The Lord’s Prayer, a most surprising hit as recorded by Sister Janet Mead. Notice the songwriting credit. Does anybody else see a problem here?

We know it by heart.

We memorized it at Sunday School.

I used to hear on the school bus, sandwiched between “Let It Ride” by B.T.O. and Grand Funk Railroad’s remake of Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion”.

Sister Janet Mead was a 36 year old Australian nun with a love for music. In the 1970’s she taught music and led “Rock Masses” at Adelaide’s St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral. She was asked by Australian record label Festival to record a cover of Donovan’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”, with a contemporary rock arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer on the ‘B’-side. She recorded both songs, the two sides were flipped, and thus was born a smash hit. It wasn’t only big in America, where it reached number 4 in the Billboard Hot 100, selling over 1,000,000 copies and going gold. It also hit number 3 in her native homeland and Canada.

That’s what I call a “God thing”. I consider this single a miracle. Yes, this was the era of Jesus Christ Superstar and “My Sweet Lord”. But those are, in general, pop chart anomalies (and neither exactly scriptural). A glance at the Billboard Top Ten for the week “The Lord’s Prayer” peaked in the US charts (ironically enough on the day before Easter 1974) shows just how out of sync the song was with the rest of the hits on pop radio at the time:

1. Bennie and the Jets – Elton John
2. Hooked on a Feeling – Blue Swede
3. TSOP – MFSB
4. The Lord’s Prayer – Sister Janet Mead
5. Come and Get Your Love – Redbone
6. Sunshine On My Shoulders – John Denver
7. The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me – Gladys Knight and the Pips
8. Seasons in the Sun – Terry Jacks
9. Oh My My – Ringo Starr
10. Mockingbird – Carly Simon and James Taylor

The other nine hits the week ending April 13, 1974, include a song about a gender-confused fictional pop star, songs of romance, a very depressing song about a dying man and a couple of disco songs (one promoting the importance of dancing as a means of staying alive, about three years before the Bee Gees would broach the subject in Saturday Night Fever).

Don’t misunderstand me. I like most of these pop songs. But Top Forty radio is one of the last places to find the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ instruction to His believers on how we should pray:

⁹ After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

¹⁰ Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.

¹² And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. – Matthew 6:9-13, KJV.

Being the Lord’s instruction on prayer, this passage is extremely important for believers to understand and know. And God, in His infinite wisdom and immeasurable creativity, used a hip Sister of Mercy from down under to get this message out to millions of people, many of whom had perhaps never had – and maybe otherwise never would have – heard these words of Jesus.

Not only did God see to it His Word got out to the world, He did it in a melodious way that guaranteed those who heard the song would remember it. The tune was an earworm (a song one will not soon forget and will stick in your head, replaying in your mental jukebox whenever someone mentions it, or you hear it again even years later). Once it’s in your head, it’s in your head.

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, ESV).

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2, ESV).

God used Pharoah, a mighty enemy and enslaver of His people, to see to it His will was done.

God spoke through the jawbone of an ass (Numbers 22:28).

Even the stones can cry out in praise of the LORD (Luke 19:40). (Wouldn’t have been cool if God had used The Rolling Stones in this instance?)

God sent His Son Jesus to be our propitiation – our substitutional sacrifice – overcoming death itself so we may be forgiven and follow Him to our heavenly home. He did all that for us, we who do not deserve the astonishing love our Father lavishes upon us – His children. He uses so many methods and situations to bless us, help us, grow us, save us. Why not a million-selling Top Ten single played over and over on pop radio?

And, who knows? Maybe God will use The Rolling Stones to shout out glory to Jesus! He reformed a Christian-hating Pharisee to write the majority of the New Testament.