Adveniat Regnum Tuum

‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’
Matthew 6:9 -13 (NIV)

A note from Seth Crissman, Executive Director of The Soil and The Seed Project:

I don’t remember how old I was when I learned the Lord’s Prayer.  I think it was probably something I heard my parents pray, even before my earliest childhood memories. I remember kneeling and praying with my parents and my siblings at the end of the day. As we prayed together, we would remember the day that had been and look forward to the day that was to come. My parents would often end the time of prayer by leading us in the Lord’s Prayer. Together, we prayed, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  We asked God to give us our daily bread, to forgive us as we forgive others and deliver us from evil.  Praying the Lord’s prayer was one of the earliest things I did as a follower of Jesus.  

Jesus spent a lot of time teaching about greatness, the Kingdom of Heaven and God’s ordering of things. God-with-us, Immanuel, embodied this in the incarnation as well as in his life, death and resurrection. 

• Jesus called ordinary people and used ordinary things to teach them about God’s right ordering of things. 

• Jesus did not lift up the sophisticated, powerful or impressive as models to be imitated. He didn’t work the angles to try to gain influence or status. 

• Jesus actively rejected that sort of grasping and chose to confront self-seeking power over and over again especially among the religiously serious.
  Jesus taught of a Kingdom that is small and seed-sized that is not particularly shiny but has everything in it needed for life. 

The Lord’s prayer is a beautiful example of Christ’s greatness/smallness teaching. By offering counter-examples just a few verses before, we get a picture of “how not to pray.”  

1. Don’t try to impress others (performing) when you pray. 

2. Don’t try to impress God by going on and on. 

The Lord’s prayer serves as the example.  In it, Jesus teaches his disciples to burst into God’s presence. When the person praying enters into the presence of God, it is not on the merit of their own cleverness, power or sophistication. Philippians 2 reminds us that Christ did not grasp for power, but instead emptied himself and was obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Jesus Christ, our self-emptying, now resurrected savior has been given the name above every name, at whose name every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Because of Jesus, we can “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16 NIV

I believe there is a real temptation for us as Christians to think that we “graduate” as Christians from simple rhythms and practices of faith like the one from my childhood. Sounding well spoken and clever is valued over speaking or praying genuinely, being sophisticated over showing up or embodying simple hospitality, and reading about prayer is valued over simply praying.

Functionally, believing that we graduate from many of those earliest practices of faith leaves leaders in positions of power without a posture of learning.  This is harmful for them as individuals as well as for the communities that they are leading. 

Praying “adveniat regnum tuum” – “Thy Kingdom Come, on earth as it is in heaven” takes practice.  It requires turning to God just as we are, refusing to rely on our own merit to enter into the presence of God.  It requires releasing and emptying instead of reaching and grasping for status and power.  As we practice praying the Lord’s prayer, we open our hearts to the transformative work of the Holy Spirit as God teaches us to want God’s kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.”  May it be so.