Sunday, February 10, 2006
Orinda Community Church (UCC)
A sermon by the Rev. Frank Baldwin
OUR FATHER… Romans 8:12-17
I. Welcome to the Christian season of Lent, that began this last week and will run through these next six weeks to Easter Sunday. The name, Lent, comes from lencten, the old Anglo-Saxon word for Spring, which arrives each year with the observable “lengthening” of days in these weeks before Easter. Spring is officially a good month and a half away, and it’s still pretty dark around here when I get up in the morning, but at least the onset of Lent is a sign that warmer, brighter, longer days are coming.
Christians who observe the season of Lent often use it for special spiritual practices, like fasting from certain foods or doing without something one would ordinarily take for granted. It is often a season for study, reflection and prayer. This year at Orinda Community Church we’re using these weeks for an in-depth look at the Lord’s Prayer, which you may also know as the “Our Father,” or “the prayer that Jesus taught us.” We’ll be visiting a different phrase of the Lord’s Prayer each Sunday in our worship service, and each Tuesday evening a group will gather to study the prayer and share what it means to us.
And why would we devote this much attention to the Lord’s Prayer? Well, with the possible exception of the 23rd Psalm, it’s undoubtedly the best known, best loved, and most memorized bit of scripture in the entire Bible. Even though there are countless versions of the prayer in different languages and translations, it is something that all Christians, the world over, have in common. It’s been spoken aloud in public worship for centuries; and it’s also the most often requested prayer in battlefields, hospitals and memorial services. That’s why, in recognition of how the Lord’s Prayer truly belongs to us all, we’re calling our theme for this Lenten season here at Orinda Community Church: “One Prayer, Many Voices.”
So then, “The prayer that Jesus taught us” is found in two places in the Bible: Matthew 6:9-13, where it’s a part of the famous “Sermon on the Mount,” and Luke 11:2-4, where it’s shorter and offered as a template by Jesus when the disciples ask him to teach them to pray. Biblical scholars tell us it’s an example of a classic Jewish prayer known as a kaddish, that Jesus would have learned at the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. It was originally said in Aramaic, the spoken language of first century Galilee and eventually translated into Greek for Matthew’s gospel, so that it could be understood and used by Christians everywhere.
Somewhat strangely, the very last sentence of the Lord’s Prayer – For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever – was never part of the kaddish prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. This phrase was, and is, a doxology, literally a “praise God,”a kind of elaborate “amen” added by the early Christian community when it used the prayer in worship. In most contemporary Bible translations you won’t find this doxology attached to the prayer in Matthew or Luke, expect maybe as a historic footnote, or with a textual reference indicating its special origin.
II. Considering its importance, the Lord’s Prayer is incredibly short – only 65 words or so in Matthew, including the doxology and an amen – and yet almost every bit of it has been the subject of vigorous dispute and controversy. That’s largely because the Aramaic language in which Jesus said it, as well as the kind of prayer it is, are both conceptually imprecise by nature. Every phrase, every expression, every figure of speech, practically every word in the Lord’s Prayer can be understood in several different ways, or on several different levels. For example, when Jesus says Our Father in heaven at the beginning of the prayer, does he imply that heaven is up in the sky, or is it the invisible realm of the spirit, or is it coming into being here among us, or is it something hidden deep within each individual; is it eternal, is it now, or is it still to come; is it a place, or an idea, or a state of being? In the context of his time, setting and language – as well as in his own unique understanding of things – it’s quite likely that for Jesus, heaven means all of these at once. God is in all, with all, and through all; and heaven is wherever God is.
The Lord’s Prayer is addressed to Our Father… (instead of My Father) suggesting that Jesus wanted us to pray it together, or at least, to regard it in a communal rather than an individual sense. God belongs equally to all of us, or perhaps better put: all of us equally belong to God. The “fatherhood” of God is definitely one of those controversies that the prayer attracts. God as “our father” would seem to specify that God is characteristically male, a limited concept disputed elsewhere in scripture where a much wider range of sacred metaphors is employed to help us know the Holy One who is, of course, beyond all human knowing.
God as “father” is a difficult concept for some, because not all fathers have been consistently “godly” in their behavior. And then there is the problem of patriarchy, where God’s presumptive “fatherliness” has been falsely and often cruelly used to justify the exclusion of women and the disrespecting of their contributions, their perspectives, and their authority. Certainly Jesus did not see God as merely a projection of his own human father, Joseph the Carpenter. And he went far beyond the patriarchal assumptions of his own day in the way he openly welcomed women into his inner circle and honored their faith, their gifts, and their leadership.
III. Be that as it may, there is just something undeniably parental about God. It is quite amazing that despite the utter holiness of God’s name (as Jesus readily acknowledges in the first sentence of the prayer he taught us), his own name for God was Abba. Abba is an Aramaic word for father, obviously derived from the family circle, and it means, quite simply, Poppa! In the gospel of Mark, Jesus uses this name when he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane a few minutes before his betrayal and arrest: Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I will, but your will be done. [Mark 14:36] And scholars believe Abba lies behind many other prayers and teachings of Jesus that the Greek New Testament renders as Father.
Think of that: Jesus called God Poppa! It sounds strange to us, thinking, as we sometimes do, of God as remote, unapproachable, foreboding, disapproving, incomprehensible. But Jesus addressed God in the most intimate, familiar and familial way possible, as Abba: Poppa. That was exactly the kind of relationship he had with God: very secure, very trusting, very strong, very close. In no small measure, it was this provocative familiarity with God that got Jesus in so much trouble with the ultra-formal religious authorities of his day who had made it a sin to so much as pronounce the holy name of God, even in prayer. And perhaps even more astonishing, it is exactly this intimacy with the Holy One, this bond as of a little child with an all-knowing, all-powerful – yet loving parent – that Jesus teaches to his disciples when he says, So then, when you pray, say something like this: Abba! Heaven is yours and, Holy, Holy, Holy are you!
That this attitude of Jesus indeed penetrated the thinking of the early church is demonstrated in the scripture which was read for us a few minutes ago from the Letter of Paul to the Romans: When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit [of God] bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ… Can God still be “Poppa” for us? Can we re-envision the Holy One in our lives not as aloof, disconnected, fierce or judgmental but as compassionate, understanding, strong and kind; as one into whose arms even such as you and I could crawl with confidence and trust. Can we pray, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… and have Abba! in our minds, as Jesus did? I think God would love it if we could!