What's Wrong with the Lord's Prayer?
- Keith Stanglin
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
by Keith D. Stanglin
Over twenty years ago, a former Roman Catholic, who was new a member of the Church of Christ where I once served as a minister, expressed to me his appreciation for our church’s respect for Scripture and for the simplicity of the worship assembly. But I remember one Sunday, while speaking with him in the building’s foyer, he asked me about something that truly puzzled him. He wanted to know why we didn’t say the Lord’s Prayer. After all, it’s a biblical prayer, one that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. I agreed that it should be said, but my hands were tied; I was a lowly associate minister with no influence, at least not enough to change this. Churches of Christ have traditionally not recited the Lord’s Prayer, and that was that.
I once heard about a city-wide ecumenical gathering of ministers for breakfast, where the preacher from the Church of Christ was asked to lead a public prayer. He began with the first two lines of the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name”), and as everyone else was just joining in to continue, he proceeded to something completely different. That’s what I call a false start.
Why no further? Over the years, I have heard no good reasons for this omission, but I am aware of three bad ones. I have ordered them from worst to slightly less worse.
First, because many Restorationists have a very strict view of covenants or dispensations—influenced especially by Alexander Campbell’s “Sermon the Law”—they see the Mosaic dispensation, with all its laws and regulations, ending with Jesus, specifically with his death, nailing those laws to the cross (a misinterpretation of Col. 2:14). The more extreme versions of this position hold that even Jesus’ teachings, including his instructions for prayer, must fall under the old covenant, now obsolete. With this approach, all pre-Pentecost teaching and practice is suspect, unless it is taught or practiced under the new covenant as well. (I think this is a minority position and certainly inconsistently applied, but it’s interesting to see how it surfaces when it’s convenient.) This interpretation is hard to take seriously from a Christian point of view, for it would render all of Jesus’ teachings irrelevant to the Christian church. In that case, why would Jesus have bothered to teach what would so soon be obsolete, and why would the Gospel writers have bothered to record now obsolete teachings of Jesus for the post-Pentecost church to ignore? To state the obvious, I’ll just assert here that Christ’s teachings to his disciples are in fact normative (or, at least, permissible!) for Christians.
Second, since the “kingdom” has already “come,” then this is the one phrase thought to be inappropriate to pray after the establishing of the church on Pentecost (which is why one must stop before that third line). If “kingdom” is identical with “the post-Pentecost community of Jesus’ Spirit-filled disciples on earth,” then maybe the kingdom has arrived, and perhaps in its fullness. But to limit the reign of God in this way would be a narrow and impoverished view of the kingdom, which was present in the hearts of God’s people before Pentecost, and will come to fulfillment in a new way in the eternal eschaton. Until God reigns fully in each and every heart and mind, then the kingdom still has some “coming” to do.
Third, recited prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer, are sometimes criticized for being “rote” and therefore not heartfelt. Churches of Christ inherited a low-church Protestant affinity for extemporaneous prayer, a reaction to church liturgies that were recited by people with apparently little thought or appreciation for what they were saying. But the recitation, even frequent recitation, of a uniform set of words is not the source of the problem. If it were, then people who sing the same hymn from memory, or who tell their spouse the same three words—“I love you”—every day, would be equally guilty of mouthing empty words. The problem is not with the meaningful words, but with the speaker’s potential lack of concentration or care for what is being spoken. Avoiding the words is not the solution; understanding and appreciating the words is.
The bad reasons now dispensed with, I won’t enumerate all the good reasons for praying the Lord’s Prayer. It is worth pointing out, however, that praying this Prayer unites us with nearly 2,000 years of Christians who have practiced this Prayer not only by praying it, but also by reflecting on and writing about it. First-century Syrian Christians were instructed to say it three times daily (see the Didache), and it quickly became a standard component of the Eucharistic prayers every Sunday. Many church fathers wrote treatises on the Prayer, and the Prayer (along with the Decalogue, Apostles’ Creed, and two sacraments) was a standard topic of later catechisms.
The content of the Prayer is not exhaustive, but it is rich. Like God’s written word, it is both shallow enough to wade in and deep enough to swim in. It unfolds into deeper reflection, line by line, but it is also easily understood. It can be a quick and easy way to focus. I often advise people who have a hard time praying to start with the Lord’s Prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer is good to pray both individually and corporately. Individually, it is an important daily practice. And I’m pleased to be part of a congregation that prays the Prayer together at every Lord’s Day assembly. This is to follow the instruction of Jesus, who commanded, “Thus you pray” (Matt. 6:9). How could a Christ-following church not encourage this simple practice?
The Center for Christian Studies joins this long tradition not only by recommending the practice of this Prayer in corporate and individual worship but also by continuing to publish the book, Lord, Teach Us to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer for Today’s Church, which was co-edited by Michael Weed, Todd Hall, and me. A brief chapter is devoted to each phrase of the Prayer, with some questions for reflection at the end of each chapter.
Like our other books from the Center for Christian Studies, this book is intended for use in church and in family settings. If it stirs Christians and churches to begin using the Lord’s Prayer in their communal and individual worship, or if it helps Christians and churches who already use the Prayer on a regular basis to hear it anew with fresh ears, then the book will have accomplished its purpose. Consider taking a look at this book, and, more important, consider the benefit of the church’s regular and frequent recitation and reflection on the Prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray.