“This song caught my attention,” said the summer host of the CBC program The Current.

She said a bit more about the singer named Victory, then played the song.

It begins like this:

Let your will beat down on earth
      ’cause it’s already done in Heaven.
Let your kingdom come on earth
      ’cause you already run the Heavens
Let your freedom reign on earth
      ’cause it’s already rung in Heaven.

The opening four lines clearly echo the prayer Jesus taught, which we call The Lord’s Prayer.

It begins, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It’s that tie between what already is in God’s realm and what we need here that gives Victory’s song its structure. And Victory makes the connection clear in the closing of the song which echoes the closing of the prayer:

God is the kingdom
      in the power, in the glory, forever.

The contrast between earth and heaven is there in the opening of the prayer, though it is masked by the accustomed English translation. It sounds as if we are assigning God a place: who art in heaven.

In the Greek, Pater, the formal word for father, comes first. The attributions then distinguish which father: the father of us and the father in the heavens. This matters because of the context in which Jesus was speaking.

Although a Jew, Jesus lived under Roman occupation. In Roman culture the father of the family had absolute authority. In a multi-generational context, it would be the grandfather who ruled the household.

And the emperor was the father of all the lands Rome controlled, the one who had absolute control. The earthly father was thus responsible for the brutality experienced by the subjugated people.

The opening of the prayer sets God in contrast to the Roman emperor. Whose will and whose kingdom are needed, desired? Not the one they are living under, but the one God dreams.

And that’s what Victory picks up on in her song:

Let your freedom reign on earth
      ‘cause it’s already rung in Heaven.
Let your presence flood the earth
      ‘cause it’s overflowing in Heaven.
Let your servants rise on earth
      ‘cause they never weary in Heaven.
Let your healing fall on earth
      ’cause aint nobody sick in Heaven.

She goes on to ask for justice, mercy, and love.

The song and the way she sings it have an African-American vibe. The line which says freedom has already rung in heaven echoes the conclusion of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech.

So, the context where she is praying is one of systemic racism. In a country where police shootings of black people are horribly common, a prayer for justice and mercy is a prayer for transformation.

As the original was. Our version is rather sanitized.

For example, we pray give us each day our daily bread. The Greek reads give us tomorrow’s bread today.

That is in part a prayer for food security: if we know we have food for tomorrow, we can relax today.

But it may also be a sense of vision and hope: give us the food that will come when God’s dream for the world is real, or at least, one step closer.

Our version says, lead us not into temptation. Sounds like a prayer to help us not make mistakes, a prayer to be more holy. 

Lead us not into the time of trial, which pops up in some translations, is much closer to the Greek. Don’t lead us into the times of great suffering, the times of disturbance and danger.

It is a prayer for mercy, something Victory’s song picks up with the lines:

Let your mercy cover the earth
      ‘cause it's running over in Heaven.

Several of the lines in the song have the sense that where God is is full of good stuff – love and mercy.

God’s presence could flood the earth ‘cause it's overflowing in Heaven.

There is a note of question or even critique: if God’s justice reigns in heaven, why has it not come here?

Look up the song, to read or even better, to hear it sung in her voice.

It is a moving, thought-provoking piece.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.

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