The Park Road Pulpit
Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors
Praying With Jesus: Our Father
Exodus 3.7-14 and Matthew 6.9-13
Amy Jacks Dean, June 15, 2003
Before the reading of the Old Testament:
The giving of the Divine Name – I chose this as the Old Testament reading to accompany the “Our Father” of the New Testament reading because it seems to, ironically, in some ways, stand in opposition to the prayer of Jesus. In thinking on “Our Father” this week I thought of this passage from Exodus when Moses asks God for a name to give to the Israelites and God says “I AM” – Yahweh – a name that became so holy to the Jews as not to be spoken. When they saw the name they would pronounce it – not Yahweh, but Adonai. When lord is written LORD – all uppercase – know that is the divine name Yahweh which is not to be uttered. (Read text)
Before the reading of the New Testament:
Almost 15 years ago I was introduced to the concept of inclusive language. This introduction was not a part of any “politically correct” campaign. It was a theological matter. When referring to all people, instead of saying mankind, I began to say humankind. This was expanded for me even in my references to God. All of my language about God was masculine. I began to drop those references from my vocabulary. I have made a conscious choice to not refer to God as Father. Neither do I refer to God as Mother. God is God – and both male and female are made in the image of God. (See the first creation account in Genesis 1) So on this Father’s Day as we study the “Our Father” of the Lord’s Prayer, it has been a shock to my system to reclaim this, what is now, old language for me. It has been a good exercise. (Read text)
If you know me at all, you know that I rely heavily on the wisdom of My Father. I use his funny, quirky sayings often. I fall back on what he has taught me over the years, and I find myself teaching my own children the very things he taught me. My Father’s sayings often work their way into sermons and other speaking engagements. Recently the Minister of Youth at FBC, Greensboro emailed me to tell me that one of the parents of one of his youth had made a sign out of the set of sayings I had taught them at youth camp last summer when I was the preacher for the week at Unidiversity. I had stolen those sayings from My Father. I used that same set of sayings when I spoke at the Baccalaureate service at Providence Day School two years ago, and I mentioned them again when I spoke there this year as well. I’m sure I have spoken them here to you for they made such an impact on my life. You know, my first day of school lecture from My Father: Do you know right from wrong? The Lord don’t love ugly. And, act like you’ve got parents. (That last one always gets a round of applause from parents when spoken at a graduation event!) Some of you may remember “pass the jelly, Lois” from a year or two ago. My Father believes in treating people kindly - even if out of spite - for I learned to “beat people with a kindness stick” when they were mistreating you – then that would get ‘em good. When I couldn’t stand the new coach of the girl’s tennis team in high school, and I wanted to quit in mid-season, My Father told me that we don’t quit - especially when a team is depending on us. I could quit when the season was over, but not before. I ended up playing all four years in high school on the tennis team, being the team captain my senior year. I’m grateful that I didn’t quit. My Father says that you can be “sleepy as a wet dog.” And that is very, very sleepy. And when your schedule is flexible that means you are on a “loose pulley.” That’s a good place to be for life is less stressful on a loose pulley and more of it should be lived that way. I was once told by My Father when I was trying to help Russ with a decision that “a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.” I didn’t like that advice as much. When I got in trouble in high school for lying and the school served me the maximum penalty of a 3 day suspension, My Father said I was to take my punishment “like a man.” My father is a wealth of wisdom. His best stuff is really not repeatable here. We were at home last night, at my parents’ house, and we were discussing an extended family situation that he finds ridiculous when he boldly stated, “If I were in that family I could straighten them out!” But that’s just it - he’s not their father, he is My Father, and I am more than enough for him to handle! He’s My Father and I’m not sharing him with any of you.
Today, we take a look at 2 simple words that hold a wealth of meaning: Our Father. And I want to make 2 points that may help us in our praying the Lord’s Prayer. I want us to look at the second word first. “Father” implies a sense of intimacy and closeness - a personal God – not this Yahweh that Jews came to understand as a God whose name was too holy to even be uttered. Some years ago there was a great song out by Bette Midler. Great melody, easy to sing along, romantic ballad with Bette Midler’s powerful and soulful voice. But the words contained therein were very poor theology. I hope the public did not buy this disturbing image of God: “From a distance the world looks blue and green, and the snow-capped mountains white. From a distance the ocean meets the stream, and the eagle takes to flight.” In this song, Midler observes that the world looks better from a distance, it seems we are at peace from a distance. And she concludes with the awful chorus: “God is watching us. God is watching us. God is watching us, from a distance.”
This is not the God that Jesus has introduced to the disciples in teaching them to pray. Rather, Jesus has introduced them to a whole new way of addressing God. The church fathers “testify unanimously that abba was the address of the small child to his father. And the Talmud confirms this when it says: `When a child experiences the taste of wheat [i.e. when it is weaned], it learns to say abba and imma [dear father and dear mother]. Abba and Imma are thus originally the first sounds which the child stammers. In Jesus’ days they were no longer restricted to children’s talk; they were also used by grown-up sons and daughters to address their parents. Yet their humble origin was not forgotten. Abba was an everyday word, a homely family word. No Jew would have dared to address God in this manner. Jesus did it always . . . .[and what is most amazing about this is that] in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus authorizes his disciples to repeat the word abba after him. He gives them a share in his sonship and empowers them, as his disciples, to speak with their heavenly Father in just such a familiar, trusting way as a child would his father. (The Prayers of Jesus, Joachim Jeremias, pages 96-97)
But I confess to you that I understand why the religious leaders of that day may have been offended by this too-friendly, too-familiar manner that Jesus was teaching. After 7 years of being a college minister, I understand that the key to successful college ministry is student-led ministry. My job as Campus Minister was in many ways to serve as a leader of leaders. So a group of students planned the weekly worship services. They auditioned and selected the band at the beginning of the year. They lined up all the speakers. They organized the snacks for afterwards. And they led the worship team prayer time before each service. Each Tues night, while I was the Campus Minister at Samford University, I braced myself for the “Daddy Pray-er” of the group. She was a sweet, innocent, cute, very religious freshman who always prayed this way: “Dear Daddy, Thank you for this and, Daddy, thank you for that. . .” And throughout her entire prayer, she called God “Daddy.” That hurt my ears. She was just doing what someone, probably her own pastor had taught her, to pray the prayer as Jesus taught us: Abba - Daddy.
But it is interesting to note, that later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gives further instruction about what to call God. Jeremias says that “it is possible to conclude that the giving of the Lord’s Prayer to the disciples authorized them to say “Abba,” just as Jesus did. In this way, Jesus gave them a share in his relationship with God. Jesus did not, however, stop at this authorization. At the same time he protected the new form of address to God by forbidding the disciples to use the address abba in everyday speech as a courtesy title.” (ibid page 63) “And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven.”(Matthew 23:9) Abba - Father – Daddy, when prayed by Jesus became reserved for God and God alone. This at least makes you wonder - if you’re going to call God Father, then you need to come up with a new name for your biological/earthly father.
Though Jesus brought the name of God close, intimate, and personal, he still held reverence and awe and mystery for God. Calling on the name of God is not to be taken lightly or casually. God is intimate and personal and God deserves a name only reserved for God, and no one else, not even my own earthly Father. That is why for me, I have chosen to say that God is God - there is nothing or no one like God and the best way that I can call upon God is to call God “God.” Yet I still pray The “Our Father” for it is the language of the church and it is the teaching of Jesus.
The second word: Roberta Bondi is Professor of Church History at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and an outspoken feminist theologian. I was interested in her thoughts when she says, “Oddly, now the part of the phrase [Our Father] that daily grips me [is not “Father,” but rather] the seemingly much less difficult word, “our.” “Our” is a tough word for me in this prayer and I’m working hard at it . . .in light of all the difficulties around praying to God the Father, what on earth could make praying the perfectly ordinary word `our’ an issue? Well, I’ll start by reminding you of what we acknowledge all the time, which is that 20th century Protestant Americans are almost fatally individualistic in every area of our lives, including our religion. I am still a product of my own culture, Christian or not, and so I continue to fall into the trap of thinking of my spirituality and my prayer as a private matter involving nobody but myself and God.” Bondi goes on to say that visiting her Baptist relatives in Kentucky as a child didn’t help either. There she learned that faith was all about accepting Jesus into my heart to save me from my sins so that Jesus could be my personal Lord and Savior. (A Place to Pray, Robera Bondi, page 24) Me. Me. Me.
Yet when the disciples said teach us to pray, Jesus taught them that much of faith is corporate in nature - by that I mean one body, one community, one family of faith. The “Our” is perhaps the most important word for today, for in it we are reminded that we are not alone - not only is God in this with us - intimately and personally as Abba, but we have one another. And that God is Abba to me and to you and to those who persecute us. God is Abba to our enemies and God is Abba to those with whom we are in conflict - for God is “Ours” and not mine alone. It is not “My Father who art in heaven” it is “Our Father.”
Bondi tells this story: “Over a period of weeks I had been unsuccessfully struggling to forgive what I had experienced as a significant betrayal by a close friend I’ll call Jane Anne. I was fairly sure she was unaware of what she had done to me, and I had no intention of trying to talk with her about it: some days I told myself that trying to discuss it would only make my feelings toward her worse; other days I wanted to believe that what I felt would go away if I just didn’t pay any attention to it. Neither strategy worked, nor were my prayers for help in forgiveness successful. Though I had days when my anger and hurt receded a little, for no apparent reason, on as many other days my pain and rage were as new and sharp as they had been in the beginning. One part of me – the smaller part in which God’s grace is always calling me to truthfulness and vulnerability, however – knew that love is too valuable ever to be thrown away . . .The larger part of me – the old, wounded isolated part – felt that the very ground had fallen away under my feet. All I wanted to do was simply follow my familiar patterns of safety by praying for myself . . . One morning, feeling really hopeless, as I began to pray Jesus’ prayer, I heard myself praying the opening words in a new way. “Our Father who art in heaven,” I heard myself say and then immediately after that, “my Father and the Father of Jane Anne . . . all at once I realized that I was no longer alone in a private world in which I was blinded and isolated by my own mental anguish. Rather, I found myself in the presence of God, Jane Anne beside me, in the bright and open space of God’s mysterious love for the two of us . . .by speaking the words “my Father and the Father of Jane Anne’ I had prayed for her and myself together. Somehow, in that moment when I was given the gift of praying “our Father” and really meaning it, I knew I had a place already I didn’t have to fight for or defend; it was a place in the family of God to which I belonged simply because I was a human being.” (ibid, pages 27-28) God is Our Father – not just mine and not just yours.
So I say to you, dear friends, forgiveness is possible, acceptance is within reach, love can overcome – for God is not mine, God is ours. Our lives are much too private, I fear. We all live behind some “veil of secrecy” (a phrase from my friend Drew Toler, a Chaplain and Marriage and Family Therapist) where hurt and pain and anger and grief are stifled. Where rage breeds violence and hatred and fear and despair. Today, know that God is close and intimate, with a name that should be reserved only for God – Abba. And this Abba is a shared reality for us all – for we are not alone – we are all children of God. May it be so.
Abba – Father – come among us and within us.
Abba – Father – grant us your peace.
Abba – Father – make us fit for the work of your Kingdom.
Our Father – teach us to give up our selfish needs.
Our Father – remind us that we are all your children.
Our Father – help us to love and forgive.
God – guide us to partner with one another that your Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.