Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel, Eagle Harbor Church UCC
July 19, 2009
Luke 11:1-4 and Hosea 11:1-4
Our Father
Last week I preached the first sermon in our series on the Lord's Prayer. I suggested that some of us may at times pray this prayer on autopilot. Jesus taught this prayer to the disciples when they sought a deeper relationship with God. They wanted to know how to pray, what posture and framework. I spoke about bending toward God, letting ourselves be drawn into the presence of God in trust and humility. The Lord's Prayer includes the ingredients for a healthy relationship with God, others and the world.
Our Father. Does this phrase of the Lord's Prayer warm your heart and soul – or does it stick to the roof of your mouth like a spoonful of peanut butter? Some of us miss the traditional God as Father language that many churches have put on the discontinued shelf. Others of us do not resonate with using male language to describe God. I often refer to God not as “he” but simply as “God,” to emphasize that God transcends gender. And yet, in personal prayers to God I so often imagine God as Parent—a sometimes Fatherly and sometimes Motherly being who draws me in close. So perhaps this should not be an either/or question. In our bulletin we suggest the name “Creator” for those who wish not to address God as Father in the Lord's Prayer and in the Doxology we pray to Creator, Christ and Spirit instead of the traditional Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Truly, God's roles of Creator and Christ are also necessary parts of our faith. Yet when Jesus' disciples asked him how to pray, he told them to begin, Our Father. Is anything lost, is any meaning obscured from our updates in language? Is our quest for inclusivity watering down our faith? That depends. What is important, I believe, is to keep our language of God balanced. Naming God in such a way that we are emphasizing the relational aspect of God is part of that balance. The trinity is relational, and is the model for God's intimacy with humanity, as well as our relationships with one another.
God in intimate relation with us is critical because it is here that Christianity is set apart from all other religions. In Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and all other theistic faiths, God is not addressed as Our Father. The intimacy that Jesus invites when teaching the disciples to pray to Our Father is unique and is an astonishingly radical claim about who God is.
It has been said that naming God Father may not work for those who don't get along with their earthly fathers, so perhaps we shouldn't use the term. I've argued that myself—but I don't anymore. Here is why: Jesus instructed us to address God as Father not because earthly fathers are so great. Instead, God is model for earthly Fathers and mothers and everyone else too for that matter.
In Luke 15 we read that Jesus told a parable to explain what the love of God is like: He said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.' "So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
That brought him to his senses. He said, 'All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.' He got right up and went home to his father.
"When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son ever again.'
"But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast!1
God welcomes us, loves us unconditionally, forgives us, and longs to commune with us. We can imagine the joy of a Father embracing his long-lost son, and then perhaps catch a glimmer of the profound joy and delight that God has in relationship with humanity.
Before Jesus' public ministry, when he was just twelve years old, he told his parents that he had stayed in the temple because he had to be in his Father's house. Abba and Imma, Daddy and Mommy, are the first words a Jewish child learns to speak. It connotes a childlike trust. Madame Guyon, a French mystic wrote, “Teach this simple experience, this prayer of the heart. Don't teach methods; don't teach some lofty ways to pray, Teach the prayer of God's Spirit, not of man's invention.”2 Praying to our Father is the simple prayer of the heart. It is here that the floodgates open and we may not have the right words to say – but the Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words. The disciples had heard the analogy of God as a Parent. Such as in the Hosea text that we heard this morning: “I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” Psalm 103:12 “As a Father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion;” in Isaiah, such as 66:13 “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” God as Parent was not a new image. What was new, what was startling, was Jesus' instructions to address God as Father. For those who dared not even utter the divine name, this was incredibly radical theology.
We pray to Our Father because we do not pray alone. Even when there is only one person praying in a room, that one is joined with a community that spans time and space. This prayer in particular is so very corporate in nature, and there is such profound power in that it is shared by so many traditions. It not only links us with other people, but also links us with Jesus, the intercessor of our prayers. Every time we pray, Jesus intercedes and prays with us and through us. As my Dad wrote, “We pray to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, every time we pray, no matter how we name God. When we pray OUR Father, it is and can only be in Jesus' name.”3 Praying Our Father reminds us that our prayers should not be limited to our own personal sphere of self, family and friends. Praying for the needs of those we've never met is a powerful way to pray for heaven on earth. Praying for people around the world enlarges our own sphere, connects us with them, and perhaps may lead us to action. As Mulholland wrote, “Praying to Our Father for the needs of our brothers and sisters should create a desire to be part of the answer.”4
William Barclay told the story of an emperor riding through Rome at the head of a multitude of troops. His son, excited to see his father, made his way through the crowd and under the legs of a guard on his way to his father's chariot. The guard scooped him up and said, “Don't you know who that is in the chariot? That's the emperor.” The boy replied, “He may be your emperor, but he's my father.”5
Addressing God as Our Father is approaching God in intimacy and also responsibility. As the model parent, God is perfectly loving to God's children. We children, in turn, strive to make our Parent proud. It is a responsibility. Mulholland wrote, “It isn't the people outside the church who take God's name in vain. It's the people on the inside, the nice people who would never dare let one little cuss word fall off their lips—they're the ones many times whose lives are totally unchanged by the grace of God.” A sobering thought. But isn't this at the heart of the stories we read in the New Testament about the Pharisees and the Scribes who know the law inside and out but remain untransformed in their hearts? And we know those stories are not written to make us feel good for being the other guy, but to provoke us, leading us to examine how we are like the teachers of the law.
Saying Our Father sets in motion the rest of the Lord's Prayer. For the responsibility of aligning our will with God's will, working with God to establish heaven on earth, and forgiving others, flows directly from our relationship to our Parent God. Isaiah 49:15-16 reads, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the baby she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hand.” Literally—tattooed. God says to us, I will not forget you—you are mine. You are my child.
God is beyond any image or images we use to describe or address God. Yet images are important, because they help us understand something about God. They help us grab hold of God a bit more. One of these images is the one that Jesus primarily used: our Father. It is a name that reminds us that although God is so very other than us, so beyond what we can imagine, that God also nurtures us and loves us. The first phrase of the Lord's Prayer tells us volumes about God. It can remind us that we are invited to approach God with childlike trust, shedding any self-consciousness or complicated methods for prayer. The Lord's Prayer begins with praying from the heart, from our heart to God's heart. It sets the stage for a prayer bathed in trust, love and commitment to a new way of living. May we allow ourselves to be continually embraced by our Parent God who is always near.
1 The Message by Eugene Peterson.
2 Experiencing the Depths, p. 122.
3 Sermon preached at New Life Community Church in Artesia, CA, July 12, 2009.
4 Praying Like Jesus, p. 43.
5 The Gospel of Matthew, 1975, p. 203. Reprinted in Praying Like Jesus by Mulholland, 32.