Do you remember when you learned to say The Lord’s Prayer, or who taught it to you? Maybe your mother or father taught you to say it, or maybe you learned it from a Sunday School teacher or in Vacation Bible School on a summer long ago. The majority of us learned it in childhood, and most of us probably struggled to get the words right as we learned to say it all the way through. Maybe, like one little boy, we prayed fervently, “Give us our trash passes, as we forgive those who passed trash against us.”

It’s amazing to reflect though, in how many hundreds of languages and by how many millions of people, this prayer, taught by Jesus, is prayed every single day. Saying the Lord’s Prayer in English, as we do, has actually only been in practice for about 500 years. Think of that! Jesus taught his disciples the prayer in Aramaic, it was prayed in Hebrew and Greek for centuries before it began to be prayed in Latin, the universal language of Christianity until the 16th century. The Lord’s Prayer wasn’t translated from Latin into English until the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, less than 500 years ago. Some of you who grew up Catholic learned the Paternoster, the Our Father, in Latin long before you learned it in English.

And I suppose that it’s the universal nature of this prayer we have from Jesus, spoken in hundreds of languages and by millions of people every day that I want to focus on this morning. When we say The Lord’s Prayer, we start with the universal “Our.” Our Father – the Father of Christians who are American, Canadian, Mexican, South American, English, Danish, German, Polish, Russian, South African, Sudanese, Nigerian, Palestinian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and so on and so on throughout the world.

When we pray to Our Father, we are praying to the Father of all who are Christians – the millions and millions of us all across the earth. Surely that should change the way we understand the part of the prayer that goes “Give us this day our daily bread.” Not give “me” but give “us.” We are praying that none of God’s children, in whatever part of the world they live in, including our own, should go hungry. As James Mulholland says in his wonderful book on the Lord’s Prayer, “Praying to ‘Our Father’ reminds me that I live in community. When I begin to pray for those beyond my doorstep, then I begin to pray for heaven on earth.”

Praying to “Our Father” reminds us that the love God has for you and me is the love we are to show one another, and that love includes sharing what we have with others. It hurts my heart and tugs painfully at my conscience to think of Sudanese mothers and fathers praying to “our Father” for daily bread when their children will likely receive no bread at all this day in a country savaged by war and drought.

We pray, as Jesus taught us, not only to the father of us all, but to a particular kind of father as well. Jesus used the mind-boggling word “Abba” – the closest translation for us would be “Daddy” in addressing God. Jesus taught us in addressing God as “Abba” that our Lord and God, the ruler of the Universe, the Almighty, the Creator of the heaven and earth, desires to be as close to us as a parent is to a child. This manner of addressing God changes everything for us because our Abba, Father, cares for you and me in the closest and most intimate of ways.

Think of it – our Abba, our Father, the God we honor as hallowed or holy – is the same God who chooses to love us as his own children. In using the name “Abba”, in claiming God as a parent, Jesus was opening up a whole new way for us to be in relationship with the divine. As Mulholland says, “For Jesus, God was the father we cry out for when we awake in the darkness, in the grip of a nightmare. God was the mother who dries our tears and kisses away our pain when we fall and skin our knee. God was a parent – intimate, loving, and committed.”

In just two words, “Our Father, Our Abba”, Jesus opens up the whole of the Great Commandment to love God with every fiber of our being and to love each other as well. We are offered relationship with a God who desires to be as close to us as a parent is to a child, and we are given the opportunity and privilege of seeing other human beings as fellow children of God, our siblings, our brothers and sisters, members of our family.

It is with that kind of understanding that we pray for our daily bread, for forgiveness of our wrongdoings, and for protection from evil. We pray, not just for ourselves, but with and on behalf of all who call out to God saying, “Our Father.” What might be the evil that a Palestinian mother or a Honduran father or a Chinese child might need to be protected from? “Save us from the time of trial; lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

As familiar as the Lord’s Prayer is to us, there is much at stake every time we pray it. I hope we are challenged by the words Jesus tells us to pray as much as we are comforted by the words. But perhaps the most important learning of all is that the disciples asked Jesus how to pray like Jesus himself prayed. Ultimately, when we pray the words that Jesus taught us to pray, we are kneeling alongside Jesus himself. Ultimately, “we are praying like Jesus when we begin calling God “Our Father.” These words invite intimacy, responsibility, community, and self-denial. They are the framework for everything else Jesus encourages us to pray. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is the obvious response of someone praying “Our Father.” Once we know such intimacy, we desire what God desires. Once we accept our responsibility, we share God’s love for all his children. Once we understand God’s call to community, we commit ourselves to establishing his kingdom. Once we know all of these things, we are willing to deny ourselves in order to see God’s will done.”

At my church in Miami, the church where my oldest daughter now sings in the choir, we got in the habit of holding hands when we prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t even remember how it got started, but I know it became a habit right away. I’m going to ask us to hold hands this morning when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. I’ve learned that there is great power anytime we hold hands, when we, in a concrete way, hang onto each other as we ask God’s protection and care upon each of us, as we ask to be forgiven of our sins, and as we ask to be protected from evil.

So this morning, when it comes to the point where we grab hold of each other’s hands and pray the words that Jesus taught us to pray, let us also remember the millions of other Christians in every country of the world who desire heaven on earth as we do, who desire daily bread for all God’s children, and who pray that forgiveness might redeem human relationships. And let us finally thank Jesus, who takes us by the hand and leads us to our Father.

Amen.