He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”                       [Luke’s Gospel 11.1-4]

There’s that old church joke about the new minister who comes to a congregation, and preaches her first sermon and all who are gathered are greatly impressed.

The following week, they hear the same sermon, virtually word for word, from the new incumbent. Quizzical looks pass around the pews. Next week, same sermon, and people are restless. The Chair of Church Council is approached; something needs to be done. “Let’s wait and see what happens” is the sage advice.

Next week, an identical homily and all pretence of tolerance is gone, so the Chair speaks to the new minister, encouraging her about the quality of the sermon, but worried that there might only be one arrow in her quiver.

The following Sunday, she gathers the people for worship, acknowledging people’s concerns about hearing the same sermon, week after week. She then remarks, “When we start doing it, I’ll preach something new.”

This prayer, which is offered each week by Jesus’ disciples across the globe, suffices for every liturgy we might ever craft.

If we click on each line, what an extraordinary drop-down menu would appear, as the implications of God’s intention for the creation is declared.

What does it mean to name God with the intimacy of a child to a parent, and to honour that same God with our next breath, to declare God as holy? In our community, intimacy can be dangerous, when places which should be safe, are not. Honouring our parents, our elders, our carers can appear to be an irrelevancy, an outdated notion. Offering ourselves in relationship is costly, indeed; Jesus invites us to risk ourselves with God, and we gradually discern that Jesus, at God’s initiative, has first risked himself in our hands.

We ask for God’s reign to be realised; what does that look (and sound and feel) like in our world? The economy of God in not measured in dollars spent, or sliding tax scales, but in justice granted and mercy offered, in hungry children fed and peace being more than a handshake. If the last are first in God’s economy, then we are living our lives and world backward.  

Bread for each day sounds simple in the deceptive wealth of the global north, but then we remember that people – children, each day – are dying of starvation in Gaza, with hundreds of food trucks queued, immobile, on the other side of the barriers. Others die, waiting for the miserly handouts, when soldiers open fire.

Jesus’ words are carefully articulated; is it possible that the reign of God, and bread for each day and forgiveness for ourselves and for our neighbours are linked, inextricably?  “Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter”, Dr King reminds us, and then we remember that the Northern Territory Government is imprisoning ten-year-old children.

At first we scramble for excuses for this obscenity, and then we drop our heads, and hold our breath, unconsciously mimicking Kumanjayi White, who died, breathless, at the hands of police in the confectionery aisle of an Alice Springs supermarket a few months ago.

May I risk myself by suggesting that this moment, this time, is the time of trial? How shall we bear Christ’s witness? Let us step into this prayer, and step it out in our lives.

We pray, not to convince God to change God’s mind, but to align ourselves with the intentions and hopes and griefs of God in relation to our world. We pray, to echo the hope for God for the world, and to be adapted to the cruciform shape of God’s action in the creation. When you pray, move your feet.

Perhaps the disciples might well have asked, “Lord, teach us to live.”  Praying might appear to be a less costly request.

It is not.

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.