Sermon Tone Analysis

Who are you? is the question.

And until we understand both answers to that question our life will be stunted, frustrated, and dull.

Both answers you say?

Yes, both answers.

One of them applies to ourselves, and one of them applies to the one we are addressing.

If we do not understand who we are and if we do not understand who the person is that we’re addressing - not the pretentious stuff, not the stuff of rumors, but who they really are our communication will not go very far.

Communication experts tell us there are five perceptions that we’re going through simultaneously every time we communicate with another person.

My me - My perception of myself

My You - My perception of you

My you me - my perception of how you see me.

My you me you - my perception of how you see me seeing you.

My you me you me - my perception of how you see me seeing you seeing me

In our time today we do not have time to go through each one of these, but suffice it to say that our identity and the way we see the other’s identity is extremely important in any communication.

In our passage today identity is paramount.

Let’s read our passage and then focus on todays verse:

Wow! It’s almost like you have that memorized!

So one of the difficulties of studying a familiar passage is to slow down enough to really get to the heart of it and understand all that it is telling us.

Today, we’re going to focus on one verse, and one verse only:

Luke, in his gospel has the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray.

In Matthew’s Gospel this passage takes place in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount - Matthew 5-7.

Jesus says, “Pray then like this...”

Note: He did not say that this was to be our specific prayer - though it could be.

Back in seminary I was given a week long challenge by our Greek teacher to pray only the Lord’s prayer 10 times/day for the week.

It changed the way I pray it.

Then Jesus begins with:

OUR Father… Immediately we are put on the same plain as all others.

I’m not better than you, you’re no better than me, there is no one that has a higher ability to address God than another.

OUR - whether we recognize God as our Father, God is our father.

I know for far too many their vision of any father figure is not a healthy one and because of this many have sought to change this to God my mother or some other option.

Be very careful - are you not seeking to create God in your own preferred image.

Let’s stop for a minute, if God is OUR father, what does that make us?

Exactly, it makes us God’s children.

When you and I go to pray we need to recognize that we are received as God’s children.

And as God’s children know that God knows how to give us good gifts.

God knows how to give good gifts to us as his children.

And as His children He is very aware of what are good gifts and what gifts are not good for us.

As we go to pray, our My ME our perception of ourselves is should be I am a child of God.

I AM a child of God.

Say that with me.

“I am a child of God.”

Now for some of us that feels good.

For others the next word is a stumbling block:

FATHER - this is a difficult image as I said for many.

Too many in our country today do not have a father at home.

For too many our fathers have not lived up to the image of the father they were supposed to be.

Think about that for just a moment.

How do we know what a good father should be?

It’s not some celebrity, or Hollywood character.

No, if it was it would continue to always be subjective.

But I’ll bet if I did a survey right now we could come up with some characteristics of what a good father is, and I’m guessing that if we were to put any of our dads up against such an ideal we would see that all of them fall short.

Putting this in context - we need to remember that the society of Jesus time was a very patriarchal society.

The wealth, the inheritance, the stability of the family rested with the father.

Now I know that’s not true today as much, but it’s still true in the bulk of the world.

Think of what that means for the child of God; the inheritance of God goes to the children of God.

And look who it is that invites us to call God Father!

We sing it in the hymn Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee:

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother - All who live in love are thine.

In HEAVEN - throughout history the heavens have been described as above everything else.

God being in Heaven means that God as Father is above all other fathers.

He is the first, the Creator, Psalm 95 describes him this way.

God the father is above all fathers, above all those that we think of.

That ideal father we were imagining that we could think of earlier?

Yeah, that one?

He came to mind didn’t he?

Well, God is higher, God is better than that.

In fact God is so much better that we get to our next phrase:

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME -

Now think about this.

We know to think of God as Holy, for he told us to be holy as he is holy.

But here it says we should have reverence for the very name of God.

In English, that’s a bit tricky - we say “God.”

In Hebrew there was a name given Jehovah, or you may have heard Yahweh.

For the Jews this name is considered so Holy that they will not even pronounce it.

When they read a text and the name appears they will replace it with adonai, which means the Lord.

Today, the word/name God is thrown around so casually.

I admit, I have difficulty seeing OMG because for most people I know it means Oh My ________, and so it uses the name of God flippantly.

I’m currently reading the Great Divorce, a book by C.S. Lewis with my small group.

He brings light to this idea when in a conversation between a ghost (one from hell) and spirit (one from heaven) as they were taking in the beauty of their location:

“God!” said the Ghost, glancing around the landscape.

“God what?” asked the Spirit.

“What do you mean, ‘God what’?” asked the Ghost.

“In our grammer (sic) God is a noun.”

“Oh — I see.

I only meant ‘By Gum’ or something of the sort.”

I think the same is true for the name of Jesus, when we see it relegated to nothing more than a cussword.

One of the 10 commandments is not to use the Lord’s name in vain.

That is for no reason or to make less of it than who it is.

A great story I heard about a friend in High School was that he was at the high school drag races.

One guy was working on his car when the wrench slipped causing his hand to get smashed into the engine.

Suddenly he let forth a string of cuss words beginning with “Jesus H. Christ...” My friend approached him, “Oh, you know Jesus too?

I didn’t know he had a middle initial”

The guy looked confused.

“I know Jesus too, but I don’t usually talk to him like that.”

Now I doubt this exchange caused the guy to convert or anything, but he did at least recognize what he had done, and as the story goes his language got somewhat better.

We’re all coming with equal stature before God, our Heavenly Father.

As we come, let us recognize not only who we are, but who it is that we are addressing.

How it is that God sees us!

And know that God knows how we see Him.

Let’s pray.