A sermon on Luke 11:1-13 by the Revd Geoff Leslie

It is not just Christians who like to pray. Prayer is the essence of the spiritual life – a relationship with the Universe, the spiritual, with God, with the world and with the deepest part of ourselves. Many humans in all places and times have wanted to make that kind of connection. But who knows how to pray?

When the disciples spent time with Jesus, they observed someone who really knew how to pray. Luke points this out more than the other Gospel writers. Jesus is often caught in prayer – on the mountain, or in secluded places, hidden away or in their plain view – and it is no surprise that here in Luke 11 they are watching him pray, and they asked him what was his secret. It says, when he stopped, they said to him, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray’.

In Victoria, our parliament begins each session with a recitation of this Lord’s prayer and the Labor party under Dan Andrews, those terrible progressives, declared in an election promise that they would update the practice, perhaps getting a more multi-faith prayer, or a type of meditation. The Greens of course wanted it gone. And then a committee was appointed from the group Faith Communities Council of Australia to work on it.  

There were Hindus, Muslims and a variety of Christians and they wrote a preliminary report in 2024. To my surprise, they recommended keeping the Lord’s Prayer in parliament.

Committee member Bp Philip Huggins said, ‘The Lord’s Prayer speaks to universal yearnings. Characterising the prayer as something pertaining just to Christians misses its genesis and universality….The origin of the prayer was Jesus being asked how to pray well by those who saw His depth of prayer.’ (The Melbourne Anglican, July 2025, p4)

In June last year, a petition with 11,000 signatures and a joint statement of Anglican, Catholic, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish faith leaders called for keeping the Lord’s Prayer in parliament. The statement said ‘it is a simple prayer containing notions of forgiveness, gratitude, reconciliation, unity and the common good and that the majority of Victorians retained belief in a higher power.’ Ergo, the Lord’s Prayer is inclusive and valuable.

So point 1. This is a good prayer for humans. It is not weird or sectarian; it is suitable for anyone who yearns for God and for a better world. It captures the human vocation; it is Prayer 101 from a Master Pray-er.

Point 2. however, I will make is that this prayer is presented as a way for Jesus’ disciples to brand themselves. John the Baptist apparently taught his disciples a distinctive prayer that both marked them out and kept them on track for his mission and purposes. The disciples seek a prayer that will express the distinctive piety that Jesus’ own life has expressed and into which he has drawn the disciple band and so he gifts them this prayer to hold onto. It contains his distinctive view of God, the world and their mission. It is a badge, a trademark, it should be a signature prayer that all Christians treasure in common, but in most Baptist churches and other contemporary-style groups, it is rarely heard today. Indeed, you could say that here Jesus commands us to pray it – ‘When you pray, say…’   So bring it back I say. It covers a lot of good ground with its simple and direct address to God, its yearning for a better world and for the needs and attitudes of the disciples in their work in the world. It is austere, free of flourishes, yet perfectly adequate. This is how Jesus’ followers should approach God. Just go and talk to him. Call him ‘Father’ or something equally personal. Tell him what you want. It is not magic.

The Content of the Prayer

I’ve noticed that nearly every line in the prayer reflects something of content that Jesus taught about prayer somewhere in his life and teaching. There is a whole sermon could be had on each of these glorious lines. I’ll pick out some key words:

• Father –
   This is almost certainly a translation of the Aramaic term ‘Abba’ that is sometimes placed on Jesus’ lips in untranslated form (Mark 14:36). Jesus loved to call God ‘Father’; he wasn’t the first person to do so but it became a mark of his uniqueness. Every time his prayers are recorded, they begin with Father. ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth that you have not revealed these things to the wise and learned but to little children’ (Matt 11:26). He goes on to say ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’. (27). And Jesus did reveal to us what the Father is like – When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen.  He sees, he will reward you. Don’t babble like the pagans, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matt 6:6-7).  Jesus never doubted that God was indeed the Creator and the Judge of all the earth but he encouraged us to see that this same God is tender, and close, and understanding. Transcendent, yet imminent. Interested in us and in the sparrows. Knowing our needs and what’s best for us. Loving us. The word he used to convey all that was ‘Abba’ Father. I know some of us feel uncomfortable with that – it is such a gendered word – but if you look to change it, try to find a word or phrase that suggests the dear and attentive side of God, not just authority and holiness. That is the genius of Abba.

Hallowed be your name.
 If God’s name is to be regarded as holy, it is about God’s reputation, about the way God is regarded in the world.  What do people think about God today? If they judge God by the way those who claim the name of God live, alas his name will not often be hallowed. This could be a prayer for us to protect God’s reputation by living resplendent lives that cause people to praise God.
On the other hand, God’s name is sometimes disrespected because people are unaware of what God is up to, what God allows, and why there is such suffering and disorder. This prayer could be, ‘God reveal yourself’ (Message translation) or ‘God, do some mighty things on our behalf that will really show the world your greatness’. As tonight’s psalm 85:4-6 says,
Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us!
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
Will you not revive us again,
that your people may rejoice in you? 

If God shows up and acts, his people will rejoice, the nations will observe and God’s name will be hallowed. Which is the primary meaning? Our preserving God’s reputation as his name-keepers? Or God acting to preserve God’s glory and respect?  It is hard to say – probably a bit of both.

• Your kingdom come –
  Again, Jesus was not the first to talk about the Kingdom but it became his essential message. “The kingdom of God is near; repent and believe the Good News”. The dream that God would set the world to rights; the hope that God will come and sort out the world – its governance, its justice, its operation.  This is a BIG prayer.
• Bread –
  This chapter of Luke goes on to discuss more about the request for bread – the friend at midnight who unlike God is reluctant to meet this request, and the promises that God will give us bread not a snake. The point is that bread is a very reasonable request and God can be trusted to grant it.
  Strangely, in both Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the Lord’s Prayer they include a word in this request the meaning of which is uncertain.  They say ‘Our bread, our epiousion bread’ give us today (Matthew) or ‘day by day’ (Luke).  The word could mean ‘necessary’ or ‘for life’ or ‘for everyday’ or the opposite ‘supernatural’, or ‘for tomorrow’. We usually translate it as ‘daily’. 
  But think about Jesus and bread – he starts his ministry by saying We do not live by bread alone but by the words from God.  He goes on to say that he is the bread of life and we need him for our souls more than we need sliced wholemeal. He breaks bread as a metaphor of fellowship. He says bread is his body and we are to share it and live it and unite through it. I don’t think we can pray for ‘our daily bread’ without some hint that bread alone does not satisfy, we need something spiritual, and that without both kinds of bread we perish.
  In my praying of this petition, I sometimes think it was all very apt for the poor people for whom a day’s pay and a day’s bread were never guaranteed, but in my context I often pray, help me not to accumulate more stuff than I need.  I don’t want to pray for more material things – our problem is too much.
• Forgive –
  This prayer for forgiveness has a sense of ‘day by day’ or ‘everyday’ about it like the request for bread. In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer he immediately follows it by discussing this phrase about forgiveness. Matthew makes our forgiveness more or less conditional on the way we forgive others. Luke makes it more of an aside. God forgive us our sins – and by the way, we forgive people their debts to us.
  Jesus taught about the need to forgive others often so it is not surprising that here in this disciples’ prayer, we are nudged to live a life modelling the forgiveness we receive. I know that to forgive can be the most wonderful thing – I had a Christian friend when I was at school who got bashed by a local thug. He would not let the lads go around and punish his attacker, who came and knocked on his door and said, The boys came around to find me but they said you wouldn’t let them bash me, why did you do that? My friend said that he believed God wanted him to offer forgiveness instead of revenge, love instead of hate.  A little later, the lad went to jail and my friend visited him there regularly, which changed his life.
  That’s a great story, but to demand all victims forgive their perpetrators is problematic and not anyone’s place to demand. It is up to the person who has been offended and they must choose the time and the manner in which they forgive.
• Lead us not into trial
  Lit. ‘Do not cause us to enter trial’.  So, it’s ‘save us from trial’ not ‘save us in trial’. I think the traditional translation ‘lead us not into temptation’ is not right (though possible). The word pierasmos can be translated either trial or temptation, but Jesus showed us what this petition means when he repeated it in Gethsemane. He led his disciples into that dark garden knowing that in the hour that fast approached, he would be arrested, tried, tortured and executed.  That is a pierasmos, a trial. It is not a temptation. He intended to pray “Spare me from this trial” or as he put it in picturesque Hebrew, “Let this cup pass from me”. Some trials are so horrendous that we may not survive the pressure.  So as he goes toward the area where he wishes to pray, he says to the disciples ‘you wait here and pray that YOU don’t enter into trial’, meaning that his treatment will be bad and could be bad for them, too. They should pray that they are not put under such a trial as Jesus is, that their disciple-calling will be bearable, they won’t face extreme pressure.  One translator suggests for this line of the Lord’s Prayer, “Don’t put us under great pressure” because pressure comes from without and from within.
  Is it legitimate to ask God not to bring you into suffering and trial? Apparently it is. There are some things in life I don’t think I could cope with and I’m allowed to ask God to spare me a test which I have little hope of passing.
• The rest of the Lord’s Prayer which Luke omits is fine but I don’t need to comment on it because Luke doesn’t mention it.

So here, Jesus shows us how he thinks about prayer.  And he shows us what to pray about and how to pray. Abba, yearning, daily needs, forgiveness and a bit of protection from trouble.  It is a prayer that we can pray when we cannot think of anything else to pray. Simone Weil prayed it every day in Greek, a practice which I have followed. This prayer helps, as the Colossians reading said, to keep us in touch with the nerve-centre of true spirituality, namely Christ. I hope you know how to say it, not just to sing it. I hope you feel free to riff off it with your own paraphrases and reworking, that’s how I make it meaningful, pondering and rewording each phrase. I hope you find it stimulates your faith and then your love and commitment. As Chris Anderson shared last week in the magnificent prayer of Mother Theresa (St Teresa of Calcutta):

If we pray, we will believe.
If we believe, we will love.
If we love, we will serve.
Only then we will put our love for God
into living action,
through the service of Christ
in the distressing disguise of the poor.”

Prayer will always be a mystery and a challenge but the Lord’s Prayer is a good place to start. Let us say the Lord’s prayer together (we will sing it later) using Nathan’s translation from Laughingbird:  

“Abba Father
may your name be kept sacred.
May everything be brought under your rule.
Give us enough food for each day.
Forgive us the things we have done wrong,
just as we forgive those who owe us anything.
And don’t push us beyond our limits.”

AMEN