Today, after a 2 1/2 year hiatus, I stepped back into the pulpit to lead worship and preach. I was filling in at Country Homes Christian Church in Spokane (where I served as Transitional Pastor 14 or 15 years ago) while their pastor was out of town. Here’s what I has to say…

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The Apostle Paul urged the Christians in the city of Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing.” I remember, as both a child and an adult, wondering how that was even possible. To come even close to grasping what Paul might have been talking about requires that we expand our understanding of prayer to include not just words we say but also how we live and who we are. When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray he responded by sharing with them what we have come to know as The Lord’s Prayer. And for a very long time, in places all around the world, in a wide variety of languages, using multiple translations, alone and together, people have been praying that prayer. And sometimes it has been prayed so often that we have mostly stopped considering what the words might mean, and what they might be calling us to do, and who they might be calling us to become. Occasionally it can be helpful to do something to shake things up a bit and open our hearts once again to a more expansive understanding of prayer.

Towards that end, this morning I want to share with you a very old and familiar prayer in a new and unfamiliar form. And to do that requires that I share a few bits of background information to set the stage. The first thing to remember on this journey is that just because something is very familiar to us does not mean it has always taken the form with which we are so familiar. For example, every week when you gather for worship you hear the words of scripture read. Sometimes they are read from the New Revised Standard translation, sometimes from the New International translation, sometimes from the King James translation, among others. But always, you hear them read in English. So it is easy to forget that those words have been translated from some other language. Jesus did not speak English. English did not even exist as a language when Jesus was alive. He spoke Aramaic, a language in the same family with Hebrew and Arabic. And that family of languages share some qualities which differ from languages like English. For one thing they have a vibrational quality – the sound, the vibration, of the words carry part of the meaning of the words, and vibration (sound and light) are common themes. The words can take us in a variety of directions, sometimes at the same time.

That being said, a man named Neil Douglas-Klotz has spent his life exploring the Aramaic words of Jesus, with the intent of offering us fresh new ways to hear what Jesus might have been saying. Among the words that Klotz has worked to unpack, The Lord’s Prayer has been a particular passion for him. So, this morning I want to share some of that work with you. Some of you may remember when I was last with you, fourteen or fifteen years ago (can it really have been that long?), that I invited some friends of mine from the Dances of Universal Peace community to come and lead us in a dance using this prayer. Two weeks ago, on the Saturday before Easter, I shared in that experience again with some of those same folks, and I was reminded once again how powerful it is to have this prayer opened in fresh new ways. I invite you to hear these words with an open heart. Some of the phrases may resonate with you more than others. There is no requirement for you to respond in any particular way. I only invite you to give them a chance to expand your understanding of what Jesus might have been saying to his disciples and to us.

I will read each phrase in the Aramaic (please understand that it will only be a very rough approximation of what they might have sounded like when Jesus spoke them), followed by the familiar King James version, followed by several possible alternatives which Klotz offers in his book “Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus”.

“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray…” (Luke 11:1)

Abwoon d’bwashmaya

Our Father which art in heaven

Oh Birther! Father-Mother of the cosmos, you create all that moves in light.

Oh Thou! The breathing life of all, creator of the shimmering sound that touches us.

Source of Sound: in the roar and the whisper, in the breeze and the whirlwind, we hear your Name.

Radiant One: you shine within us, outside us, even darkness shines – when we remember.

Name of names, our small identity unravels in you, you give it back as a lesson.

Wordless Action, Silent Potency – where ears and eyes awaken, there heaven comes.

Oh Birther! Father-Mother of the cosmos…

– – – –

Nethqadash shmakh

Hallowed be thy name

Focus your light within us – make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.

Help us breathe one holy breath, feeling only you – this creates a shrine inside, in wholeness.

Help us let go, clear the space inside busy forgetfulness: so the Name comes to live.

Your Name, your sound can move us if we tune our hearts as instruments for its tone.

Hear the one sound that creates all others, in this way the Name is hallowed in silence.

We all look elsewhere for this light – it draws us out of ourselves – but the Name always lives within.

Focus your light within us – make it useful

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Teytey malkuthakh

Thy Kingdom come

Create your reign of unity now – through our fiery hearts and willing hands.

Let your council rule our lives, clearing our intention for co-creation.

Your rule springs into existence as our arms reach out to embrace all creation.

From this divine union, let us birth new images for a new world of peace.

Create your reign of unity now – through our fiery hearts and willing hands.

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Nehwey tzevyanach aykana d’bwashmaya aph b’arha

Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven

Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.

Help us love beyond our ideals and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.

As we find your love in ours, let heaven and nature form a new creation.

Create in me a divine cooperation – from many selves, one voice, one action.

Let your heart’s fervent desire unite heaven and earth through our harmony.

Your one desire that acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms..

– – – –

Hawvlan lachma d’sunqanan yaomana

Give us this day our daily bread.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight: subsistence for the call of growing life.

Give us the food we need to grow through each day, through each illumination of life’s needs.

Help us fulfill what lies within the circle of our lives: each day we ask no more, no less.

Animate the earth within us: we then feel the wisdom underneath supporting all.

Generate through us the bread of life: we hold only what is asked to feed the next mouth.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight

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Washboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) aykanna daph khnan shbwoqan l’khayyabayn

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.

Forgive our hidden past, the secret shames, as we consistently forgive what others hide.

Lighten our load of secret debts as we relieve others of their need to repay. Erase the inner marks our failures make, just as we scrub our hearts of others’ faults.

Untangle the knots within so that we can mend our hearts’ simple ties to others.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.

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Wela tahlan l’nesyuna Ela patzan min bisha

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

Don’t let surface things delude us, but free us from what holds us back from our true purpose.

Don’t let us enter forgetfulness, the temptation of false appearances.

Break the hold of unripeness, the inner stagnation that prevents good fruit.

Deceived neither by the outer nor the inner – free us to walk your path with joy.

Don’t let surface things delude us,

– – – –

Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l’ahlam amin. Ameyn.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

From you is born all ruling will, the power and life to do, the song that beautifies all – from age to age it renews.

To you belongs each fertile function: ideals, energy, glorious harmony – during every cosmic cycle.

Out of you, the vital force producing and sustaining all life, every virtue…

Out of you, the astonishing fire, the birthing glory, returning light and sound to the cosmos…

Truly – power to these statements – may they be the ground from which all my actions grow: sealed in trust and faith.

From you is born all ruling will

Amen.

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To pray without ceasing might mean, among other things, that we open ourselves to God’s invitation to live an ever expansive life which is filled with an awareness of God’s presence and leading in us and through us. May it be so for us. Amen.