Singing With Jesus: The Lord’s Psalm

We shouldn’t be too surprised if Jesus, the Son of David, was also a song writer. The Lord’s Prayer is a psalm, and reading the prayer as a psalm opens up its meaning. To read the Lord’s Prayer as a psalm, you have to be able to read a psalm as a psalm. So this book is first of all an adventure in reading the Bible’s poetry--the psalms, of course, but also much of the prophets’ testimony. The Old Testament’s poetry is rich in themes important to the Lord’s Prayer: heaven and earth, kingship and covenant, prophetic teaching and repentance, priesthood and redemption. Jesus brilliantly brings these strands together in the prayer through which he taught his disciples to pray. Much richer than a ＂＂laundry list＂＂ of petitions, the prayer beautifully affirms the counter-cultural kingdom of the only true God. It commits us to merciful behavior and full dependence upon--and contentment with--God’s provision. The prayer is a plea that the rift between God’s authority and this earth would be healed . . . all organized around images of Israel’s experiences in the Exodus. ＂＂Professor Schaefer has produced a fine study of the Lord’s Prayer. He wears his great learning lightly and writes from it with real understanding of our needs and hopes. His account of the prayer is both penetrating and graceful.＂＂ --Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Senior Research Fellow, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Kurt C. Schaefer is Professor of Economics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is executive editor of Faith and Economics, and a frequent speaker in chapel services and adult-education classes.

I was born in 1958 in Peoria, Illinois, to a German-Lutheran family in Richard Pryor’s neighborhood. My education (large urban high school to University of Michigan) was strong on the liberal arts, and led to a PhD in econometrics and the history of economic thought. I have taught mainly in New York and Michigan, but also in London, Budapest, and Oslo. After teaching for several decades, I completed a Master of Divinity degree (think of Fred Rogers or Desmond Tutu).



Most of my writing has been for scholarly journals, doing economic analysis of international trade or gender-pay differentials or poverty policy or economic thought in classical civilizations. I’ve directed a social research center and led an internship/seminar program on nonprofit leadership for liberal arts students. I do quite a bit of speaking at college chapel services and other church-related venues, and I am the parish accordionist (!) in my religious congregation. I definitely have the best spouse and children in the universe. As time allows, I also enjoy sailing, walking, and cooking.