A strong sense has come to me lately when praying the Our Father of standing as one with the whole people of God. We ask these petitions not first for ourselves and then for others. We ask them as the one people whom God has made His own by naming them His in Baptism. Whenever we pray the Lord's Prayer we are interceding for the Church and for the world and by the time we're done there's not a person forgotten or a good thing left unasked for.
Thinking more fully into the Lord's Prayer, we have the Prayer of the Church in LSB, Divine Service, Setting Five on page 215-216. When praying it and thinking that "us" is never less than the total company of the baptized (and yes, I'd include those in heaven who go on struggling and praying for us who are still walking by faith and not by sight and who are one body with us), you get the feel for how vast this intercession truly is. This particular form is a turning into prayer of Luther's form from the Deutsche Messe of 1526.
2 comments:
I had a long conversation about the theology of the Our Father over coffee at the weekend: (it was a theological college weekend - I'm not usually quite so pious).
It struck me for the first time that I can not say "our" until I have first said "my". I am not in community with the people of God until I am in communion with Him. I found that very comforting.
Blessings
D.P.
Have any Lutheran writings on the Our Father mentioned that it was not a new prayer written by Jesus but a version of traditional Jewish daily prayer, found to this day not word for word but nonetheless in recognisable form in the siddur?
With this in mind, the passage in which Jesus gives the "Lord's Prayer" is even more radical -- having just weighed in against making a show of things and thinking God is impressed with spectacular prayers, Jesus then offers as a model for prayer a thoroughly traditional common prayer.
Bleiben beim Alt, so zu sagen!
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