From the Vicarage - June

 “Our Father….”

If I said those words in the midst of a gathering of people, and asked others to join in, I have little doubt that very quickly there would be a good number of individual voices reciting together ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. It is a prayer which many of us learned in our youth – whether at home, or school, or in a church. It is the prayer which is most known and most often spoken every day all around the world in over 7,000 languages. It is the prayer used at everything from our King’s Coronation Service to our own family gathering for a baby’s baptism, as well as Sunday by Sunday in the services offered in Christian churches of every size and denomination, wherever they may be.

It is of course the prayer which goes all the way back to the words of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, and to words given in response to his disciples asking “Lord, teach us to pray…” So, in essence, we could say it is not in fact a prayer at all – it is a lesson on how to pray, and what to pray.

In a few days’ time the Church celebrates what some will remember as Whitsuntide but is now more often called Pentecost – the festival 50 days after Easter when the first friends of Jesus received the gift and strength of God’s Spirit to come out of hiding and to begin to live their new-found lives of faith with outward joy and courage. The bible tells us that between Easter and Pentecost those disoriented friends had spent time together in prayer. How often in those 50 days, I wonder, had they used their earliest version of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’?

The Lord’ Prayer consists of less than 70 words, and yet it covers a diverse range of subjects, needs and concerns. There are petitions for food and forgiveness, for protection from temptation and evil, and an awareness of both the things of earth and the things of heaven! But the whole scene is set by those simple, even child-friendly (until we get to the ‘hallowed’ bit), opening words…. ‘Our Father...’, or in its original language ‘Father, of Ours…’

This is not your father or mine – but the Father to whom we can all look, in whose company we all have a place, and in whose presence we all have a welcome. That’s where the prayer begins for a reason. It reminds us that everything about prayer is about relationships. We can only pray at all because we can relate to this ‘Father God’ who listens and loves, and whatever we pray for is as vital and necessary for others (our sisters and brothers), as it is for ourselves. That too is why prayer is more about slowly having our own minds and hearts changed by the encounter, than it is about thinking that by sheer persistence we might eventually change God’s mind!

Think about it. Return to ‘The Lord’s Prayer’.

Say it slowly, with attention and intention;

with a willingness to relate, and an openness to being changed.

With Love & Prayer                      Carolyn  (Vicar)