The Lord's Prayer

I want to show you another short video clip …but before doing so, I must warn you that it contains offensive language.

So offensive, in fact, that it was banned by 80% of UK cinemas because they said that there was a significant risk of upsetting audiences.

As you know, it’s very rare these days for cinemas to ban adverts on the grounds of offensive language, so this advert is extreme. If you’d rather not listen to it, please put your fingers in your ears now.

[Play video clip … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlUXh4mx4gI ]

OK …if you’re sitting next to someone with their fingers in the ears, please let them know that it’s now safe to remove them.

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That advert was scheduled to be screened before Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December2015.

It was cleared by the Cinema Advertising Authority and the British Board of Film Classification, but the Odeon, Cineworld and Vue chains – which control 80% of screens around the country – refused to show the advert because they believe it “carries the risk of upsetting, or offending, audiences.

The Prime Minister described the ban as “ridiculous”.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said the ban was “outrageous… This is a prayer that is 2000 years old and informs our whole culture.”

Stephen Fry tweeted from Australia… “I’m in Oz, just heard. Banning the ad is bizarre, unfair and misguided.”

And a spokesperson for the Church of England said…

“The Lord’s Prayer is prayed by billions of people across the globe every day and in this country has been part of everyday life for centuries.

Prayer permeates every aspect of our culture from pop songs and requiems to daily assemblies and national commemorations.

For millions of people in the United Kingdom, prayer is a constant part of their lives whether as part thanksgiving and praise, or as a companion through their darkest hours.”

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Such is the power of the Lord’s Prayer.

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There are many version of the Lord’s Prayer, but the one that people usually refer to as the ‘traditional version’ comes from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer published in 1662

Rather than tamper with the much-loved Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England introduced some alternative service books in the 1960’s. These services, and subsequent revisions, included the ‘modern’ version of the Lord’s Prayer which we use today at St Paul’s.

However, many churches still prefer to use the traditional version. And some people still don’t understand why the Church of England has changed the Lord’s Prayer.

But the so-called ‘traditional’ 1662 version had itself undergone significant changed since it was first published by Thomas Cranmer a hundred years earlier.

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Ultimately, all version of the Lord’s Prayer can be traced back to the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospels.

But there also we find two slightly different versions… one in Matthew’s gospel (which Jan just read to us) and a slightly shorter version in Luke’s gospel.

But the prayer is set in different contexts, and I want to briefly explain how that might have come about.

If you compare the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, you soon discover that they have an awful lot in common …but there are also some significant differences. These are called the synoptic gospels.

The gospel of John is completely different, so I will leave that aside this evening.

I’ve often heard people give the following explanation for these differences as follows.

Imaging three people witnessing the same car accident, and each being asked by the police to write a statement. The essential facts in these statements would all be the same, but the details would all be different, because the witnesses observed the accident from three different perspectives.

However, that explanation implies that Matthew, Mark and Luke were all eye-witnesses of the ministry of Jesus, ...but they weren’t eye witnesses, they were researchers.

In fact, Luke explicitly tells us at the beginning of his gospel that he wasn’t an eye-witness, but someone who has carefully researched the life of Jesus.

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Mark is the shortest of the gospels, and most scholars think it was the first to be written. Some also think that Mark was a close friend of Peter, and therefore Mark recorded the life of Jesus from Peter’s perspective.

When Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels, their main source was Mark’s gospel. And they copied most of it into their own gospels.

Today we would call that plagiarism, but I guess it wasn’t seen as a problem in the first century. And they certainly didn’t have footnotes and a bibliography to credit their sources.

However, in addition to Mark’s gospel, the research of Mathew and Luke turned up other source material. For example, some people think that both Matthew and Luke had discovered another source which scholars now call ‘Q’.

This is sounding a bit like James Bond, isn’t it?

[Show diagram]

‘Q’ was a collection of authentic sayings by Jesus, and both Matthew and Luke wanted to include these sayings in their gospels.

The Lord’s Prayer, so the theory goes, is part of this Source Q …which is why you find it in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark.

But the two researches used these Q sayings in different ways.

Matthew describes Jesus sitting down with his disciples at the beginning of his ministry, and he wrote what we call the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. And the Lord’s Prayer is part of the teaching of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount.

Luke, on the other hand, doesn’t mention any Sermon on the Mount, but he uses the same Q sayings elsewhere in his gospel.

In Luke, it is towards the end of Jesus’s ministry while travelling to Jerusalem, that that he teaches his disciples the Lord’s Prayer.

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Perhaps Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer more than once ….during the Sermon on the Mount, on his journey to Jerusalem, and maybe on other occasions.

But I find it particularly helpful to think of Jesus teaching his disciples on his final journey to Jerusalem.

For in the Lord’s Prayer he is summing up his own ministry …and preparing his disciples in taking it forward.

Even the opening words allude to a journey.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation

but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power,

and the glory are yours

now and for ever.

Amen.

Thy Kingdom Come

25 May - 4 June

Novena

Fixed Prayer or framework?

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation

but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power,

and the glory are yours

now and for ever.

Amen.