Our Father

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Our Father

Matthew 6:9-13

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Every Sunday we join together in the Lord’s Prayer and repeat those words. What we are actually saying is: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Many people find strength and inspiration in those words. And yet many other people are bothered by these words. There are two main reasons why people feel uncomfortable when they hear these words in church. Some people are bothered because they associate the word father with their own father and they did not have a good relationship with their father. All the negative emotions and memories about their own fathers get transferred to their relationship with God. No matter how hard they try; all those bad memories destroy any possibility of joy during worship.

For instance, I grew up with my grandmother. I met my father when I was 14 years old when my grandmother took me to visit him in his apartment in New York City. I cannot say that he was a good or a bad father; he was just not part of my life. If there is any association of the word father for me, it would be to believe that God is a person that created us and then left us to be on our own. God would be the kind of God that the Greeks imagine there was; a God too perfect to get involved in the everyday life of God’s own creation. But I know through the witness of Jesus Christ that God is a hands-on kind of God. God not only created us, but God walks with us on a daily basis. God continues to get involved in history, liberating the oppressed, healing the sick and forgiving the sinner. Jesus Christ has shown me that God is not like my father. Psalm 27 reminds us: “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”

Other people resent hearing the word “father” referring to God because they feel excluded by that term. Last Saturday June 7th I attended the farewell celebration for Rev. Diane Koob. During the worship service one of the district lay leaders began to speak about Rev. Koob’s ministry; and he made a reference to God by using the pronoun “he”; to which Diane responded by questioning: “He?” The lay leader proceeded to explain how it was a habit for him to refer to God by male pronouns. Many women within the church have been telling us that they feel excluded when we make references to God by using male pronouns only. Just look at our worship service this morning: our call to worship talks about God our father, and then proceeds to speak about Christ Jesus our brother. There was no mention of a female in the whole call to worship. Then our opening hymn talks about this world being my father’s world. No wonder our sisters feel uncomfortable sitting in our pews.

Some men and women have responded to our sisters complains by using female pronouns and referring to God as “she.” This has tended to offend another large group within the church. To avoid offending anyone other people have tried to use neutral names and avoid all pronouns. In the gospel of John, we are told that Jesus said to his disciples: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” So we can use the word friend to talk about God; except that some of us have had bad experiences with some friends, including those we call our best friend.

I had a friend that I loved; I thought that we had a great relationship. He and I received the call to ministry in the same summer camp. When I had my first child I got in trouble with my family because I choose him and his wife, instead of one of my relatives to be my daughter’s “god-parents.” It was all good until one day he told somebody a story about something that happened when we were in the Dominican Republic. I was shock because I met him for the first time in New York City. I asked him about what he remembered about those stories; and it was them that I put it together. He was confusing me with my brother who did live with my father back in the Dominican Republic. I was trying to be his friend, while he was continuing his old relationship with my brother; after so many years he did not know who I was. This is nothing compared with the stories that many people can tell about their best friends; to them calling God a friend would bring images of treason, abandonment and pain.

We seem to have a strong need to make God one of us, a father, a friend, a human. But the bible itself attempts to make clear a radical difference between God and humanity. The book of numbers, the twenty third chapter, and verse nineteen tell us that: “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” In other words, God can be trusted to do what God says God will do because God is not a human being. Humans are hard to trust; sometimes you cannot even trust yourself. I have become an expert in presenting myself good arguments in order to change my mind. I tell myself that I will eat salad for lunch every day and that works until I see the menu.  

So why if the biblical writers knew that God was not a man they used human images to talk about our creator? The reason was mainly because when the bible was written the highest example they could use to talk about God was a man, since they were living within a man dominated society.  But today man is no longer the highest symbol of authority. If someone from another planet came to live among us they would guest that the highest authority is the dog. You only have to see a human walking behind a dog with a plastic bag in their hand ready to serve their dog to know this. I for one know how hard our little dog has worked to train me. Every morning when I enter the kitchen, she comes and stands in front of me, if I do not pet her fast enough she would proceed to place her two front paws on me until I realize that I had failed to acknowledge her. I will comply and then she would go back to her resting pillow. I have to admit that she is a good human trainer.

            Love for our sisters and brothers compel us to seek to use names for God that will not cause them pain. Names in the bible are more than a label to refer to someone; they actually described the person named. They tell something about the essence of the person it refers to. That is why we see so many name changes when someone’s life is change; from Abram to Abraham, from Simon to Peter, from Saul to Paul, and so on. So how can we keep God’s name holy if we are not even sure what name to use for God? There are several we can use that will remind us who God really is.

The fourth word in the opening of the Bible is the first mentioned name in the bible: “In the beginning God,” the word translated God in Genesis is a plural word; it remind us that God is self sufficient, that God is the one who is a community in God self. It points to our doctrine of the trinity. It is the most used name for God in the Bible, used over 2,300 times. This name of God reminds us that although we enter the church as an individual, salvation is a community experience.

In the story of the Exodus, Moses asked God, “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your fathers hath sent me to you; and they shall say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? God responded to Moses saying (Jehovah) “I am who I am.” It reminds us of the unchanging nature of our God. The book of James tells us that: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

The Lord our Peace. (Jehovah-Shalom) The basic idea underlying this one Hebrew word, Shalom, is “a harmony of relationship or a reconciliation passed upon the completion of a transaction, the payment of a debt, the giving of satisfaction.” It reminds us that God was in Christ reconciling he world to God’s self. (El Shaddai) The Almighty, All-Sufficient God. It refers to God as the one able to supply all our needs, it reminds us that all we need is God.

(Jehovah-Rophi) The Lord, the Physician. The psalmist talks about God in Psalm 103: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” Peter in his first letter states that: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” There are many more names we can use, but all we need to remember today is that: “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” And that is reason enough to worship!

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