Climbing The Mountain

Maybe you grew up Catholic or you’ve at least watched a movie where one of the characters is in confessional. The priest hears the confessions and then tells the character to say a certain number of “Our Fathers.” Many church services pray that prayer at some point. It’s the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9-13. That’s what we’re going to dive into today. It’s just another one of the ways that this sermon is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time, not a sheep and goats kind of thing). It’s even got the GOAT of prayers in it. I’m going to tip the scales of the discussion from the outset though and say that there is nothing wrong with praying it word for word. You can do that. I do that sometimes and I think about every word I’m saying and what it means. I’ve been to many services where the audience just recites the prayer though, completely dead and devoid of meaning, just performance, which in the immediate context of what Jesus was preaching, not doing your acts of worship to be seen by others, is the picture of irony. There is so much more to this prayer than rote expression.