"Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven ... (Matt. 6:9)

God-Intimate and Close

Jesus' sense of God was so close, so real, and so intimate that he never prayed without addressing God as his heavenly Father. His relationship with God was always expressed from a father-son relationship. This familiar and ideal relationship has nurtured Christian prayer for centuries. But addressing God as "Father" creates a great deal of uneasiness in today's world.

Paul Tillich, in his book The Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper, 1957), states that all of our language about God is symbolic, "because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate" (p. 41). In our attempt to describe God we use metaphors, similes, parables, and poetry. In describing God's comfort, I think of the words of Isaiah 32:2, where the prophet talks about "the shade of a great rock in a weary land." In describing God's power, I think of Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." In talking about the guidance and care of God, immediately the Twenty-third Psalm comes to mind, "The LORD is my shepherd." To describe God's personal relationship with us and the world, the most popular metaphor through the ages has been that of "father" and the "fatherhood of God." For centuries we have prayed, "Our father, who art in heaven ..." and confessed our faith together by saying, "I believe in God the Father Almighty ..." These metaphors—shadow, rock, fortress, shepherd, and father—have served us well in our attempt to understand and to describe God.

In his book, The Idea of the Holy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1928), Rudolph Otto reminds us that it is impossible for the finite human mind to comprehend the infinite eternal God. He states, "If the human mind could fully explain God, then God would cease to exist" (p. 71). For to be God, God has to be illusive, mysterious, and distant. The Lord declared to Isaiah:

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa. 55:9)

Our desire to communicate to others the reality of God makes the use of symbols and metaphors necessary. In our cautious and inadequate expressions, we must keep in mind that God will remain far more than our words and phrases.

This can be a risky business. A little girl in Sunday school was working very hard on a drawing. The teacher asked her what she was doing. The girl said she was drawing a picture of God. The teacher told her that no one knows what God looks like. Confidently the girl replied, "They will when I am done." When we speak, we may feel that not only do we have a picture of God, but also that our picture is the only picture of God. Upon realizing that our language of God is symbolic, we may feel that our preferred symbol or metaphor is the only one. We are so limited in our expression because our finite minds are trying to express the infinite. We may distort the image of God by the limitations of the symbols we use.

Jesus calls God "Father," and it is impossible for us to use a symbol that would convey the same idea of this divine relationship to all people everywhere. For centuries, Christians have thought of God as the "eternal masculine." So we ask the obvious question, Why have Christians overlooked the "mother" metaphor for God?

There is an obvious answer to that. The Bible reflects the period in which it was written. The biblical metaphors for God as "Father," "King," and "Lord" were used in a time when the male-dominated monarchy was the keystone of political order. God's sovereignty was expressed in terms of royalty and kingship.

In the agricultural society of the first century, it was inevitable that the poetic imagery of God's tender care and concern should be drawn from a shepherd and his flock. This imagery was well known to the people of Jesus' day, who encountered shepherds and sheep every day. To them, this imaging of God was vivid. Sheep and shepherds are not so well known to our world.

In the patriarchal society of Jesus' day, the father figure was dominant, especially first-century Jewish families. It is quite natural that their thoughts of God would center around God as heavenly Father. These verbal images and metaphors functioned well for those days. But the world has changed. To say that God is our Father conveys entirely different meanings in today's world. Because of the abusiveness of some fathers, for many children today, the father image is terrifying and frightening.

A chaplain at a children's home told how he could not use the Lord's Prayer at the home. There was a thirteen-year-old girl at the home who, from the age of seven, had been repeatedly abused by her father. Whenever she heard the word father, it triggered a violent reaction from her. Thus to use father as a metaphor for God is not always suitable for all of the world's children.

However, we must seek to understand what this metaphor meant for Jesus and how he understood God as his heavenly Father. What did it mean for him? What does it mean for us? Jesus admonished his disciples, "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven."

Notice the opening word of the prayer: "Our"—not "my" or "your," but "our." For Jesus, God is the Father of all people, from the four corners of the earth. God is the common longing of the human heart. The "our" of this prayer cuts across every land, culture, race, and need. God is not the possession of any one group of people, but of all people.

Then notice that the prayer begins with God. The very first phrase of the prayer recognizes who God is. It is only when God is given proper place that all things fall into place. The very first thought of this prayer is to focus thought and recognition upon God rather than upon self, needs, or problems. If our first thoughts are on ourselves, we will be disappointed with the results of our prayer and feel that we have failed. Jesus teaches us in his prayer to get our thoughts off of ourselves and onto God, who for Jesus is "our" Father of all.

Just prior to Jesus' teaching the Lord's Prayer to his disciples he gives two general rules regarding prayer. First, Jesus criticizes those who pray to be seen and heard by others. "But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Matt. 6:6). The story is told of the time when Harry Emerson Fosdick was invited to Boston on a Sunday evening to preach. Just prior to his sermon, a prominent Boston pastor led in the evening prayer. Following the sermon, someone asked Fosdick what he thought of that minister's prayer. "It was the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience," he replied.

Second, Jesus insisted that we must remember that the God to whom we pray knows what we need: "For your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Matt. 6:8). We do not come to a God who needs to be coaxed, pestered, or battered for answers. God is a God of love, who is more ready to answer prayer than we are to pray.

Richard Foster, in his book Prayer (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), says that the one thing that should strike us when we read this prayer is the deep, personal, and intimate nearness of the Father God that Jesus experienced and taught. The idea of God as Father was not new to those who heard Jesus pray. In Psalm 103:13 the psalmist states:

As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.

In regard to this passage, Walter Brueggemann, in his book Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993) points out how striking it is that when the psalmist speaks about God's gentleness toward God's people, the image is that of a father. God is like a father in two ways. First, the father here is "motherlike," in being willing to care in inordinant ways and to stand in utter solidarity. Second, God is like a father who remembers where we came from, how we are born, of what we are made, and how utterly fragile and precarious we are.

Also, Hosea 11:1-4 talks about God as a Father who takes the children into his arms and leads them with "cords of human kindness" and the "bands of love" and "bent down to them and fed them."

The Bible does not give only Father pictures of God. Through the prophet Isaiah, God uses the language of a mother: "As a mother comforts her child,/ so I will comfort you" (66:13). It is not the image of God as a father that startles us as we read the Lord's Prayer. Rather, we are startled by the invitation to address God in such a personal and intimate manner. To the faithful Jew, who even hesitated to speak the divine name, the childlike intimacy of Jesus' words must have been utterly shocking.

The very first words that a Jewish child learns to speak are abba (which means "father") and imma (which means "mother"). 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. Jesus' utter intimacy with Father God is startling. Just think about it: The God of creation; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Sarah, Leah, and Rachel; the God of creation; the God of heaven and earth—is our Father!

In the Lord's Prayer we are invited into the same intimacy with God the Father that Jesus knew upon earth when he encouraged us to pray, "Our Father." We are encouraged to crawl into God's lap and receive God's love, comfort, healing, and strength. We can laugh and weep freely and openly in the arms of Abba, our Father God. We can be hugged by a caring and comforting Imma, our Mother God.

The whole of Jesus' life was a prolonged abba experience. The real test of "our Father" thinking came on the cross. If Jesus was wrong about his life, it would have been seen here. No cruder instrument of death ever existed. As a deterrent to crime, the Romans lined the Appian Way with crosses, on which insurrectionists and freedom fighters were crucified, reminding everyone of the price of rebellion.

Jesus saw the cross and death looming before him. In Gethsemane he prayed, "O Father, if it be possible!" It wasn't possible. The masses cried out for his crucifixion. How close, real, and intimate was God the Father then? As the final hour of life approached, would Jesus abandon the idea of God as Father? No! From the cross Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them," interceding for those who placed him there. Luke tells us that Jesus' very last words were: "Father, Abba, into your hands I commend my spirit." Home at last with the Father.

Marguerite Henry Atkins wrote a remarkable book entitled Also My Journey (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow, 1985), telling about her years of caring for her husband, who had Alzheimer's disease. It is a vivid account of her struggle, pain, anguish, and the hope of faith. She wrote a poem just before her husband's death.

He is my loved one
But Thou Lord didst create him
and so Thou lovest him more.
I know Thou wilt be near him
in his death....
Thou wilt hold him close in Thy arms
as a mother cradles her child
while sleeping.

That loving, parental image of God brought her hope, comfort, and peace. She could visualize how in death God was near to her husband, holding him close as a mother would cradle her child.

Is not this how God cares for us? So much so, that we can experience the power and strength of Abba, God our Father, and the caring and comfort of Imma, God our Mother.

"... hallowed be your name." (Matt. 6:9)

God, Who Is Holy

We do not have a sense of the holy today. A man who was desperately trying to straighten the tombstone on his wife's grave was interviewed by a television reporter. The night The night before, a motorcycle gang had played havoc in the cemetery, knocking over many tombstones and desecrating gravesites. The man, in a distraught and tearful voice, asked the reporter, "Isn't anything sacred anymore?" Most people have lost touch with the concept of the sacred, the holy. We do not give much thought to the "holiness" of God's name, because we do not know about the holiness of God. In the face of such devaluation of the holiness of God, we do not seem to know what is holy or sacred anymore. Nothing appears sacred, not even the name of God.

Jesus began his prayer, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." Hallowed is not a common word; it has little use today. The numerous translations of the New Testament have not improved upon it. Two of the latest translations, the NIV and NRSV, still use the translation hallowed. Webster defines hallowed as "holy, sacred, or revered."

What did Jesus mean when he prayed, "hallowed be your name"? The word hallowed is derived from the Greek word hagios, which basically means "different" or "separate." A thing that is holy, hagios, is different from other things. A holy people are set apart from other people. A holy temple is different and set apart from other buildings. God's day is a holy day, set apart and different from other days. Add to this the fact that in Hebrew the name does not simply mean the name by which a person is called. In Hebrew one's name connotes the nature, character, and personality of the person so far as it is revealed or known. This is why the psalmist could say, "And those who know your name put their trust in you" (Ps. 9:10). Those who know what God is like, who know God's nature and character will trust God. "Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,/ but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God" (Ps. 20:7). Therefore, if we put both of these thoughts together, we can say: "Help us, O Lord, to give to you that special, revered place that your loving character deserves and demands."

The Lord's Prayer begins with this phrase because our reverence for God is based on the kind of holiness that God evokes. Our knowledge of God is essential. No one will revere an immoral, uncaring, disinterested god. Those who heard Jesus pray this prayer were familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures. From those Scriptures they discovered that God is a God of justice, goodness, patience, and loving-kindness. These scriptures taught that what God has created is good and that God seeks to do good things for us. In Christ, the love of God is revealed more fully. We revere God not because God exists, but because God's holiness, goodness, justice, and love beckon our reverence.

Reverence is to believe that God is, to know God's character and nature, to be aware of God's presence, and to be willingly obedient and submissive to God's will. William Barclay tells us that "reverence is knowledge plus submission" (The Gospel of St. Matthew [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956],210).

Therefore, Jesus could begin his prayer, "hallowed be your name." Jesus was very much aware of the third commandment and knew how essential it was for Israel. The holiness of God's name held everything together. If the people no longer had respect for the holiness of God, then community in general would decline. When God and God's name are honored, all life is sacred. When God is dishonored, nothing is sacred. A loss of reverence and respect for God's name causes us to lose respect and concern for one another. This is why God had Moses place the commandment for the respect and honoring of God's name near the top of the list in the Decalogue. Moses knew that respect and reverence for God's name lay at the root of all moral and spiritual values. Jesus understood this, so he set the phrase "hallowed be your name" at the beginning of his prayer.

This part of the Lord's Prayer is extremely important for us for two reasons. First, if we lack reverence for God, how can we have reverence for one another and for the world around us? Reverence for God is the basis of our relationships. An absence of the sense of the "holy" causes life to decline.