of the next petition and this begins the transition from the combined economic and religious sense to an exclusively religious sense. However, he has inconsistently retained “debts” in the second clause. Traditional versions of the Lord’s prayer have completed the transition by substituting “sins” or trespasses” in both parts of the petition.
Matthew’s petition for bread is the more original. As an itinerant, with complete trust in God’s providence, Jesus would have asked for bread only for the day. Luke has turned to petition into a long-term affair – day by day.
In the next petition, too, Matthew has preserved the more original version (“Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us”). Jesus’ interest in the poor and his parables about indebtedness would have led him to think of real money indebtedness.
Finally, Matthew again expands a petition by adding a second, parallel line. “And Please don’t subject us to test after test” is explained and extended by “but rescue us from the evil one.” This, too, is Matthew’s contribution, in all probability.
As the prayer appeared in the Sayings Gospel Q, it was likely the following:
Father (Abba, Aramaic for ‘Father’ – or Dad),
Your name be revered.
Impose your imperial rule.
Provide us with the bread we need for the day.
Forgive our debts to the extent
we have forgiven those in debt to us.
And please don’t subject us to test after test.
There is a good chance that Jesus used these or similar petitions often in different forms and orders in his public prayers. It could be that the person or persons gathering and organizing the sayings in the Sayings Gospel Q put these sayings together to form Jesus’ prayer.
That is more background than I had intended to present. Let’s look at these several translations (not versions) of Jesus’ prayer. What do you think?
One more quick comment: The translation that you like best is probably not what we are looking for; we are looking for what Jesus teaches us about prayer – about how we might pray.
The translation with which most of us grew up is likely the Revised Standard translation – the pew Bible, copy written in 1952. But the Lord’s Prayer that we memorized is mostly from the King James translation. And our Methodist version of the prayer takes “trespasses” from one gospel and “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever” from the other.
Now, let’s discuss The Lord’s Prayer in its several translations – and there are many more. What do you think? What strikes you?
Let us conclude by praying the Lord’s prayer in its basic form – expressed in the common American English of our time:
Father,
Your name be revered.
Impose your imperial rule.
Provide us with the bread we need for the day.
Forgive our debts to the extent we have forgiven those in debt to us.
And please don’t subject us to test after test.
Amen.
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