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Words…words…words. Recently I
read that last year, 100 new words were added to the
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary—words like bikini wax, brain
freeze, chick flick, hazmat and Wi-Fi. Whether the world
will be a better place because of it is yet to be seen, but
we are overwhelmed with words. Words…words…words. The
constant stream of rapid-fire raging rhetoric on talk radio;
the unending stream of words on e-mail, i-Pod and spam;
printed words, shouted words, confusing and contradictory
words. To those who are caught up in the flood of words,
Jesus said: “In praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the
Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their
many words. Pray then like this…” And he gives us a spare,
modest 66 words as a pattern for prayer.
For those of us who are
“Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus” this Lent, author John
Indermark says:
In the face of ageless
inclinations toward long-worded, long-winded prayer, Jesus
counsels another way. “Pray then like this” is not a decree
to memorize the Lord’s Prayer so we can have familiar words
to close worship; rather it invites us to form our prayer
life in simplicity and brevity, cutting to the core of what
is truly necessary for our soul, body and life.
(John Indermark, Traveling
the Prayer Paths of Jesus, page 69)
We call it the Lord’s Prayer,
but it is really the “Disciples’ Prayer.” Jesus gave it to
his disciples as a sample prayer, a model prayer. In fact,
in Luke’s gospel, the prayer is offered in response to the
specific request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Across
the centuries and around the world, this pattern prayer has
touched the hearts and expressed the desires of the faithful
in every place:
OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN
HEAVEN,
HALLOWED BE THY NAME.
This simple prayer calls us to
look beyond ourselves, beyond the petty boundaries of our
puny lives, and to get in touch with the wonder and grandeur
of the God to whom we pray, to turn to:
1. THE GOD WHO IS
THERE...IN HEAVEN.
“Our Father, who art in heaven”
Going through my files, I came
across notes from a conversation I heard on WJR in 1982 with
Goldie Norton, at that time the President of the Wham-O
Corporation. In touting her company’s primary product, she
actually sounds as if she was talking about today: “In times
of depression and despair, people need something to spark
their lives…and the Hula Hoop is there!”
Since I owned one of the
original Hula Hoops—Wham-O brought it out in 1958 when it
sold for $1.98, and they sold 20 million of them in the
first six months on the market—I have to say I am thankful
for the Hula Hoop. And of course, Goldie was right…in times
of depression and despair, we do need something to spark our
lives, but I certainly hope there is more there than
the hula hoop!
The prayer
begins with the powerful affirmation of the God who is
there, a God who is present in our day and time; a God who
inhabits our lives and our world, the cosmos and all
creation; a God who “is” and whose majesty fills the
universe…“in heaven.”
When Jesus invites us to address
our prayer to the God in heaven, he is not giving us God’s
e-mail address, not locating God on some cloud or corner of
the universe. He is naming this God as the God who is above
every God, beyond our imagination, greater than our human
capacities, our five senses or our reason, larger than
anything our feeble minds can grasp, the God who is (in
theological language) “WHOLLY OTHER.”
Back in 1961, J.B. Phillips
wrote a little book which shocked the staid religious
landscape of a settled church coming out of the comfortable
50’s, when everyone assumed God looked something like Dwight
Eisenhower. It became a classic and is still in print today.
The title was simply Your God is Too Small. Phillips
describes many of our inadequate concepts for God:
Phillips writes: “We seem to
have captured and tamed and trained to our liking a God who
is really far too big to ever be forced into little man-made
boxes.” (Phillips, Your God is Too Small, page 37)
And forty years later, I fear
Phillips is still right. All too often, our God is too
small. Our image of God is a God made in our image:
-
Domesticated and
down-loadable
-
Pocket-size, parochial and
provincial
-
A God defined by the
political party
-
A God who cares more about
our nation than all the nations
But the religion of the Bible,
both Old and New Testaments, and the religion of Jesus
Christ is pitilessly hard on all these low and trite views
of God. The Bible is forever reminding us that it is no use
to talk about the God who is beside us or within
us until we recognize the God who is above us and
beyond us.
The God to
whom we pray is the God who is there…in heaven.
2.
AND THIS IS THE GOD WHOSE NAME IS HOLY.
“Hallowed be thy name”
Just to be clear, God’s first
name is not Harold, as in “Harold be thy name.” God’s
name is hallowed, holy, sacred.
The Old Testament writers used
many names to describe God, since they knew no one image or
name was adequate.
ElShadi: “The God Most High,
the Exalted One”
Elohim: “God the
everlasting”
The Lord of Hosts: “One who
leads the people of God in battle”
They used imagery of God as a
mother who comes with nurturing comfort, God as shepherd,
caring for his sheep, God who is known as word and wind,
earthquake and fire. Since no one name could fully grasp
God’s holiness, the actual name for God was given in just
four consonants, “YHWH.” Literally, it was the name which
could not be spoken by human tongues. No wonder the first
commandant was “Do not take the name of the Lord your God
in vain.” God’s name is hallowed, holy.
Contrast that to our casual,
flippant ways of speaking about God, using God’s name as if
it was nothing more than an exclamation point. To quote my
preacher brother:
Is it possible that we get so
cozy with God, that we face the danger of bringing God down
to a manageable size, reducing The Almighty God into a
domesticated house cat who will curl up beside the fire with
us and purr when we pat its stomach, a warm comforter to
make us feel cozy and safe at night?
(James Harnish, July 7, 1991,
“Does Anyone Fear God Anymore?”)
What would
it take for us to once again be captured by the vision of a
God who is:
Immortal, invisible, God only
wise,
in light inexpressible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
(UM Hymnal, page 103)
This God, the God of Jesus’
prayer, the God who is there...in heaven, the God whose name
is hallowed, holy.
But the amazing revelation of
Jesus’ prayer is the invitation to address this holy,
wholly-other God as “Father.”
3.
THE GOD WHO IS THERE—IN HEAVEN IS OUR FATHER.
And not
just “Father.” Jesus chooses to use the colloquial,
informal, familial name Abba, which means Daddy,
Papa.
John
Killinger writes:
For Jesus to call God
“Abba” was to make the most audacious theological statement
that could ever be made. Think about it—the God who created
the world and cast the nebulae in space; the God whose
majesty is seen from the highest mountains; the God who led
the Hebrews out of captivity in Egypt; the God who fashioned
the giant sequoia and plants the tiny seeds of pearl in the
oyster; the God who set the oceans rocking and raised Jesus
from the coldness of death...this God can be called “Our
Father.”
He
concludes:
If that doesn’t make shivers run
up and down your spine, then you have not properly
understood. To think that the God of all this depth and
power should be our Father is enough to stagger the mind and
make it recoil in sheer insufficiency.
(John Killinger, The God
Named Hallowed, page 20)
Of all the names for God, this
is the name Jesus uses most often—seventy times in these
four short Gospels. Jesus says the God who inhabits all of
heaven, whose very name is holy, this God is “Our Father.”
Now let me quickly say that this
name, like all the other names for God, is imperfect and
inadequate, since no one name can capture the fullness of
God. God is not male, since God is not limited to created
categories of human gender. God is as much female as male,
as much mother as father, and so much more. But Jesus was
willing to risk the inadequacy of language and human imagery
to make it clear that God is not just “The Force,” not just
an abstract power in the cosmos, not just “out there”
in heaven, but “here and now,” Our Father.
In Christ, the God who inhabits
heaven, immortal and invisible, has become accessible and
approachable, knowable and touchable, personal and
relational. The God whose very name is hallowed becomes our
Father/Mother parent God and holds us, like children, in his
warm embrace. To call God “Abba” or “Daddy” is to say that
you and I are not orphans on the doorstep of the universe.
We are loved with an unquenchable, unchangeable, eternal,
relentless love; a love that will never let us go, the love
of an Abba, Daddy, Father.
For those of us who experienced
it, the death of President John Kennedy will always be
seared in our memories as one of the transforming events of
our life and times. For a strikingly handsome, gifted man,
with so much potential, to die so unnecessarily was a real
tragedy. And then, of course, just as tragic, the
unnecessary and untimely death of his equally handsome,
gifted son John, again at an all-too-young age. Those of us
who remember the time, remember him as “John-John,” the
small son of the young President. Who can ever forget the
image of a small boy saluting his father’s coffin?
The other image we will always
remember is the picture of President Kennedy sitting behind
the great oak desk of the Oval Office, talking on the
telephone. As the leader of the greatest nation in the
world, he literally held the balance of power between east
and west in the palm of his hand, with the weight of the
world resting on his shoulders and the hopes of the nation
focused on his leadership. But there in the picture,
crawling out from under the imposing presidential desk is
the small boy, his son, young John. Yes, he was the most
powerful person in the world, but for little John-John, he
was just his father, “Daddy.”
Jesus says, when you pray, don’t
heap up empty phrases…empty words. When you pray, pray then
like this: “Our Father, Abba, Daddy, in heaven, holy is
your name.”
In Israel, there is a church
built on what tradition says is the site of Jesus’ teaching
of the “Lord’s Prayer.” It is called by the Latin name, the
Church of Pater Nostre, which means “The Church of the Our
Father.” The beautiful courtyard of the church is surrounded
by great plaques with the Lord’s Prayer in 111 different
languages, and in the archives of the convent can be found
copies of the Lord’s Prayer in 1,128 languages and
dialects.
John
Killinger says,
Think of the hundreds of tongues
in which this prayer arises every day. It is impossible that
there should be a single moment at any time of any day or
night when it is not being repeated somewhere, in Spanish,
in Chinese, in Swahili, in Maori, in all the languages of
the earth.
(Killinger, The God Named
Hallowed, page 11)
The entire world—every language,
every tongue, every dialect, every nation, every tribe and
every people with one voice calling to one God, the God who
is in heaven, the God who is holy, the God who is Our
Father.
Notes:
You can
visit the Convent of Pater Nostre in Jerusalem and view any
of the 1128 languages and dialects at www.christusrex.org/ww1/pater/.
As I say in the sermon, J.B.
Phillips’ Your God is Too Small is still in print and
well-worth reading. John Killinger’s The God Named
Hallowed is no longer in print, but can be found through
www.amazon.com or www.alibris.com.
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