The Lord’s Prayer

Over the past few Sundays, we have been in the midst of a 4 week series on the Lord’s Prayer.  Each week, we have used a different English wording, beginning with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and ending with The Message by Eugene Peterson, which was first published in 1993.  However, many people ask, why can’t we just use the original Lord’s Prayer?

Truthfully, none of these English translations are the “original.”  For that we would need to translate the Gospel of Matthew into Syriac-Aramaic.  Instead, what people usually mean by this question is that they want to use the version they learned when they were young.

While each person will have their own preference as to the wording of the Lord’s Prayer, there is also an important question to ask as a worshiping community:  Are we doing our children and grandchildren any favours by teaching them a prayer using wording that they do not understand?

A few things to consider as you think about the wording:  First off, words like thee and thine and thy have lost their original meaning.  Just like French has tu and vous, English used to have thou and you.  “Thou” was used for a close friend – somebody you know very well.  “You” was more formal.  Thus, the language used to talk to God was the same language you would use with a friend, and the term used for Father actually means Daddy.  We lose this sense when we use older wordings.

Another thing to consider is using “trespasses.”  I have not been able to find when or how this word came to be used, as we don’t find it in either Matthew or Luke’s versions of the Lord’s Prayer.  Instead, Matthew has “debts” (Mt. 6:12), and

Luke has both sins and debts (Lk. 11:4).  Seeing as trespassing only gets used in modern English to talk about being on somebody’s private property when it is forbidden, the meaning is lost unless you are actually redefining it in your head as you say the prayer.

Finally, consider “Lead us not into temptation.”  This is a hard thing to understand when we take into account the biblical assertion that God “tempts no one” (Jas. 1:13).  So if God already doesn’t tempt us, why would we ask God not to tempt us?  It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

More recent translations say things like, “do not bring us to the time of trial” (Mt. 6:13; Lk. 11:4), or “Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil” (The Message).  While the words for trial and testing and temptation are very closely related, “Save us from the time of trial” makes more sense than “Lead us not into temptation.”  We are asking God to save us from those things that threaten to lead us away from our faith.

Ultimately, whichever translation you choose to use, make an effort to understand what you are saying.  Each petition of the Lord’s Prayer is worth delving into and studying further.  It is a prayer rich in meaning, where it benefits us to say it slowly, or even to sing it, so that we are paying attention to what we are actually saying.

If you haven’t tried learning a different wording, I encourage you to try it.  It’s not that hard, and it might even help you to understand what you are saying!                            

In Christ,

Pastor Lynne Hutchison