Isn't it amazing? Just when all the juice is gone from words that are squeezed dry by familiarity, just when a petition like "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" has become dead and meaningless—this happens. Suddenly it’s so new we’re not sure we ever heard it before—“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”
What is the will of God? All too often we use the expression "It’s God's will" when we’re forced to accept things we don't like, when we confront the unexpected and the unwanted, when we face temptation or tragedy.
According to the synoptic gospel tradition (meaning Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. There is no account of the wilderness temptation in John. Luke sums up the temptations by saying that the devil “finished every test” (4:13). That is, in these three scenes Luke sees portrayed the whole range of temptations Jesus will face in his ministry. In turn this means that Jesus’ experience was unique to his sonship and mission. Through it all, Jesus never wavered from doing God’s will in a way no one else has ever done.
Jesus dared to say there are some things in this world that aren’t the will of God. “So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18:14). The writer of 2 Peter understood Jesus well, I think, when he said that God does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
If God doesn’t will the destruction of little children, or indeed the destruction of any of us, what does God will? God wills life. “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:38-39).
God wills the coming of the kingdom. This, as we’ve seen, was the burden of Jesus' message as recorded in the first three Gospels. The relationship between "Your kingdom come" and "Your will be done" is very close. God wills unity, the overcoming of all that divides and creates enmity and hostility. “[God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9-10).
Whoever the author of 1 Timothy was (probably not the apostle Paul), he is surely in line with the mind of Jesus when he writes that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Salvation is the will of God. How sadly cheapened that great word has become! Salvation means rescue, safety, healing, wholeness, peace, release, and reconciliation. When the singer of Psalm 40 tells of being heard by God, being drawn up from the desolate pit, of feet set on a rock, steps made secure, of being taught to sing again, of deliverance, he is describing salvation, and he uses the word more than once. These things are the will of God; they are God's “good pleasure,” what God delights to do and to have done.
In the prayer he taught his disciples, Jesus affirms that the will of God is done in heaven. In fact, that’s what heaven is: the realm wherever situated where the will of God gets done: promptly, without delay; perfectly, without exception; willingly, without resistance.
But we live on earth, not in heaven. How is the will of God done here? Not promptly: in all the eons of earth's history the day of salvation, of rescue, safety, healing, wholeness, peace, release, reconciliation, has not yet arrived.
Not perfectly: only in bits of healing, broken signs of wholeness, moments of peace, the foretaste of the kingdom, but not its fullness.
Not willingly: resisted step-by-step and inch-by-inch.
This earth is a whole network of contesting wills. There is God's will, but also our wills. Our wills are sometimes in contest with God's. This is why we usually think “the will of God” is something we don't want, something to which we submit grudgingly. Overarching our wills with a power that seems greater and more cunning than the sum of them, is a mysterious will that our ancestors called “Satan,” or “the devil” or “the Evil One.”
So Spaceship Earth goes its way with a mutinous, bickering crew. Twenty percent have stashed away in their compartments 80 percent of the goodies on board and live so recklessly that they threaten to foul up all the indispensable life-support systems. The other 80 percent live without adequate health care, unable to enjoy much or learn much on the trip. It is known that some of the passengers weren’t well searched before they came on board and have hidden in their luggage weapons that could wreck the whole ship. The people on board keep multiplying at an unprecedented rate, so things are crowded and all the problems become more irritating.
This doesn’t mean that earth has been wrested from God's control. God is still Captain of the ship. We’re not speeding through space out of God's control and out of God's care. “If I make my bed in Sheol”—hell—“you are there!” (Psalm 139:8).
There’s an element of resignation in this petition. It signifies our acceptance of those things we see but can’t understand. But that’s not the main thrust. Prayer is more than self-adjustment to the way things are. Prayer is a cry for things to change, for the great positive will of God that is summarized in the great word "salvation" to be done—and to be done here on earth as it is done in heaven. God is interested in earth. God is interested in changing earth and making it like heaven. That, to echo Luther, is God's proper will, and that’s what we pray for.
In a memorable sermon, George Arthur Buttrick (late minister of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City) summarized the import of this prayer. Your will be done to me—that's the note of resignation. Your will be done through me—that's enlistment for service. Your will be done for me and all others—that's the note of joyous anticipation that God will one day achieve God's gracious, proper will for us all.
Praying for the will of God to be done on earth gets right down to the conflict between your will and God's. You won’t learn to pray by beginning piously and resignedly, "Your will be done." The first question is, “What is your will? What do you want?” An embarrassing question! It’s not easy to clarify, to articulate, and to specify what we really want. The very process can teach us something.
Now then: ask, seek, knock; batter on the gates of heaven for what you want, and took for the answer. Does it not come? Keep knocking. Don’t get tired and give up too fast. Remember the fellow who wanted bread at midnight. Does it still not come? Then maybe your will is not in line with God's great desire to bring safety and health and wholeness and peace and release and reconciliation to all people. Maybe what you want needs correction. Now you are beginning to learn in the school of prayer. Now you are ready to pray with real meaning, “Lord, teach me your will. Lord, your will be done!”
Stay warm, dear friends.
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