How many times a week do you recite the Lord’s prayer? Got it? Ok, now how many times do you pray the Lord’s prayer? And is it really the Lord’s prayer or is it more accurately the disciples’ prayer?

It is important to understand the simple purpose of each of the petitions, as Luther’s Small Catechism teaches for example. But these petitions were not given so that we could get something from God as much as they were given as the gift of God in themselves. Christ taught his disciples to pray in this manner because each of the statements in the prayer pertain to a crucial element of our relationship to him.

There are two ‘eyes’ in the disciples’ prayer. The first is obviously to God, the other is toward our fellow disciples and brothers and sisters in Christ. This is shown by the word “our” and “us” all throughout the prayer.

So it is no mistake that the way in which we address God is “Our Father.” Jesus could have said “Our God the I AM,” or “Our Heavenly Creator,” but clearly Christ is most concerned in teaching us that God relates to us in a very personal way as a father. He also short circuits the ‘me and Jesus’ attitude by addressing him as Our Father. This is the gift a relationship to a body.

Of course addressing him as our Father immediately recalls to mind the means by which he made us his children. He both gave us our physical lives in creation and continues to sustain us in all of our physical needs. Even before we get to the gospel, there is plenty of evidence of his love and care as a father!

More importantly though, we address him as father because of his act of giving up his only son, his very life, his Word and Communication to be one of us so that in him we might be made his again. He has certainly commanded much from us throughout history in his law (evoked in the phrase “who art in heaven”) but he also gives all that he commands and provides for life and sonship in abundance.

It is within this context of relationship, established and sustained by him alone, through his real and living Word, that we approach him and present our requests to him. The disciples’ prayer is not a creed, not a testimony, not a shoping list for God or a twisting of his arm by properly-phrased petitions. Rather it is a revelation of the relationship that he has already established with us, given to us as a means of strengthening that relationship and teaching us to live in it. It is in itself the gift of all that we ask for.