Today we begin a series of five Sundays looking at the Lord’s Prayer. As part of the block of teaching recorded by Matthew in what we sometimes call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns to the subject of prayer.
He specifically talks about the private, interior world of prayer, and contrasts that with the way that some love to pray openly, volubly, at great length, reciting things that they hope will impress by their quantity and persistence. All of this is unnecessary, Jesus says, because our Father already knows what we need. And then he goes on to tell us how to pray.
So the paradox is that prayer might seem unnecessary, but we are to do it anyway.
The answer is that we are drawn to a relationship with God. Our purpose is to Encounter God and Grow in him, that is to have personal experience of him, to get to know him better and better. No matter how much we have experienced in our spiritual lives to date, we can always go further, go deeper. If we feel that we have not started, hardly know God at all, then Jesus here presents us with the easiest and most gentle start to our Christian adventure.
It is good to pray. We know this because Jesus here tells us both to do it, and how to do it. We know this because Jesus himself did it. In Mark 1 we read that “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” This was obviously unexpected because Simon comments that everyone is searching for him. In Luke 6 we read “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them ...”
Most naturally, we feel the impulse to pray. We feel drawn to seek contact with God. Very often I will pop into the church during the week and there will be someone sitting in silence. When times of difficulty come, we feel the urge to reach out to someone greater than us. It is how we are made.
It can seem difficult, mysterious, complicated, and we can feel ourselves to be untutored, unready or unworthy to communicate with God.
Here then is Jesus’ gift to you, a few words that have been in constant use for 2000 years. They sum up the relationship that God longs to bring us into, and suggest the ways that we should respond.
First, note that we are to call God Father. This is Pater in the Greek, and most experts agree that Jesus almost certainly taught the prayer in Aramaic, and used the word Abba.
We find it difficult to understand just how amazing, revolutionary this is, and on two counts.
First, Jesus uses the language of the street to talk to God. You do not need a degree or to come from a particular class or race – anyone is free to encounter God. There is no hidden code or special formula – just talk.
The Jews of Jesus’ time would have conversed in Aramaic or used Greek in everyday life, but they were trained to pray in classical Hebrew; to this day a Jewish boy coming to Bar mitzvah learns the correct responses off by heart in Hebrew, even if he has no idea what he is saying. Until relatively recently all Roman Catholic worshippers learned the words of the Mass in Latin. Our neighbours next door say Friday prayers in Arabic even if they do not know what the words mean. God is mysterious and therefore it seems fitting to address him in suitably reverent language. There is a suspicion, spoken or unspoken, that somehow the language of the Book of Common Prayer is more spiritual or fitting, precisely because it is more difficult to follow.
Jesus, on the other hand, instructs us to be familiar with God. “There is no sacred language, there is no sacred culture. All of this is a natural outgrowth of the incarnation. If the Word is translated from the divine to the human and becomes flesh, then the door is opened for that Word to again be translated into other cultures and languages.” (Kenneth Bailey, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes).
More than that, we are to call him Abba, Father. This was eye-brow raising in the time of Jesus, and it is a problem to some today. Abba is the term that one uses to one’s father, implying love and affection, bound up with a proper respect that there should be in families for our elders (!); it is a very human term and one that Jesus seems to have made his very own for addressing the divine. There were many more respectful terms that were used in prayers of the time. The God we pray to is not addressed as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, although that is who he is, but that would be of special reference to the Jews; he is Abba Father, the God to whom any human can pray. God had described himself as father of the whole nation (Out of Egypt I brought my son Israel), but no-one spoke of God or prayed to him in the intimate personal terms that Jesus taught us to use.
God is Father. We are called into relationship with him. It is not enough to read about him, discuss him, sing about him, help maintain a building and organisation dedicated to worship and teaching about him: these are all good, but they are the external things pointing to the reality inside. We are called to know God personally, to experience his love and reflect it in lives of worship and service. Anything less is to have the beautiful white dress but no bride to go in it, the cradle and layette but no baby, the artful table setting but no dinner to eat! It is simple and heart-touching ... we are to call our God Father; anything else misses the depths of love in the Father’s heart for each of us.
To speak of God as Father does throw up problems for some. Is this language not too male, reflecting a patriarchal view of society that is outmoded and inappropriate? Kenneth Bailey comments that the bible describes God using both male and female images. On the one hand he is given the title Father, a male image. At the same time, believers are told that we are “born of God” (1 John 3:9). If God gives birth, then God acts like a female. These two are brought together in Deuteronomy 32:18: “You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.” Jesus uses images where he compares himself to a “mother hen” or to a woman who finds her lost coin. Paul uses the language of human birth by longing that “Christ might be formed in you”.
And what are we to say to those who have had bad experiences of their own father? It is part of growing up to find out that our father is not faultless, perfect, ideal. Usually we get a perspective later in life; "By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong." ~Charles Wadsworth
It is true, however, that some have been cruelly treated, or neglected, or abandoned by their own father. How can this be helpful to them?
All that we can say is that Jesus himself defined what Father looks like. He told a story that is often called the Prodigal Son but should rather be titled the Prodigal Father. In a culture where the offending younger son should have be ostracised, thrown out, banished for ever for his appalling treatment of his father, the father instead breaks every convention. He longs for the return of his errant son, throws all dignity aside as he rushes to welcome him, and treats him with a grace and kindness that most would say is totally unearned. The heart of the Father is to reach out to and welcome, to nurture and to give. Every human father should aspire to this, every one of us who is a father is conscious of failing to live up to it completely. Every one of us, fathers and children, are blessed that we do have a heavenly Father who welcomes us, blesses us, heals us, cares for us, and seeks to share his life with us as we open ourselves up to him.
You might be thinking that this all seems too folksy, too casual, smacking too much of the “Heavenly Dad”. I would say first that if some others do seem to speak like this, or relate to God in that way, and it gives them joy and helps them to Encounter God and Grow, then we should rejoice with them and for them; we can leave it to Father God to sort them out!
I would also say that he is Our Father in heaven ....
Folk in the time of Jesus very often lived in the same home or certainly the same small village; mum and dad were just around the corner, or next door. In our disconnected world our parents can be miles away, but this was not their usual experience. And yet there was a respect within the family; Abba means more than Daddy.
Also we remember that we live within creation; our Abba Father made it all. We live and die as created beings; our Abba Father is eternal. We are faithful servants; he is the master. Abba, the loving Father, is approachable and yet dwells in awesome majesty in the heavens in all his glory.
Furthermore we are to pray for God’s name to be hallowed, to be made holy.
This is a mystery, even a paradox. God is holy, the source of all holiness. If we ask for his name to be hallowed, it is as if we were to ask for wood to become solid or for fire to become hot; they already are.
This is an example of what is sometimes called the “divine passive”. It starts with God, flows from him, and invites us to be caught up in it, to fall in with it, to submit to his will. The third commandment is to reverence the name of God. God’s name is holy, but it can be defiled. Paul alludes to Isaiah and Ezekiel when he comments that the sinful, hypocritical behaviour of religious people causes God’s name to be blasphemed among non-believers. (Romans 2:24) God is holy, his name is holy, and therefore our heart’s desire is to be holy. Every time that we pray the prayer that starts “Our Father”, we are asking God to change our hearts and inclinations so that we will think, feel and act in ways that cause the name of God to be honoured and revered. Having a bumper sticker that says “Jesus saves”, or “come to Alpha”, and then driving in an aggressive manner will not cause God’s name to be hallowed. Being known as a Christian but having a careless tongue or a contentious nature will not cause God’s name to be hallowed.
Jesus taught us to pray Our Father, who art in heaven. We are invited into the family, where Jesus is our elder brother, modelling for us a life of prayer and trust. The prayer leads us into a new relationship with God and with each other. It takes seriously the fact that we are far from perfect and that we need forgiveness. Abba Father loves us as we are and is not waiting until we improve before he will welcome us into his family. Jesus, who taught us this prayer, chose to die on the cross for us when we were still sinners. He loves us now, is praying for us now, and invites us to pray with him.
We are not to recite the Lord’s Prayer, as it were, on automatic pilot without thinking about it. May I encourage you to set the timer on your watch or your phone to beep every daylight hour? For the next week, pause every 60 minutes or so, thoughtfully say these words, and particularly reflect on how we are living can cause God’s name to be hallowed, or not. Give thanks for his Father’s love. Try to anticipate what I might say about “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” next week!
Questions for discussion
1. Jesus spoke against dry repetitive prayers, and then gave us the Lord’s Prayer. What is the most useful thing about the prayer to you?
2. How helpful do you find the concept of God as Father or Jesus as elder brother?
3. What does it mean for you, for God’s name to be hallowed?
4. God is holy, God is Father; in what practical ways can we help each other to live this out?
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