Welcome to this Lenten study of the Lord’s Prayer as a Rule of Life, based on The Lord’s Prayer: Walk in Love by Cynthia Davis, and a few other resources. During Lent this blog will give an overview of the Zoom study several of us are engaged in. You can download the slides from the Thursday evening sessions here. If you want to join the weekly study, email Cindy.
Each week we’ll open with prayer, sharing of our inspiration, reflect on the book(s) and scripture and close in prayer. This week our opening prayer was the Lord’s Prayer sung in Ukranian.
As part of the study, we covenant together to pray the
Lord’s Prayer at least once a day and to really listen to the words. Sometimes
when a prayer is very familiar, we speed through it without thinking about the
words. You may want to pray through different versions of the Prayer. Some are
found in The Lord’s Prayer: Walk in Love and online.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church invites us to
“Become a church that looks and acts like Jesus.” Our goal in this study is to
participate in the Becoming a Church model that says, “We are becoming a new
and re-formed church…individuals, small, gathered communities and congregations whose
way of life is the way of Jesus and his way of love, no longer centered on
empire and establishment, no longer fixated on preserving institutions, no
longer shoring up white supremacy or anything else that hurts or harms any
child of God. By God’s grace—WE ARE BECOMING A CHURCH THAT LOOKS AND ACTS
LIKE JESUS.”
We’ll use the Lord’s Prayer as a blueprint for ways to:
- Center on Jesus Christ
- Practice the selfless, self-giving way of the cross
- Unite around the practice of a rule of life in small, gathered communities
- Reclaim our Christian identity as a Spirit-driven, countercultural, underground movement
- Live and bear bold witness to the vision and values of Jesus
Recently I’ve begun reading Canon Stephanie Spellers book The
Church Cracked Open. In the introduction, Spellers notes, “Like our
forebearers, we have to embrace uncertainty and loss, humbly recenter our lives
with the margins, and fundamentally redefine what is holy, what is worship, and
what makes us a follower of Jesus.” She refers to the woman who breaks the
alabaster jar of ointment for Jesus noting, she “takes something precious and
breaks it... [because Jesus] was the holy one, the center of her world, and she
had reoriented her life around him as her focus…[we need] to recenter away from
empire and onto God and God’s dream…live more like children made in the image
of our unselfishly, extravagantly loving God…we seek to triumph over fear and
muster the courage to break the jar…or let God break and disrupt us.”
The Becoming a Church website tells us
“Transformation and re-formation like this requires intention, wisdom,
community and the Spirit…a Rule of Life….an intentional commitment to a
set of habits and practices that provide guidance, rhythm and inspiration for
living a beautiful, holy life…” All Christians pray the words. By looking at
them intentionally we can see ways the Lord’s Prayer can be a basis for a Rule
of Life which is Jesus-centered.
Prayer is an important part of any Rule of Life. RichardRohr notes, “Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is,
rather, a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence…” Others have noted
the same thing:
• Prayer
is time when you are ‘real with God’….time to ‘stop and listen’ to God. The
Lord’s prayer incorporates the basics of all prayer: Praise or Adoration,
Confession of faults, Thanks for needs being met, and Supplication or
Intercession for our needs and those of others. (Bible.org)
• Living
a praying life will make us instruments of God’s peace, agents of God’s
love…this is our vocation as Christians, our response to the call of God.
(The Praying Life, Deborah Smith Douglas, pg. x)
• [Lord’s
Prayer] sums up…the way [Jesus] read and responded to the signs of the times,
the way in which he understood his own vocation and mission and invited his
followers to share it. (The Lord and His Prayer, NT Wright, pg. 2)
• God
wants to be your dwelling place. He has no interest in being a weekend
getaway or a Sunday bungalow or a summer cottage…he wants to be your home.
[Jesus said] “My father will love them and we will come and make our home with
them (John 14:23). (The Great House of God, Max Lucado, pg. 4)
The Lord’s Prayer is introduced to us in Matthew 6:5-15 and
Luke 11:1-11. Read these scripture references, and the verses preceding and
following to get a picture of what was happening with Jesus and his disciples
at that time.
To use the Lord’s Prayer as our Rule of Life for this Lent
journey, we can follow the five suggested steps from the Becoming a Church site for establishing or
recommitting to a Rule of Life. As we
intentionally use the Lord’s Prayer as the basis for our Lent rule, we can use
the steps in this way:
1.
Start by praying the Lord’s Prayer with the
intention of using the words to form your mind toward God and orient your life
toward Christ.
How do the familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer transform our
thoughts and actions toward Christ and God? You may want to pray using
different versions to listen for differences that might inspire you to respond
to the familiar words in a new way.
2.
Pray the Lord’s Prayer with intention to hear
what the words of the prayer can teach you about living and acting more like
Jesus.
Are there words or phrases in the Prayer that jump out as
ways to be more Christ-like? Sit with these words or phrases and consider how
they can help you become a part of the Body that “looks and acts like Jesus”
throughout Lent.
3.
Identify spiritual habits that will help you
live a Way of Love toward one another and all creation based on the Lord’s
Prayer.
Think about what spiritual habits you might continue,
resume, and/or begin that will help you live a vision of Beloved Community as
outlined in the Lord’s Prayer.
4.
The weekly study will give us a chance to share
ways to build the words and demands of the Lord’s Prayer into our individual
Rule of Life.
How do you think using the Lord’s Prayer daily will impact
your daily interactions?
5.
Being a community during Lent will help us be
accountable and deepen our intention to continue using the Lord’s Prayer to
direct our lives even beyond Lent.
As we embark on this journey, ask yourself:
How might praying the Lord’s Prayer intentionally and daily
impact my Lenten journey?
How might using the Lord’s Prayer as a Rule of Life give new
insight and direction?
Next week we’ll dive into the first line of the prayer. This
week, start formulating your Rule of Life for Lent.
