Kingdom Building
July 27, 2019
Scripture Reading: Luke 11:1-13
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’ –Luke 11:1-4
The last line of Luke’s version of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, we now call the Lord’s Prayer, quoted above from the NRSV (as does Matthew’s version in the NRSV), is not the line we are accustomed to saying. The traditional prayer that flows from our mouths so comfortably is from the King James version, And lead us not into temptation.I pray this language nearly every Sunday because that was what I was taught from childhood and my faith tradition continues to use it. I may have even questioned as a child whether God would ever lead me into temptation. I was that kind of child. I still wonder that today. I guess Pope Francis has had the same question and made the audacious decision a couple of months ago to order a change.
In the revision of the New American Bible, the changed text of the Lord’s Prayer will read, “and do not subject us to the final test” (Matthew 6:13, Luke 11:4)*.
The Protestant rendition of the Lord’s Prayer ends with a doxology not included in either Matthew or Luke. We all juggle with the choices of sin, trespasses, and debts. I see no problem with saying comforting words from our childhood when we say the Lord’s Prayer or the twenty-third Psalm for that matter as we memorized them in our youth. Being led into temptation is a constant evil we must confront; being protected from temptation is not a bad thing to ask from God. My guess is that is what most of us thought we were praying when we learned these words.
I do think it is important that we understand that we at times create meanings of scripture that are not in the words themselves and thus we must strive to dig deeply into what are the messages of the Bible based on their original context, our faith history, and the changing meanings and parsing of words over the centuries. Think how much our knowledge-base was expanded with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Our faith is a growing and maturing life and our study cannot keep up with that if we allow it to stagnate.
Prayer: Lord, help us Do [our] best to present [ourselves] to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15 NRSV) Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV) Amen.
*https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/pope-changes-text-of-gloria-lords-prayer
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.