Praying The Lord's Prayer

 A few months ago I participated in a group study of The Lord's Prayer, or "The Our Father..."  The prayer is commonly given as follows: 

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.

We looked at the prayer line by line through group discussion and considered the meaning of the prayer with help from video talks given by the Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton and by reading his book The Lord's Prayer. Pastor Hamilton made a case for keeping the traditional "Thy" when using this prayer, for emphasizing God's will (and not our will), for taking "daily bread" to mean both physical food for those who hunger and spiritual food for those seeking that, and for adding a comma so that the lines read "Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." He spent some time taking up the idea that "Our Father" might be inadequate, or even traumatizing, to people who have had bad relations with their earthly fathers and suggested that "Our Parent" might be a good substitute. These are my memories only, and I may be off course here. You can go to the link above and hear it directly from him.

The version of the prayer that is most familiar to me is as follows:

Our Father who are in heaven,

hallowed be Thy name;.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses (or debts)
as we forgive those who trespass against us (or our debtors);
and lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one,
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power,
and the Glory, 

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

now and for ever.
Amen.

This reflects my mixed Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox roots.

The other day I found the following version on the Progressive Methodists Facebook page:

I do like this, but some people have complained that in using this we are distorting Christ's words and intent. This is, after all, a prayer that Crist taught us.

I'm not convinced that this distorts Christ's teachings more than any translation of anything that He said or taught. I'm also not sure how much it matters how much we get exactly correct when we pray. We and what we pray with and for are works in progress, I hope. We're not praying to tell God what to do or to acquaint God with what we need or what we're hoping for. Prayer should soften the heart and lead to honest conversation that illumines us.

This suggested version begins to do that for me. I only hesitate when I get to "Fill us with courage..." I'm not hesitating here because I don't need courage, but because I don't want to lose the idea that "temptation" refers to a specific time of trial, an event or events that will occur or do occur in real time and history. I find "the evil one" useful because I need to remember that evil can have a very real presence and is embodied in social structures and systems that benefit a few people at the expense of the many and that it can be personified and personalized as well.