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A 4-year-old girl was coloring
at home with her crayons and paper. She looked up at her
mother and said, “Mommy, does God have crayons and paper in
heaven?”
The mother was a little startled
by the question. “I don’t know, dear. Why do you ask?”
“Because,” replied the child,
“we always say in church every Sunday, ‘our Father who does
art in heaven.’”
“Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.” With these words begin the best known
prayer of all time. It is a prayer known by heart by more
people than any other prayer. A close second might be the
Twenty-third Psalm. But some of us might be hard pressed to
say the Twenty-third Psalm as accurately as we say the Lord’s
Prayer.
I remember the story of two men
who were arguing about whose church had the best Christian
education program. They went back and forth for a while, but
finally one man said, “Okay, I’ll bet you $5 you can’t say the
Lord’s Prayer.”
“You’re on,” said the second
man, and he began, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the
Lord my soul to keep.”
“Congratulations,” said the
first man. “I didn’t think you could do it. Here’s your $5.”
Perhaps this bedtime prayer is the third best known
prayer of all time. I’m not sure.
Even those not raised in the
church can manage with a little help to say the Lord’s Prayer.
Almost every worship service incorporates the Lord’s Prayer
into the service. Almost every wedding and every funeral uses
the Lord’s Prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer is a source of
strength, security and stability for all of us. The Lord’s
Prayer establishes community. It brings a Christian community
together, somewhat similar to singing, or the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Prayer provides a sense of direction
for your prayer life. The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer to pray
when you don’t know what else to pray.
There’s an old story that comes
out of Craig Chapel on the campus of Drew Theological
Seminary. An old professor was preaching at the chapel service
one day. His sermon was long and tedious. When he got to the
end he launched into a prayer which was equally long and
tedious. He began to say, “Our Father, we pray for this…” and
“our Father, we pray for that…”and “Our Father, we give
ourselves to you”… “Our Father, we commend ourselves to you.”
Finally, the next time the old man said “Our Father”, a
professor in the back of the chapel simply shouted out, “…who
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” The service closed with
the Lord’s Prayer.
I take a fresh look with you at
this prayer during the Lenten season of 2003. I start today
and end on Easter Sunday with the final phrase, “Thine is the
kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (I guess
that’s a hint to not miss a week during the next seven
weeks!)
What have I learned since I last
spoke about this prayer 18 years ago? In 1985, from this
pulpit, I last addressed this text. What have I learned about
prayer? And what have I learned about this prayer? “Our
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
DEEP INTIMACY
First, there is deep intimacy in
the word “Father.” “Father” is Jesus’ unique description for
God. “Father” is not a title for Jesus, but rather a
relationship. Jesus teaches us to address God as a loving
parent. Some people want to change the Lord’s Prayer to make
it read, “Our Mother, who art in heaven,” or “Mother/Father
God, who art in heaven.” While I’m not about to change the
words of the Lord’s Prayer, I frankly don’t believe Jesus
would be opposed to any of that in our day.
Jesus offers a special intimacy
with God, a special closeness. We sometimes sing with great
gusto, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” Here in this prayer,
Jesus teaches that God is even closer than a friend.
Jesus uses a very special term,
“Abba.” Paul picks up on it in the 8th chapter of
Romans. I am far from being an expert on world religions, but
I do believe that no other religion allows humankind to
address God in this fashion. God is the very best parent
imaginable, and we can call God “Father.”
William Barclay tells a story of
a Roman emperor riding through Rome with his armies, returning
from a conquest. A small boy ran through the crowd excitedly
to greet the emperor. A guard scooped him up and said to him,
“Son, don’t you know who that is? That’s your emperor.”
Replied the boy, “He may be your emperor, sir, but he’s
my daddy.”
I was fortunate to have a very
positive father image growing up. So this image speaks to me.
I make the connection easily. As a boy I went to my father
with almost everything. I could ask the hard questions, raise
the doubts, and ask embarrassing and awkward questions,
especially during my teenage years. I always found sufficient
answers, complete comfort, total reassurance.
Jesus invites you to do this in
the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer. He invites a widow,
crying out in her grief, to pray, “Father God.” He invites an
aging adult, growing frail and infirm, to pray simply, “Father
God.” He invites a soldier, caught in the horrors of war, to
pray the same way. He invites a person struggling for answers
to tough questions to pray, “Father God.” He invites a youth
or a young adult, looking to make the right choices in life,
to pray the same prayer.
We pray, “Father”—for times of
fear, doubt, loneliness, pain, anxiousness and more. Jesus
even says at one point, “Your Father knows what you need
before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:31) By that I believe Jesus
means you can talk to God about anything.
OUR FATHER
Secondly, Jesus teaches us to
address God as “Our Father.” Luke begins the Lord’s Prayer
simply with the word, “Father.” Matthew says it begins, “Our
Father.” I think Matthew got it right. It fits the overall
picture of Jesus. Jesus not only teaches us to pray, “My
Father,” but he teaches us to pray, “Our Father.”
God is the father of every human
being, acknowledged or not. God is the graciously acceptable
father of everyone. God is distinctly and completely our
Father.
There’s a wonderful story about
a Roman Catholic priest who came to serve a new parish. As he
walked through the parish house looking over things, he met
the woman who had been the housekeeper there for many years.
Her name was Mrs. Kelly. As she oriented the new priest to the
house she said, “Now, there’s some things I need to tell you.
Your roof needs to be repaired. Your water pressure needs to
be adjusted. And your furnace probably needs to be replaced.”
The priest stopped for a moment
and turned to the woman. “Mrs. Kelly, you have lived here far
more years than I have or probably ever will. You need to call
the roof not my roof, but our roof. It’s our
roof, it’s our furnace, it’s our water pressure.
Do you think you can remember to do that?” She promised that
she would try.
Two weeks later the Bishop came
to visit the new priest and find out how things were going. As
they were sitting in the living room over coffee, Mrs. Kelly
arrived in great distress. She was obviously upset and having
a difficult time calming herself down. “Father,” she said,
“I’ve got something terrible to tell you.” She was out of
breath. The priest said, “It’s all right, Mrs. Kelly. Calm
down and tell me what it is.”
“Well,” she said, “Father,
there’s a mouse in our bedroom and the mouse is under
our bed.”
You can possibly push the
notion of “Our Father” too far. But the reality is here in
this prayer. God is the father of each person here, whether
you are a believer, a seeker, or a wannabeliever. God is the
father of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia that
disintegrated a few weeks ago. The 7 people who were on board
the shuttle included a Hindu, a Jew, a charismatic Christian,
a Unitarian, an African-American Baptist, an Episcopalian, and
a Roman Catholic. Was that mix deliberate or accidental? But
it’s a perfect illustration and it teaches us something. God
is the father of everyone.
God is the father of the people
of Iraq, maybe especially the children, the very young, and
the very old. God is the father of the North Korean people,
even in the grip of a cruel dictator. God is the father of the
Israelis. God is the father of the Palestinians, acknowledged
or not.
More and more, this world is now
an interdependent community. More and more we need to feel the
power of praying, “Our father.” This is a prayer for
the world community and it’s a prayer that’s especially
important right now.
There is a story about a young
couple who established a wheat farm in the Midwest. One day
their 2-1/2-year-old son wandered out of the house, walked
over to the wheat field, and immediately got lost in the
field. The parents called the farmhands, and they set up a
frantic search. Eventually they called neighboring farmers and
their families to come. After a few hours the whole town was
out in the wheat field looking for the little boy. As they
roamed around the field somebody finally suggested, “Why don’t
we form a circle around the wheat field, join hands, and walk
toward the middle?” So they did. They didn’t have to walk far
before someone came across the little boy, alive and well,
sitting on the ground. They scooped him up and took him
immediately to his father. The father hugged the little boy to
him and then said to the crowd standing around, “Why did we
wait so long to join hands?”
There’s a parable in that
somewhere for right now. Our Father.
IN HEAVEN
Then Jesus teaches, “Our Father
who art in heaven,” or …who reigns in heaven.” This is not an
attempt to “locate” God. It is much more than this. Here is a
sense of reverence, a sense of the holy. It’s a dimension to
life that we sorely need today, and it’s a dimension that’s
missing. When I was in seminary there was a classic book that
many people were reading, entitled The Idea of the Holy.
It is that idea of holiness that is lost today.
That’s why I suggested that the
hymn we sing at the beginning of the service today be “Holy,
Holy, Holy.” It might not be a great hymn musically, but it
speaks volumes on this particular issue. The hymn is based on
the Old Testament reading from Isaiah 6. We need to get this
holiness into our system, into our vocabulary, into our
perspective again.
Someone has suggested that the
Lord’s Prayer be prayed while we are standing on our feet with
arms outstretched and eyes uplifted. This is a prayer to the
God who is intimately a father with us, and the God who is
beyond us, who is “other” than us. Jesus teaches that God is
both high and lifted up, and immediately accessible. God is
one who is the transcendent other, and who is Daddy.
HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME
The word “hallowed” is hard to
translate. It means “sacred” or “holy” or “awesome.” Eric
Park, one of our former pastors, wrote a singing version of
the Lord’s Prayer that is used on Sunday night. It begins like
this: “Our good Father, who reigns in heaven, holiness
breathes your name.”
The name of God is sacred, says
Jesus. Maybe that’s a part of the force of the third
commandment: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God
in vain. It’s another way of saying, “Do not use God’s name
loosely or frivolously.”
I have a vivid memory of the
time in my life when I was 4 or 5 years old. I had been given
a new wagon for my birthday, and I was trying to learn to ride
it. My father was out with me as I tried to ride it on the
gentle slope of the sidewalk. However, I wasn’t very good at
steering, and the back wheels of the wagon kept getting caught
between the sidewalk and the grass in a kind of rut. Three or
four times it happened, and I became frustrated. I finally
cried out, “Ye gods!”
My father took me from the
wagon, took me over to the porch steps and we sat down. And I
endured about a 15-minute lecture about why that was an
inappropriate thing to say. In my father’s mind, it was using
the name of God frivolously. That little episode in my early
childhood has burned a vivid memory into my brain.
The name and nature of God are
sacred.
EVERY WORD IS PACKED
So we find that even in the
opening phrases of the Lord’s Prayer, every word is packed,
every word is loaded with meaning. The master teacher, Jesus,
carefully teaches every turn of phrase. This is probably one
of the reasons why this prayer was so well remembered by the
disciples and by the early church. Both the disciples and the
early Christians had never heard these words before in
addressing God. There is so much in a few words here.
Father, God; OUR Father, God;
who is above this life and yet intimate with this life; your
name is a holy name.
Can you and I grasp some
of this in our modern age? Can you and I grasp this in a
fast-paced, high-tech lifestyle? Can you and I grasp this in a
jam-packed, tightly wound schedule—the kind most of us have to
keep?
Can you remember to pray by
heart and from the heart, “Our Father in heaven, holiness
breathes your name”? |
