Our Father in Heaven…Know Your Audience
Isaiah
6:1-8 and Matthew 6:5-13
Mostly,
I don't really like commercials when I watch T. V. Usually I mute the sound so
that I don't have to listen to them. Every once in a while though I find an ad
I really like. I used to love those
commercials for the cold, frosty beverage, the commercial with the three frogs
that each croak out a different syllable of a the word Bud-weis-errr. I loved
the follow-ups even more, the ones where the lizard tried to fry the frogs in
the lake...Classic. My current favorite is the Dell Computer commercial with
the preppy and Goth college roommates.
I
have to admit, although there aren't a whole lot of commercials I like,
advertising has become both big business and an art form. And the art form is
being refined more and more all the time. Advertisers seem to be able to tell a
person more about oneself than can one's closest friends. They send out
catalogs to our homes that are tailor made for our buying habits. Don't think
it hasn't escaped me that our home has never received a single offer for any
sort of mechanical tool...ever! No, I take that back. Laura got one once. Also,
don't think it hasn't escaped me that when I watch sports on TV that most of
the commercials are either about cars, beer, pizza or cialis; do advertisers
know the middle-aged American male population or what? Advertisers have
discovered the secret, the magic, the key to communicating in a competitive
environment. They have become sophisticated in knowing their audience.
Over
the next six weeks we are going to talk about the Lord's Prayer and how it
applies not only to our lives, but even more to our life of prayer. Jesus says,
"When you pray," Not "if" but when. Prayer is not optional
but essential. Prayer is spiritual breathing. It is the heartbeat of the soul.
Where there is no prayer there is no spiritual life. Studies indicate that
prayer is practiced almost universally by all people of all cultures at all
times. Prayer is woven into the fabric of life. But there are many ways that
people pray. There are different lessons to be learned. Every religion teaches
its disciples particular ways that one ought to pray, from bowing toward Mecca
for Muslims to the chanting of non-descript sounds for Hindus. In Jesus' day,
every rabbi taught his disciples how to pray. It was said that one could
identify another person's rabbi by how a disciple prayed. Jesus' disciples
wanted to be a part of this culture of prayer. They wanted to know the secret,
the magic, the key to communicating with God. So Jesus taught his disciples.
The life of prayer, Jesus says, begins with the lesson the modern marketers
have learned so well: know your audience.
Jesus begins his teaching to the disciples by
telling them that they shouldn't bother with the what of prayer until they
grasp the who. That is, don't worry about what should be prayed: what words,
what topics, what concerns to give voice to, what concerns on which to remain
silent. Don't worry about what until we understand who; until we understand to
whom we are praying, nothing else matters.
Jesus then gives two negative examples. First
there are the hypocrites who seem to direct their prayers to other people. They
pray for show; their's are prayer as performance, prayers to impress. But they
have the wrong audience, for it does us no good to pray to each other. And even
if they were seeking to pray to God, even if God was their audience, God is not
impressed with lofty language. God is fluent in all languages but cares most
about the language of the soul.
The
second negative example is the Gentiles who directed their prayer to deity but
seemed to believe that more is better, that God could only hear so many prayers
at one time and so there was a competitive advantage to be found if one prayed
a lot; this is kind of like calling one's family on a holiday, the more one
calls the better one's chances of making a successful connection. This is
prayer as an anxious experience: "Will I get through? After all, there's a
lot of people on the earth, and if they're all praying then that's quite a lot
of phone line being taken up, right?" Jesus says, "Don't be like
them. They have missed their audience. God is not impressed with flowery words.
Nor is God overwhelmed by the volume of traffic that comes his way. This is not
who God is. Other gods may be like this but not the living and true God."
Then Jesus tells the disciples who God is, tells the disciples the kind of God
to whom they are praying.
Who
is God? Who is our audience? God is our Father. Father. This is what Jesus
tells us to call God, and, of course, it is what he himself called God. Jesus'
sense of God was so close, so real, and so intimate that his relationship with
God was always expressed from the place of a father-son relationship. If one
reads the Gospels carefully, it is impossible to imagine Jesus apart from his
relationship with the One whom he calls Father. Again and again the word
"Father" drops from the lips of Jesus as it did from no one else
before or since. When Jesus called God, Father, it got him in big trouble.
The
two accusations made against Jesus for which he was crucified were blasphemy
and sedition. Sedition was what concerned the Roman leadership because they
feared Jesus might lead a rebellion. Blasphemy is what concerned the religious
leadership because they found his intimacy with God to be, well,
blasphemous--profane and ungodly. Calling God, "Father," helped get
Jesus killed. Yet, Jesus had no other choice, did he? Jesus had come from
heaven and was returning to heaven. Jesus knew God only one way: as Father, as Abba.
The very first words that a Jewish child learned to speak are abba (which
means "father" or from the lips of a child "daddy") and imma
(which means "mother" or "mommy"). The word abba is
so personal and so familiar a term that no one ever used it to address
God--until Jesus did. It has been pointed out that there is not a single
example of the use of abba as an address to God in the whole of Jewish
literature except for the gospels. Jesus' utter intimacy with Father God is
startling. And Jesus invites us to share in that same intimacy through our
prayer life.
The
fact that we can call God, "Daddy," (or, if you prefer, “Mommy,” it
really matters not because God is Spirit and therefore beyond gender. The point is not the pronoun, the point is
the intimacy), but the fact that we can be intimate is a pretty big part to
knowing our audience. "Daddy," by definition, rules out certain
things about God. Our Daddy is not like the Viking's Thor who throws down his
hammer from the heavens or like the Greek's Zeus who sends lightning bolts cascading
across the sky. No, Dad is no angry tyrant, ready to punish at the least
provocation. Our Daddy is not like the philosopher's watchmaker who winds up
the watch of the world and then lets it run. No, Dad is not an inaccessible,
uninterested deity.
I
think of our Daddy, and I think of what used to happen most mornings in the
Munroe household about seven years ago. Our son Matt was then two years old,
and he would wake up earlier than everyone else, although Laura and I would not
be too far behind. So there we would be, lying in bed, half groggy, but then we
would hear Matt open his door and drag himself and his blanket down the hall.
We would hear him slowly open our bedroom door. Then, as we opened one eye and
poke our heads up from the pillow, Matt would spread out his arms and announce
himself by saying, "Ta- daaa!" It was as if he was saying,
"Daddy, Mommy, I'm here!" And what amazed me is that even first thing
in the morning, even though I knew what he was going to do, my heart was still
warmed with joy. And that's what I imagine God is like when we pray. He wants
us to announce ourselves to him: "Daddy, I'm here!" And even though
he knows we're coming, his heart fills with joy and he tells us to climb up
into bed and snuggle up next to him. Our audience when we pray is our Father.
But,
as soon as we say this, that God is our Father, we have to qualify what we say.
We all know the prayer, "Our Father, who art in heaven.” God is our
Father, but our Father is the God of heaven. This raises the question: where is
heaven? Heaven is beyond the earth, of course, but it’s also beyond all the
creation. Heaven is beyond what we can see or hear or even measure with our
most precise telescopes or advanced mathematics. Scientists have calculated the
size of the universe as roughly 13 billion light years across. A light year is
186,000 miles per second for one year. What this means is that the universe
is...Big! If we were to travel 186,000 miles per second for 13 billion years,
we would come to a sign (in calligraphy, definitely not neon, probably in
Hebrew) that said "Heaven," and pointed out still farther.
Now
before any of you science types start asking questions about, "Is this
really where heaven is?" Please know that I don't know. I’m not being
literal here but am speaking metaphorically. My point is that heaven is beyond
the things that have been created. Heaven is beyond everything we know. Late in
his book of prophecies, in chapter 55, Isaiah quotes the words of God saying,
"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways...As the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts." We know, of course, where Isaiah got his
understanding of God in heaven; namely, from being there in a vision.
In
today's Old Testament lesson we hear Isaiah's cry of anguish because he saw the
Lord, high and lifted up. Isaiah heard the thrice repeated cry of the seraphim,
the heavenly creatures, who cry out night and day, "Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." Isaiah sees the
King, the Lord Almighty, and he is ruined! Who is God? Who is our audience?
Isaiah tells us, no, he warns us: our God is the thrice holy God.
In
his prayer, Jesus tells us to pray, "hallowed be thy name."
"Hallowed" is not a common word; it has little use today, but it
means to be made holy, sacred or revered. God's character is holiness so his
name is to be made holy, to be held sacred, to be revered at every moment. The
Jewish people, to whom Jesus belonged, understood this truth well. They were
extremely cautious about using the divine name, for they believed that even
pronouncing it put the speaker in jeopardy. Other tribes and peoples might say
the names of their gods as often as they liked, for their gods were not the
real God. But to say the name of the real God was like unleashing the power of
a thousand thunderstorms. Holy God, was the One who spoke and all things came
into being. Holy God, was the One who called Abraham to be the father of a great
nation and bring blessing to all the earth. Holy God, was the One who addressed
Moses at the burning bush, Elijah in the cave, and Job through the whirlwind.
"Hallowed be thy name," Jesus taught, and when it is a pray-er knows
his or her audience, and the soul knows its home.
Six year old Bobby sat at the dinner table looking perplexed. "Mommy," he asked, "why is it that we never call God by his name?" "What do you mean, dear, we always talk to God every night when we pray," she answered. "But we don't use his name," argued the boy. "Sure we do," argued back the mom. "No, every week in church we say in that prayer, 'Hallowed be thy name,' but we never call God hallowed." Young Bobby is missing the point, but he's on to something, isn't he? We know our audience. We know God is holy. We need to call him so. But we also need to call him, "Father." It's as if Jesus is inviting us into this wonderful intimacy, a closer than close relationship with God, but then says, "Remember, though, to keep your distance." It could drive us crazy but we know what Jesus means: prayer lessens the distance between us, but it does not erase the distinctions. God is still God. We are still not. Intimacy does not mean easy familiarity. Prayer is a dialogue with the Holy One of Israel, not a chat over the fence with the neighbor. God is present to us, closer than our own breathing, nearer than our hands and feet, but God does not live next door.
When you pray, not if but when. Pray like this: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.”