Every day in Parliament begins with the Lord’s Prayer. It will be said daily by millions of Christians and in most church services. But, how we say it reveals what we really think it means.
So, for example, should I stress “Your kingdom come” or “your kingdom come”?
I think it should be the former, with the stress on the “your”. Why? Because there are plenty of other kingdoms on offer and vying for dominance. When Jesus taught his friends to pray this way, you could get executed for claiming that anyone other than Caesar was ‘the Lord’. To pray “your kingdom come” was potentially – or maybe even essentially – seditious.
This isn’t a merely religious question. Whose kingdom we choose to serve has real-world consequences. For some people, it means protesting against the state or the law, thus coming into conflict over what they believe is more fundamentally right than what the dominant culture allows. Those taking part in protests against the proscription of Palestine Action are counting the cost of this ethical choice.
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