Conclusion: Lord, Teach Us to Pray

A long time ago — some two thousand years now — an unnamed student dared to make a request of his teacher. This student had seen his teacher engaged in prayer many times, in fact, he had most likely heard him pray as well, but on this day that student was not satisfied with merely observing his teacher, he wanted instructions. We aren’t told exactly how long these two had known each other before this conversation occurred, but it was clearly a long enough period of time for the student to feel comfortable enough to inquire about something that was, up to that moment, a private act. Prior to this particular day, the teacher left his students whenever he prayed and went to a desolate place, often a mountain, by himself. It wasn’t until very much later, nearly at the very end of the teacher’s life, that we read of the teacher specifically asking his students to accompany him to prayer, but at that time he only invited three to go with him. On this day, however, the teacher apparently prayed close enough so that his students were able to see what he was doing.

While the teacher prayed a short distance away, it seems likely that all of the teacher’s students were present, and perhaps they were even discussing prayer. And when the teacher rose and began walking back toward the students, a hurried discussion may have occurred about who was going to ask the teacher their question. Perhaps that discussion had not even come to its natural conclusion before the teacher broke into the circle of his students. It is not difficult to picture Jesus looking around at the faces of the quickly and recently silent group of men and women while they returned his gaze with blank but expectant faces looking as though they had just been caught doing something they shouldn’t have. The silence may have lasted only a brief second, but to one of the students, the silence probably became overwhelming. He blurted out his request and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

I think it is possible that after this disciple’s request, another moment of silence ensued during which the students may have wondered if they had pried too far. Jesus probably smiled as he looked around this small circle of students before answering because he knew they had just asked the most important question they had ever asked him — the most important question they could ever ask. They probably had already questioned him about the Torah, the religious leaders, the political situation with the Romans, his miracles, his parables, his control over demons, and his bizarre comments regarding his own death. But this was the question Jesus had been waiting for them to ask. Nothing was more important to Jesus than this question, but Jesus knew they had to ask it; it wasn’t a topic he could bring up on his own until they were ready. They might have thought they were only asking Jesus about prayer, but Jesus knew this request was about so much more.

Prayer is not merely a ritual that needs to be performed, neither is it the thing that identifies a person as religious, or marks a person as being one of Jesus’s followers; prayer is the way in which Jesus’s students learn to be Jesus’s disciples. Prayer transforms followers from spectators into participants. Prayer, the sort Jesus was about to teach them, introduces disciples to their true Father and to what their true Father wants for their lives. This prayer was never intended to be shouted from the hilltops, rather it was given so it might be whispered in the darkened corners of a closet, pondered while walking through nature, digested while in the doctor’s waiting room, recited while stuck in traffic, and contemplated in those silent moments before falling asleep. It is a prayer upon which Jesus’s disciples must rely if they wish to ever return to their true home and become as Jesus is, a child of their heavenly Father.

There are many other prayers that can, should, and will be offered to the Father, but the Lord’s Prayer is the one prayer without which Jesus’s disciples cannot live. This is the prayer about which Jesus taught that day when he climbed the mountain and gave what we now call the Sermon on the Mount; it tells Jesus’s students how to be his disciples, how to speak with the Father, and how the Father speaks to them. In the hands of Matthew and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, this prayer enlivens Matthew’s Gospel and declares the holiness of the Father, the nature of his kingdom, the parameters of his will, the depth of his provision, the extent of his forgiveness, the wisdom of his guidance, the strength of his protection, and the eternality of his glorious and powerful reign. The Lord’s Prayer declares the entirety of the gospel, frames the totality of the Bible, and defines the life we were created to live.

When Jesus broke the silence that day after his disciple’s simple request, he showed his students what it means to be a child of the Father. Moses brought the Law and the sacrificial system down from the mountain so the Israelites could make restitution with the Father and avoid his wrath, but when Jesus gave this prayer to his disciples, he showed them how to approach the Father and experience his eternal love as children of the Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus. Besides salvation and eternal life, the Lord’s Prayer might just be the most important gift Jesus has ever given to his disciples. We would do well to become obedient to Jesus’s words when he said, “Pray then like this…”