This morning, I'm beginning a four-part series on the Lord's Prayer that will carry us through the Sundays of February. This series grows out of conversations I have had with many of you about the questions you have about prayer, about praying-how to do it, what to say, what to ask for, what to expect. Jesus himself gave us the prayer we know as the Lord's Prayer in response to the first disciples' plea, "Lord, teach us to pray." But, I know from several of you that the Lord's Prayer, even though you know it by heart, or maybe because you know it by heart, has sadly become something of an empty vessel, words repeated by rote, that have lost their power to heal and transform.

It would be fun and instructive sometime to share with one another our experiences with this prayer through our lives. For me, as a little girl, from the earliest times I can remember, I said the Lord's Prayer every night with my Dad before I went to sleep. Amidst those precious memories, I also remember feelings of self-consciousness and worry. I was so afraid of getting the words messed up, putting my trespasses before my daily bread or something. And even now, in situations like Memorial Services where there's lots of emotion, I worry about not getting the words out right.

So this series is for all of us would-be disciples, all of us who long to know Jesus more intimately and feel the Spirit guiding our lives. May those of us who worry about our performance learn to relax. For those of you who are new to the Christian faith, may you come to love and cherish these words. For those of you who find it dull and boring, may it come alive and be for you like an icon, a window into God's heart. And for those of us who love these words and find in them a precious dialogue with God, may we discover even more treasures of faith within this ancient and holy prayer.

Prayer is to be at the very center of our life as Christians. Pray without ceasing, said the apostle Paul. We don't know a lot of details about Jesus' life, but we do know that he prayed a lot. We can tell that he knew the Psalms, the prayer book of the Hebrew scriptures, by heart, because he weaves them into his sermons and his teaching and his own prayers, including his most passionate prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross.

We can tell he prayed a lot because so often, the Scripture says that he made a deliberate effort to go off by himself to pray. Even when people were pressing around him, needing and wanting so many things from him, he said, "Time out. I'm going apart, to pray." We know that his disciples saw him in prayer, heard him praying, experienced him as someone rooted and grounded in prayer, and so, they asked him, "Lord, teach US to pray."

And in response, he gives them a precious gift, a prayer that teaches us about God, a prayer that brings us into God's presence. A prayer that summarizes the whole of the Good News. A prayer that draws us into God's agenda.

And so we begin: Our father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name.

Bishop Mel Wheatley, whom some of you know from his days as Senior Minister at the Westwood church, wrote a little book called, When You Pray, Say 'Our.' Right off the bat, from the very first word of this prayer, we are affirming that we are in relationship with God, and God with us. We don't say something neutral like "Dear God," or "Hey God,"or "O God" . . . we say "our" and we are connected immediately to the holy of holies.

But "our" is not only a possessive pronoun, it's plural as well. When you pray, say "our." One of the most radical things about this prayer is that it doesn't say "my" or "mine." It is an intimate conversation with God that draws each and every one of us in, not as a "me," but as an "us." When we pray, we pray as the whole people of God, for the whole people of God, in every time and in every place. And what we ask for, we ask for all.

The very globalness and expansiveness of this word "our" reminds us implicitly that our God is very big. Bigger than me and my wants and needs. Bigger than everyone I can know. Bigger than my neighbors, my kind, my country, my side. Bigger than all that and bigger still. "Our" draws in the friend and the stranger, the ally and the enemy, the cherished and the despised, the loved and the feared. "Our" includes them all.

Well, and that's just the first word! You can see that I could go for more than four Sundays on this gem of a prayer. This prayer so distilled and refined to a pure intensity of the whole of the Christian faith. No wonder, in the early church, this prayer was not generally shared. It was reserved for those who had studied, prepared themselves, made the decision to be baptized in a context where that was often a matter, literally, of life and death.

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Jesus knew God intimately and affectionately as "Abba," literally "dad" or "daddy." The great biblical scholar, Joachim Jeremias, tells of stepping off a plane one time in the Middle East, and a little Palestinian girl at the foot of the ramp spotting her father and calling out excitedly: "Abba, abba. Daddy, daddy!" This is our God! Intimate, immediate, familiar, loving, approachable, full of love for us, concerned with every detail of our well-being. A creator God who has this much love for each and all of his children, every one.

Now, in the Jewish custom, the actual name of God was never spoken, out of reverence and awe. And so the whole phrase taken together, father-in-heaven, was a way of saying or indicating God without saying the name. Heaven doesn't mean out there, far away, way up in the sky, beyond our reach. . . . No, heaven in this phrase means sacred, holy. Our father in heaven, our loving parent God, holy One, may your name be hallowed.

Holy be your name. Sacred, blessed, revered, adored, sanctified. We know how tempted we are, how very easy it is, to forget that God is God. To think that this world and our lives and all our accomplishments are of our own doing. To put ourselves instead of God first. Hallowed be your name.

These few brief words reorient us, putting God first, bringing together the most intimate and the most sacred aspects of God. Abba in heaven is personal and universal, intimate and infinite, approachable and beyond imagining, human and holy, loving and all-powerful, tender and strong, full of mercy and dedicated to justice.

Abba in heaven, holy loving God, may your name be hallowed on earth as in heaven. May your kingdom come on earth as in heaven. Called to live in the confidence of God's sovereign holiness, we can expect the kingdom to come, a new way of holiness and righteousness to permeate everything about life on this earth.

That's what we'll explore next week and I hope you'll be back and bring others to join in the journey. These words are words of life for us each and all. As we now prepare our hearts to participate in this sacrament, the holy meal, which binds us to one another, to Christ, and to God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, I offer this paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer from a great New Testament Scholar and bishop of the church, Krister Stendahl, as we pray: Our God, far above and beyond our grasp, yet close to us like a parent, Let the time come soon when you are recognized by all as God. That is, when you establish your supreme and just and good rule over your whole creation. Yes, let the time come soon when your gracious plan for salvation becomes a reality on the earth as it now is in heaven. While we wait for that day, let us already now enjoy the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, as we share in the bread that sustains our bodies and our souls. Amen.