The Lord’s Prayer has become so familiar to us that its true meaning can be virtually inaccessible.
      It was never intended that way.
      The prayer originally was supposed to be a pattern given by Jesus to help the disciples express their own prayers to God.
      Instead over the centuries it has been memorized, repeated by rote and finally merged into the cultural flotsam and jetsam to resurface as the object of Internet jokes... like this one: A mother hears her three-year-old reciting the Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from e-mail, Amen.”
      Actually, I kinda like that one.
      Anyway, I want to look at the lesser-known version of the prayer recorded in Luke 11:2-4.
      Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
      It is “our” father, not “my” father. We must never lose sight of our connectedness to the community, even in personal prayer.
      Father is abba or “daddy,” the informal address of a child. He is “in heaven.” – ouranos in the Greek – “that which is revealed by ascending” and thus outside of time. But, strangely, also close enough to hear us.
      “Hallowed be thy name.” The pious Jews do not dare write the name of God, yet Jesus invites us to call him daddy. That doesn’t compute in our minds. It only makes sense through the intercession of Christ, who fulfilled the first four of the Ten Commandments concerning reverencing God.
      A saying in the Talmud proposes that we fail to hallow His name when we don’t give thanks for all, even for those things we do not like.
      Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done as in heaven, so in earth.
      Jesus said “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is here: repent ye and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). From everything we know about Jesus’ description of it, the kingdom comes “in earth” rather than “on earth” – we contain it in our own earthen vessels. It doesn’t come “by observation” and is in fact “within you.” So, this part of the prayer is for that kingdom and the will of God to flood every area of our life.
      Give us day by day our daily bread.
      The word for bread is the commonly used Greek word artos, which means bread. The word for “daily,” epiousos, is another story. It is only used twice in the Bible and only for the bread in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and Luke.
      Some say that it means tomorrow. Others say that it refers to the shewbread in the Holy Place in the Temple. Both could be correct, but it certainly doesn’t refer to the physical food needed for our sustenance.
      I believe that the origins of the words for “daily bread” point to its true meaning, the flesh of the Son that we partake of in communion. It literally means the “I am” bread. Jesus in John 6:48-51 says that He is that bread.
      And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us.
      This deals with the second tablet of the 10 commandments, and fulfills the last six, those dealing with our relationships with each other. All trespasses and sins are considered a debt, a wrong that requires satisfaction – but so is anything other than peace with one another. Christ is saying that we who pray for the remission of our debts must have already forgiven all others.
      Forgiveness either cascades from God through us to others or it can’t even begin.
      And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
      The Greek for “lead” is eisphero and is also used only twice in the New Testament, both times in this prayer. It means, “to go or carry inward.”
      Life itself is the “great tribulation” and “the valley of the shadow of death.” We are continually tempted to go inward – into our own thoughts – for a solution whenever confronted with any test. Jesus expands on this a little later in the Sermon on the Mount by saying, “Take no thought for your life...”
      Instead, we are in the same position as His first disciples when He said to them, “You are they which have continued with Me in My temptations” (Luke 22:28). What we think are our own tests or temptations are really His. (Because our whole life is His!) He has completed the test perfectly. It is finished.
      “Evil” is preceded by an article and means “the evil one.” Satan speaking through my fallen mind is the most evil thing I know. If I recognize the antichrist in myself, I won’t be tempted to go inward for anything.
      An inverted Lord’s Prayer has been used by practitioners of the occult for centuries as one form of the Black Mass. Rudolph Steiner in his book, The Fifth Gospel, claims that Hitler’s SS Corps recited a version of this prayer daily:
      “Amen,
      “The Evil One reigns.
      “We are led into temptation by pride and desire.
      “Our boundless ego involves us inevitably in enmity and strife and debt to our neighbor.
      “In a bitter struggle for power, control and material gain (our daily bread)
      “Wherein the will of the Father in heaven goes unheeded.
      “The kingdom of heaven is cut off in the earth and
      “The name of God is not hallowed.”
      This, indeed, is creepy. But it’s not much different than many of our own prayers, that begin with an “amen” – agreeing with ourselves about what we want, then tacking on God’s name as an afterthought. It should make us shudder.
      How then should we handle the Lord’s Prayer?
      When the scriptures were read in the synagogue in first century Judea, one man translated the Hebrew Torah readings into the common language of the congregation, which in Jesus’ day was Aramaic. This man was called a targumist and his explanation was known as a targum of the passage.
      I believe this is what Jesus had in mind for the Lord’s Prayer. We are to use it as pattern to guide us in targuming a prayer of our own to God.
      At the risk of being presumptuous, here is mine:
      “Our Daddy,
      “In the place without time where I am seated with You in Christ.
      “I see in all things your finished work and perfection and I give you praise and thanks for everything, especially the things that I don’t like.
      “May your Kingdom be in us today as it is in heaven.
      “Forgive in me those things that I am doing wrong as I am forgiving those who are not doing right by me.
      “Give us this day the bread of life, make Christ manifest in us today.
      “Keep us from going inward for any purpose other than to know that Jesus Christ is in us, and let us not deny you in anything or put anything or anyone before you. But to the contrary, deliver us from the evil one, ourselves. Let us depend on you totally. Amen.”

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