A More Light Congregation

Bethany Presbyterian Church

Sermon

Over the next four weeks we will be looking at Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer.  Each week, we will read the same text from Luke that is the prayer.  In addition, I have added a few lines of scripture that exemplifies the theme of that week.


The Lord's prayer occurs in a longer form in the gospel of Matthew, as part of the sermon on the mount.  In Luke though, Jesus has come down from the mountain and is beginning to send out more disciples.  This section of Luke is filled with Jesus' instructions.  In Luke, this short prayer example from Jesus is an answer to a direct question, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”


In the Matthew version of the prayer, up on the Mount, Jesus is giving a didactic lesson.  The sermon on the mount are sayings of Jesus.  In the Luke version of this prayer, Jesus is more interactional.  Jesus' teachings are in response to a question or set of circumstances.  In Luke, Jesus is always concerned about relationships.  For every instruction he gives, or answer to a direct question, he offers examples.


The answer to “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” begins with the word Father.  That might tell you all you need to know about Jesus right there.  Always one to buck tradition, he would have blown the disciples out of the water with this first word.  No one addresses God directly.  And yet Jesus is not only giving us permission to address God directly, but Jesus gives a preferred name to use.  The audacity and boldness of Jesus to tell us to address God this way is only surpassed by the audacity and boldness that Jesus subsequently gives us.  Barely two chapters earlier, Jesus was transfigured before them and Peter and John and James immediately thought to set up something like a hierarchy and set a place for Elijah and Moses.  And the disciples also in chapter nine argue about who among them is the greatest.  When in the presence of something great, their first thought is how close am I to the top of this ranking?  Just imagine if you only experience the world according to where you are in a hierarchy and then someone tells you that there is no hierarchy with God.  Everyone can call God Father.  No matter who you are, you can have access.  No one can pull rank.  There is no rank.


And not just access to God the big boss, or God the one in charge, or God the great judge.  No matter who we are, we have access to God who Jesus called Father.  Jesus gave us that same relationship that he has with God.  Although now we understand a Trinitarian person of God, it would have been shocking back then to be so familiar, and so familial with God.


To call someone father necessitates an existing relationship and a bond.  The psalms address God with words like O Lord, or My God, or My shepherd.  For Jesus to teach us to address God as Father is a continuation of the names from the psalms.  In the tradition of Abraham where offspring and lineage is described as the seed from Abraham, the disciples would have heard the name father as something lifegiving.


If we step into the life of a disciple we can feel the shock, amazement and maybe even confusion right from Jesus' first word.  We can address God directly, with a name, and feel the bond, relationship, protection, love and life force of what a father is and can be.  How should we pray, the disciples ask?  Here, says Jesus, call my father your father.  That's generosity!


Regardless of my father or your father and where on the spectrum of love vs. tragedy that our relationship with our modern day, very human fathers falls, Jesus' words are in relationship to the one he called father, not the one we call father.  To pray the lord's prayer by addressing God as Father, doesn't have anything to do with our human relationships with our fathers.


However, we are human and we do have fathers.  To us, fathers are many things that we hope they are and they are many things we wish they weren't.  When we hear about a relationship between a father and child that is tragic or abusive we say things like “How could a father do that to his own child?!”  We elevate the word father.  We know how strong that bond is and feel the betrayal of that kind of abandonment.  That's not the father that Jesus was talking about.


When we have been personally psychologically or physically hurt by our human fathers it is very difficult if not impossible to get beyond the word father as Jesus meant it, and open ourselves to something that we can't imagine because it is not part of our experience.  The church itself did not help, when the patriarchal institution throughout history grew to a place of such importance in families, and men of the church abused that trust and position.  Soon, it wasn't just a memory of a father, but a memory of a church father, that we have to psychologically deal with.  There is no judgment or shame, rather affirmation and celebration of strength, when someone changes to words of the trinity to Creator, Sustainer, Helper; or prays the Lord's prayer saying Mother/Father God; or Parent God; or Abba Father.  We have no right to judge how someone else refers to God.  Often the choice not to use the word father happens when one is in search of something better.  If “father” doesn't work but we want to express that bond, that relationship, that life giving force, in a way that's true to ourselves, we should be celebrating the work someone has put in for themselves to be able to pray and stay in relationship with God in a way that is congruent and not just settling for a less than complete relationship with their faith and their prayer life.


Modern day folks aren't the first people to struggle with the word and concept of father.  Archetypal masculine images and energy and descriptions flow through every society in every age.  Masculine and feminine expressions and energy are not unique to each gender.  But it's difficult for us to think “masculine” and not see a “man.”  It's difficult to hear “feminine” and not see a woman.  “Jesus' constant use of this archetypal image shifted the way his disciples and listeners thought about God. Although not unknown in Judaic thought, the image of God as Father was perhaps a little too familiar for the contemporary religious leaders of Jesus' time.”1


Expressions of father come in as many forms as humans can come up with.  Our very complexity combined with our creativity results in as many machinations of father that humans have experienced.  Think of Gandalf in The Hobbit; Dumbledore in Harry Potter; Mufasa and Simba in The Lion King; Darth Vader in Star Wars; Aslan; Finding Nemo.  John Steinbeck's “To a God Unknown” is a relationship between a father and son; Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin; Even Brian Wilson's “Child is the Father of The Man.”  These are all expressions of everything a relationship with a father might bring.  And more.  You're probably typing more in the comments section right now!


If we choose to pray the lord's prayer with the word father we need to remember to back up to a time way before our current day.  We need to find a way to avoid the traps of a patriarchal culture and consider our context.  


In the blog “Archetypal Spirituality” John Power says, “[So] it is not just enough to say that Christ gave his disciples the icon of the father as God but also to note that he included a strong flavour of the type of father he had in mind. Hence any Christian archetype of God is going to be complexly an interaction of  Jesus descriptions of the father overlayed on their own experience of the father.”1


Fatherhood means different things in different cultures and is influenced by many societal and cultural norms and expectations.2  Different societies have developed norms and support systems that encourage and empower those norms.  If those norms are unhealthy, we go down a dangerous path.  


The church and culture have always been in a struggle to either compete for our moral compass, or a struggle to work toward the same goals.  We need to embrace that struggle because if we ever stop asking questions and challenging what we see we will find ourselves settling for less than good and less than life giving behaviors.


The lord's prayer in its simplicity, makes such a profound statement that has held throughout time.  Words matter.  Jesus knew that.  Let's find a way to show that we know that too.


Amen.



1 The Father Archetype

2 Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. Published February 2016. Accessed August 15, 2020.

“In multiple patriarchal mythologies and various world religions, the ruling deity is a father figure

who routinely dwells in the heavens:  Uranus/Caelus and Zeus/Jupiter from Greek/Roman mythology,  

Odin from Norse mythology, Amon Ra from Egyptian mythology, the father/sky gods of various African tribes,

God the Father of Christianity, Yahweh of the Jewish faith, and Brahma from the Hindu religion."


"Father"

Reverend Debra McGuire

August 16, 2020


Luke 11:1-13