In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ casts a vision for our relationship with God (piety), our relationship with others (people), and our relationship with money and stuff (possessions). Regarding people, Jesus gives specific teaching about intercession. Jesus dreams of us becoming a community of people devoted to intercessory prayer for each other and for the world.
This teaching is found in what is called the Lord ’s Prayer. George Buttrick writes, “Two signs of Jesus abide, though all else be ignored or forgotten—a prayer and a cross…These are His memorial: not a tombstone or a moneyed foundation, but a simple prayer and a gallows set against the daybreak.”[i] When we think of Jesus, many of us think of his cross. We should also think of his prayer. Though his cross was his greatest gift to us, his prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—was also a tremendous gift to us. These two were Jesus’ greatest legacies—his cross and his prayer.
In fact, the prayer becomes a defining characteristic of those who follow Jesus. William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas write, “So if you are asked, “Who is a Christian?’ the best answer you can give is, ‘A Christian is none other than someone who has learned to pray the Lord’s Prayer.’”[ii] To be a Christian is to pray Jesus’ prayer. It’s as simple and as challenging as that. And to pray Jesus’ prayer is to intercede for others. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to intercede as we’ve never done before.
Frederick Buechner writes about the radical nature of this prayer: “We do well not to prayer the prayer lightly. It takes guts to pray it at all…’Thy will be done’ is what we are saying. That is the climax of the first half of the prayer. We are asking God to be God. We are asking God to do not what we want but what God wants…To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze. You need to be bold in another way to speak the second half. Give us. Forgive us. Don’t test us. Deliver us. If it takes guts to face the omnipotence that is God’s, it takes perhaps not less to face the impotence that is ours. We can do nothing without God. Without God we are nothing.”[iii] The prayer puts God in his place and us in ours. It invites the tiger out of the cage.
There are three petitions of adoration and surrender—hallowed be your name; your kingdom come; your will be done. These are followed by four petitions for our necessities—daily bread, forgiveness, no temptation, deliverance from the evil one. [iv] The intercessory nature of the prayer is seen in its use of first person plural: Our Father, give us our daily bread, forgive us our debts, lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil. This is not a prayer for me, myself, and I. It is a prayer for us. It is a prayer for others.
This focus on others begins with the prayer’s very first phrase: Our Father. David Buttrick writes, “If we pray the prayer, we must reach out to the world, knowing that everyone is a child of God no matter what their nationality, faith, language, skin color, or sexual orientation. God claims us all as family, even those heirs who may have misplaced their religious birth certificates. The ‘our’ in ‘our Father’ is not possessive, for who can possess God? No, the ‘our’ acknowledges that we cannot stand alone before God. We must stand with our neighbors. ‘Our Father’ forces us to join the human family.”[v] From the prayer’s beginning, we come to see ourselves as part of all of those who are children of the Father to whom we pray.
And what do we pray for the human family? While we certainly could pray many things, Jesus identifies four things about which we should intercede for others:
Give us our daily bread—that others would have the physical resources needed to survive and thrive.
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors—that others would have obstacles removed that stand between them and God and that they would remove the obstacles that stand between them and others.
Lead us not into temptation—that others would not have to endure times of trial, testing, or suffering.
Deliver us from evil—that others would be protected from the one who seeks their downfall.
Take ten minutes today and pray the second half of the Lord’s Prayer on behalf of a specific list of individuals: “Father, I come to you on behalf of __________. Please grant ___________ the physical resources he/she needs to survive and thrive. Please forgive _____________ for any sins that stand between him/her and you. Please help __________ to forgive others who may have done unkind things to him/her. Please keep __________ from times of trial, testing, or suffering. And please protect ___________ from the evil one.”
[i] George A. Buttrick So We Believe So We Pray (Abingdon, 1951), 121.
[ii] William Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas Lord, Teach Us (Abingdon, 1996), 18.
[iii]Ibid., 9.
[iv] George Buttrick 128.
[v] David Buttrick Speaking Jesus (Westminster John Knox, 2002), 143.
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