As you know, another name for the Our Father is the Lord’s Prayer.  It is called the Lord’s Prayer because Our Lord Jesus Christ himself thought it out and gave it to us to use.  It happened that one day, after he had been praying, his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray…” and his reply was to give them the Our Father (NRSV, Luke 11:1-4).

Father

Going to God

Of course, there are fathers and fathers.  Some are good and some are bad.  But when we say that God is our Father, we mean he is our good Father.  So Jesus has taught us to look on him, not as a kind of stern head teacher to keep away from, but as our good Father whom we can go to at any time.  All good things come from him (James 1:17), and we can always trust him to give us what is best for us to have.  So we should never be afraid to go to him and ask him to give us what he knows is good for us, because that is what he is waiting for us to do.

Trusting God

Jesus was very anxious that we should fully understand this.  One day he was talking to a group of people and he asked them, “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?”  Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (NRSV, Matthew 7:9-11).  So you may be absolutely sure that you can trust God completely to give you what is best for you to have.  As St Paul said, “…all things work together for good for those who love God… (NRSV, Romans 8:28).

Our Father

We are all God’s children

You’ll notice that the prayer begins Our Father, not My Father.  This is because he is just as much the Father of other people as he is of us.  So the plural is kept all the way through: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses”.  In the Lord’s Prayer, therefore, we pray for others as well as for ourselves, for the people we don’t like as well as for the people we like.  For, as God is the Father of all, so we are all his children.  And as he is good to all, he desires all his children to be friends with one another.  As Jesus said, “…pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good…Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (NRSV, Matthew 5:44,45,48).

So people of other races are also his children along with us, and for that reason are our brothers and sisters and we should treat them as such.  It is just as wrong and stupid for white people to look down on black people because they are black, as it is for black people to look down on white people because they are white.

A Mexican fable!

There is an old Mexican fable which shows how silly this sort of thing is.  It tells that when God made the first man, he put him in an oven to bake him.  Unfortunately, God left him in too long and when he took him out he was burnt black.  That is why there are black people.  So he made another man and put him in the oven, but this time he took him out too soon and he was pale and underdone.  That is why there are white people.  Then God tried once again and this time the man came out a beautiful golden brown, a perfect man, in fact a Mexican!

We laugh at that, but we are just as silly if we think that we are better than someone else because that person has a different coloured skin.  The colour of people’s skin makes no more difference to their value than does the colour of their eyes.  People who have a different coloured skin are worth just as much to God as we are, because he is the God, not of one race, but of all humankind.

Jesus died for us all

Indeed there is an even greater reason why they are worth as much to God as we are, and it’s this: Jesus became a human being and died on the Cross to save them no less than us.  As you know, Jesus was a Jew but, because he truly belongs to all the human race, we represent him in different ways on crucifixes.  In Britain he is usually represented as a white Christ.  And because he belongs equally to Africans, they have a black Christ on their crucifixes.  So the Indians picture him as an Indian and the Chinese as a Chinaman.  And all of us are right because, whoever we may be, Jesus took our human nature when he became a human being, and we are his brothers and sisters and should look on each other as such.

A prayer for others and ourselves

So you see the Our Father is a family prayer which we share with all other members of God’s Christian Family.  For this reason we can use it as a prayer, not only for ourselves, but also for other people.  This means that if we want to pray for someone else in trouble and don’t quite know what to say, we cannot do better than say the Our Father for them, knowing that they are included in the words ‘us’ and ‘we’ and ‘ours’: “Give us this day our daily bread; forgive us our trespasses; lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”.  This is called saying the Our Father with a special intention; and of we can use the Hail Mary in the same way: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death”.

SUMMARY

1. God is our good Father from whom all good things come, and whom we can trust completely.

2. Our Father means that he is the Father of others as well as of ourselves, including people we don’t like.  As all others are his children, we should treat them as our brothers and sisters by being friendly towards them.

3. People from other countries are worth as much to God as we are.  The colour of their skin makes no more difference to their value than does the colour of their eyes.