Prayer is a sacred technology for spiritual growth. It’s as low tech as you can get, and there’s no need to be high tech about it, but prayer still is a technology, a way of using tools of human invention to have an effect, to make a change. With prayer, the effect, or change is mostly in ourselves and our relationship with God, a deepening and widening of our souls and opening of our relationship with God. (If I call it an “ancient technology for soul growth” maybe that’ll draw clicks from conspiracy heads all into yada-yada about the lost civilization of Lemuria or whatever).

But there’s nothing secret here. No arcane initiation. No special elite status to unlock (for a fee, of course).

The tools of prayer are very simple and available to everyone: words, silence, breath, maybe movement, maybe melody and rhythm. Even more fundamental than any of those tools, the basic technology of prayer is our attention. If we pray with words, if we pray with silence, if we pray with song or with dance, or with scripture or prayer beads or what have you, any of that is only important in how they direct and shape our attention.

The different methods of prayer, the different practices of prayer are ways of directing and shaping our attention so we may attend to the mystery of God, attend to the sacred reality of how the Divine is at work through this world and through our lives, attend to the spiritual dimension of things, attend to our souls and to what our souls need in our reliance on a God beyond the limits of our lives. This kind of prayerful attention to the sacred dimension of reality often has a posture of reverence, a posture of gratitude, a posture of humility.

To pray with such attentiveness changes us. We find we receive gifts, often unbidden, by grace, that nourish our souls.

As Jesus taught in our scripture reading today, if we just pray to show off in public how righteous and devout we are, that doesn’t do our souls any good, or anyone else’s. Does that still have any relevance for this day in age? I’m afraid so.

Also, if we just pray by rote, just saying the words or going through the motions without attention to the meaning, that doesn’t do our souls any good either.

Rather, Jesus taught, we should pray “in secret,” meaning to pray in a way that’s removed from any ego rewards, so we can focus our attention away from performance, away from distractions, and toward the actual reality and mystery of the Holy One Beyond Name who meets us in the depths of our souls.

Our adult spiritual formation group has been doing a close study of the Lord’s Prayer, going line by line, slowly and carefully reflecting on what this prayer does when we let it shape our attention, rather than just rattling it off.

So, what I hope to do this week and next with my sermons, is to help us all explore and deepen how we pray the Lord’s Prayer, how we let its ancient wisdom direct and shape our attention as we pray.

Today, I’m not going to get very far past the first word.

From the very first word, Jesus’ prayer can shift our consciousness, you could say, can open our minds and our hearts.

The first word is “Our.”   

It’s not “My.” It’s “Our.”

The entire prayer is spoken in the first-person plural, not singular. We pray as part of a community. Jesus makes this clear from the very first word.

The prayer begins with an evocation, a way of calling on God, a way of addressing God, a way of stirring our attention into an awareness of the Divine, and a way of putting ourselves into conscious relationship with the sacred reality of the Holy One.

How we address God shapes our posture through which we relate to God.

What Jesus does is address God in a way that pushes our egos out of the spotlight. God is not “my” God. God is our God. This means the God of everyone. Not just our little self-righteous tribe. Jesus makes that clear through his life and teaching. The Prophets do too. When we pray to God we pray to the God of all and everyone.

This means that in evoking God I’m immediately thrown into an awareness of my relationship with the Holy Creator of myself and of all life, and at the same time I’m invited into an awareness of my relationship with others as well.

Now, Jesus doesn’t use the word “God” in the first line of the prayer. He uses the word “Abba.” As far as I know this is unique to Jesus, addressing “God” as “Abba,” and “Our Abba.”

“Abba” here, in Aramaic or Hebrew, is closest to “Papa,” in English. It is not the formal “Father” that so many translations of the Lord’s Prayer use. Rather, it’s the informal, endearing way a real child gets their daddy’s attention.

Referring to God as “Our Abba” is a way of evoking our relationship with God as being a sweet and innocent expression of trust and adoration.

This is move on Jesus’ part that is automatically humbling, especially for grown adults. Where’s the swagger in it? Where’s the tough and cynical and hard-won maturity? Where’s the rugged individualism? Jesus challenges our egos to accept our position of absolute dependence on our Holy Creator, the Creator of the Universe.

Now, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: God is beyond puny human categories like gender. God is as much “Our Mama” as “Our Papa.” And not contained by either or by both.

The nature of the Divine is transcendent. This is a big word for a big reality that no word can contain or convey. Neither masculine nor feminine nor both can contain the transcendent reality of the Holy.

Yet prayer is all about how we relate to God, being who we are. Jesus is teaching us to relate to God in a way that is loving and personal and accessible …

At the same time, in the same breath, Jesus directs our attention to God’s transcendence:

“Our Abba in heaven” – the Holy Source of All Being, whose Being is beyond being, in a realm we call heaven, beyond the boundaries of this earthly realm.

So, the first line of the prayer takes us beyond our small egos into our shared relationships together with a God who relates to us in love, whose true nature is at the same time transcendent.

The second line is, “May your Name be revered as holy,” “Hallowed be thy name.”

This further calls our attention to the transcendence of the Holy One, whose Name is beyond name. This Name is beyond “Abba” beyond “God” beyond “Adonai” or “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” or anything a chattering ape can utter…

A Great Mystery before which we can only fall silent.

Jesus’ prayer calls us to a posture of reverence, of awe.

And that’s where I’m going to leave things, for now.

Next week I’ll share some more reflections about where Jesus’ prayer takes us from there. But it’s important we don’t get caught up in words.

Whatever we use in prayer is ultimately just a way of pointing, to direct our attention beyond itself, an invitation to open our awareness to holy depth and breadth beyond ourselves.

“That of which we cannot speak we must pass over in silence” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

For the goodness of this, for Jesus’ teachings about this, I give thanks.

Thanks be to God.

You can view video of this sermon here.

Delivered Sunday, June 2, 2024, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge

Image by Lutz Peter from Pixabay