 Rev. Jeff Nelson |
Who's Your Daddy?
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Do you ever wonder what kids think of all this church stuff? Have you ever listened to them describe what it is they hear us say, do or pray? Here is what one four year old told her mother she was sure she heard the folks in her church pray each week: Our father who does art in heaven, Harold be thy name. Thy kingdom come, I will be done with dressings made in heaven. Give us this day our jelly bread, and forgive us our trash baskets and forgive us who put trash bags among us. Lead us not into Penn Station but deliver us some e-mail. For there is wine in the kingdom and the powder goes on the flowers forever. Amen. The Lord’s Prayer. We say it almost every Sunday. The 57 words that make up the prayer are probably among the most familiar and comforting words of our tradition. We know those 57 words like the back of our hand. We can go to almost any church, of any denomination, in any place, and when someone begins the Lord’s Prayer, we can, for the most part, follow right along. But, after a while, I wonder if the prayer starts to sounds like that four year old’s prayer, even to us? I wonder if we even know what we are praying? Or have we let the words just run together so that we, and anybody listening, cannot make any sense out of them anymore? I wonder if we realize that this prayer we pray, this prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, is a radical, world- altering prayer? Fredrick Buechner contends that to say the 57 little words that make up the Lord’s Prayer is to “unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.” What is it that we are praying each time we say the Lord’s Prayer? And what might happen if we stopped for a moment to consider its ancient and familiar words? Over the next several weeks, we will take a closer look at the prayer Jesus taught us, to discover its deeper meanings and find the ways to live into these words we say so often. Tonight we begin at the beginning, with the first (and probably most familiar) of the prayer’s words: “Our Father, who art in heaven...” It would be tempting to skip over the very first word… the word “our.” But this little three-letter word does more to impact the tone for the entire prayer than almost any other word in it. “Our Father…” Jesus does not teach his disciples a prayer that begins with “My Father.” Right from the get-go we see that this is not a private prayer. The very word “our” connotes community. This poem I found on the Internet, although simple, gets at the heart of what it means to begin this prayer with the little word “our”:
You cannot pray the Lord’s
Prayer and even once say “I.” The Lord’s Prayer is a communal prayer. And even when uttered during moments of private devotion, we find ourselves praying as a part of, and on behalf of, a community of others. This communal grounding stands as an antidote to our culture of individualism—a culture that has led us too often to a mentality of “I got mine…you get yours.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church points to the radical stance that must be taken by any person or groups who genuinely pray the Lord’s Prayer. It reads: If we pray the “Our Father” sincerely, we leave individualism behind, because the love we receive frees us from it. The ‘our’ at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, like the ‘us’ of the last four petitions, excludes no one. If we are to say it truthfully, our divisions and oppositions have to be overcome. The first word of this prayer, “our,” opens up the entire communal nature of the prayer.
To begin this prayer with “Our” Father is to say that, somehow, all of us are brothers and sisters in the same family. Black, white and brown. Male and female. Young and old. Rich and poor. From different nationalities, speaking different languages. All of us are caught up together in family, united in the love of our heavenly parent, God the Father. To say “Our Father…” is to say something pretty radical. It might be like “unleashing a power that would make atomic power look like a warm breeze.” We move to the second of these 57 words that make up the Lord’s Prayer, and that word is “Father.” The prayer is addressed to “Our Father.” But this Father…our Father…is not just any old father figure. This is our Heavenly Father. There are at least two meanings that are being evoked by the prayer and its opening address to God as Father. The first is political. The second, relational. We begin with the political. Oh no, I’m about do it. I am about to talk about religion and politics…at the same time. These are the two topics we are not supposed to discuss in polite company. Talking politics and religion is sure to silence any polite dinner conversation, dampen any party and even threaten to split many churches. Conventional wisdom says religion and politics don’t mix. They are just too important, too potentially divisive, and raise too many issues that strike at our core values. Religion and politics—it just makes us all a little uncomfortable. But when it comes to mixing religion and politics, I think Abraham Lincoln has some sound advice for us. Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God’s blessing and endorsement for our politics—saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, as Lincoln said, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God’s side. To the very first pray-ers of the Lord’s Prayer, the phrase “Our Father, who art in heaven…” had definite political overtones. In the culture of the first century, the father was at the center of life. He was the first, last, final and only authority within both private and public spheres of life. The father’s authority involved power defined by unquestioned control. In the first century, “father” was an all-encompassing image with social, legal, political and cultural implications. To be called “father” was the absolute term of honor, the ultimate notion of respect. In the Roman Empire, the backdrop that gives rise to the New Testament writings and the Lord’s Prayer, the “father” was part of the pecking order that extended all the way to the emperor. Caesar was called the Father of the Roman Empire, much in the same way that we Americans might refer to George Washington as the father of our country. To those living in the biblical times of the Lord’s Prayer, father Caesar gave them national identity, story and myth, much in the same way the stories of George Washington and his cherry tree do for us as Americans. The story of the Roman Empire was that father Caesar was the provider of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. In fact, Caesar was called the Prince of Peace. In the Roman imperial world, the “gospel” was the good news of Caesar’s having established peace and security for the world. However, a close examination would show that the Peace of Rome was a peace that was held together by military might, dubious foreign treaties and a deep dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots. (I hope we are beginning to see the radical thing it was to claim there was a Father worthy of praise other than Caesar, that there was a kingdom with a peace far greater than that of the Empire, and that not the emperor but Jesus—a poor, itinerant preacher—was the true Prince of Peace…and his gospel, which came first to the poor, was fully realized not in a military conquest but in a sacrificial death on a Roman cross.) When the first followers of Jesus dared to utter a prayer that claimed an allegiance to another Father—a heavenly father—it was paramount to treason. (I think that is why the scriptures counseled the first pray-ers of this prayer to pray in private, not out of personal piety but out of personal safety.) When the first pray-ers of the Lord’s Prayer prayed to their Heavenly Father rather than Caesar, father of the Roman Empire, it served as an alternative to the imperial vision. Claiming to be living under the reign of their Heavenly Father meant membership in a new family and a new kingdom, a family that no longer revolved around blood and a kingdom no longer enforced by military and economic violence. The new political authority, invoked by the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer, was surely good news to all those left on the margins of the Roman Empire—the poor, the foreigners, the women, the sick, the disabled, the children and slaves. (It sounds a lot like the people Jesus was always hanging out with, doesn’t it?) If Jesus were alive in our time and lived here in our American context, I wonder how he would teach us this prayer today. Might he ask to pray to “Our Heavenly President”? Or to lift our eyes to “Our Celestial CEO”? Whatever the case may be, to pray in the spirit of those who first dared to utter the words “Our Father, who art in heaven…” is to claim that there is an authority higher than those who control the political and economic machines of our day. To pray the Our Father in a contemporary context challenges us to be political without being partisan—no small task in our current political climate. To pray the politics of the Our Father today demands that we say God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. In the fractured and polarized political culture of America today, the opening lines of this prayer that Jesus taught us must challenge all those brave enough to pray it, to challenge both the right and the left from a consistent moral ground—a moral ground that takes in the totality of the scriptural witness, beginning with the overwhelming demand for justice on behalf of the poor. You see, praying this prayer is messing with a power far greater than even atomic power. There is a second meaning embedded in the father image used by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. That meaning is definitely relational. When we refer to God as a Father in our contemporary context, the image “Our Father, who art heaven…” that probably comes to mind is parental more than it is political. And while I am not sure that is what the original pray-ers of the prayer most understood from the opening lines of the prayer, this fatherly, parental image is certainly not without merit, both experiential and biblical. God as Father. Before we go any further, we must admit that the image of God as father, as dad, is one that some struggle with. Too many among us have had broken or strained relationships with our earthly fathers. They say that about thirty percent of people my age grew up without a father in their lives, and over half grew up in families where the father was more absent than present. So for some, there is a lot of pain when we use image of father at the onset of this prayer. However, we encounter a new image of God the Father when we read the Bible, one that surpasses all earthly understandings and limitations of fatherhood. The image first appears in the book of Exodus, the fourth chapter. It is the story of Moses, his encounter with God and his call to “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh: ‘Let my people go!’” God has a plan for his people, and slavery isn’t it. So he calls Moses and says to him: I want you to go before Pharaoh, and I want you to deliver a message to him: “This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, let my son go, so he may worship me.” What makes this significant is that it is the first time in the whole of scripture that God identifies himself as a father or parent of a child. Up to this point, we know God in scripture as Creator—the one who made all things in heaven and on earth. The move that God makes here from Creator to Father is significant. Fellow Methodist preacher Mark Feldmeir (no relation to our Mary Feldmaier) describes this move God makes by drawing the following analogy. He writes: I happen to admire the work of the great Russian artist Marc Chagall, but I never knew Marc Chagall. If I could collect every piece of Chagall’s artwork and fill the walls of my house and admire his work daily, I would still not know him. And the truth is that I’d rather have Mark Chagall in my house than have one of his paintings on my wall.
God understood this. He wanted his people to know him, not just know about him. He wanted his people to speak to him rather than simply about him… For the first time in scripture he calls us his children, calls himself our Father. When we pray “Our Father, who art in heaven,” we are acknowledging our need to be in relationship with God—to move beyond simply knowing about God into a relationship where we might come to know God. Who is this God who wants to know us? The same God who spoke to Moses, the same God whose most treasured dream, both then and now, is for his children to be free. Here is a story that speaks of the power of this relationship God wants so badly to have with us. A seminary professor was vacationing with his wife in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. One morning they were eating breakfast at a little restaurant, hoping to enjoy a quiet, family meal. While they were waiting for their food, they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting with the guests. The professor leaned over and whispered to his wife, “I hope he doesn’t come over here.” But sure enough, the man did come over to their table. “Where are you folks from?” he asked in a friendly voice. “Oklahoma,” they answered. “Great to have you here in Tennessee,” the stranger said. “What do you do for a living?” “I teach at a seminary,” the professor replied. “Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you? Well, I’ve got a really great story for you.” And with that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the couple. The man started: See that mountain over there (pointing out the restaurant window)? Not far from the base of that mountain, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up because every place he went, he was always asked the same question, “Hey, boy, who’s your daddy?” Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question: “Who’s your daddy?”
When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. The boy would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, “Who’s your daddy?” But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast, the boy got caught and had to walk out with the crowd.
Just about the time he got to the back door, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, “Son, who’s your daddy?” The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the question, “Who’s your daddy?”
This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and, using discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following to that scared little boy: “Wait a minute!” he said. “I know who you are. I see the family resemblance now. You are a child of God. God is your daddy.”
He patted the boy on his shoulder and said, “Boy, you’ve got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.” With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, “Who’s your daddy?”, he’d just tell them, “I’m a child of God. God’s my daddy.” The distinguished gentleman got up from the table and said, “Isn’t that a great story?” The professor responded that it really was a great story! As the man turned to leave, he said, “You know, if that new preacher hadn’t told me that I was one of God’s children, I probably never would have amounted to anything!” And he walked away. The seminary professor and his wife were stunned. They called the waitress over and asked her, “Do you know who that man was who was just sitting at our table?” The waitress grinned and said, “Of course. Everybody here knows him. That’s Ben Hooper. He’s the former governor of Tennessee!” So who’s our daddy? “Our Father, who art in heaven…,” that’s who! Notes: The idea to do a sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer was inspired by Michael H. Crosby’s book, The Prayer that Jesus Taught Us. Throughout this series, I will be leaning heavily on his scholarship to help flesh out the deeper meanings of this prayer. On the issue of religion and politics, I have found nobody better than Jim Wallis. He brings the very best evangelical Christianity into the political issues facing us today. Wallis is the editor of Sojourners magazine as well as some incredible books, The Soul of Politics, Who Speaks for God, Faith Works and God’s Politics, all of which I have read and would recommend. There is a growing academic interest in the relationship between the early Christian church and its relationship to the Roman Empire. Among the many scholars researching this topic, I have found Richard Horsely’s work to be the most comprehensive and challenging. Some of his works that I would recommend are Paul and Empire, Jesus and Empire, Paul and Politics, and The Message and the Kingdom. Mark Feldmeir’s sermon, “Our Father…”, from his book of sermons, Testimony to the Exiles, was very helpful in fleshing out the parental image of God as father. I am always grateful for Mark’s insight, especially as it relates to communicating Gospel truth in a postmodern context. The Craddock piece once again comes from his book, Craddock Stories.
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