The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer [Paperback]

You're probably familiar with John Dominic "Dom" Crossan from his appearances in TV documentaries about the Bible, the life of Jesus and the ancient world. Over the past decade, his books for general readers have become very popular in congregations nationwide. Yes, some of Crossan's perspectives are provocative and he's more likely to be enjoyed in mainline Christian congregations rather than evangelical circles, but overall: This guy's books draw crowds for spirited small-group discussions in congregations coast to coast.

In "The Greatest Prayer," Crossan focuses on the "Lord's Prayer" or the "Our Father," depending on your own personal tradition with this prayer. Crossan is an internationally respected scholar and, in some previous books, he has taken readers deep into scholarly research. Here, he deliberately chooses not to take readers through a detailed historical exploration of the ancient world. Rather, he simply lifts up each section of the world's most popular prayer and explores how each phrase relates to the overall wisdom of the entire Bible. That's a reader-friendly way of approaching the subject. It's easy for people at any reading level to enjoy. Crossan's goal is to give us a vivid sense of what this revolutionary prayer must have meant in the lives of the men and women who first heard it, who first repeated it and who carefully preserved the prayer for us to enjoy thousands of years later. In making this connection, he extends the prayer's relevance right into the heart of our contemporary world.

The book is divided into 8 sections, making it a great choice for a two-month small-group study. The reading is neither too technical nor too long. This is a book custom-designed for a lively experience of spiritual reflection and moral dialogue in small groups. Simply encourage members to get the book, assign the weekly reading--and you'll have no shortage of conversation when your group gathers.

John Dominic Crossan has once again applied his background as an historian and as a Catholic priest to remind us, or educate us for the first time, that what Jesus' message was and is, is to love one another. He argues effectively that what Jesus taught in the Lords Prayer is that "justice" in the Bible is not retributive justice, but distributive justice -- that all must be treated the same, and that all must be treated with love. It's a tall order at times, but that is the message of the Lord's Prayer, which all too often is used to seek punishment for those whose actions we do not agree with, rather than seek compassion within to assist them or to assist ourselves to deal with the unwanted behaviour. I would certainly list this as a recommended reading for there is some serious thought put into this new tome of Crossan, serious thought that we might all want to consider. Check it out!

Dr. Crossan's profound and revelatory little book on the meaning of The Lord's Prayer is, for those of us who pray this prayer daily, a spellbinding journey. It is a trek of faith through the labyrinthine passageways of ancient scripture, its sacred memory, and its profane history. It is a meditation on the ways we choose to approach one another, with a flailing sword or a proffered loaf of bread. It is finally a bracing analysis of the strange prayer that was Jesus' answer to the simple request, "Lord, teach us to pray."

There are three ancient versions of the Lord's Prayer, which Crossan calls the "Abba Prayer," for good reason. Renditions appear in Matthew, Luke, and the Didache ("The Teaching [of the Twelve Apostles]") a very early little catechism rediscovered in the 19th century). Matthew, the most "Jewish" of the evangelists, preserved seven petitions, a number that alerts Hebrew readers of the holiness and importance of what they are reciting. Luke has five petitions.

Crossan perceives six tropes in Matthew; he combines the last two: "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one." Thus he constructs a nicely balanced poetic sensibility, with a crescendo of three petitions orienting us to God's name, God's kingdom, and God's will, followed by a second crescendo making that orientation clear for us on earth: (1) all of us get the sustenance we need on a daily basis; (2) all of us are awarded a debt-free future inasmuch as we free our debtors; and (3) we are preserved from the temptation to slip into violence to promote God's reign and therefore saved from the grasp of the evil one.

The key to this analysis is the Exodus story, the central memory of the children of Abraham. It is the oft told tale of the deliverance from perpetual enslavement to Pharaoh (forgive us our debts), the delivery of manna to the hungry wanderers (our daily bread), and the entry into the Promised Land (thy kingdom come).

The great scripture scholar opens these and many other passages to show the intricate web of connectedness from Jesus' prayer to the entirety of sacred Judaeo-Christian history. A few startling examples follow.

Galatians 4, Romans 8 and Mark 14:36 all refer to The Lord's Prayer, says Crossan, so some version of it was known from the earliest times. The references occur when Jesus or Paul addresses God in Aramaic as "Abba." Crossan contends that when Mark and Paul use "Abba," their readers know at once that they are referring to The Lord's Prayer, and his contention is convincing.

It is not coincidence that Abba sounds a lot like Papa; both are words for Daddy that are easy for a child to utter. This address, "Abba," is as intimate as a toddler's, holding his hands out and crying, "Dada." Crossan calls the Lord's Prayer the Abba Prayer for good reason. I grew up calling it the "Our Father," not a bad translation, actually.

"What happens to God and what happens to us are interactive, reciprocal, and collaborative (p. 49)." Crossan asserts that the "heavenly" three petitions are meant to be wedded to the "earthly" three. Thus "Hallowed be thy name" is realized by "give us today our daily bread." "Make your kingdom come" is another way of saying "forgive us as we forgive others," and "thy will be done" is equivalent to "lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one."

In other words, it is entirely up to us to hallow God's name, to bring God's kingdom, to get God's will done on earth. We do it by first assuring that no one is lacking bread, and on a daily basis.

Crossan's point was driven home to me by a recent local news story about a householder who had foster children. She allowed one of those children to starve while feeding the others and claimed when arrested that she didn't have enough food to go around. The newspapers shivered with indignant rage at this horrible specter of a householder who fails to feed a helpless member of her household.

For Crossan, Abba is nothing if he is not the Divine Householder who sees that his household is taken care of on a daily basis. We too are householders here on earth, and our primary duty is to see that our household, this earth full of hungry mouths, get its bread daily, just a the manna fell daily in the desert. Let one starve and, well, what did you think of the foster parent in that news story?

One last insight is Crossan's controversial interpretation of the final (or final two) petitions. God's will for us is that God not lead us into temptation. Using the entirely appropriate cognate story of Jesus' temptation in the desert, Crossan shows that the great temptation is to accept from Satan "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory," which are Satan's to give. These are the kingdoms built and maintained by injustice, oppression, and violence, and they are indeed Satan's realm. Jesus rejects them, and we ask God to help us reject them. God's will is to be done on earth by establishing His kingdom without violence.

It is a kingdom where justice (defined as everyone getting all the sustenance they need) is enshrined in love and love enshrined in justice. "Think, then," writes Crossan in an astonishing paragraph, "of justice as the flesh of love, and love as the spirit of justice. Combined, you have both; separated, you have neither. Justice without love or love without justice is a moral corpse. That is why justice without love becomes brutal and love without justice becomes banal."

John Dominic Crossan has written an erudite but passionate and accessible account of his interpretation of The Lord's Prayer, the Abba Prayer, as only a master biblical scholar can. My one critique, and it is one that pervades earlier Crossan works, is his insistence that no form of violence is countenanced in the correct reading of the New Testament. He struggles with the Book of Revelation and other apparently approving mentions of violence, and he concludes that no matter what they state, violence is absolutely forbidden as ungodly.

It is not that I disagree with him about the impermissibility violence. I do agree with him. He has simply not found a convincing way to excise approved violence from the New Testament. He believes that Jesus and his very first followers fully understood that all violence, even the slightest defensive violence, was against God's will, that any such approval was written in later and is in fact bogus. He is not completely convincing, and so another generation will address the specter of violence and the contradiction of a promised land where lions lie down with lambs.