As in heaven… Reading the Lord’s Prayer with a view to constructing a sermon

Abstract

The Lord’s Prayer is an important ecumenical symbol. It is the main prayer of the Christian Church and is prayed collectively in almost every worship service in churches over the world. In this, the first of three articles, the prayer is discussed with a view to eventually construct a sermon in which poetic material, hymns and songs are incorporated to form not only a part of the liturgy, but an integral part of the sermon itself. In this article the origin and setting, as well as the address and the you-petitions of the prayer are examined. In a second article the we-petitions and the doxology are explored and in a third all these aspects come into play for a concept sermon, incorporating hymnic and poetic material from ecumenical resources.