The Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology.
The prayers of the Church, Prosper, and the Fathers indicate, are not distinct from doctrine. What the Church actually prays forms the confession, profession, and proclamation of the Church. Doctrine flows from doxology. Liturgy is indistinct from theology.
The Lord’s Prayer is not just a prayer among many within the liturgy. It is the prayer, truly best prayed in the context of God giving to us what he most desires to give — the Son to his bride the Holy Church within and as the Word of the gospel and the Sacraments. Thus, the Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology. And this is why we need to plagiarize it more.
How Our Lord Teaches Us to Pray
Though known through rote over-learning, we can never exhaust the theology of the Lord’s Prayer and therefore it retains deep, endless value and meaningfulness. Like the Eucharist, it is another form of viaticum — food for the soul throughout our terrestrial journey. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we’re not just echoing what he has given us to say, we are actually praying. More precisely, we are his will, not ours. And, so, it has adaptive properties to conform our vision and desires as we feed in faith upon Christ and his words.
While there are many excellent prayers that have adapted the Lord’s prayer, using it as a model or template for prayer itself, nevertheless we should not neglect Jesus’ “pray thus” directive. The Lord’s Prayer is to be plagiarized, not merely refashioned. It is to be prayed, believed, and taken to heart. In this way it facilitates not only communion with God but as a confession to God.
You know the Father’s name is holy and that it is holy among you because of Christ and his availing crucifixion that has reconciled you to God. So pray it.
You know his kingdom comes and that it has come to you in the incarnate Son of God and by the Holy Spirit in the Word and Sacraments. So pray it.
You know that the Father’s will is perfect and holy and that it is done among you because of the great redemption accomplished by Jesus the Son, and its purposed to the renewal of creation itself. So pray it.
You know that God gives you daily bread and that he gives it out of his great love that was supremely manifested when he gave you the Bread of Life on the cross and now in the Eucharist. So pray it.
You know the Father forgives you of your sins and helps you forgive others theirs and thathe forgives you because he has separated you from your sins as far as the east is from the west in forsaking his only-begotten Son. And so you pray it.
You know God does not lead you into temptation and that he guards you in the time of temptation because your Lord himself has endured temptation beyond what you have experienced and has overcome temptation, sin, the devil and death. And so pray it.
You know that God delivers you from evil and that it is so because he already delivered you from the punishment you deserve, delivering his own Son over to make atonement and be the propitiation. So pray it.
You know that his is the kingdom, power, and glory are forever and ever and that it is so because Jesus rose from the grave, ascended into heaven, and reigns on high forever. And so you pray it.
And you know that every bit of this prayer is prayed in the plural, that it has in view the reconciliation of humanity to God and the restoration of the cosmos, and that every petition includes the words “our,” “we” and “us,” and that your thinking and praying is to embrace all the baptized, and entreat for all the lost, and so you pray it so as to situate yourself within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. And knowing that it’s all true, you say “Amen.”
The Lord’s Prayer in the mouth of the Church, then, is truth that sets us free to be honest with the Lord, serviceable to his kingdom, and in our proper place within the cosmic order, namely as catechumens, disciples of Jesus the Christ.
God Plagiarizing Himself
The word of God teaches us that it plagiarizes itself. Consider the New Testament: Everywhere in the gospels, whether the wilderness temptations or on the cross of Golgotha, God incarnate submitted himself to his own word and thus we can be in no better position than to do the same. This is an enormous consolation when you cannot think of what to say, when you don’t know what to pray. Don’t worry about the need for spontaneity and creativity. Let the prayer the Lord has taught us take you to that which is most certain and true because this prayer is what Jesus himself would and did pray.
While the Lord’s Prayer is simple, it encompasses all of prayer, too: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication.
Martin Luther’s Large Catechism says that “nothing is so necessary as to call upon God incessantly and drum into his ears our prayer that he may give, preserve, and increase in us faith and obedience.” [1] What better thing to drum into his ears than his own words? Luther believed so strongly in this that it made its way into his Large Catechism:
[W]e should be moved and drawn to prayer. For in addition to this commandment and promise, God expects us and He Himself arranges the words and form of prayer for us. He places them on our lips for how and what we should pray, so that we may see how heartily He pities us in our distress, and we may never doubt that such prayer is pleasing to Him and shall certainly be answered. This [the Lord’s Prayer] is a great advantage indeed over all other prayers that we might compose ourselves. For in our own prayers the conscience would ever be in doubt and say, “I have prayed, but who knows if it pleases Him or whether I have hit upon the right proportions and form?” Therefore, there is no nobler prayer to be found upon earth than the Lord’s Prayer. We pray it daily, because it has this excellent testimony, that God loves to hear it. We ought not to surrender this for all the riches of the world. [2]
Psalm 51:15 gives us a good practical theology of prayer: “O Lord, open my lips.” He opens our lips with his very words, words that cannot be exhausted, just as our need to pray them cannot be exhausted. Luther put it like this: [The Lord’s Prayer] “is included in seven successive articles, or petitions, every need that never ceases to apply to us. Each is so great that it ought to drive us to keep praying the Lord’s Prayer all our lives.” [3]
The Lord’s Prayer cannot be outgrown, rendered redundant, or denominated as outmoded. One simply cannot come to the point where this prayer has been mastered or where it is merely a didactic device if for no other reason than it entreats the Lord for forgiveness, for necessities of life, for the prospering of the kingdom of God in the here and now in hopes of the not yet — not as a “me,” “my”, “I” prayer, but a “our” and “us” prayer. While the Lord’s Prayer is simple, it encompasses all of prayer, too: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication. Even if it were just a simple thing, there would be nothing greater in praying to God than what he has given us in this prayer if for no other reason than the sufficiency of Scripture begets the sufficiency of this prayer. It can be said that the Word made flesh gave this word for those in the flesh that our flesh may be conformed to this Word.
If you have ever wondered whether God answers your prayers, wonder no more.
In Ephesians 3:12, St Paul encourages the baptized to come with “boldness” before the throne of God. Before Paul, Jesus himself instructed his disciples to take great boldness as a plagiarizer of prayer. Approach the throne of the great King telling him what he said, what he loves to hear, what he knows to be his good and perfect will. If you have ever wondered whether God answers your prayers, wonder no more. By praying to him what he has given you to pray, you are assured he not only hears but answers your prayers according to his good and perfect will.
The Lord’s Prayer cannot be worn out and never grows tiresome, for it contains many more facets than the grandest of diamonds. Around your dinner table, during your morning and evening prayers, when engaged in the canonical hours, include the Lord’s Prayer or conclude with it. Despite widespread biblical illiteracy, it still remains almost universally known, making it most fitting for prayer with others. In life and at the hour of death, it is a faithful companion because it brings us to Christ with Christ’s own words.
From what Jesus teaches and practices, it appears that all our orthodoxy and orthopraxy should be the product of pure, unmitigated plagiarism. This is what keeps our communing with God in profession, praxis and prayer most certain and true. So choose this day from whom you will steal. As for me and my household, we will plagiarize the Lord.
*The substance of this article is adapted from Rev. Paul Willweber’s “All Theology is Plagiarism” paper presented at the (25 April) 2010 Catechism Convocation on the Lord’s Prayer at Trinity Lutheran Church, Whittier, CA. Willweber is the parish minister at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in San Diego.
[1] Tappert, T. G. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959, rpt. 2000), 420.
[2] Paul Timothy McCain, ed. Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 410.
[3] Paul Timothy McCain, ed. Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 412.
