When it comes to prayer, according to Jesus in Matthew 6, there are two behaviors to be avoided: the prayer of the hypocrite, and the prayer of the idol worshipper. Yes, we would certainly like to avoid being associated with either of these. Unfortunately, we’re more guilty of both than we would like to think.
Hypocrite is an ugly word, and we’d hate to be on the receiving end of it. But Jesus describes the hypocrite as treating prayer not as the way to speak to and hear from God in the secret place of our hearts, but rather as a way to make those around us think more highly of us. Ask yourself, have you ever found yourself in the midst of prayer and thinking more about how your prayer sounds (or would sound) to someone else, rather than how it sounds to God? Have you ever prayed in such a way that others might think you are more “spiritual” than you think you really are? Have you ever kept a prayer going just because you didn’t want to seem like you were ending the prayer too quickly?
Or have you ever prayed in the manner which Jesus describes as an idol-worship kind of prayer? Do you ever pile up words in the hopes that you might finally pester God into hearing you? Have you ever treated prayer like a negotiation, like God needs extra incentive to listen? The pagan gods were temperamental and needed to be convinced to do something nice for those who prayed to them. Do you ever think of God that way?
Perhaps we do know something about praying like hypocrites and idol-worshippers. Both of these ways of praying arise from spiritual anxiety and insecurity, the fear that God might not like us or that we only know what we’re doing if someone else pats us on the back for it. That is the way of the ego, the false self that Jesus routinely identifies in the Sermon for always being angry, lustful, vengeful, and vain.
So Jesus gives us the cure: the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). The ego does not know how to pray the Lord’s Prayer because the ego doesn’t know how to be small, and the Lord’s Prayer makes us small. Simply uttering the first word – Father – makes us small because all we’re called to be are his children. Jesus uses the word Father fifteen times in the Sermon on the Mount. That’s what the Sermon is, learning to be at home with him who made us, whose love sustains us and makes all vanity and insecurity nonsensical. The brilliance of the Prayer is that Jesus is teaching us to ask for all the things the Father already wants to say yes to. His kingdom and his will? He already wants to say yes. Daily bread? Yes. Forgiveness? Yes. Deliverance from temptation and evil? Yes.
What do you think this prayer would do to you if you prayed it every day? We have some idea of the positive effects of daily exercise. Why should prayer be any different? Imagine the words “thy will be done” and “deliver us from evil” being as familiar to us as getting out of bed, as much a part of our life as a daily meal. What do you think this prayer would do to you if you prayed it every day?
The Lord’s Prayer is not the final word on prayer. But it is the first and best word on prayer. So, as Jesus says, pray like this.