The Lord’s Prayer: A Radical Manifesto

The Lord’s Prayer: A Radical Manifesto

         Part one of a two-part series on the Lord’s Prayer

February 8, 2026

Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf

Readings: Matthew 6:5-12

Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.

CENTRAL FOCUS of the SERIES:

To sensitize and to reframe the Lord’s Prayer as a radical orientation to life as the God of Deliverance and distributive justice dreams it and wills it.

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to God who is in secret, and the Holy One who sees in secret will reward you.[a]

7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for God knows what you need before you ask.

9 “Pray, then, in this way:
Our Father in heaven, may your name be revered as holy.
10 May your kingdom come. May your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.[b]12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.

 

On an Easter Sunday, two billion Christians recite this manifesto—a statement we want to manifest. In Protestant Christianity, it is called the Lord’s Prayer. Roman Catholics call it the “Our Father,” and the early Christians called it the Abba Prayer.

Last week, I shared about active hope, about the call to hope not on the basis of an expected outcome, but to act out of our vision of what God and our souls truly long to be fully manifested in the world. It is our vital connection to that vision that can make the difference in our actions; our nearness to it, our understanding of it, our trust in it and commitment to it.

I learned the Lord’s Prayer in third grade Sunday School, but I don’t think a third grade understanding of it or any other faith matter is adequate for a lifetime. So today and next Sunday, I’ll be sharing about the Lord’s Prayer and how it’s important for our life of faith and our faithful presence in the world.

One translation of the medieval Islamic poet Rumi says, “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Such a beautiful way to name the many ways to pray, to make a connection to the Great Mystery and Source we often call God. So what about this way of prayer connection that we call The Lord’s Prayer? I’m indebted to scholar and author John Dominic Crossan’s book, The Greatest Prayer, for shaping these reflections.

Crossan calls The Lord’s Prayer a strange prayer,

“…a prayer from the heart of Judaism on the lips of Christianity for the conscience of the world…”

From our story in Matthew this morning, we have Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. He’s talking about ostentatious behavior and includes prayer. He begins his suggestion about praying this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. For today, let’s explore these first two pieces of this prayer about naming.

What’s in a name anyway? Does naming matter?
Do you know these people?
Marion Morrison? [John Wayne]
Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.? [John Denver]

Names in our culture might often have to do with sounding a certain way or being in vogue, but in ancient societies names often denoted qualities. Names spoke more to the nature and reality of that person, that presence.

The ancient story of Moses and the burning bush from the book of Exodus is a naming story. Moses turns aside because he is confronted with paradox; a bush that is burning but not consumed. When Moses asks God’s name, he is given two beautiful answers. The first can be translated several ways, “I am who I am,” “I will be who I will be.” In essence, the story says God is un-nameable in specific, the name beyond names, the reality of Being itself. In this sense, ultimately God cannot be named definitively. All of our names for the Divine are limited metaphors that cannot be taken literally. This is a humble and sacred not knowing, not possessing, not limiting.

Yet Moses also hears of God as the One who has been present to his ancestors and the one who has heard their cry and will bring them out of slavery. Somehow Moses does know that this ‘unknowable in its fullness’ Divine Mystery has been in relationship with his lineage and is a force for liberation.

Knowing that the Divine Mystery is in some primary way un-nameable and that all God-naming is limited, we still must try to name God in metaphors that help us at least have a sense of some part of God’s reality and nature. It is a worthy thing to take responsibility for our Divine naming and to have it serve God’s purposes of life and love. So there is a freedom to name the Mystery we call God, and that applies to The Lord’s Prayer. If “Our Father” works for you and communicates intimacy and a loving parent, you can use that expression in your prayer. You could say “Mother/Father God.” In our bulletin, we often print “tender, loving God.”

Moreover, the ‘Our Father’ address wasn’t necessarily meant to focus on men and the male parent as much as it was meant to remind Jews of God as the one who was head of the household of earth. The householder, both men and women in various Biblical passages, was the one who helped create an orderly household where all had enough, were protected enough, and who modeled this holding for others to learn and mature into. God was the Creator, Provider, Protector, and Model of Divine Householding, householding of the earth.

And how do you know a house is being held well?

All have enough to live in balance and to generate life. In Hebrew thought, you might call that state of life-giving balance shalom.

In the first Creation story, God creates and provides for an orderly Creation where all things have a place. The crown of that Creation is Sabbath, a day of rest from work to balance out life from all the work and to focus on appreciating and celebrating and praying for the blessing of Divine shalom.

And Sabbath was defined not only as the seventh day, but the seventh year Sabbath, and the 50-year Jubilee was the year after seven cycles of seven years.

In the descriptions given of how Sabbath is to be observed, a repeated phrase is “so that.” And it does not say “so that you can go to temple,” it says, “so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and your resident alien may be refreshed,” “so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.” Rest was without regard to status in the household or society. All were included. All had equal status before God in this basic sense.

There is a principle of balancing here, of re-creation, of relief and renewal. In the case of the seven-year Sabbath, the Scripture says it is “So that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat.” In the case of the year after seven times seven years, the Jubilee Year Sabbath, land was returned to its original tribal and familial owners and debts forgiven.

Add to this Sabbath principle of rest that allows for renewal and release and re-balancing, the prophetic tradition where God’s particular concern is for those who are vulnerable, those being left out of receiving what they need by the structure of society, orphans, widows, and aliens. We have again God as a God of distributive justice, the Divine Householder whose concern is that all have enough.

And when the Householder does well, one praises the name of the householder, one honors that name and hallows it. We might say

Divine Householder, hallowed be your name…

We could look around at the mountains, at the ocean, at the wonder of a sunrise. We could hear the story of a 14-billion-year evolution of the cosmos and how all these forms have found ways to organize themselves and cooperate and relate into star systems and ecosystems, into incredibly diverse and renewing forms still unfolding. And we could say with awe and wonder,

Divine Householder, hallowed be your name…

As it has been, connecting to the Great Mystery of Life, to that which we name God, is meant to move us forward on the path of life, collectively and individually, to gain wisdom that serves life’s vitality, to build perseverance and faith on the long road, to know comfort and strength in times of trial, to open us to growth and joy. And we need that now as much as any time in a too often ‘King Herod world’ of so much authoritarian impulse and acting out, so much environmental stress, and so much wealth inequity and lack of sharing. We can also suffer from a ‘King Herod’ presence within ourselves—an inner voice and influence who is not a life-giving householder, who does not balance out our inner parts into peaceful shalom.

Praying the Lord’s Prayer, together and each, not as a formality, but as a reminder of our longing for and our orientation to the Greater Mystery and Divine purpose, can be a powerful resource of vision, a great prayer that nurtures our continued creative and courageous actions in the world and in our souls. This prayer can be a radical manifesto shaping our lives from their root and offering a basis for our active hope. There will be more about the rest of the prayer next Sunday.

In this moment, we are reminded to be like the Divine Householder, within us, among us, and beyond us, who keeps a house of life-giving order and balance where all have enough. Go and do likewise. AMEN