Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian
November 19, 2022
Be Careful For What You Ask
On How Actually Praying “The Lord’s Prayer” Could Be the Start of a New World
It is an absurd and tragic irony that we so many of us who have little to no connection to the church of Jesus Christ, let alone the way of Jesus Christ, know and can speak aloud by memory what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” The whole thing, when you break it down, but particularly “thy kingdom come.”
This entreaty, this request, this plea, is not for a release from worldly woes or circumstances no matter how dire, but rather a call to radical justice in all things economic, political and social here in our very earthly and mortal endeavors. It is a prayer that the Way of God would rule and reign, and that opposed to and in conflict with and conquest over the Way of Civilization (aka humanity) and its insufferable exploitation and oppression of peoples over one another and creation.
When Jesus was cornered to answer about allegiance to Roman rule with the question about taxation and monetary tribute (Matthew 22) he did not equivocate when he answered that one should give to each, Caesar and God, the “things” that belong to each. Yes, the answer left his incriminators suspended in mid-air without the ability to lay a hammer blow to him in that moment, but it also reverberated then and continues to upend us today by pointing out the difference and distinction between how humanity sues for peace by violent victory of one over the other and how God sues for peace by distributive justice for all.
Caesar, the way of retributive justice that categorically and completing creates caste by self-domination is simply not God, the way of distributive justice that intentionally and comprehensively creates equality by self-subordination.
When we pray “thy kingdom come” we call for the uprooting and upheaval of all civilization’s disastrous and deadly structures that protect one ethnicity/race or class of persons over against another. We call for equity, forgiveness of debt, equality, fair play, human rights, consideration and compromise and all of what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 (that again, by the way, is a bible passage known culturally by so many because of its use at weddings, these many of whom give no regard to Jesus and his ethic except perhaps to appreciate at a distance how selflessness is a nice idea to which to aspire, not that I’m cynical or anything) as self-giving love: patient, kind, generous, never rude, and never insisting on one’s own way.
Since so many people who care little of God, let alone God’s way, but still do know “The Lord’s Prayer” in these days of the church’s decline and the marginalization of Christianity, it might be wise for the church not to bemoan its loss of position and power but rather welcome that loss as the opportunity to realign itself to the actual Way of God that conflicts with and confronts the Way of Caesar. And it might be strategic to use “The Lord’s Prayer” as the communicative, constructive and contemplative way to teach and reach that realignment. Using John Dominic Crossan’s The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer would be a great place to start.
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