Abba; February 18, 2018; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM
I’m reading a book right now called, The Greatest Prayer. In it, John Dominic Crossan says that the Lord’s Prayer is both Christianity’s greatest and strangest payer. Prayed by all Christians it never mentions Christ, prayed in all churches it never mentions church, prayed on all Sundays but never mentions Sundays, called the Lord’s prayer but never mentions Lord. It is prayed by all types of Christians without mention of any of the things that divide the church, doctrines and structures… It is prayed by Christians who emphasize what it never mentions and also prayed by Christians who ignore what it does. …The Lord’s Prayer is … both a revolutionary manifesto and a hymn of hope. Revolutionary because it presumes and proclaims the radical vision of justice that is the core of Israel’s biblical tradition. A hymn, because it presumes and produces poetic techniques that are at the core of Israel’s biblical poetry.” We’ll unpack that a bit over the next 5 weeks.
Who taught you to pray? My parents taught me. Every night we said prayers, the same words, “Now I lay me down to sleep… followed by God bless, Mommy and Daddy, Grandmas and Grandpas, Aunties and Uncles, Betsy and Becky, Cousins and all, teach me to be a good girl, Amen,” and then we finished with the Lord’s prayer.
Later, in my teen years, Pastor Dave Solberg taught me some other ways to pray. One of the first techniques he taught me, to deepen my prayer life is, one I use often, especially at night when I can’t sleep. It follows the word ACTS. I begin with A for adoration: I praise God for something I’ve experienced that day, tonight it might be something like, “Oh God, you call us together as the body of Christ, how good you are, to draw us together.” Then I move on to C for confession: again, specifically about the things of the day. T comes next for thanksgiving followed finally by S for supplication—a theological word for prayer requests. I start with my prayer list, the people I pray for every day, the conditions of injustice and suffering in the world, and then, after I’ve finished with all of that I finally can ask for something for myself. ACTS, I invite you to try it this week. On the insert you’ve got a paraphrase of the Lord’s prayer and the “modern” version of the prayer that has been in use since the 70’s along with some suggested readings for the week.
I’m sure some of you have developed rich practices of personal prayer. And I’m pretty sure that many of us have struggled with prayer, too.
- Sometimes you don’t know what to say. Or your words don’t sound like the prayers you hear prayed aloud.
- Or it may be hard to be disciplined and consistent in prayer. It’s easy to get distracted and have our minds wander.
- Maybe you only pray when you need something or are desperate. Praying can feel like trying to manipulate God. You may feel you don’t deserve for God to listen to you.
- Some of us, in more honest moments of reflection, may even doubt the efficacy of prayer. If God hears us, why would God act on our request? If prayer is a conversation, how come I’m the only one talking? I listen, I really do listen, but I never hear a response.
When it comes to one of the basic practices of the Christian faith, I’m afraid many feel uncomfortable, and even incompetent.
We’re not alone. The disciples asked Jesus how to pray. They had been with Jesus, had heard his teaching, and saw his care for others. They witnessed the people responding with interest and the religious establishment reacting in furious opposition. They saw his personal practices of prayer. They attended synagogue and prayed in worship, they prayed at home on the Sabbath and Passover. They knew how to pray and they did pray.
Yet they asked for instruction. I imagine that Jesus’ practice of prayer must have been compelling. Perhaps his prayers were natural rather than forced or formulaic, reflecting a vital relational connection with God. The disciples probably sensed that prayer contributed to what they saw in Jesus: a man for whom God was the bedrock of his being and made his existence more full.
Isn’t that what we seek in prayer too? A strong relational connection with God: a reality that will not remove life’s challenges but will make our existence with all its struggles, meaningful and full. We want to know God’s will and direction for us and we want to live in line with that will.
So, we ask with the disciples, “Teach us to pray.” The prayer we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” is based on texts found in Matthew and Luke and on a text found in a first century document called the Didache that recorded the practices of the early church. Each one of those is a little bit different from the others. There are also three other places where the Lord’s Prayer is summarized in a single acclamation, “Abba, The Father!” We can think of that as a sort of ecstatic cry, like “Free at Last!” Those are found in Galatians 4, Romans 8, and Mark 14. Those three “Abba” prayers were written down much earlier and were chronologically much closer to the Aramaic language used by Jesus than the later written gospels in Greek. Abba is in Aramaic, and means Daddy, the close intimate address.
I think the only times I refer to God as Father are in the Lord’s Prayer and in the trinitarian formulation as part of a sacramental action, like presiding at Communion or Baptism. Jesus was male, yes. But God? The Creator of the universe? The Alpha and the Omega? The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent One? Yahweh? Whose name is too holy to pronounce in Hebrew and Judaic tradition?
Most theologians agree that God is not literally “sexed” and that all language that we use to refer to God (even that language given through divine revelation) is limited in it’s ability to express the ineffability of God. The language we use to refer to God or to pray to God is metaphorical. References to God are meaningful and they are referential, but there is always a recognizable gap between the word or title and that to which it refers.
The long historical and consistent use of male-dominant images to refer to God (and quite a bit of those come from the Bible–which unarguably reflects its patriarchal context), has sort of tricked many people, if only by a kind of osmosis or subtle, innocent indoctrination, into believing that God is actually male. Or at least more male than female. Or more “masculine” than “feminine.”
But, if we understand the way that God-references actually work, and if we acknowledge that God’s nature and being lies beyond the capacity of our finite language to adequately represent, then become wary of any approach to God-references that limits us to only masculine references to God. We should feel free to incorporate other images and references that reflect the mystery of God, the relationality of God, and the love of God for all persons. We could even limit ourselves to only images and titles from the Bible and still develop a much more inclusive and dynamic image and vocabulary for God.
It’s not just in this prayer that Jesus referred to God as his “Father.” His address expressed a basic relationship between Jesus and YHWH. He invited the disciples into that same relationship so they could address God and even depend on God for daily provisions. God is not unapproachable or unattainable. God is Father, Daddy, Abba.
That’s a pretty big deal, because this means that the Father-status of God makes it possible for the children of God to be released from their anxiety about their basic needs. The heavenly Father’s most important characteristic is that one can depend on his care for all creatures. It frees us from anxiety. In the political and economic context of the Roman Empire the term “father” had less to do with confirming and perpetuating patriarchy than it did with the churches positioning themselves and their daily life in freedom from and resistance to the imperial powers.
For these early Christians, God was their Father: not Caesar, not the Emperor, not the local Roman governor. Even the persistent patriarchy of the household was challenged or upended by the emphasis on God alone as Father. The early believers were affirming that they had only one master and teacher, Christ, and only one Father, God.
Empires-back then and still now–use human anxiety to garner the attention and submission of their subjects. They offer protection, security, comfort–the only price for that security is unconditional obedience and quiet submission. Trust in God as Father–as the one who provides–cuts the link between human anxiety and the control of the Empire because it dissolves anxiety into prayer, service, and confidence.
So “Our Father” can have an anti-patriarchal, subversive tone to it. Like calling God “king,” it stakes out a claim for the believer with respect to which “powers” have ultimate authority. It can also be a very egalitarian and democratic claim, because it puts all people on the same level; all as equally loved and deserving of respect under the loving authority of God.
Abba, The Father! It puts us at ease before God. A good example of that close kind of prayer is shown in the Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye is a poor laborer with five daughters living in Russia. He talks with God throughout his workday in an easy yet respectful manner, and honestly shares his complaints and his joys and his hopes.
One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, speaks of her simple experience of prayer in a book titled Help, Thanks, Wow. For her, those three words express the nature of her prayer life and the appropriate response of one human being to the remarkable grace and mercy and love of God. “Help! Thanks! Wow!” Isn’t that great. Our prayers can be just like that, uttered within our hearts or whispered in ways that others might not even recognize as prayers. The fancy address to the Almighty is missing, the wordiness of a proper prayer is absent—all that is left are singular words that express our true and basic reliance upon God: help, thanks, wow!
Like many of you, Steve and I relish the opportunity to see the sunset over the ocean. It’s something of a ritual isn’t it? We watch quietly, reverently the daily scene of remarkable beauty that shifts and changes. When we gawk in awe—is that prayer? It evokes within us a sense of reverence and appreciation. We are confronted with a reality beyond and outside of ourselves. It is pure gift.
In Romans chapter 8 Paul says we are empowered by God to pray. It is the gift of God’s own Spirit that cries out in us, with us, from us, and through us, Abba, The Father! That Spirit that intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words liberates slaves from bondage and injustice and makes them not only free but heirs of God. When we cry, “Abba Father!” It is that very Sprit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought.
We are children of God, liberated from injustice and as heirs, we inherit that same responsibility for others, to liberate. “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
All of that is packed into the very opening, “Abba, The Father!” a revolutionary manifesto and a hymn of hope, indeed! Lord, teach us to pray. Amen.