There's been a lot of conversation these days about pronouns, names, and that kind of thing, and essentially what it boils down to is a desire for people to be spoken to the way they would like to be spoken to. That's simple enough, and that carries over not only for the people you see here on earth, but also to God himself, as well. At this point in the scriptures, in our Gospel reading, the disciples ask Jesus a pretty important question: You're God, we've been talking to you for a while now, but seeing as how we have you here in person, how would you like to be spoken to? What would you like to hear from us?
The response from the Lord Christ is to give the Lord's Prayer - the best known prayer in all of Christianity. The one that is engraved, tattooed, on posters and art all over the place. And for good reason, because when Jesus was asked how we should pray, that's what he gave to us.
But like with everything else that we have in the scriptures, this isn't something that God gives us because it's good for him. After all, he's God. He doesn't need anything from you. And it also isn't something that he gives us because he'll refuse to listen to us unless it's in exactly those words. Quite the opposite, and you can feel free to speak to God in all kinds of words, as people do all the way through the Bible. So if it's not for those reasons, then why are we doing the Lord's prayer at all?
Let's rethink it. Maybe you're not praying that prayer to guarantee that God will hear you, and you're not praying it to get something specific out of him, so why that prayer? Because God knows that we need something from it instead of him needing something. In other words, prayer isn't just for you to get things out of God. This isn't letters from Santa territory in which you're trying very hard to get things from God. This is you communicating with the divine, and like with all mentions from scripture, the communications go both ways.
For you see, the holy scriptures of God are his word for you. And when you pray from the Lord's prayer, you're speaking scripture aloud. You're hearing the word of God as you say it. And that's important, you know. In the Lord's prayer, you're communicating that God is the creator of the universe, the maker of all that there is. He knit you together in your mother's womb, formed and fashioned you and all other things. The waterfalls, the stable earth, the great salt sea around the waves' tempestuous shocks. All that.
This is the force that you approach. This is the force that you approach with your petty concerns - the magnificence of the creation of the universe and all that is in it. The force that shattered the Egyptians, cast them into darkness and wrecked their chariots in the sea. The force that confounded the tower of Babel's builders, and scattered them over the face of the earth. The same God who flooded the earth to expel its wickedness, and drowned the surface of the water under the firmament.
That's who you're talking to. And this is a dynamic power. I use the word dynamic as a word that shares its root with dynamite, dynamo, and so on. The root word is power, truly and genuinely. Dynamite is the substance of stored, explosive power. A dynamo is an electrical generator that makes everything that you use work. And God is Dynamic in that same way. Awesomely powerful, which is something that we are tempted to forget. When you're writing a letter to Santa, you're not thinking too much about Him being an awesomely powerful presence in time. You're thinking about how he can give you gifts if you've been good. But he's not the creator of the universe. He's a guy at the north pole that gives you things.
If you're approaching God as a person that you just makes demands to, you'll be tempted to forget all that he does. You'll just think that he's a source for you to get things. A genie of sorts. But we base our interactions with God, based on the Lord's prayer, on God the way he actually is. Yes, he's approachable, but that's what makes it all the more majestic and wonderful. That is, if you're genuinely communicating with the author of creation, and the fact that you can come to him calmly, politely, almost intimately, and ask for your daily bread is quite the thing.
In fact, we will go one further, and state happily that what you're doing is talking to the creator of the universe in a colloquial way, which is why you need to be reminded of who he is before you start stripping this away into things that are unimportant or silly. Yes you're colloquial, yes, you're intimate, but you need to remember what the forces are that you're invoking.
This is similar in many ways to how things work in a marriage, for the great enemy of marriage is contempt and complacency. That is, you struggled and strove to enter into a relationship, worked as hard as you could to win someone over, put in effort and time, and then you end up in a world where you take that person for granted all the time. They no longer seem special because you're too familiar with them. That's why it's advocated that you take your spouse out on dates, etc, because you need to place them once again in a world where you are actually eager to see them, and want to impress them. You're genuinely supposed to be in a space where you are reminding yourself of what a prize your spouse is, and always has been. And nobody wants you to think about this after they're gone only. You can do it now.
In that same way, part of what you do in the Lord's prayer is to approach God but in a spirit of deep reverence and awe, partially because of how blessed and fortunate you are to have something this magnificent so close to you. These are things you're going to be tempted to forget if you only make demands and issue decrees. But if you know what it is that you're talking to, things take on a bit more gravity.
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