Jackson Community Church

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Lord's Prayer


Fri, Feb 24 @ 5pm C3: COCKTAILS & CHRISTIAN CONVERSATIONS 

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5pm • ZOOM Link and password required. Option:
Bring your adult beverage and your curiosity for a conversation about our sacred texts.
For more information about this study series:

Podcast from BibleProject about the Lord’s Prayer: https://bibleproject.com/podcast/matthew-p10-lords-prayer/

The text is provided below

Matthew 6:13 (NRSVUE)
And do not bring us to the time of trial,[b] but rescue us from the evil one.[c]

,[b] Or us into testing
[c]  Or from evil.

Matthew 6:13 (RSV)
And lead us not into temptation,
    But deliver us from evil.[b]

[b] Or the evil one.

Reflections on Bread as Part of the Lord’s Prayer

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Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. — Conrad Aiken

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. — Ursula K. Le Guin

If it is bread that you seek, you will have bread.  If it is the soul you seek, you will find the soul. If you understand this secret, you know you are that which you seek. ― Rumi

SONGS about BREAD:

Hymn excerpt — John Macleod Campbell Crum
Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

BREAD SHARING

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. — Viktor Frankl

The piece of bread is an ambassador of the cosmos offering nourishment and support. — Thich Nhat Hahn

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. — Nikolai Berdyaev

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread – the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature. — Ivan Pavlov

We believe that salvation is to be found in wholesome work in a beloved land. Work will provide our people with the bread of tomorrow, and moreover, with the honor of the tomorrow, the freedom of the tomorrow.  — Theodor Herzl

When you fight to give your family bread, that’s not passion anymore: that’s conviction. — Yoel Romero

When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor’s gift. — Maya Angelou  

When the children of Israel were suffering from hunger and thirst, Moses prayed to God and God answered his prayers with food from heaven. The Qur’an says: “And We caused the clouds to comfort you with their shade, and sent down unto you manna and quails. [saying,] ’Partake of the good things which We have provided for you as sustenance’” (2:57). — Muhammad Shafiq

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.  ―Mother Teresa

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou. – Omar Khayyam

Even in the inevitable moments when all seems hopeless, men know that without hope they cannot really live, and in agonizing desperation they cry for the bread of hope. — Martin Luther King, Jr

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts. ― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

When you share your last crust of bread with a beggar, you mustn’t behave as if you were throwing a bone to a dog. You must give humbly, and thank him for allowing you to have a part in his hunger. — Giovanni Guareschi

BREAD MAKING

You can’t just leave out one part; the bread won’t rise if the yeast isn’t there.  — Holly Near

I like reality. It tastes like bread. — Jean Anouilh

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. — Nelson Mandela

We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it … If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.  — Jose Marti

Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conflict, or harm. — Jack Kornfield

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. —John Irving

COMMENTARY on BREAD in LORD’s PRAYER

In the Lord’s Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach. — Woodrow Wilson

The devil took advantage of Christ’s hunger to tempt him to limit his concern to the relief of human need. These are vital concerns, but they cannot be the sole concern of the Church. We need daily bread; we need, too, a reason for living, a sense of purpose, a vision. — Basil Hume
Obviously Jesus was not telling His disciples to pray only for bread. But bread was a staple in the diet of the Jews, and had been so for many years. Furthermore, bread was a powerful symbol of God’s provision for His people …. We remember how God cared for the Israelites when they were in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. Life in the wilderness was hard, and soon the people began to complain that it would be better to be back in Egypt, where they had wonderful food to eat. In response to these complaints, God promised to “rain bread from heaven” (Ex. 16:4). … This petition of the Lord’s Prayer, then, teaches us to come to God in a spirit of humble dependence, asking Him to provide what we need and to sustain us from day to day. We are not given license to ask for great riches, but we are encouraged to make our needs known to Him, trusting that He will provide.— RC Sproul 

Bread was important; in fact, where some eat and some do not eat, the kingdom is not present. — Fred Craddock

Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. ‘That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I’m set up.’ And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions. — Francis Chan

Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer

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I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and … almost involuntary in my life … And when I talk about prayer, I mean really … what Rumi says in that wonderful line, “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground”. — Mary Oliver

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men” — John F. Kennedy

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. — John Bunyan

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God. — Billy Graham

SONGS about prayer:

Renditions of The Lord’s Prayer:

RESOURCES about the LORD’s PRAYER;

WHAT WE NEED IS HERE— Wendell Berry
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Thoughts on Prayer

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God. — Saint Teresa of Avila

Exercise, prayer, and meditation are examples of calming rituals. They have been shown to induce a happier mood and provide a positive pathway through life’s daily frustrations. — Chuck Norris

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. — Soren Kierkegaard

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help. Thanks. Wow. … You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word “prayer.” … Prayer is private, even when we pray with others. It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding. Let’s say it is communication from one’s heart to God. Or … to the Good, the force that is beyond our comprehension but that in our pain or supplication or relief we don’t need to define or have proof of or any established contact with. Let’s say it is what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds. Or let’s say it is a cry from deep within to Life or Love, with capital L’s … … Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence. — Anne Lamott

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty; and wish to see you with a hundred eyes . . . I am in the house of mercy, and my heart is a place of prayer. — Rumi

A PRAYER FOR YOUR WILD SOUL — John O’Donohue 
Give yourself time to make a prayer
that will become the prayer of your soul.
Listen to the voices of longing in your soul.
Listen to your hungers.
Give attention to the unexpected
that lives around the rim of your life.
Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future,
to the voices of those near you and those you have lost.
Out of all of that attention to your soul,
make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul,
yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability;
that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine
forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour
to challenge your blindness and complacency;
enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty.
Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.

ORD’s PRAYER Commentary

The Lord’s Prayer has a central place in Christian worship. The plural “our” is used throughout, so that those giving voice to the prayer acknowledge both the presence of God and their connection to a wider praying community. The first three petitions focus the worshipers’ attention on God. The remaining petitions turn to “our” needs, asking God to help all of “us.” — Craig Koester

The Lord’s Prayer (the Our Father) appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. We pray the expanded version from Matthew 6:9-13. It is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus summarizes his proclamation of the gospel, or Good News. In the same way, the Lord’s Prayer is at the heart of this sermon because it can be said to summarize the whole gospel.
       With this prayer, we enter into communion with the Father and with Jesus, who has revealed him to us. Praying this prayer helps us to develop the will to become as humble and trusting as Jesus.
       In the Lord’s Prayer, we praise and glorify God and petition for what we need. There are seven petitions. The first three are addressed to God and draw us to him for his own sake: thy name, thy kingdom, thy will! The last four concern us and our needs that the Father fulfills: give us, forgive us, lead us not, deliver us. — Loyola Press

Initial words on the topic from the Catechism of the Catholic Church teach that it “is truly the summary of the whole gospel”. The prayer is used by most Christian denominations in their worship and with few exceptions, the liturgical form is the version from the gospel of Matthew. Protestants usually conclude the prayer with a doxology (in some versions, “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen”), a later addition appearing in some manuscripts of Matthew. Although theological differences and various modes of worship divide Christians, … there is a sense of solidarity in knowing that Christians around the globe are praying together … and these words always unite us. — wikipedia.com

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