I’VE NEVER BEEN part of a congregation in which the Lord’s Prayer was recited on a regular basis. And if I’m being perfectly honest, when it was recited, I sometimes got annoyed. It felt too much like an empty ritual, not unlike the child who dutifully recited the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at school, thinking it was about some guy named “Richard Stands.” You know…as in, “and to the republic for Richard Stands.”

No, I’m not making that up. And Richard, wherever you are, I hope you appreciate all that youthful respect.

Whether it’s the prayer or the pledge, we can memorize and say the words. But do we know what we’re saying? We typically recite the Lord’s Prayer from the King James Version. But we don’t use such outdated English anywhere other than church. So how much do we mean what we say? Or are we just going through the motions?

Often, my annoyance would come particularly when the congregation recited the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven,” because the cadence was unnatural and therefore sounded insincere. I know: that kind of awkwardness comes with reciting in unison. We adjust our pace to the others around us, trying not to get too far ahead or too far behind, trying to pause in the same places. And so we mumble, more or less together: “Thy kingdom come…pause…thy will be done…pause…on earth as it is in heaven.”

But note that not even the King James Version is punctuated that way. In the King James, verse 10 of Matthew 6 reads: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Do you hear the difference? “Thy will be done in earth.”

Similarly, the New Revised Standard reads, “May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The second phrase has no comma, no pause. Going even further, the Common English Bible puts it all together into one unbroken sentence: “Bring in your kingdom so that your will is done on earth as it’s done in heaven.” To pray for God’s kingdom to come, in other words, is to pray that his will, his desire, his intention would be done here on earth in a way that reflects how it’s done in heaven.

And how is God’s will done in heaven? Perfectly, I presume. Does that make the prayer unrealistic? No, but it does make the prayer what theologians would call an eschatological one, meaning that it looks forward to the completion of God’s redemptive work in the world. The prayer not only envisions what the world needs in the present, but what the world will be in the future when Jesus returns as King. Marana tha, the apostle Paul prayed; Come, Lord (1 Cor 16:22).

Moreover, it’s possible that the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven” should be taken broadly, applying even to the earlier petition that God’s name would be revered as holy. Like this: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be as hallowed on earth as it is in heaven.”

Here, I think of the prophet Isaiah’s vision of God seated on his throne and surrounded by seraphim, mighty angels with six wings. As they flew, the seraphim called out to one another:

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory. (Isa 6:3, NIV)

Isaiah was terrified, not merely because the vision was intimidating in its own right, but because he knew himself to be a sinful man and feared that he would be undone in the presence of a holy God.

Or, we might think of the apostle John and the book of Revelation. John, too, had a vision of a heavenly throne, this time surrounded by four living creatures, and again, each had six wings. The creatures resembled, respectively, a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle, and were covered all over with eyes, even the wings. Frankly, that’s not something I’d want to see in my dreams! But in a manner reminiscent of the seraphim of Isaiah’s vision, the four creatures never stop saying:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. (Rev 4:8)

Two visions, centuries apart, of God on his heavenly throne. Both visions are dominated by frighteningly majestic creatures declaring God’s holiness. And Jesus invites his disciples to pray that the absolute sovereignty and holiness of that King would be recognized and revered here on earth.

So, think about it: is that what we mean when we recite the Lord’s Prayer?

WHENEVER WE SPEAK of “heaven on earth,” we mean the blissful experience of paradise. It could be something as grand as an amazing vacation spot or as mundane as a delicious plate of food. But when Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven here on earth, he means any place, any life, any relationship in which God is truly acknowledged as King.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we recognize that the earth has a long way to go to embody that kingdom. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done, we do so knowing that we ourselves have a long way to go, too. But we pray eschatologically, knowing that God’s will is that eventually, there would be a new heaven and a new earth, in which the old order of death and pain will pass away (Rev 21:1-5).

Whatever words we use, we pray as Jesus taught to remind ourselves and each other of that day, and of our responsibility to faithfully live toward it.