Lenten Study 1. (Drawing on ‘Thy Will Be Done’ by Stephen Cherry.)

Part 1. Introduction to the ’s The Lord’s Prayer is the best known and most widely used of all Christian . Take a few moments to reflect on the prayer then write a few words that express your encounters and relationship with it. You may decide to write a poem, create a mind map or draw a picture instead. (We have about 7 minutes for this activity.)

The Lord’s Prayer is written in poetic form making it easy to recite and remember. Like much of the Scriptures, it is challenging in interpretation, layered with theological meaning and yet practical in its grounding for daily life. It is primarily about the relationship between humanity and .

We can assume that the prayer arose from the times of solitude and quiet prayer that sought on a regular basis. While this prayer has become communal, it’s the quiet, sincere prayer ‘behind closed doors’ that Jesus commends. Prayer, according to Jesus, should never be motivated by our need to impress others or to manipulate God with our words and wants.

What does prayer mean to you?

How do you pray?

When is prayer most meaningful?

Jesus suggests that prayer should be ‘light’ and not a burden. Is this your experience with prayer?

1 Matthew 6. 9-13. (a literal translation from the Greek) Father of us the one in the , let be revered the name of you, let come the kingdom of you, let be done the will of you, as in also on earth. The bread of us daily give us today. Forgive us the debts of us, as also we have forgiven the debtors of us. And do not bring us into temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

Note down any patterns of words that you can see.

If we look closely, we can see that the prayer divides readily into two halves. The first half of the prayer is about God. It is only after our acknowledgement of God and who God is that we ask for ourselves: for our daily provisions, for forgiveness, to be spared temptations and for rescue from the evil one. Cherry paraphrases this section of the prayer as: ‘Give us what we need and keep us away from everything that would harm us.’ He states that ‘the prayer begins with God’s fatherhood and ends with God’s glory. And in between it is focused on three facets of human lived experience- our needs in the present, our relationship with what has gone wrong in the past, and our fears for the future.’

Part 2. Our Father who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name.

If we call our Father Him who is incorruptible and just and good, we must prove by our life that the kinship is real. Gregory of Nyssa

Naming God as Father: What language should we use in addressing God?

Do you think ‘Father’ is a suitable name for God? What other titles or names could we use?

2 Cherry claims that in naming God as ‘Father’ Jesus is not referring to his or to our personal relationship with our biological male parent. For Jesus, while he showed care for his mother, his genetic family unit did not take priority over his community of . Cherry claims that when Jesus names God as ‘Father’ in this prayer, ‘he was shifting the focus of our relationship with God from one based on power and deference to one based on care and support.’….. ‘from the institutional to the relational.’ Catholic theologian Gerald O’Collins suggests that God should be referred to as a ‘motherly father.’ How could this change our view of God?

The prayer is not written in the first person. It refers to ‘our father’, not ‘my father.’ So, when we pray this prayer, we place ourselves in relationship with Other along with God. Cherry states, ‘if and as we let the Lord’s Prayer shape us, we will find that the barriers around the self begin to dissolve and we begin to discover our true identity not as ‘me’ but as a member of a broad communion of people who belong to each other through God.’

Who or what is Other under these circumstances?

Is the use of the prayer limited because it’s patriarchal in nature?

Below are two images that express within them the motherly-fatherhood of God. The first is Rembrandt’s ‘The Prodigal Son’ in which one hand of the father figure is painted as a feminine hand and the other as a masculine hand. How can we best express the non- and dual-gender of God?

3 The second image is an earlier one by the icon painter Andrei Rublev of God as based on the story of the divine visitation announcing the conception of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah. The figures are androgenous, both male and female and neither. What do you think the artist is trying to say about God?

Who is in heaven. What do you think of when you think of heaven?

While God is transcendent, God is also immanent or close to us. Augustine wrote in his Confessions; ‘God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.’ For , heaven was not about God’s transcendence but about God’s power to hold and help and support and is a place where ‘all desires are fulfilled in the intimacy of God.’

Hallowed be your name. ‘Hallowed’ refers to God’s holiness. What does ‘holiness’ mean for you? Biblical scholar Paula Gooder refers to God’s holiness as ‘God’s shininess’. God’s goodness glows! So, when we ask for God’s name to be hallowed, we are recognising and acknowledging the goodness of God and our relationship to that goodness.

What other things do we call ‘holy’ and why?

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