Tradition has it that, in the beginning, humanity came from the ground. The play on words in the Hebrew Bible is poetic: Out of the adamah came the adam (Gen 2:7). In modern parlance, one might say the earthling came from the earth. Either way, the point is the same. Humanity is a humble derivative of the soil, bound inextricably to the world.
The problem, though, is that we’re bound to this world. The conundrum is existential, really, given that this world is a morally insufferable mess. Where, then, does that leave its derivatives? “We are wholly of this world,” writes Jewish philosopher Berel Dov Lerner, “and if it flounders, we must go down with it.”
Few can agree on what exactly is wrong, though. The left blames the right; the right blames the left. Moderates boldly claim to have found the Nichomachean mean—a token, perhaps, of either their wisdom or ambivalence. Or both. What everyone can agree on is that strife has been our faithful companion through the years. If the twentieth century has taught us anything, it’s that humanity is allergic to peace. Wars and rumors of wars remind us that we possess the uncanny ability to take away that which God gives—namely, the breath of life. When you stop to think about what humans can (and have done) to one another, it’s despairing.
As a result, many are tempted to think that belief in Absolute Goodness can be nothing more than an exercise in childish naivety—an opium, a self-projected mirage upon our desert world. The world, in other words, is too awful for belief in the Good. The only thing left to do, then, is to surrender every traditional notion of the sacred back to the soil, thus becoming what we were and abandoning every hope for what we could be.
Perhaps, there’s another way to think about it. In his essay, “De Futilitate,” C. S. Lewis claimed that one’s ability to rage against the world’s injustice was a testimony to the fact that Absolute Goodness could be detected, something which permitted—indeed, demanded—such rage in the first place. In other words, that one could claim the world was unjust implied justice itself existed ab extra. And because Goodness existed beyond this world, it could be used within it. Here Lewis, writing during the Second World War, discovered something curious about our species. We can perceive a fundamental relationship between the visible and the invisible—between this world in which we are bound and that world for which we long. There’s a link between the two that can’t be severed, and we must come to terms with this fact. The stakes are high, for if we abandon the hope of heaven, we will surely surrender earth to the flames. Lewis, arguably, gives us a way to rethink earth in light of the reality of heaven.
Jesus does the same thing in the Lord’s Prayer. He teaches us not how to ascend to heaven, but rather how to access heaven for the sake of the world. This is important to consider—especially for religious folks. The pious, after all, have a reputation for being the most obsessed with escaping this world. But Jesus—because he is the true Human—is far more earthly-minded than the pious, for he dares to call his people back to the place from which they were hewn. In this vein, I want to point out three important truths from the Lord’s Prayer that can help us fulfill our calling to be, well, true earthlings.
“Our Father in heaven”
When Jesus tells us to address God as “Father,” he does nothing novel. The Jewish people had long described their God in familial terms (e.g. Exodus 4:23; Hosea 11:1). They did this for many reasons. In the Jewish story, for instance, the breath of God endows the ground with life (Genesis 2:7). This is what fathers do; they give life. When he disrupted earth with heaven’s breath, God created something profound: Imago Dei. Humans come from God. That’s why the Prayer instructs us to call God “Father.” Jesus seeks to wake us from our theological amnesia, reminding us of our true origins.
With a Father in heaven and our feet on the ground, humanity is called to bridge two realms—one visible, one invisible; one temporal, the other eternal. Jews knew that God sought to rupture earth with the vitality of heaven and not—as popular Christian eschatology teaches—to rapture humanity away from the earth to heaven. Even though we find ourselves in a cacophony of chaos, we are intimately connected to the symphony of heaven, from which our daily bread comes. As my church’s catechism puts it, heaven “exists invisibly alongside this visible realm.” Indeed, if earthly reality is to be intelligible at all, one must rethink the location of heaven—not as something up there but as something far closer than we ever dreamed (Matthew 4:17). And when we do this, we come to see the world differently and catch a glimpse, however faint, of its coming redemption.
“Your Kingdom come.”
In the modern era, the idea of “kingdom” is patently absurd. We live in an age of autonomy, and kingdom sounds far too restrictive. The word terrifies us. We can hardly be blamed for this. History, after all, has given us a front-row seat to the cruelty of autocracy. Understandably, then, the word kingdom can pack a punch. To be sure, Jesus’ idea of kingdom is overtly political. But not in the way one might think. Here Jesus seeks to stretch our imagination. When Christ gripped the basin and towel, for example, he dared onlookers to rethink the concept of kingdom, to imagine a different sort of politics—one not bent on subjugating people but serving them. In his own life, Jesus illustrated how his kingdom revolves around the sort of love that dares to be crucified, not around the act of crucifying. At the heart of his kingdom is self-sacrifice.
I’m not suggesting, though, that the anthem of Jesus’ kingdom is something along the lines of a campfire kumbaya. We mustn’t tame or turn the gospel into something the proud and arrogant can tolerate. To those who drink from the chalice of wealth and power, the instruments of Jesus’ political actions (basin, towel, and cross) are utter nonsense—and we should make sure it stays that way. The fact is that Jesus calls us to repentance. And there is no Gospel—no forgiveness and healing—without repentance.
“And forgive us our debts”
This brings us to what Jesus says about forgiveness. We’re familiar with this part. We all know, for example, that Jesus tells us to confess our sins and seek forgiveness (“And forgive us our debts…”). We’re also aware of how Jesus ties this to our willingness to forgive others (“…if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”). But here’s a question many haven’t considered asking: If unforgiveness is so terrible, then why does Jesus say that, under certain circumstances, God himself will show unforgiveness? It is perplexing. One may very well wonder why God doesn’t take “the high road” and treat everyone nicely regardless of what they choose.
But that misses the point. God will never grant the life of heaven to someone who is not willing to partner with him in sowing it into the ground themselves. If we are unwilling to forgive the repentant, God will simply grant us what we want: A life of unforgiveness. God is not interested in creating people who think they can score points in heaven while looking down their noses upon the world. That’s not how the marriage between heaven and earth works. Instead, God desires an on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven kind of people. In other words, God wants our feet firmly planted on the ground so that the life of heaven’s peace can flow into it.
And those feet must move (Isaiah 52:7). As divine image bearers, we are called to carry goodness, justice, and beauty all across the earth. And we have every reason to do so. You see, long ago Adam fell into the ground. But the earth has since quaked, and Adam has awakened once more. And as he walks out of the tomb, he turns to look back at where we lie. In that moment, heaven’s gaze pierces our grave darkness. Perhaps we, too, will rise and follow him into a world upon which the morning will soon dawn.