Reflection by The Rev'd Dr Deborah Broome
- biancasnee
- Jul 24
- 2 min read
Lord, teach us to pray.
[Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” So he said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, may your name be revered as holy.
May your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
Luke 11:1-4
Again and again in Luke’s Gospel we see Jesus withdrawing from the crowds in order to pray. The disciples clearly recognise he knows something about prayer that they don’t, so one of them asks for help: teach us how to pray. And of course this treats prayer as a learned experience. It is something we can learn – and like other things we learn (driving a car, playing the piano, speaking another language), it gets better if we practice.
“The Lord’s Prayer” – the prayer that unites Christians the world over – is a community prayer: it was taught to a community, it’s prayed by a community – and even when we pray it on our own it helps us remember that we’re part of a community. What we pray shapes what we believe – an idea so old it’s come down to us in Latin: lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing. Worship forms us as Christians.
This prayer invites us to focus on the essentials: God’s presence and God’s reign. We pray for daily bread, the bread we need for today, the bread that will satisfy us: neither leaving us in want or drowning in excess. We pray for forgiveness, we admit that sins are like unpaid debts – we’re asking God not to collect on us and we’re committing ourselves not to collect on others. We ask for deliverance from a time of trial, acknowledging that we need God’s protection and support in whatever test might be coming our way. We admit that we can’t do it alone, and this brings us back to relationship again. To the relationship between us and God, and the relationship between us and each other. We need God’s help, and we need each other’s help. Through this prayer Jesus is teaching us about God, and the relationship we have with God, and the relationships we have with one another.
When we pray like this we focus ourselves on what is important, the kingdom in which God’s name is hallowed and in which everyone has what they need. We remind ourselves that God is the one who can give us these things. Prayer isn’t just words; it’s formation. And these words, this prayer, is a way to live before God. It forms our identity and shapes our community. We are acknowledging the relationship we have with God, and with each other. This prayer opens us up to one another, and to the world in which God wants to reign. We are committing ourselves to working for the kingdom of God and wanting help in doing that.
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