We live in an age of worry. Studies from Statistics Canada tell us that 1 in 4 Canadians report to have moderate to severe anxiety. Gen Z and Millennial Canadians between 18 and 39 years old reported the highest levels of anxiety, loneliness, depression and stress of any age group (33.5 per cent for anxiety, 43.2 per cent for stress, 29.1 per cent for loneliness and 27.7 per cent for feelings of depression). We are in an epidemic of worry, anxiety, and stress.  We face so many issues in day-to-day life that worry and anxiety are par for the course. To not worry seems to be something that only those who do not live in reality can do. What does it mean then to follow Christ’s teaching in this passage regarding worry? Jesus seems to think that we need to change our mindset about the value of worry (v27), change our relationship to possessions (v28), and to trust in the abundance of our Heavenly Father who “knows that you need all these things”(v32). We can abandon our scarcity mindsets because of the one who announces the abundance of God. Abundance, not scarcity, is the mark of God’s Kingdom. But that abundance must be made real through the lives of a people who have discovered that they can trust God and one another. Such trust is not an irrational gesture against the chaos of life, but rather a witness to the very character of God’s care of creation. So it is no wonder that Jesus directs our attention to the lilies to help us see how it is possible to live in joyful recognition that God has given us more than we need.

We who live in consumeristic cultures must remain aware that we live in a context that is perpetually trying to get us to be discontent with what we have. We are conditioned to chase after more. We are trained to get our value from money, possessions, and material gains. Jesus tells us that “You cannot serve both God and money (Mammon).”(v24) Historically, “mammon” is the name of a powerful deity who uses wealth to destroy people. It has the power to create hunger and discontentment in us, to get us to perpetually want more. Ultimately mammon competes with God for our heart’s devotion. So what does it mean for us to serve only one master? What are we giving ultimate allegiance to in our lives? Can we trust that Jesus is a better Lord than Mammon? 

Jesus taught us that what we see is shaped by how our eyes are trained to see the world. If our eye is bad, our sight will be corrupted. We need good eyes to see the world rightly. When we see things, we project our own biases upon what we are seeing. What we see out there is interpreted through our own personal filter. Jesus here is challenging his listeners to think about the kind of eye that they are developing. Do they have an evil eye or a good eye? Is their eye able to see what is true and good or is it tainted by greed and malice? We rarely examine the lens in which we see the world around us. And if we do —we may be shocked at how much our sight needs to be healed. But the good news is that just like the two blind men who called out for mercy and healing (Mt 9:27-31)— we too can call out to Jesus our Great Physician to heal our distorted lenses. 

One of the ingrained messages we receive in our culture is to do all you can do to get rich and stay rich. We spend a majority of our lives in the workforce earning and storing up wealth in the hope of an eventual retirement. Into our modern day consumeristic context we hear an invitation from Jesus to store up treasures that last. “Treasure” moves from things we value that are temporary— to things we value that are moral and eternal. It’s not that Jesus has a problem with using our days to work and earn. We need to pay our bills and provide for ourselves and others. (2 Thess. 3) Jesus is asking us: what do we value? Where is our treasure? We will know what it is based on what we spend our energies on and what is the driving force of our life. If we are not careful, our possessions will possess us. Instead, Jesus invites his disciples to let God’s reign take centre stage.

Jesus comes out of teaching on prayer and begins to talk about another spiritual practice. “When you fast…”. Jesus doesn’t say, “IF you fast”but rather he assumes that people will be regularly fasting. This might strike us as odd in our modern North American context that tends to disparage the idea of self-denial. What is fasting? Fasting is abstaining—often from food and water. This abstaining creates a longing for more of God and can paradoxically be a feast of spiritual encounter. Fasting can even have medical benefits. But we don’t fast for what we can get out it. Fasting is firstly an expression of worship to God that reminds us we are sustained by God alone. In this practice of fasting Jesus wants us not to be like “the hypocrites” who do things for the sake of public display and fame. The only way to fast, or pray or engage in any other spiritual activity that brings about a heavenly reward is to do it “in secret.” Whatever discomfort or pain we are experiencing is to be kept hidden as much as possible. The “reward” that we are storing up when we pray and fast in secret is simply the beauty of the character that we develop when we learn how to be singularly motivated by God’s will and thus not motivated by social applause.

This last line of Jesus’ prayer reminds us of our own frailty and the reality that evil is a force from which we need deliverance. We live in a broken world and have an enemy —the satan—which tempts us to fall. God does not tempt (James 1:12-13), but God does allow us to be tested and go through trials to refine our faith (James 1:1-3). When the satan or anyone else tempts us, they’re hoping we will fall and be more enslaved because of it. So we need to be lead in such a way that we do not fall into temptation. The heart of this petition is about God protecting and rescuing us from temptation and the work of the evil —and the evil one. To pray “deliver us from evil” is to acknowledge that we are on the front lines of a cosmic conflict (Eph 6:10-12) which we need to resist in prayer. As N.T. Wright suggests, “it is a prayer that the forces of destruction, of dehumanization, of anti-creation, of anti-redemption, may be bound and gagged, and that God’s good world may escape from being sucked down into their morass.” This petition also acknowledges that we need a Saviour to deliver us. We can’t defeat evil on our own. And so, the prayer to “deliver us” is a prayer that trusts in the work of Jesus to deliver us out of all captivity. 

The Lord’s Prayer contains, at this point, a most unusual thing: a clause which commits the prayer to actions which back up the petition just offered. ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ Prayer and life are here locked indissolubly together. This isn’t saying that we do this in order to earn God’s forgiveness. It’s a further statement of our loyalty to Jesus and his Kingdom. Claiming this central blessing of the Kingdom only makes sense if we are living by that same central blessing ourselves. Failure to forgive one another wasn’t a matter of failing to live up to a new bit of moral teaching. It was cutting off the branch you were sitting on. The only reason for being Kingdom-people, for being Jesus’ people, was that the forgiveness of sins was happening; so if you didn’t live forgiveness, you were denying the very basis of your own new existence. On the cross, all is forgiven on God’s side. But this forgiveness only reaches us and benefits us when we acknowledge that we need to be forgiven and accept that we are forgiven, which is part of what it means to place your faith in Jesus Christ. Even as Christians, there are things we can do and attitudes we can cultivate that hinder our ability to receive God’s love and forgiveness. So this section of the Lord’s prayer reminds us of our own agency and need to willingly participate in the Kingdom arriving in our lives. 

There many ways you can focus your prayer i.e., worship, thanksgiving, confession, consecration. Jesus teaches us that we should focus at least a part of our prayer time in petitioning or asking God to meet our needs, referring to the phrase ”daily bread.” In the historical context of this passage, the people to whom Jesus was speaking would have been poor, with no safety net. Less than 10% of the population had the economic standing to have the luxury of surplus. ‘Give us this day our daily bread’; reminds us that our natural longings, for bread and all that it symbolizes, are not to be shunned as though they were of themselves less important. It also reminds us that our prayers of petition move beyond the individual and towards the communal needs as the prayer is rendered in the plural of “us” and “our”. Finally, this prayer for daily bread points us beyond only physical hunger to the spiritual hunger that afflicts many in our modern day. Jesus said he is “the bread of life”(Jn 6:35)— and in his body broken we discover the place where we can come with our physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs, and lay them before the God to whom all desires are known.

Jesus came announcing and enacting the Kingdom of God. Every parable, every teaching, and every personal encounter recorded in the Gospel’s ultimately tells us about King Jesus and his arriving Kingdom. It is perhaps surprising that Jesus asks his disciples to pray for the Kingdom to come, and the will of God to be done. This tells us that the Kingdom of God comes not through force, but through prayer, consent, and petition. We have a part to play! It also tells us that the Kingdom and the will of God have not yet fully arrived on earth as it is in heaven. This raises many questions of how God’s sovereignty is at work in the world. While we may not have the full answer to those questions, Jesus’ prayer teaches that us that we stand in the time between the now and the not yet full arrival of the Kingdom. When we pray these second and third petitions — we pray for God to act AND confess our alignment to that activity. To pray that God’s will be done is to pray that our wills be trained to desire that God’s will be done. This means our prayers matter, even when we cannot see the tangible results or what the will of God is for a specific situation. We must trust that prayer always accomplishes much, whether we can see it or not.

Of all the lines in the Lord’s prayer, the phrase “Hallowed be Your Name” is one of the more confusing statements. We rarely use the word “hallowed” in our common day vocabulary— which means to honour, sanctify, set apart, and treat with the highest of respect. And even if we do, we might misinterpret this section of the prayer as directed first at our actions. The first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer are directed toward’s God’s activity. Jesus here petitions God to hallow God’s Name. To be sure, if God acts to honour God’s Name, then surely the followers of Jesus will too, but this text actually speaks first of a Divine action. This means all worship, adoration, and hallow-ing of God’s name is less of a request— and more of a confession about what is already true because of who God is and what God has done. It is an orientation of our hearts and lives to that supreme reality that refuses to make the Lord’s name vanity. (Ex 20:7) When we say "hallowed be thy name," we are making the adoration of God the ultimate concern of our lives. We are confessing what matters most to us and what we will give our ultimate allegiance.