Who Is the ‘Us’ in ‘Our Father’?

It’s a simple question, but one that has only recently struck me: when we pray “Our Father”, who is the us?

I recently blogged about my daily routine, which usually begins by praying the Lord’s Prayer, often with Jacqui. As Jesus himself taught, there is a particular dynamic when we pray with others. “And when two or three of you are together because of me,” he promised, “you can be sure that I’ll be there.” (Matthew 18:20)

Christian faith, at its heart, is communal. Of course, each of us responds personally to Jesus’ call — no one can make that decision on our behalf. Yet our identity as Christians is never merely individual. We belong to his church, even to his own body.

This stands in sharp contrast to the naked individualism of our culture. As I’ve often noted before, the Christian vision sounds much closer to the Ubuntu saying: “I am because we are.”

So the Lord’s Prayer begins by reshaping our identity before we ask for anything at all. We are not isolated individuals turning heavenward with private concerns; we are a family speaking together. Every “I” is gathered into a “we”. Even when I pray alone, I never really pray alone.

But there is more. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, who exactly is included in this us? I’ve come to realise that Jesus is including himself. When I pray, I pray with Jesus, so that together we say, “Our Father.”

The prayer itself reaches us only in Greek — the common language used by Matthew and Luke. Jesus, however, almost certainly taught it in Aramaic, the everyday language of Galilee and Judea. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the word he used for “father” was Abba.

Mark preserves this word when he describes Jesus’ anguish in Gethsemane: “Abba, Father,” he prayed, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36). This is how Jesus himself prayed.

Paul clearly echoes this when he writes: “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’” (Galatians 4:6)

This is radical language. While the Old Testament occasionally speaks of God as father — such as in Psalm 103 which I read this morning — it does so sparingly. I think I may have said this before, but as my Hebraist daughter likes to point out, the Hebrew scriptures refers to God far more often as Rock than as Father.

What is more, there is no record of any Jewish teacher addressing God as Abba — the ordinary, intimate word a child would use, closer to “Dad” than to a formal title. While adults could use it respectfully, its tone was always relational rather than distant.

To bring such a homely word into prayer was therefore extraordinary. It signals not familiarity without reverence, but intimacy without fear — a nearness to God that was genuinely new and deeply transformative.

That the creator of this vast and marvellous universe — the one who made my brain, which the astronomer Fred Hoyle once described as the most marvellous thing in the universe — should be addressed in this way is nothing short of stunning.

We rarely notice, too, that in the Lord’s Prayer we ask that God’s kingdom may come, that he would reign on earth as he reigns in heaven. One might expect, as in so many Psalms, that Jesus would teach us first to address God as King — such is his authority and power.

And yet, while the logic of the prayer points in that direction, Jesus insists that our primary understanding of God is as Father.

Jesus gives us permission to approach God with him, not in fear but in trust — not because we are worthy, but because we are loved.

And what of “Our Father in heaven”? Here is a tension we need. Heaven reminds us that God is not a projection of ourselves — not manageable, not tame. Our Father is awesome. Yet Father tells us that transcendence does not cancel closeness. As Graham Kendrick puts it so well, majesty and mercy belong together.

Before daily bread, before forgiveness, before rescue from evil, the prayer grounds us here: you belong; you are not alone; you are held.

Perhaps, then, the real work of the Lord’s Prayer happens before we ever reach the petitions. Before bread, forgiveness, guidance, or deliverance, we are re-located — placed together in the presence of God, alongside Jesus himself, and shown how to stand there.

Each time we say Our Father, we rehearse a deeper truth: that we belong to God and to one another — and that neither belonging is earned.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, “The Lord’s Prayer is not merely the prayer of the individual, but the prayer of the whole Christian community.” To pray it is to step out of isolation and into communion — with the church, with the world, and with Christ himself.

And that, perhaps, is gift enough for the day ahead.