How to Talk to a Father

Jesus was still sitting on the mountainside, and the crowd was still listening. He had just told them to give their money away in secret, so that only God would know. Now he turned to praying.

"When you pray," he said, "don't be like the show-offs. They love to stand and pray in the meeting houses and on the street corners, where everybody can see them. They have their reward already."

Everyone knew who he meant. Some men waited until the market was at its busiest, planted their feet on the corner, lifted their hands high, and prayed long and slow, so that people carrying baskets had to step around them. If you had been in that market, you might have caught one of them opening an eye to check who was watching. People did watch. Being watched was his reward, and it was all he would get.

"But when you pray," Jesus said, "go into your room and shut the door. Pray to your Father, who is there in the secret place. Your Father sees what is done in secret, and he will reward you."

(Most houses then had only one or two rooms. The room with a door might be the storeroom, so a person could end up praying between the flour jars and the olive oil.)

"And when you pray, don't keep babbling on and on, like people who don't know God. They think he will hear them because they use so many words. Don't be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

A boy who wants a drink does not climb onto the table and make a speech to his father about the history of water. He says, "Dad, can I have some?" and holds out his cup.

"So pray like this," Jesus said.

Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your kingdom come.
May what you want be done on earth
the way it is done in heaven.
Give us today the bread we need for today.
Forgive us the wrongs we have done,
as we have forgiven the people who wronged us.
And do not lead us into testing,
but rescue us from the evil one.

Then Jesus went back to one line, the hardest one, and explained it. "If you forgive people when they wrong you, your Father in heaven will forgive you too. But if you will not forgive them, your Father will not forgive your wrongs."

Somewhere on that hillside a boy probably thought of his big brother, who had eaten the last fig that morning, and sighed.

God's people had called him Father before, in their old songs. But Jesus put the word at the very front of the prayer, the way a child calls "Dad!" across the house before he says anything else. Jesus knew that word better than anyone alive. Very early, while it was still dark, he would slip off to a lonely place to talk with his Father. One night in a garden he would pray, "My Father, may what you want be done," and mean it all the way through. And after he rose from the dead, he sent his friends a message: "I am going up to my Father and your Father."

He was the Son. On that mountain he was sharing his own Father with fishermen and farmers and children, and teaching every one of them to begin where he always began, with Our Father.