CPE - Sacred Text - 1

Twice a week when my cohorts in CPE at Barnes-Jewish Hospital gather for class, we begin with one of us briefly presenting a sacred text, however we define that term, followed by the group briefly reflecting on it. I am the last of our group to go and no one yet has read a selection from a text accepted somewhere as scripture. So leave it to the Unitarian Universalist to buck the trend and turn to the Christian Bible for a text.

THE LORD’S PRAYER / OUR FATHER

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever.
Amen.

(Matthew 6:9-13 – KJV)

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Recording of “The Lord’s Prayer” by Isaac Cates and Ordained
(Listen on YouTube)

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THE STRANGEST PRAYER
From the “Prologue” to The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, by John Dominic Crossan (NY: HarperOne, ©2010)

The Lord’s Prayer is Christianity’s greatest prayer. It is also Christianity’s strangest prayer. It is prayed by all Christians, but it never mentions Christ. It is prayed in all churches, but it never mentions church. It is prayed on all Sundays, but it never mentions Sunday. It is called the “Lord’s Prayer,” but it never mentions “Lord.”

It is prayed by fundamentalist Christians, but it never mentions the inspired inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, the miracles, the atoning death, or bodily resurrection of Christ. It is prayed by evangelical Christians, but it never mentions the evangelium, or gospel. It is prayed by Pentecostal Christians, but it never mentions ecstasy or the Holy Spirit.

It is prayed by Congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic Christians, but it never mentions congregation, priest, bishop, or pope. It is prayed by Christians who split from one another over this or that doctrine, but it never mentions a single one of those doctrines. It is prayed by Christians who focus on Christ’s substitutionary sacrificial atonement for human sin, but it never mentions Christ, substitution, sacrifice, atonement, or sin.

It is prayed by Christians who focus on the next life in heaven or in hell, but it never mentions the next life, heaven or hell. It is prayed by Christians who emphasize what it never mentions and also prayed by Christians who ignore what it does.

You could respond, of course, that there is nothing strange there at all. It is, you might say, a Jewish prayer from a Jewish Jesus; hence nothing Christian or even Jewish Christian is present. But that only invites us to start the question of strangeness all over again. It does not mention covenant or law, Temple or Torah, circumcision or purity, and so on.

What if the Lord’s Prayer is neither a Jewish prayer for Jews nor yet a Christian prayer for Christians? What if it is… a prayer from the heart of Judaism on the lips of Christianity for the conscience of the world? What if it is… a radical manifesto and a hymn of hope for all humanity in language addressed to all the earth?

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APPRECIATIVE REFLECTION

I selected the Lord’s Prayer and John Dominic Crossan’s introduction to his invitation to reinterpret the Lord ’s Prayer specifically because one of my learning goals this summer is prayer related. Prayer and theology intersect and interact in many ways, not all of them obvious, and I’m trying to work my way through how that works for me in my encounters with patients and their families.

I appreciate the way Crossan highlights that most of the beliefs of Christians are totally absent from the prayer Jesus offered those who followed him as a model for how to pray. In repeating it, Christians do not give voice to their beliefs – or only to a very small, not very controversial portion of them – even as they give voice to their faith. The words of the prayer are less than the prayer. And the prayer functions in ways that exceed its content.

While I am only beginning to study the Kaddish, a Jewish prayer that is best known to non-Jews for its function in honoring the memory of the dead, I realize that it too is a prayer whose literal content gives no expression to that widely known function. It is not a prayer for the dead, in a Christian sense, nor for the grieving. It does not mention death, the dead, afterlife or resurrection, loneliness, grief or loss. It is a prayer expressive of the greatness of God that ends with a prayer for peace.

This contradiction and interplay between function and theological content of some of the greatest prayers in two great Abrahamic religions gives me much food for thought and perhaps a little inspiration as I work to develop ways to pray authentically with patients and families while still providing what they need in the prayers that I give voice in their presence.

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