It is ironic that the context which forbids meaningless repetition in prayer serves in Matthew's Gospel as the location of the Lord's model prayer, for no prayer has been repeated more often than the "Our Father."
As early as the second century, a document called the Didache prescribed that Christians should repeat the Lord's Prayer three times a day. That is not necessarily a bad thing, just as it is not inherently negative to repeat it in unison in church services. However, we should never say the prayer thoughtlessly, always remembering that Jesus himself conceived of the prayer as a model. That is, he did not say "This is what you should pray," but "this is how you should pray" (Matthew 6: 9).
The context of the Lord's Prayer is the extract from the Sermon on the Mount to be read tomorrow. What the Lord Jesus categorically objects to is the attitude found in those who "love to pray . . . to be seen by men."
He may have observed the worship leaders in the synagogue succumbing to the temptation of praying up to the congregation with acceptable cliches, sonorous tones, added-on fervency. Or at times of public fasts he may have seen large numbers of men praying towards the temple right there in the street whenever the trumpets sounded at the time of the afternoon sacrifice.
Before coming down too hard on the Jews of Jesus's day, we should examine ourselves thoroughly and search out our own capacity for self-delusion and deceit. Parading piety in one form or another is an age-old human vanity and it receives the only reward going, that of human praise.
Incidentally, blessed is that clergyman who has a wife or soul-friend to lampoon and deride immediately any pious parson's voice or mannerisms he may unconsciously adopt in church. The hideous alternative is lifelong derision and lampooning behind his back by successive congregations who instinctively recognise a prat when they hear and see one.
What, then, is to characterise our praying? Jesus offers two things.
First: "When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (v.6). If Jesus was forbidding all public prayer then the disciples did not understand him for the Book of Acts frequently records the church at prayer.
Perhaps these are the questions to be asked: do I pray more frequently and more fervently when alone with God than I do in public? Is my public praying simply the overflow of my private praying? If the answers are not positive, then our condemnation is writ, for we are hypocrites.
The second thing that concerns Jesus is that there should be no "babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (v.7).
Pagans thought if they named all their gods, addressed their petition to each of them and then repeated them over and over, they would have a better chance of receiving an answer.
There is certainly no time-warp here for we often need reminding that prayer should not consist of heaped-up phrases, idle repetitions and the ridiculous assumption that the probability of an answer is in proportion to the total number of words in the prayer multiplied by its endless repetition.
Yet, of course, there is balance here and the best example is Jesus himself. Although he prayed in public, he prayed far more in private and although he prayed staccato petitions on occasion, he wrestled through long night prayer vigils.
He would teach us that praying, if it is to be a genuine act of righteousness, is to be directed to God our Father and not to a human audience, primarily private, and shorn of the delusion that God can be manipulated by empty garrulity.
How, then, should we pray? Jesus's answer is the wording of what we call the Lord's Prayer, but would be better titled "The Lord's Model Prayer." It is less the prayer he prayed than the prayer he gave to his disciples, and thus to us, as a paradigm for all of our own praying.
So a final question - am I praying sort of person, or is Jesus's counsel likely to fall on deaf ears since the reality of my daily existence is that I simply have no invisible means of support?
G.F.