The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in Heaven”

If prayer is more than just talking to ourselves, to whom are we talking? If, as Jesus taught, prayer is primarily asking for things, who are we asking? We’re asking and talking to “Our Father in heaven.”
 

Jesus’ unquestioning faith in God's care led him to begin almost every prayer of his that is recorded in the New Testament this way: "Father." He didn’t invent this name for God. It is found, although infrequently, in the Hebrew Scriptures. However, it is never used there to address God directly. Jesus' did something new when he talked to God directly as Father with a naturalness that was unique.

We even know the exact word he used. "Abba . . . Father"—that's the way Jesus talked to God. It was an unforgettable memory in the early church. Paul tells us that Christians of the first generation, impelled by the Holy Spirit, began their prayers with the same word, "Abba.”

 

"Abba" is Aramaic (the everyday language Jesus spoke) and it is the family word for God. It refers to a child's father: personal, involved, knowing, caring. The nearest equivalent in English would be “Daddy.” To Jesus that needed no proof or argument. In a day when religious people made God so remote that they wouldn’t even pronounce the sacred Name, Jesus cried, "Abba . . . Daddy," and taught his disciples to do the same. “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:15-16).

 

That brings us to the little word "our." Jesus spoke freely of "my Father," but he teaches us to pray "our Father." As I said last week, that’s a reminder that God is not my private Father—or yours. A child in a large family learns very quickly that there are some things you can’t ask your father to do. If you were an only child you might ask; but God has no only children. You can’t ask to rise on the bleeding back of a sister or brother. You can’t ask for a personal advantage that will cost one of God's other children dearly. You can’t ask for your nation to prosper at the expense of other nations, or your church to prosper at the expense of other churches. The "our" in "our Father" makes us all sisters and brothers who pray for one another as well as for ourselves. God is intent on making us all—every human being created in God’s image—into a loving family.

 

Now come some difficult issues. When we begin our prayer with "Our Father," we’re in danger of thinking about God as male. Doing that can be unfair to half the human race.

If you think this isn’t important, let me point out that in the name of the “Fatherhood” of God, some in the early church taught that women are defective males, created less in the image of God than are men. In the name of the “Fatherhood” of God, women have been denied the full exercise of their gifts in positions of leadership in the church. The Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some protestant denominations—particularly the ones that view the Bible as being without error and interpret it literally—still do this. In fact, I know of one congregation in a small town where I once served (I won’t mention what denomination it is or where it’s located) who didn’t even allow women to vote in congregational meetings, let alone hold office or preach! I hope that it’s changed by now. We need to be aware that there are some serious problems in approaching God as “Father.” We have to be understanding when some sincere Christian women say that, for one reason or another, they simply can’t use “Father” as a name for God anymore.

 

I can understand that. My father was an alcoholic and my mother divorced him when I was a youngster. I had no real father-image until I was a teen-ager, when my mother married my stepfather. He was a terrific father-image, but it came a bit late in my life. So I can relate to those think it’s a mistake to think of God only as “Father.” The Scriptures contain many passages that speak of God in feminine, mothering terms.  At the same time Psalm 103:13 speaks of God as a “father [who] has compassion for his children,” Isaiah 66:13 says, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” One denominational statement of faith likens God to “a mother who will not forsake her nursing child” as well as “a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home.” A modern catechism asks, “When the creed speaks of "God the Father," does it mean that God is male?” and it answers:

 
No. Only creatures having bodies can be either male or female. But God has no body, since by nature God is Spirit. Holy Scripture reveals God as a living God beyond all sexual distinctions. Scripture uses diverse images for God, female as well as male (emphasis added).

Mothering terms are every bit as effective in conveying God's intimacy and care as fathering terms are. The question is: In adding the “Mother” language (which we should certainly do, assuring women that they are as much in the image of God as men ever were), should we altogether eliminate the “Father” language?

 

We haven’t solved the problems that surround "Our Father," a phrase designed for comfort rather than conflict, but let’s see if it makes a difference that this Father is "in heaven."

 

It’s true that the biblical writers thought of heaven as “up there.” But the primary meaning of heaven in the Bible is what is not-earth, what is other than the world we know. To call God "our Father in heaven" is to speak of the otherness of God. As it says in Isaiah 55:8–9:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
 

God's way of being, God's way of knowing, and God’s way of loving aren’t like ours. They are mysteries to us.

 

To return to the matter of maleness and femaleness: Our way of being on earth is to be one or the other. But because God is "in heaven," God's way of being goes beyond both of them.

 

So God's fatherhood is not exactly like human fatherhood. God is a Father in God's own way, a Father who really fathers.

 

These language problems aren’t insignificant.  If the church gives the message to women that they are less in God’s image than men, or that God listens better to men than to women, or that only men are able to serve in certain offices in the church, we need to do something about that language.

It may help to see the problem of exclusive vs. inclusive language as part of the larger problem of all religious language. We have only human words, so we always describe God in human terms; that is, we always use analogies. When we say, “God is like this or that,” we’re also saying, “God is not like this or that.” When we say God is like a human father, we’re also saying at the same time God is not like a human father.

 

Jesus, I think, goes straight to the heart of it. "What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matt. 7:9-11 NRSV, emphasis added). God is like human parents, even evil ones; yet how much more is God different from any human parent!

It’s a two-way street. The imperfect human analogy goes to heaven, where it is corrected by the only true motherhood or fatherhood—that of God. Then it comes to earth again as a judgment on all the imperfections of our human motherhood and fatherhood. To do away with the analogy of God as our heavenly Father would be to exempt human parenthood from the judgment and healing that comes back down the two-way street.

 

Whatever words we use, it boils down to something like this: "God our Parent, both Mother and Father, we’re all your children and therefore sisters and brothers of all who wear a human face. You care for us with unfathomable love, and you judge us with perfect justice. You thrust us out to grow toward maturity, yet you remain always present and reliable. We present our prayer to you in confident trust." As we sang in our opening hymn:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father [and Mother],

There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not;
As Thou has been, Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

That is something of what we mean when we pray, "Our Father in heaven."

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Stay warm, my friends.