Praying the Lord’s Prayer Backwards

Luke 11:1-13

A few of us “theological types” were sitting around a dinner table at a church conference one evening. Our esteemed president, Dr. Greg Smith, was holding forth in typical rabbinical fashion — asking questions designed to test the shallowness of our measly little lives.

One of them went something like this: “What did the snail say when it hitched a ride on the back of a turtle?”

We searched our theological heads. We searched the Scriptures. Nowhere in the entire canon of Holy Writ could we find a single thing about snails or turtles. Finally, we gave up. “Rabbi,” we said, “we do not know.”

Dr. Smith threw his hands in the air and announced: “WHEEEEEEE!”

That’s exactly how I feel every time I open the Bible — especially the stories of Jesus. Wheee! Thrilling insights. Unexpected challenges. The uncomfortable edge of life’s envelope. And today’s text is no exception.

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A Prayer You’ve Never Prayed

Somewhere near the end of today’s reading, Jesus compares God to a neighbor who’ll get out of bed at midnight to help a friend in need.

I have a neighbor like that. His name is Bud. He lives on the lake in New Hampshire where we have our camp. For more than twenty years, Bud has been answering my desperate pleas for help. The pump breaks down — call Bud. The boat motor quits — call Bud. Have to go to the hospital — call Bud. For years, when parishioners really needed to reach us and we had no phone at camp, we told them to just call Bud, and he’d bring us the message.

I’m sure Bud groans every time he hears from me. But the truth is, Bud loves us. The light comes on. The door opens. Bud shows up.

And Jesus says: God is like that. Even when we’ve worn out our welcome, even when we’re causing enormous inconvenience, even when God would be perfectly justified telling us to go away — God still gets out of bed and shuffles to the door.

Wheee! What a thought.

But there’s a danger lurking in this passage too. Because embedded in today’s reading is a version of the Lord’s Prayer that most of us have seldom — if ever — prayed:

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.

Five sentences. No “thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.” No flowery doxology at the end.

I learned early in ministry: you don’t go monkeying around with the Lord’s Prayer. I once watched a senior pastor use this version in a communion service. When it was over, one of the great pillars of the church went tearing out the door, weeping: “What have they done to my Lord’s Prayer?”

What got lost in the emotion was that what they had done was use it in what scholars believe is its original form. The familiar doxology — “For thine is the kingdom…” — was never part of the prayer itself. It was a congregational response added by the early church more than a century later. What we have here in Luke is as close as we’ll ever get to the actual words Jesus spoke.

Uncomfortable, perhaps. But powerful.

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How Most of Us Pray

Let me ask you an honest question: what prayer do you pray most often?

There’s a ridiculous old Burt Reynolds movie called The End in which his character swims out into the bay intending to drown himself. About sixty seconds underwater, he comes bursting back to the surface yelling, “God, help me! I DON’T want to die!”

As he desperately swims toward shore, he bargains: “Lord, if you get me out of this, I’ll give EVERYTHING to you!”

A hundred yards closer: “Seventy-five percent!”

Closer still: “Fifty!”

You can see where this is going.

As silly as it sounds, most of us recognize that prayer. God, get me out of this! God, I’ve got a problem! God, HELP! And right behind it: God, forgive me. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong. And please, please don’t let my parents find out.

Then comes: God, give me stuff. Tony Campolo told of the night his son Bart wandered into the living room and announced, “Mom, Dad — I’m going upstairs to say my prayers. Anybody WANT anything?”

Help me. Forgive me. Give me.

Here’s the problem: that’s praying the Lord’s Prayer backward.

And when you flip the prayer around like that, the whole focus shifts — away from God’s kingdom and onto me. That’s not really prayer. That’s magic.

The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski put it this way: magic is an attempt to manipulate supernatural powers so people get what they want. Prayer is a process of spiritual surrender so that we become instruments through whom God can do his work.

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Praying It Forward

So what does it look like to pray the Lord’s Prayer forward?

“Father, hallowed be your name.”

Hallowed means set apart, consecrated. And what Jesus is doing here is astonishing: he’s teaching us to begin prayer by claiming our identity.

We are not random wanderers on some cosmic yellow brick road, hoping to find a make-believe wizard who’ll fix everything. We are children of the living God. Created in his image. Heirs of his purposes. Bearers of his likeness.

I once visited a family facing a devastating diagnosis — the kind where the word cancer is followed by the phrase six months to two years. What struck me most was how they kept using one particular word. “Yes, I have a serious illness, but I’m going to face it as a Christian.” “I’m praying for healing, but if it doesn’t come, I’m not afraid, because I AM a Christian.”

That’s praying the Lord’s Prayer forward. Before you ask for anything, you remember who you are.

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“Your kingdom come.”

This, I believe, is the key prayer of the Christian life. And it’s the one most of us almost never pray.

The kingdom of God is people reconciled to God and to each other. It’s the poor lifted and the hungry fed. It’s the last getting to be first. It’s the lion lying down with the lamb. And when you pray “Your kingdom come,” you’re asking God to use you to make it happen.

A friend of mine prayed one evening for some small role in bringing the kingdom near. The next morning, he was standing in line at a grocery store when a little boy at the front of the line started pulling out empty pockets. He was trying to buy a birthday gift for his mother and came up short. My friend watched it unfold and thought: maybe this is it. When the boy began to cry, he was sure. He stepped up, asked the clerk how much was needed, and made up the difference.

The boy asked his name so he could repay him. My friend said, “I’m just a friend of God. Pay him back by being kind to someone else.”

Thy kingdom come.

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When you pray this way — beginning with who you are, then asking to be used for God’s purposes — everything else falls into its proper place. Give us our daily bread. Of course. We need strength for the work. Forgive us our sins.Absolutely. We need to be clean instruments. Deliver us from evil. Yes — because the kingdom work is hard, and we need God’s protection.

But notice: those requests come last — not because they don’t matter, but because they mean something different when they serve a larger purpose than our own comfort.

That’s praying the Lord’s Prayer forward.

Go and give it a try!

Amen.