I don’t think I ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer until I was in my twenties.
I grew up in a church environment that wasn’t only non-liturgical, but was so self-consciously and deliberately. I won’t bore you too much with the details, but to a notable degree the Plymouth Brethren free church I grew up in developed and maintained its identity in more or less conscious opposition to the established Lutheran church across the road. What they did, we didn’t do.
Liturgy was one of the things we didn’t do. Liturgy, and the Lord’s Prayer. Thinking back over my almost 30 years in that church, I can only remember hearing the Lord’s Prayer recited once. And that guy was rebuked immediately after the service.
The Lord’s prayer was not something to recite; it was a pattern to be emulated and creatively employed. Every prayer should touch all the bases laid out in the Lord’s prayer: Praise, supplication, confession, and so on. Actually reciting it would go against what Jesus intended by teaching us the prayer. Recitation was empty words. Being Spirit-led meant being spontaneous and authentic. And unlike those Lutherans, we were Spirit-led.
The Lord’s prayer was not something to recite; it was a pattern to be emulated and creatively employed.
I’ve changed my mind as I’ve gotten older. While I recognize the validity of seeing the Lord’s prayer as a pattern, some years ago I started reciting the prayer every day.
Primarily it was because of a frustration with how bad I was at prayer and how badly I had been taught to pray. I just couldn’t seem to get it to work. My most real time with the Lord, it seemed, was on airplanes. Specifically during take off and landing. Most other times, I struggled even to remember to pray. And when I did remember, I often had no idea what to say. Focus eluded my scattered mind, thoughts fleeing everywhere.
I’m the kind of person who needs external sources of structure to keep me in check. Otherwise, entropy takes over and I eventually settle in a state of inertia. I found that structure in liturgy and in praying the Lord’s prayer specifically.
What I found in the Lord’s prayer were the words that I couldn’t come up with on my own in my spiritual desert. These words, originally spoken by the Lord himself, were there, no matter how parched my mouth. It was a life-line in spiritual downtimes, when I just couldn’t find the energy to come up with a prayer on my own. It introduced me to spirituality that wasn’t dependent upon my own effort, riding on whatever measure of self-discipline I could muster on that particular day (which was usually little or none). And what I found was that the Lord’s prayer wasn’t just a life-line, but something life-giving. It didn’t just keep me afloat, but slowly started lifting me, becoming a sort of spiritual baseline, injecting a quiet kind of vitality into my spiritual life in general.
The Lord’s prayer truly is a pattern. That’s just not the only thing it is.
I also found that the Lord’s prayer started seeping into my more spontaneous prayers. As I got used to the pattern of the Lord’s prayer and it became part of my spiritual marrow, it started to give all my other praying a deep, Christ-like shape. Experiencing this, I gain a new appreciation for what the church of my earlier years taught me: The Lord’s payer truly is a pattern. That’s just not the only thing it is. It’s a pattern, but it’s also a prayer to be recited. I mean, Jesus said so!
The weight of tradition, of knowing that not only have saints and sinners alike prayed the Lord’s prayer for millennia, but Jesus himself did too, is significant as well. I feel a special sort of connection with these saints and sinners, and this Lord, when I pray the Lord’s prayer. When I started praying it, it opened the door for me to explore other liturgical prayers of saints and theologians past. The Book of Common Prayer has become precious to me. How religion preserves and orients people towards the past is one of the most crucial things it has to offer in modern society.
At the church I now go to, a slightly charismatic nondenominational church plant, we aren’t big enough to have much of a children’s ministry. We’re trying, but we’re not quite there yet. So, my 5-year old daughter and I go to a Lutheran Inner Mission church in our neighborhood Sunday afternoons for Sunday school. They do it well—and they do it liturgically. Which means that they close every session with the Lord’s prayer. Last Sunday, I looked down at my daughter and heard how well she was keeping up with the words. My heart swelled. I have no idea what her future will hold spiritually. I have hopes and fears, but no idea. But I can rest assured that my praying the Lord’s prayer with her every night of her life has given her a precious vessel of faith that will be with her, whatever she goes through.