Reordering our prayers by reordering our desires
Crump on the Lord's Prayer, part 2
I’ve decided to return to posting material working through David Crump’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door on Prayer and the New Testament. This post focuses on the second and third of Crump's chapters on the Lord's Prayer. Earlier posts here: 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Crump opens this chapter with reflection on the phrase "if it by thy will". Is this a pious cop-out, a failure to grapple with God's will? Are our prayers to be bolder, more specific? Here's the conundrum:
Somehow we must find a way to act upon two equally vital truths: (1) Jesus invites every believer to confidently bring specific requests to God's throne while (2) simultaneously requiring that we humbly surrender personal interests to the Father's plan.1
Like any good but infuriating author, he defers a full resolution to this paradox to a much later chapter. However, continuing through the Lord's Prayer will furnish us with some of the requisite tools to resolve that paradox (to a degree).
Sanctify thy name:
Crump's reading of this petition, in short, is this: that God himself act to reveal and fulfil the glory of his own name and character, which is accomplished both eschatologically in the full and final redemption of his people, and ethically in the expression of Jesus' disciples daily obedience.
Thy Kingdom come:
entails the universal establishment of his sovereignty over the creation, finally demonstrated in both the eradication and the punishment of all rebellion, as well as the total vindication and redemption of his people with righteousness.2
But... has the kingdom come, as Jesus seems to say? The tension of this question points us back to the tension of the previous petition, and the tension that opens this chapter. Because the kingdom has come in the person of the King, and we enter that kingdom precisely in relation to him, while all the more awaiting the future kingdom. And so, in a different sense, the kingdom is present where the King's subjects live in accord with his kingdom ethic. It thus places an ethical demand upon us - to yield in submission to the King's will and decrees.
On earth as it is in heaven
As far back as Origen, Crump notes, this phrase has been applied to all three of the previous petitions, not merely the most recent.
Thy will be done
Echoes the previous two, and by now we are seeing the tension played out in both. That God's will, which is inescapable anyway, be completed and consummated, and yet so too that his ethical will, his revealed will for human lives, be lived out in the here and now. But why pray that God do what he is going to do anyway? Two suggestions predominate commentators. Firstly, that it's for our benefit, not God's, that we so pray. Secondly, as per the reformers, that God is pleased to perform his will, which he was going to do anyway, through believers' prayers as instruments. The second of these solutions posits a theological rationale behind and beyond the text, and seems to leave prayer in tatters as a practice with integrity.
Part two
Where the first half of the prayer has 3 petitions focused on the fulfilment of all God's purposes in the end times, the second half, 3 more petitions, seem to take that eschatological reality and embed it in the everyday. These petitions are neither exclusively eschatological, not exclusively immediate, but they lean more towards the immediate in the light of the ultimate.
As Crump puts it: Jesus's followers believed it [the kingdom] had already arrived ... for them, the question now became: How does the real presence of the kingdom determine my current, earthly existence?3
Life's Essentials
Crump firmly falls on the side of understanding this as 'daily' bread, not eschatological or sacramental meaning. What I particularly enjoy about his treatment here is how he situates this request, for earthly provision, in light of both (a) the first three eschatological petitions, and (b) the radical re-orientation to worldly goods seen through the gospel accounts, based on the overriding priority of the kingdom.
The Lord's Prayer... simply requires that one's material existence be utterly conditioned by the reign of God. Followers of Jesus are to hold on to nothing as tightly as they hold on to their King, and when it comes time to act on their stated values - as it does for all of us every day - they will go anywhere and do anything the Father asks, regardless of the cost, because they know that he will faithfully supply their needs.4
Asking for forgiveness
Crump highlights the OT background of God as a merciful God from whom we can expect forgiveness, and then brings us to Jesus, "announcing the arrival of God's long-awaited kingdom, an ever-expanding domain where forgiveness of the penitent and condemnation of the rebellious - the indivisible expressions of any righteous judgment - were being actualized in this world."5
"On this score, Jesus's teaching was characterized by a nonnegotiable connection between (a) receiving forgiveness form the Father and (b) extending forgiveness to others. The one always implies the other.6
He then quotes Sirach 28:
2 Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done,
and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.
3 Does anyone harbor anger against another,
and expect healing from the Lord?
4 If one has no mercy toward another like himself,
can he then seek pardon for his own sins? 7
I hadn't realised this antecedent to Jesus' own teaching. Crump then explores the relationship of forgiving and being forgiven. Among things I hadn't considered before, he puts Matthew 18:21-35 alongside Luke 7:36-50, and the woman in Luke 7:41-43. He thus comes to the same conclusion we have seen elsewhere - that forgiving others is not a condition to being forgiven, but the invariable consequence of it.
since forgiveness and reconciliation are interpersonal transactions, God anticipates an inevitable reciprocity as testimony to their authenticity; such gifts cannot be experienced without their mutual interaction. ... You cannot receive grace without sharing it.8
Deliver us from evil
One of the things I appreciate about Crump is that he is more than willing to let tensions stand as tensions without fully resolving them. Reflecting on Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane:
Jesus is balancing four theological truths simultaneously: (1) nothing is impossible for the Father; (2) it is God's will to test his people; (3) God urges his people to avoid all avoidable testing; and (4) we are welcome to bring any request to the Father as longa s we finally surrender our wishes to his will.9
We might helpfully put this in conversation with James. God does not tempt, but he does test. But he also permits us to pray to avoid testing. Deciding what is testing and what is tempting may depend upon our experience and outcome. Like Jesus, we can pray both that God will spare us trials, and yet submit to his perfect purpose and plan.
In conclusion
Perhaps the best part of this chapter (and the last) is how Crump concludes. The Lord's Prayer teaches us, fundamentally, to reorient our desires, our prayers, our whole lives. It is the lived and prayed reality of "seek first the Kingdom of God". The first three petitions reorient ourselves to God's eschatological kingdom, now come and coming. The second three petitions provide a, perhaps startling, picture of essential Christianity. Are our primary concerns, and prayers, that God will provide material goods to keep pursuing his kingdom goals one more day? that we will embrace forgiveness and reconciliation and practice it with out neighbour? that we will be faithful in the midst of trials and temptations? What more is needed? And, I dare say, precisely because we think so many other things are needed, the stark simplicity of the Lord's prayer confronts us with the dual paucity, and excess, or our prayers. (Not, of course, that we cannot pray for other things; that is never the point!)
Crump's closing illustration is a beauty, and unique. He talks about how in his youth he organised his whole life around falconry! It is a sport that requires one's whole lifestyle to be organised around it.
Whether we acknowledge it, all people are controlled by their own peculiar bird of prey. It circles upward through the imagination, hovers over major decisions, and clings tightly to every personal passion. Jesus came into the world and announced that his bird of prey was the Father's plan to usher the kingdom into our world. The Lord's Prayer now insists that it must become our top priority as well.10
Crump, 115.
Crump, 121.
Crump, 133.
Crump, 136.
Crump, 137.
Crump, 138.
NRSV, Sir 28:2–4.
Crump, 140.
Crump, 145.
Crump, 148