March 27 2016
PATER NOSTER-THE LORD’S PRAYER….(1)
Why in the world would I waste your and my time writing on a prayer that is so familiar? Perhaps it being the Easter weekend is an excuse, as an extra touch of holiness then is not out of place, but still…..
And why the Lord’s Prayer? It is so ingrained in the church that I stand little chance to make people think differently about this prayer which Jesus first spoke as part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7). So, perhaps the saying “He hasn’t got a prayer” could indeed indicate that I have little chance in succeeding to make people read this spiel about the most familiar prayer in the world.
Yes, as you may suspect, there definitely is a hidden motive behind my desire to analyze this prayer. I take for granted that when Jesus spoke these now so well-known words the crowd more or less understood what he meant. It is my thesis that in the 2000 years since, the words have remained the same but no longer do they convey the original intent.
A little confession.
At night I almost always fall right away asleep – but it occasionally happens that after the initial 4-5 hours I wake up and OK, I’ll share it with you I meditate on this very prayer. So over the years I have developed some definite ideas what the words mean. No, I am not a theologian, and neither have I read any specific books or articles that deal with this prayer, so the ideas expressed are basically my own. Of course I am influenced by others, especially Johan Herman Bavinck, whom I will quote more than once. Here I will also cite Harold Bloom, who, some years ago, wrote THE AMERICAN RELIGION, an original analysis of the reigning theology of the ecclesiastical life of American religion, including Roman Catholic and the synagogue centered type of worship.
What I am trying to accomplish?
Nothing short of the impossible: I am trying to change the thinking and action of those who struggle with what is the essence of the gospel. I have always wondered why over the 2000 year history of the church its message and methods have basically remained constant, while everything else in the world has changed radically. My analysis of The Lord’s Prayer is an attempt to infuse some new thinking into the old edifice which is the church. I am aware that Jesus actually said that putting new stuff into old and used containers is bound to fail. So, yes, I may come to the ultimate conclusion that a new form and format of worship is needed. That’s the problem and the challenge when something different is attempted.
So, after this somewhat rambling introduction, I venture to deal with the meat of the matter.
OUR FATHER
It’s only in English that we call the prayer Jesus taught us “The Lord’s Prayer”. In most other languages it goes by the first two words: the prayer is still known in the Roman Catholic Church by its Latin name Pater Noster (Our Father), it goes by “Das Vater Unser” in German, “Het Onze Vader” in Dutch, and in French “Le Notre P?re.”
So let me start with the very first word ”OUR”.
That word signifies that God is the Lord of a community of believers. In the Apostle’s Creed the only article that comes with an elaboration is “I believe in one holy catholic church”, which is further explained as “The Communion of Saints”. J. H. Bavinck indicates in his BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END: A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION that we must shy away from individual salvation. Don’t get me wrong. Of course there is a personal aspect to salvation: all believers are in a daily struggle to stay on the course to eternity. But the Lord Jesus when he taught us this prayer emphasized the word OUR. I think Jesus did that for a purpose.
Bavinck writes:
”It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally enjoy God and be saved by him. The goal of our life can only be that we become part of the wider context of the kingdom of God, where all things are again united under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives ad rules for ever.”
That needs some explanation. What Bavinck says is that personal salvation and the salvation of the world are two sides of the same coin: you can’t have one without the other. THAT IS A RADICAL CONCEPT! We are not saved to go to heaven, while the world goes to pot. We are saved to be part of a redeemed world. That’s why Jesus died on the cross. We are saved as a community of believers, people who now already try to live the life of the New Creation, where God is all and in all. That very first word “OUR” indicates this startling fact, now almost forgotten in the church.
So what is the reigning belief today in the church?
By and large THE AMERICAN RELIGION (the title of a book by Harold Bloom, a distinguished professor of English who calls himself a secular Jew) points to a totally different concept, generally accepted by the church.
Bloom is well acquainted with the Hebrew, having worked on Bible translations. He is also very familiar with the New Testament, so when he talks about ‘religion’ he does so from a secular perspective, not coming from a certain religious point of view. That’s the reason I find his remarks convincing. Here then are some quotes from Dr. Bloom’s book THE AMERICAN RELIGION:
”The largest heresy among all those that constitute the American Religion is this most implicit and profoundly poetic of all heresies: the American walks alone with Jesus. ……Nothing that I have perceived in the American Religion is more persuasive than the image of the Southern Baptist “alone in the garden with Jesus”………….She knows beyond knowing, that she is no part of Creation, and she possesses the other American knowledge also, the freedom that is wildness, total spiritual solitude.”
Alone with Jesus, and not part of creation.
Dr. Bloom refers here to a most popular hymn, sung usually during the time preceding Easter. Even the choir I am part of sings this song. It starts with the words: “I come to the garden alone” and then the refrain: “He (Jesus) walks with me and the talks with me and he tells me I am his own; And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”
These words, so generally accepted in the church convey the notion that salvation is solely and exclusively an individual matter. It totally bans the word “OUR” and substitutes it with “MY”. This individualism is so ingrained in the church that we, without a second thought sing these words. Yet Jesus, when in the Garden of Gethsemane just before he was arrested, really wanted his complete support group to be with him and pray with him: there’s nothing there that even suggests what this hymn implies.
The essence of THE AMERICAN RELIGION is Gnosticism, which Bloom defines as disdain for creation and believing in individual divinity, splitting God from his creation. Americans believe that God knows us and we know God (Gnosis= knowledge in Greek) and loves them in a personal way. The American self stands outside creation. To be free is to be joined in solitude with God or Jesus, so it is not surprising that the preservation of creation is not a Christian aim in the USA.
Dr. Bloom concludes that the predominant religion in North America masks itself as Protestant Christianity yet has ceased to be Christian. He also writes that all faiths, the Reformed, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Jehovah’s Witness, the Mormons, are affected by this ideology.
Jesus foresaw this development and that’s why he started his prayer with the all-inclusive “OUR”.
Enough on that first word. The next word is FATHER.
The old fashioned notion of FATHER is used here. Today there almost always are two wage earners in the family, but in Jesus’ time the FATHER figure was the most significant. He was the provider, the principal worker, without whom there would be no family. The New Testament often mentions the ‘poor widow’ deprived of the most basics. Jesus repeatedly tells us to look after the widow and the orphans. Here the FATHER is God, the creator, responsible for all that is, and the One who also maintains the earth and all it contains. He is the One who dwells not in Heaven but, as the original Greek has it – also translated as such in German, Dutch and French – in the Heavens.
The Bible mentions three layers of heaven. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12: 2 mentions that he was caught up to the third heaven. The first heaven being anything below the Ozone layer, the second heaven the place where the stars and planets are located, including the sun and moon, and beyond that the third heaven is found, where God and his angels reside.
Typically Psalm 115: 16 states that “The Highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth (and the lower heavens) he has given to humanity, free to explore with space crafts and the Huddle machine.
So really the first line in the Lord’s Prayer should read “Our Father who are in the heavens (plural), hallowed be thy name.”
HALLOWED BE THY NAME
That really is old-fashioned language. The French, the Germans and the Dutch translations are much clearer here. In essence they say the same as the English, but more directly. In Dutch UW NAAM WORDE GEHEILIGD, in French QUE TON NOM SOIT SANTIFIÉ. Both translate as MAY YOUR NAME BE HELD HOLY.
The subjunctive form of grammar is used here to stress the importance and urgency of this matter. It does not mean that we use the words GOD or JESUS or CHRIST with a degree of reverence, that too is true, of course, but it primarily has everything to do with God’s essence. Psalm 8 makes this perfectly clear: “How majestic is your name, O Lord our God in all the earth”. Many others, especially Psalm 19, echo that claim where it says: “the heavens declare the glory of God”.
All of creation carries God’s signature. Romans 1: 20 even tells us that when a person fails to see God as the creator that person stands condemned. The Lord’s Prayer tells us that everything carries God’s signature and as such the earth and all it contains is holy.
The line MAY YOUR NAME BE HELD HOLY constitutes the heart of the prayer. Ignoring this concept means misunderstanding the entire Lord’s Prayer. Trees are holy, because they provide us with the oxygen we need every minutes of our lives. Soil is holy, because God fashioned us out of the ADAMAH, the earth, the very substance that provides us with our Daily bread. The name ADAM has been derived from that soil.
I really wonder why the church has never updated that archaic phrase of HALLOWED BE THY NAME. Perhaps we really don’t want to see creation as holy, even though it is GOD’S DIRECT WORD, his Primary revelation. We call the Bible THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, and yet, the Bible is a human book, infallible in its core-message, of course. Why has the church solely concentrated its efforts on the Bible while ignoring God’s direct revelation, the earth? I think that declaring the earth as holy is too radical for the church, even though it has been the principal object of God’s love (See John 3: 16). Fact is that God made the earth perfect in all regards, in everything imaginable.
If we really want to understand the remaining lines of this prayer, then we must acknowledge the truth of this first and foremost line, very awkwardly translated as “Hallowed by thy name”. It really means that EVERYTHING CREATED IS HOLY BECAUSE IT CARRIES GOD’S NAME, GOD’S SIGNATURE.
To be continued next week.