February 22, 2015
Matthew 6:9-13
“Our Father Who Art in Heaven”Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
Way before I was born my father played professional football. When I started to play, he taught me some things that the coaches never did. Like…almost all of the time a quarterback is going to unconsciously look in the direction that the play will go before the ball is hiked; you can tell by the pressure a lineman puts on his hand, whether the play will be a run or pass; the person hiking the ball always grabs tighter right before the snap. Each of these small tidbits helped me make quite a few plays back in the day. Often right in the moment, or maybe after the game in the locker room, or now years later when I remember, it makes me think of my dad, how he taught me.
In the first few months after I was ordained I visited in my office at the church by a retired pastor named Ed Schalk. At that time he had been retired longer than I had been alive. Ed gave me a whole bunch of advice that morning. One piece he said, “David, you will always have to work at understanding the church budget, money, and stewardship as well as the treasurer, the finance chair, or members of session. They don’t realize it, but most church members would prefer their pastor not understand anything about money in general and the church finances in particular. That way they can more easily live by the myth that their faith and their money don’t go together. Your job as a spiritual leader is to correct them every week. And it starts by letting them know you understand the church’s financial picture better than they do.” Whenever I work at understanding a financial statement or prepare a budget or preach stewardship, I remember old Rev. Schalk, how he taught me.
When we were first married my mother prepared a small notebook with 3×5 cards that had recipes on them. Almost 30 years later, we still have it, still use. The most important recipe there is the secret Davis family barbeque sauce recipe; made available to others only by marriage. You would think I could make that recipe by memory by now, and I probably could. But I always look for the book. I pull out the book, I read the card. Not so much for the recipe but because it is in my mother’s handwriting. Every time I make that sauce, I do it with gratitude in my heart for my mom, remembering how she taught me.
Jesus said, “Pray then like this.” “Whenever you pray” don’t be like those who like to be seen. “Whenever you pray” go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. “When you are praying” do not heap up empty phrases, your Father knows what you need before you ask. “Pray then like this”. Jesus said, whenever you pray, when ever you pray, when you are praying, pray then like this. : “Our Father in heaven.”
When offering his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in his Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin points out that whenever you call God “Father”, whenever you pray to God as “Father” you are really just praying in the name of Christ. Who else, why else, would you dare to call God Father. “Who would break forth into such rashness” Calvin writes “as to claim for [themselves] the honor of a [child] of God unless we have been adopted as children of grace in Christ” To pray to God as Father is to “put forward” the name of Christ.
To pray the Lord’s Prayer, to begin the Lord’s Prayer, it is to remember and offer gratitude for the one who taught us to pray, the one in whom we know ourselves to be God’s children, for so we are. Should we have a conversation about the multiple images for God in scripture? Certainly. In the 16th century Calvin was quoting scripture from Isaiah 49 , citing the motherhood of God. Should we affirm together God that is beyond gender? No question. Of course most are comfortable affirming God has no gender; until someone refers to God as “her” or “she” Should we offer a theological conviction on the person-hood of God; that language and image is the only way we have that enables us to name a God of relationship, a God for us, a God with us? Of course. Should we offer space for a pastoral reality check that acknowledges the baggage, the hurt, the grief, the pain, that can come with the term “father” for so many. Yes! But when you pray, when you pray the Lord’s prayer, what if along with Calvin, to pray “our Father” is not just a way of invoking God but a means of allowing the heart to think afresh on Jesus and our life in him. “Pray then like this.” Every time you pray “our Father” it is a time to remember Christ Jesus and to affirm that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God” we know and experience in Christ Jesus our Lord. Our Father. Remember how he taught us.
Anne Lamott, in her short book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, she refers to the Lord’s Prayer as one of the “beautiful pre-assembled prayers”. She compares it to one of the prayers of Thomas Merton or the 23rd Psalm. Prayers like that “have saved me more time than I can remember” Lamott writes. “But they are for special occasions. They are dressier prayers, the good china of prayers” Useful, she argues, when you have enough wits about you to remember and when you can find yourself entering into enough of a state of trust to even say them. “This would be approximately seven percent of the time,” she concludes. Meaning for Anne Lamott, some other form of prayer is what kicks in 93% of the time.
By her own description in the book on prayer, she acknowledges that her family never prayed when she was growing up, people who prayed were ignorant, and her parents were “too hip and intellectual to pray.” I don’t know about you, but my experience of the Lord’s Prayer is different from Anne Lamott. Growing up in the church and serving as a pastor all these years, it’s not a “good china” experience. It’s more like that serving dish passed on from your grandmother that you would be absolutely crushed if someone broke it doing the dishes. The Lord’s Prayer; it’s so deep inside. The Lord’s Prayer here with a couple getting married. The Lord’s Prayer at a hospital bedside with a family. The Lord’s Prayer in the cemetery. The Lord’s Prayer in a continuing care room. The Lord’s Prayer with a mom whose newborn is at her breast. The Lord’s Prayer before a bible Study. The Lord’s Prayer with second graders. The Lord’s Prayer after choir practice. The Lord’s Prayer on your knees with your child. The Lord’s Prayer in bed that first night of college. The Lord’s Prayer somewhere over seas when you were in the service. The Lord’s Prayer here in worship. Even the “nones”, the non-practicing folks, when life is a flutter it’s the Lord’s Prayer that gets said. Far more than 7% and something much different than “the good china of prayers.” And it all starts with “Our Father who art in heaven”. Remember how Jesus taught us.
Our Father. Sometimes I wonder if the prayer couldn’t stop right there. If there are not times when it does stop right there. Our Father. Like in an airport when you are waiting to see a loved one who has been home for such a long time. You start to speak, “Oh Sweetie…” and nothing else comes out but an embrace. Like when your child experiences the heartbreak of a first break up or not making the musical or getting cut from the team and your start to speak, “Oh Charlie, O Christy….” and you really have no words to say much more. Like when a friend tells you she’s pregnant, or they just got a job, or they past their oral exam…you shout the name and scream a bit, and what’s more to say. Like when you walk into the room to offer an embrace to someone whose heart is broken with grief.
To call on, to invoke, to speak, to shout, to weep. To start a prayer and it stops at something like a sigh. “Our father” like Jesus taught us. Holding your newborn babe in your arms for the first time; circled there in the room. Someone starts it, “Our Father, who art in heaven”,,,,and you just can’t finish as the tears of joy drip on the receiving blanket. To watch on the news and learn of the Christians brutally murdered by ISIS in Libya, and to know nothing else to say or pray than just “Our Father”, or to read the letter Kayla Mueller’s wrote to her family in the spring of last year. Before she was killed by those who held her hostage, she wrote about her love for her family, her trust in God. You read it, and no words come. You stare at your computer, at the screen, praying for her, for her family, for this blasted world, and the whole mess, wondering, asking, pleading, where is this all can go. But all you can muster is “Our Father”. You sit here in the sanctuary on any given Sunday with a heart so heavy with concern or so relieved with joy, that all you can say is “our Father” and let the rest of us finish the prayer! God our Father, it’s more than a way to start. It’s a prayer all by itself. Sometimes its all you can get. A sigh. A gasp. A prayer. Like Jesus taught us.
Not long ago I was working with a family to prepare for a memorial service for their mother, grandmother, mother-in law. One of the memories that I won’t forget had to do with her meal time table; the memories they had of sharing a meal together at mother’s table. They told me whether you were having just a sandwich, or breakfast, or more of a holiday meal, the table was always set; place mat, napkin, simple dishes, nothing fancy. The place setting, it reminded them of her welcome, her hospitality, of how she could make the little things so important. The table was always set. And it told them of her love.
Some tables, some meals, go so far beyond words. This one tells of God’s love. When you settle in at this table, sometimes just being here is a prayer. Remembering how he taught us. Our Father who art in heaven.
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