Lord’s Prayer: Our Father
Luke 11:1-2
Ezekiel 36:22-28
The
other day I was browsing through an old worship book and stumbled on this
prayer:
We
give thanks to thee, Almighty, eternal, and omnipotent God, that thou hast
refreshed us with thy salutary gift; and we beseech thee, out of thy bounteous
and wondrous mercy, to strengthen us through the same gift, in faith toward
thee and in fervent love toward one another through Jesus Christ, thy dear and
beloved Son, our Lord who liveth and reigneth with thee, one God, world without
end. Amen.
That’s
the way people used to pray. That’s the
way they were taught. The thinking was
the more flowery adjectives you used to describe God and the longer the prayer
went, the better God liked it; and so would be more inclined to answer your
prayer. Preachers especially were good
at this and sometimes would go on and on pulling out of their thesaurus every
fancy word they could think of.
I’m
not sure why they did that, because that’s not the way Jesus prayed. In fact he warned against it. “And whenever
you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the
synagogues and street corners so they may be seen by others.”[1] Jesus was not a big fan of showy prayers
designed to impress others rather than to be heard by God. So, how does Jesus want us to pray?
Today and for the next
four weeks we are going to explore a simple prayer that Jesus gave us. We say it every Sunday, but because we say it
every Sunday we can fly through the words on automatic pilot without really
thinking about what they mean. So,
before we dive in let us pray:
Open our eyes and hearts
O God so that we may receive and believe the promise you have given to us
through your Word and through your son Jesus Christ. Amen.
One
of his disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Why?
Did he not know how to pray? Had
he never prayed before? Did he not understand the concept of prayer? I don’t think so. I’m sure his mother and father prayed for him
when he was little. I’m sure they taught
him to pray, because every little Jewish boy and girl learned to pray the Shema
which was taken from Deuteronomy 6.
“Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one.” I’m sure he prayed before because every child
prays when afraid of the dark at night or when facing an Algebra test. No matter what kind of history you have in
prayer, everyone at one moment or another in their lives has looked to sky and
said, “Oh my God.” I’m sure this disciple was the same. So, why did he ask, “Lord teach us to pray?”
Well,
he had been around Jesus long enough to hear him pray, and I think this
disciple sensed that Jesus’ prayers were different than his. They were more like a conversation between a
father and a son. There was an intimacy
to them, an immediacy to them. It was real.
There was no doubt in Jesus’ voice, no wondering is God really
there. Does God really care? Is he
listening? Will he answer? Jesus prayed with confidence. That’s what this disciple wanted. He wanted that kind of confidence, that kind
of assurance that God was listening. So,
he asked, “Lord, teach us to pray?”
Jesus
begins. “Father”. Now there were a lot of words in the Old
Testament for God. Yahweh, Adonai, El
Shadai, Jehovah and on and on and on. There
were other words used to describe a particular characteristic of God, powerful,
merciful, just, and wise. “Rock, light, fortress, shield, shepherd.” Jesus had many choices and could have used
any of them to begin this prayer, but chose this one – “father”.
For
years there was not much thought given to this.
Jesus referred to God as father and told us to do the same and that was
good enough for most. But, when I
attended seminary and in the years that followed some began to question this
appellation. They believed this was an
expression of paternalism which negated and delegated women to a second class
status.
While
no one thinks of God as being male or having a gender the use of this term
became offensive to some so they began to look for other ways to address
God. Some just reversed the gender from
masculine to feminine referring to God as mother rather than father. Others just removed any name or pronoun that
could be identified as male or female.
In
fact, when I was working on my Doctorate of Ministry dissertation I went to
McCormick seminary in Chicago for a two week class on how to write a
dissertation. The professor told us that
we were not allowed to us any gender specific language when referring to
God. If we did, we would not pass. We
could not refer to God as father or Lord or he or him. Now this was the last
thing I needed to do before I could graduate so I was willing to go along with
that. It makes writing stilted and
awkward when cannot use any pronouns at all, but if that’s what they wanted I
was willing to do it.
Then
she said, when quoting scripture we are to make the same changes. That’s when I raised my hand and said I did
not believe I have the authority to change the written word of God and neither
did I believe that McCormick seminary have that authority.
Well,
we went round and round on that. She held out my graduation diploma as
incentive to make these changes. The implication was clear. If I refused to modify or change the written
Word of God I might not graduate. I saw this as blackmail. It was hill I was
willing to die on because the moment we believe we can alter or change God’s
revelation is the same moment we fire God and hire ourselves in his place. Notice I said “his.”
I
don’t believe Jesus chose the word “father” because he was sexist or
paternalistic. I think he was saying
something very specific about the nature of God. To understand what that was
you have to look at Israel’s neighbors. Many of them worshipped other deities
and many of these were goddesses. Aherat and Anat, Nut and Isis, Tiamat and the
Queen of Heaven were all given feminine characteristics, most notably that of
child-birth.
In
their creation stories the world and everything in came out of the goddess in
the same way a child is born from the mother.
As a result the world and everything and everybody in it was seen as
part of the mother and do divine. Not
only is everyone like God, in some way they are God. If you are God then there is no such thing as
sin and since there is no such thing as sin there is no such thing as
salvation.
There
are a number of religious views today that hold onto that idea, most notably
the spirituality of the New Age movement.
Fathers
are different though. They don’t give
birth. They are partly responsible for
the creation of life, but they don’t have labor pains or stretch marks. There is not the same connection as that
between a mother and child, which is why Mother’s day is always a bigger deal
than Father’s day.
What
Jesus is telling us about God when he uses the word Father is that while he is
there at the creation of life, he does not give birth. There is a separation.
That’s
why Jesus gives us an address immediately after. “Father, who art in heaven.” That does not mean that Jesus believes that
God is out there, up there, somewhere, but not in here (heart) where it
counts. He does not believe that God
only knows the parts of us that we are willing to share. So, why this modifier,
“who art in heaven.”
From
the very beginning of the Bible, well after chapter 3 anyway, God has always
been assigned a special location or a special time. It began with a box, the Ark of the Covenant
and that box was kept in a Tabernacle, a tent to carry on the journey, and the
Tabernacle was replaced by a Temple. No
one believed the Ark of the Covenant contained God. They did not believe God could be put in a
box. They did believe that human beings
by nature are physical, tactical beings and we understand things by looking at
them, touching them, tasting them, hearing them. Since you cannot see, touch, taste, or hear
God these things were created at the command of God to help us focus. To help us worship. A special day was created
for this purpose – Sabbath. These were
to be a blessing.
Every
blessing can be morphed into a curse if we’re not careful. Food is great. Too much food can be bad. Wine is good. Too much can be bad. We can turn almost every
blessing into a curse. In this case the
Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, and even the Sabbath itself became
idols. People began to worship the thing
rather than the creator. What was given
to help them focus on God became a distraction that led them away from the
Lord.
When
Jesus placed God in heaven he was reminding us that though God is present in
this world, and though we can catch glimpses of the divine in a sunrise at
Bethany Beach or in the smile of a newborn or at a family reunion, we cannot or
will not see and understand and appreciate the full glory of God in this life
and in this world.
So,
he says, we hallow or make holy the name of God. So, what does it mean to make holy God’s name
and while we’re at it, what is the name of God?
Believe
or not wars have been fought over this question. Churches have divided. In some
religions misusing their understanding of the name of God will get you killed.
At
the time of Jesus many were especially sensitive to this because of their
understanding of the fourth commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vain.” The Hebrew name referred to is today sometimes
pronounced “Yahweh”. Rabbi’s though when
reading the scripture and coming upon this word spoke another “Adonai” usually
translated as Lord, because they were afraid they might take the name in vain
because of their life or conduct.
Most
of you probably this is much ado about nothing. A rose by any other name would
smell as sweet. It’s the same God people see going by different names and it
doesn’t really make a difference what you call God. You might be surprised to learn that God does
seem to care.
In
the passage read from the Old Testament, God says, “It is not for your sake, O
house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for my Holy name which you have
profaned among the nations.”[2] Similar sentiments are
repeated many times in the Old Testament.
So, why does God care what you call him?
Let
me bring this down to earth. Does it
matter what people call you. Sometimes
when meeting someone for the first time, I’ll ask what should I call you,
“Robert, Bob, Bobby?” He may respond you
can call me Robert, you can call me Bobby, just don’t call me late for dinner.”
That’s
not what this is really about. What it
is about is your reputation. High School
kids pay a lot of attention to what people say about them because they know
that what others hear others will believe to be true, whether it is or
not. Before even meeting you for the
first time, they’ve already drawn a conclusion about you because of what they
have heard and they will treat you accordingly.
People
draw the same conclusions about God, not by what they’ve read in the Bible or
because they have put a lot of thought in it. They believe what they believe
about God because of what others have said about him whether it’s true or not.
That’s
why it is important to make God’s name holy.
Let
me give you an example. A couple of
weeks ago I flew down to Florida to visit my folks. I was supposed to be away for less than two
days, but Allegiant cancelled by return flight and told me the next one would
not be until Monday which would mean I would have missed Church last
Sunday. I told the lady at the counter
about how disappointed you would be if that happened and was there anything she
could do. She said if I could somehow get to Orando there would be a flight on
Saturday. So, I took the Amtrak and then
a taxi and made the flight.
On the way back I was
seated next to a truck driver from Elizabethtown. He was very angry because the
airline had messed up his seat assignment and so could not sit next to his
family. I said, “You think that is
bad…and then told him my story. We fell into conversation and had a great
time. The miles flew by. About an hour into this he asked me what I
did and I told him and immediately I saw a darkness cover his face. Clearly he had something against Pastors and
so something against God.
He
told me his brother had been abused by a Methodist Pastor 35 years before and
since then he had no time for clergy and no time for God. He projected the sin
of that pastor onto all pastors. In fact
he had not spoken with a pastor in all of that time, but he liked me and liked
what I was saying. The last thing he
said to me after we landed was, “I think God cancelled your flight in St.
Petersburg so that you could sit next to me on this flight out of Orlando.” Well, I don’t know that I would blame God for
that either, but I understood his sentiment.
When
we pray “hallowed be thy name” what we are really saying is “Lord, by my
actions and attitude and by the words that I speak I want to add and not
diminish your name, your reputation so that others may see that they also can
speak to you as “father”, so that they can catch a glimpse of your glory in
this world and hold onto the promise of a vision of your full glory in heaven.
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