CHANCES ARE, MANY of you reading this could recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory. And if so, you probably memorized it using the now outdated language of the King James, beginning with “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” (Matt 6:9). But when I’ve been in worship services in which the prayer was recited aloud and in unison, I’ve sometimes wondered: do we really know what we’re saying, or are we just going through the motions? Think about it: who among us ever uses the word “hallowed”? How many of us would be able to explain what it means? And if we can’t, how sincerely are we praying?

As we come to the Lord’s Prayer, or what is often known in the Catholic tradition as the “Our Father,” it’s important to remember the context of what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. In chapter 6, he’s giving three examples of religious piety that in his time were often done for the wrong reasons: giving alms to the poor, prayer, and fasting. Instead of doing such things out of authentic devotion to God, some did them for the sake of being admired by others.

Again, we shouldn’t automatically paint the Pharisees as nothing more than clueless hypocrites, especially if we think we’re better than them. Let’s face it. If everyone else around us has their head bowed as they obediently recite the Lord’s Prayer, we’d be hard pressed not to follow suit, even for that reason alone. Of course, that’s not the same thing as praying because we want to be admired (after all, who’s going to see us?), but to some extent, the motivation is to fit in, to conform to group norms.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing in itself; it depends on the nature of the group and what it takes to belong. But obviously, fitting in can’t be the only reason for prayer; we don’t want merely to do it because everyone else is doing it. Rather, we pray, whether individually or in the company of others, to attune ourselves to God. And to do that when praying the Lord’s Prayer, it would help to have a deeper appreciation for what Jesus is teaching his followers.

We’ll spend some time exploring these familiar words. And in this post and the next, we’ll start small, with just the opening phrase: “Our Father in heaven” (Matt 6:9, NIV). You may already be used to speaking to God in this way; I know that many of my own prayers begin with the words, “Our heavenly Father.” But just pause for a moment to let this sink in: we are being invited by the one and only Son of God to call his Father our Father.

We may take that way of speaking for granted, but the Jews of Jesus’ day did not. There are passages in the Old Testament where God’s people are referred to as his children or God is referred to as their Father — but history suggests that they did not address God that way in prayer. Right off the bat, then, what Jesus was teaching his followers was radical and new; they were to pray to God on the basis of a new way of understanding their relationship to him. God may be in heaven; God may be transcendent and exalted.

But God is also their Father.

At the same time, however, let’s not forget that Jesus had already spoken of God as their heavenly Father earlier in the Sermon. It begins, implicitly, with the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God. (Matt 5:9)

The idea seems to be that as the people seek to be peacemakers, to be agents of God’s wholeness and shalom in the world, others will be pointed to the character of God. This is made more explicit a few verses later:

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matt 5:16)

God’s children are meant to live in a way that shows a family resemblance to their heavenly Father; their good deeds result in glory being given to God. The same idea is made still more explicit at the end of the chapter:

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. (Matt 5:44-45a)

Whatever it might mean for disciples to do good deeds and let their light shine, Jesus makes it clear that one way to embody the character of the Father is to love and pray for one’s enemies. And as we’ve seen, the goal is to grow up to be more and more like our heavenly Father:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt 5:48)

Again, the word “perfect,” applied to us mere mortals, doesn’t mean flawlessness. It means completeness, maturity. Some of us grew up in families in which being like Dad was the last thing we wanted; but hopefully, it’s different when we think of becoming more like God.

Then, in chapter 6, Jesus adds another element to how we understand God as Father. Don’t do religious stuff in order to be noticed and admired by other people, he teaches. If that’s the reward you want, then that’s the only reward you’ll get. But if your heart’s in the right place, and you do these things for God’s pleasure and glory, then your Father, who sees everything you do in secret, is the one who will reward you (Matt 6:4, 6). And not only is God the Father the one who rewards true piety, he also knows our every need before a word of prayer is spoken (vs. 8).

Thus, by the time Jesus explicitly teaches his hearers to address God as their heavenly Father, he has already directly or indirectly referred to God as Father eight times. This is a Father who knows us and wants us to live in a way that shows the world what our Father is like. This is the Father to whom we pray.

So, before the next time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, before the next time we begin any prayer by addressing God as our heavenly Father, let’s pause to consider everything Jesus has already said about our Father and our relationship to him. What does it truly mean to speak to God as our “Father”? What does it truly mean to think of ourselves as his children?

Because, as disciples of the very Son of God, that’s the stance from which we should approach all prayer.