Henrietta United
Rev. David Inglis
Luke 11:1-13
Learning to Pray, Learning
to Live, 1. “On
Intimate Terms”
Do you remember when you learned the Lord’s
Prayer? From your parents when you were
a child? From a Sunday School teacher? In Confirmation Class?
Sitting in the pew and trying to follow along? Most of us have learned how to say it. But I would venture to say that none of us, myself included, have really learned how to pray it or how
to live it in the ways Jesus hoped we would.
As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “The
purpose of prayer is not the same as the purpose of speech. The purpose of speech is to inform. The purpose of prayer is to partake.”
The disciples saw Jesus partaking in a incredibly powerful relationship with God that their words
lamely reached for but never seemed to touch.
The disciples wanted to touch it and be touched by God’s power too. Do you think you would have dared to
ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”?
Our relationships with people are very much
shaped by what we call them: boss or buddy.
Ma’am or Mom.
The same is true of God. So Jesus
begins his prayer by giving us a way to address and come into relationship with
God–this mysterious being or force or dimension that created the universe and
is the Source of all power, life, love, and beauty. Jesus invites us to turn to God the same way
he himself did, by calling God Abba, Father. Jesus’ word Abba doesn’t
imply a remote, distant authority figure.
Abba was one of the first words a baby learned, along with
“Amma,” which meant mother. His phrase
“Our Father who art in heaven” combines God’s supernatural transcendence with God’s intimate closeness. Jesus invites us to come to God with reverent
awe, and yet with trusting affection.
Now as you know, calling God “Father” has
created some difficulties for a lot of people, because it’s gender
exclusive. We don’t know of any way of
being a father without being on the male side of the gender divide. And that leaves many people on the female
side feeling dismissed, disempowered, and disconnected from God. The problem isn’t just that some feminists
are male bashers. The tragic truth is
that Christianity has done its share of female bashing, exclusion and disempowerment,
and has too
often presented God as a supercharged male hero on spiritual steroids, who
rules with an invincible hand, hurls lightening bolts from heaven against those
who refuse to bow before him, and triumphantly vanquishes his foes. Even today, I get my share of e-mails whose
message is more or less “My God can whup our enemies and their God too.”
The truth of course, is that God doesn’t have a
gender. As hymn-writer Laurence Bernier
put it,
Our God is not a woman,
our God is not a man.
Our God is both and neither,
our God is “I Who Am” [from his hymn “Our God Is Like an Eagle].
This same understanding is expressed in the
creation story in Genesis 1:27, which says, “God created humankind in his
image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”
(NRSV). God’s image is manifested by
both men and women, but is not contained in either.
When Jesus invited us to address God as Abba,
Father, he wasn’t saying that God is a male after all. He was saying that God is available,
approachable, and compassionate towards us–like the father in Jesus’ story of
the prodigal son. That’s the kind of
Father Jesus invites us to turn to when we pray.
But if you feel closer to God by imagining God
as your Divine Mother–the divine power that gives,
nurtures and sustains life–I’m sure Jesus would encourage you to go ahead and
do that. It’s not God’s gender Jesus is
lifting up for us in this prayer. It’s
God’s closeness and availability to us. When we turn to God as “our Father”
or “our Mother,” we are saying as much about who we
are as about who God is, aren’t we? We
are God’s children. Our spirit was loved into being by God. Our essential
nature reflects God’s own nature. When
we pray “Our Father,” we are turning back to our Source. We are partaking in our most fundamental
relationship, and grounding ourselves in who God is to us and who we are to
God.
I invite you to close your eyes and try turning
to God in this way. “Divine
Father. Divine
Mother. You who breathed your
Spirit into me and gave me my life; You
who loved me into being before I even knew myself; You Whose life, light, love,
truth, creativity, and freedom are part of my own deepest nature as a gift from
you. In this moment, let me be in you as
you are in me. . . .”
Can you feel your spirit growing closer to God
as you turn to God in this way? This is
the closeness to God Jesus wants us to know when we pray, “Our Father, who art
in heaven.” (Open your eyes.)
But there’s a little more to this opening phrase. There’s the little word “our” that begins the
prayer. Who does this “our” in “Our
Father” refer to? Is it those of us who
are gathered here praying? Is it those
who share our beliefs? Who are God’s children in God’s own eyes? As Jesus’
teachings and example showed us, this “our” includes those who are inside our
circle and those who are outside our circle.
We are a spiritual brother or sister to every other person, whether we
personally like them or not, because God has created each person’s soul in God’s own image and invests divine love in
them, whether they acknowledge it or not.
So I invite you to close your eyes again. As you pray, “Our Father who art in heaven,”
begin by bringing into your awareness the people who are a part of your spiritual
family–the people you care about and the people you pray for. It’s very comforting to know that God is the
loving Divine Parent who watches over all of you and wants what is best for
each one. . . . Then bring into your
awareness someone you’ve got some issues with right now. See if your heart can expand enough to
include them in the circle of those you hold up to God for healing love and
mercy, divine light and truth. . . . Now
bring into your awareness the person or group of people you despise the
most. Maybe it’s someone who has
betrayed you or violated you or a loved one personally. Or maybe it’s the nameless people we only
hear about–suicide bombers , kidnappers, rapists,
child molesters. Who is it that really
makes your blood boil, and that provokes a natural desire for revenge? . .
. Without in any way condoning or
excusing their behavior, is it possible for you to begin to see them in some way as
God their Divine Parent sees them who wants what’s best for them? Think of how you would see your own child or
grandchild if they lost touch with who they are, or got caught up in
destructive forces that distorted their thinking and twisted their
actions. Even those who are lost and
filled with evil are in the circle of the human family created by God. God loves them still. The spirit of Jesus suffers and dies for them
still. Can you pray that God’s light and truth will dawn in them too? (Open your eyes).
Some of you may have heard about the native
tribe that has a unique way of dealing with its “juvenile delinquents.” Instead of ostracizing, shaming, or punishing
them, the village encircles them and begins telling the wayward youth all the
good things they know and remember about them.
This usually goes on for hours, until everything anyone can think of has
been said. Then they celebrate the young
person and go home. The rate of repeat
offenses is virtually zero. The offender
has been reconnected to the divine image within them that they had lost.
This is what the “Our” in “Our Father” is
about. It’s not just a way to pray. It’s a way to see others and to see
ourselves. It’s a way to live as active
carriers of redemptive hope in the world, as we begin to see the whole human
family as God sees us.
Jesus ends the first sentence of his prayer with
these words: “Hallowed be thy name.”
“Hallowed”sounds like an old-fashioned churchy word to us. So here are some more familiar words to help
us get a handle on hallowing God’s name:
In the Bible, God’s name refers to the ways God
has revealed God’s nature to us.. So the phrase “Hallowed be thy name” invites
us to gratefully reflect on the ways that God has been made known to us, in our
own experience:
The One who has given us life,
brought people into our lives to love us and for us to learn to love, and given
us gifts to share.
The One who has guided us,
opened up opportunities for us, seen us through heartaches and challenges,
offered healing and hope–often without our being aware of it at the time.
The One whose Truthsguides us through life’s
trials, disappointments and losses, helps us souls grow, helps us learn to live
fully, and set us free from ourselves.
The Source of eternal love
that nothing in life or death can take away.
The Creator of more wonder and beauty than our
senses can behold and our minds can fathom, unfolding creation in
incredible intricacy.
The divine Healer of wounds, Forgiver of wrongs,
Reconciler of divisions in our individual lives, in our relationships, and in
the human community.
Take a moment now to close your eyes and feel in
your soul who God is for you, and how much that means to you. You hallow God’s name as you revere, honor,
and give humble thanks for the gift of God making God’s own self known to you.
. . .
The more we gratefully hallow God’s name, the
more room we create for God to work in our lives.
So when Jesus taught us this prayer, he wasn’t
just teaching us words so we’d have something to say when we pray. He was inviting us into a dynamic new way of
living our lives:
–In the embrace of our divine Father or Mother,
who has loved our soul into being, who gives us our life and all that we need
to live it fully, and who watches over us with compassion as we struggle to
open to the divine essence within us.
–Seeing ourselves a part of the whole human
family, essentially united by one God whose redemptive love for each of us is
perfect and eternal, no matter how far any of us falls from awareness of
it.
–Gratefully hallowing the ways God works in our
lives so that God can work in us more fully.
Next Sunday we’ll go further into this prayer
Jesus taught us. But this week I invite
you to practice this prayer every day–practice praying it, practice being
shaped by it, practice living it.