Our Father
We need to be taught how to pray. Do you ever reflect on that?
There was a time when my daughter was little when she would ask me to pray for her tummy. This was after story time, after family prayers, right when I was tucking her into bed and about to turn out the lights. Without fail, before I could get out of the room she would whisper, “Dad…” “Yes, honey” “Will you pray for my tummy?”
Slowly I would come back to her bedside and sit and pray with her, reassuring her that her stomach would be fine and she just needed some rest. This went on for weeks before I finally asked her why she doesn’t pray to God herself and ask him to protect her tummy. She responded that she didn’t know how to pray. That night I began to teach her by inviting her to repeat after me. As she became more comfortable, I asked her to switch roles with me. She then began leading the prayer and I would repeat it. She just needed me to teach her how to pray.
We are no different from children. We ourselves need to learn how to pray. Truth be told, after a while it doesn’t hurt to re-learn, to sit at Jesus’ feet again and learn how to pray. And that is what we want to do this Lenten season: open up our scriptures to Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 6 where he teaches us how to pray. More than just words we are invited to repeat, the prayer itself teaches us so much about who God is, what is true about the world, and what is true about us. Over the next six weeks we will look at the Lord’s Prayer, section by section, and (re)discover what it means to pray.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN
Read the following passages with your Mission Community:
Some discussion questions based on God as our Father:
Discuss a time when you extended compassion to another person. What did it feel like to offer that? In light of this experience of offering compassion, what does it feel like to imagine receiving compassion from the Father of all compassion? Do you usually see God and experience God this way? Are you in need of comfort right now?
Sometimes, our experiences within our family of origin or events from our past can cause us to live fearfully, or associate God with a particular negative experience of fatherhood. Everyone in the group comes with a different story. Take a moment to share in one word, a redemptive quality of fatherhood that you would like to experience in God. (Examples: affirmation, love, forgiveness, strength, etc.)
HALLOWED BE THY NAME
Read the following passages with your Mission Community:
Some discussion questions:
Have you experienced God as “holy”, as transcendent, as “other”?
To make “hallow” means to treat something as holy and set apart. In the Lord’s Prayer hallowing God’s name is a petition, something that is active. What are some ways in which we can hallow God’s name?
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
Taken together, these two lines reveal a striking truth - that God is both immanent and transcendent. On one hand, God is our intimate Father who deeply cares for us. On the other hand, He is “in heaven” and his name is holy and to be hallowed.
Do you identify more with one or the other? With God as immanent or God as transcendent? Do you see any pitfalls if one of these aspects of God were either overemphasized or underemphasized?
Close with a time of prayer. Share needs and petitions with one another and then end with either Midday Prayer or Compline.
For further reading and study we highly encourage you to read To Be A Christian: An Anglican Catechism, particularly pages 68-81.