The Lord’s Prayer: On Earth As It Is In Heaven
The Lord’s Prayer: On Earth as it Is in Heaven
Part two of a two-part series on the Lord’s Prayer
February 15, 2026
Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf
Readings: Daniel 7:1-14 and Matthew 5:43-48
Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.
CENTRAL FOCUS of the SERIES:
Illustrate the difference between God’s Kingdom and the way of human Empire in order to ‘fill up’ the relevant phrases of Lord’s Prayer with meaning.
Scriptures from the Common English Bible
Matthew 5:43-48
43“You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy. 44But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you 45so that you will be acting as children of your God in heaven. God makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48Therefore, just as the Holy One is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.”
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.
Last week, we began looking at the prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer, viewing the Divine Householder as the divine to whom the prayer is addressed. This morning, we engage the prayer through the portal of the phrase ‘Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done, On Earth as it is in Heaven.’ Once again, my thanks to author and scholar John Dominic Crossan and his book The Greatest Prayer.
To explore this phrase, ‘Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done, On Earth as it is in Heaven,’ there is a useful detour in sampling a fantastic visionary reading from the book of Daniel in the beginning of chapter 7.
Daniel 7:2-14
2“I am Daniel. In the vision I had during the night I saw the four winds of heaven churning the great sea. 3Four giant beasts emerged from the sea, each different from the others. 4The first was like a lion with eagle’s wings. I observed it until its wings were pulled off, and it was lifted up from the ground. It was then set on two feet, like a human being, and it received a human mind. 5Then I saw another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told: ‘Get up! Devour much flesh!’ 6I kept watching, and suddenly there was another beast, this one like a leopard. On its back it had four wings like bird wings. This beast had four heads. Authority was given to it.
7After this, as I continued to watch this night vision, I saw a fourth beast, terrifying and hideous, with extraordinary power and with massive iron teeth. As it ate and crushed, its feet smashed whatever was left over.…
9As I was watching, thrones were raised up.
The Ancient One took his seat.
His clothes were white like snow;
his hair was like a lamb’s wool.
His throne was made of flame;
its wheels were blazing fire.
10A river of fire flowed out from his presence;
thousands upon thousands served him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood ready to serve him!
The court sat in session; the scrolls were opened.
11I kept watching. I watched… until the beast was killed…
12Then the authority of the remaining beasts was brought to an end…
13As I continued to watch this night vision of mine, I suddenly saw
one like a human being[a] coming with the heavenly clouds.
He came to the Ancient One and was presented before him.
14Rule, glory, and kingship were given to him;
His rule is an everlasting one—”
This part of the book uses Daniel as a historical character to explain past events as future. These four beasts are four empires of history that came in succession conquering Palestine; Babylon, Media, Persia, and then the Greeks with Alexander the Great. These are all seen as wild beasts. But these are all brought to judgment by the fifth kingdom, an everlasting kingdom. (Four world kingdoms followed by an ideal fifth was a known motif in the Ancient Near East.) In the theological world of Daniel, Israel’s God is the Lord of history and this ideal fifth realm is God’s Kingdom, the Ancient One’s Realm, and it is represented by one like a son of man coming on the clouds. That is to say, it is represented by a human. And while we, in our days of human pressure on the earth, might want the next ideal kingdom to be one for the plants and animals, Daniel here is really describing not animals but monsters—beasts who devour wildly, whose mode of operation is violent conquest and consumption.
But isn’t God in this judgment scene just conquering as well? Isn’t this the ugly vengeful God we all cringe when we hear about? A kind of heavenly vigilante? How does God’s kingdom differ from the others, other than the home team wins?
And this is where we come to Jesus, our master teacher and exemplar.
Jesus talked often about, in many English translations, the Kingdom of God. Actually, given the Hebrew and Aramaic words that are translated, it might be more helpful to hear that kingdom expression as the Reign of God or the ruling style of God or what it’s like when God is the Sovereign and the Realm is organized and acting as if that were so. It’s more about a process and a way of living than a person or bordered territory.
Jesus arrives on the scene in the midst of a continuing theological dilemma for Israel. If God is the Lord of history and God is just, how come history is such a mess and we keep getting conquered and beat up? How come the world is full of violence if God is in charge? The solution to this dilemma might be, as John Dominic Crossan calls it, God’s Great Cleanup of the World, a time when the age of violence and domination would end, when God would act and all would be put back in order. In Greek, this is called the eschaton, the end, but it does not mean the end of the world (which some bad Bible translators say), but the end of an age and the dawn of a new one.
This new age, this Divine Realm is different from the empires of the world. When it appears, instead of endless war, it will establish peace. It will be like a worldwide banquet where all can have enough and know joy together. It is a place of equality, “neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female.” This is what “on earth as it is in heaven” means. As Crossan reminds us, heaven is in great shape. It is on earth where there are problems—problems of violence and division and inequality. Bringing heaven to earth means realizing Divine ideals in our world, fully incarnating them.
And how does that happen? How does heaven come to earth?
Jesus taught that the Realm of God was already present as well as coming to be and that we participated in that Realm and collaborated with God’s coming in fullness by changing our lives, by living different values than the values of the empires of the world.
The Sermon on the Mount, from which we read last week and this week, outlines that Sacred Way of living that brings heaven to earth. And it is not easy. There is no more challenging teaching than the one we heard today; the love of enemies. The way that God offers complete blessing to all people by offering rain and sun to all, we are asked to imitate. We do that by learning to love even the enemy, even those assaulting our city with violations of legal rights and of human dignity. That’s whole love, fullness of love, completeness in love. That’s nonviolence in the soul as well as the body.
So when we follow Jesus’ teaching to “pray in this way” and we say, Your Kin-dom Come, Your Will Be done, on earth as it is in heaven, we are committing to collaboration with the nonviolent Divine Realm that is here and is coming.
When we pray Your Kin-dom Come, Your Will Be done, on earth as it is in heaven, we are seeking to live in a way that leads to a joyful worldwide banquet of equals sharing the earth together.
Every time we pray Your Kin-dom Come, Your Will Be done, on earth as it is in heaven, we are saying we desire to live differently, not as a consuming beast, living out or in complicity with violence, but as one who seeks to love so completely that we will love and act kindly to even those who oppose us, are different from us, or even assault us.
When we pray Your Kin-dom Come, Your Will Be done, on earth as it is in heaven, we are giving up the way of violent internal judgment of ourselves and embracing the way of loving even those parts of ourselves we would see as enemy, as unworthy, as not belonging, as punishing.
This is no small prayer.
It is nothing short of revolutionary.
It calls us to a Way of Living that is not easy.
It calls us to maturity and to trust in a different kind of power than what we often see in the world when King Herod is in charge and roaming the streets.
The pursuit of that revolutionary way takes a lot of praying, a lot of practice, a lifetime of practice, a lot of support, and deep commitment. And, yet, that way is our teaching. Living out that teaching, growing into that kind of love, and collaborating with God in that love is our mission. For this big a call, community is needed.
Like Daniel’s vision, we have seen a consuming beast in our city and our state. Like Daniel’s vision, we have seen these consuming beasts in history. If we have looked deep enough, we have noticed parts of our inner worlds that likewise can consume and dominate. The Mystery we name God offers us another way to live and to live together. The Lord’s Prayer is a sacred guiding reminder of that way of complete Divine love where the Divine Householder makes sure that there is enough for all and that the ways of trusting, sharing, forgiving, and persevering are uplifted.
These are the ways of life.
Let us choose life on earth as it is in heaven. AMEN