Our Father

May 24 (Matthew 6:5-15)So what is that we do when we fold our hands and bow our heads together or alone for prayer? What is happening in that time? When does prayer begin and whendoes it end? We know full well of the sort of prayer that occurs when we are in trouble.When we have exhausted our own resources and some threat still looms too large we cryout for deliverance. This cycle has been repeated from the earliest expressions in theBible up until today. The contemporary writer Anne Lamott said that there are reallyonly two prayers,

help me, help me, help me

and

thank-you, thank-you, thank-you

. Is thatall? For much of my life can tend to offer little more.In meeting with a spiritual director some time ago I struggled and mourned what Ifelt was a very poor prayer life. We talked a little about my journey with prayer andabout life as it was for me. We talked about where prayer could find its place. Theconversations turned towards my mornings and somewhere along the way I mentionedthat breakfast was an important time for me, that I simply could not really start my daywithout a decent breakfast. If I missed breakfast I knew the day would not begin well.My director encouraged me to consider that in time my prayer life could feel just thatway. I made no real concerted effort to ‘make breakfast a priority’. At some point Isimply began doing it and it became indispensable for healthy and ordered day. Thattime and that act became life giving for the rest of my day. This is

prayer for us as weexplore prayer in our lives.In Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer in chapter 11, which was not read thismorning, the disciples see Jesus praying and when he is finished they approach him andask, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”Commentators suggest that what the disciples were asking for was something to definetheir beliefs and their particular community. As John’s disciplines were give their particular prayers and practices so too these disciples looked to represent and be shapedin a particular school of prayer. And so Jesus begins,

Our Father

. We have beenfortunate in the last number of decades to have our thinking re-tuned into how significantthese two words are for understanding the Lord’s Prayer. God is indeed perceived as afather in the Old Testament and in Judaism at the time of Jesus. The father is creative,sustaining and compassionate (as are conceptions of God as a mother it should be noted).There is, however, essentially no precedent in Judaism to pray and speak directlyto God in the intimate and familiar terms of ‘dad.’ The word, like da and dada, comefrom the child’s earliest coos and playful attempts at naming the ones who are mostintimate and immediate to him or her. And even as adults most of us still understand thedifference between saying dad or saying father or even sir. This prayer invites unto a particular relationship. And the term relationship is of the utmost importance to keep inmind.The Lord’s Prayer quickly rose to an exalted position in the Christian communityand today it can still be heard recited in some schools, pasted on any number of materialsand alluded to throughout our culture. But this was not always so. As the prayer beganin Luke this was a sort of initiation for the disciples. This was the prayer of

those whowere following Jesus

. Jesus said that to those who are not following him he would speak in parables but those who follow he will speak more clearly. It appears that one of the

2things the disciples gained access to was this picture of God not simply as majestic andall-powerful but as intimate and caring.Arthur Paul Boers reminds us that even in the early church it was only baptized discipleswho were taught the Lord’s Prayer. This was privileged material that assumed a certainresponsibility and commitment.What we do then in prayer, specifically in Christian prayer,

is turn toward and enter into the presence our father in heaven

. Prayer then, somewhat like the meals weeat,

shapes our ability to interact with the world around us

. We know that when we areinsecure and scared, when fear guides how we are interacting with the world, we oftenturn to God in prayer. So what would it mean for our stability and security if we dailyand hourly turned to God in prayer? In one of the earliest Christian texts after the NewTestament Christians are encouraged to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times daily.I don’t want too move too quickly from the first two words of this prayer,

our Father

. I want to encourage us as we are looking this section to bracket out, for themoment anyway, certain conversations and agendas about gender and the meaning of theword ‘father.’ The Bible holds unequivocally that creating God in the image of male, or female for that matter, is idolatry. The Bible is also clear that all humanity, male

and

female, are the bearers of God’s image in their lives. There is plenty of room for discussion on what it means to translate the Bible in relationship to contemporary gender issues and understandings. This morning I hope that we can allow this text sit with us, asit is, so that we may gain from this language as opposed to quickly offering it uncriticalembrace or rejection.We know that with nearly every child that has ever lived a feminine figure,usually the mother, has played the primary role in at least the first six months to a year of the child’s life. This of course has been a clear function and result of our biologicalstructure as we men lack the functional plumbing required to sustain life. In that crucialyear both mother and child cannot go long without intimate contact and this does noteven take into account the unity and intimacy they shared as the mother carried the childin her womb.For the sake of convenience I will speak of the child as a male and the mother of course as a female. In the first six months to a year of life the child develops both anemerging sense of himself as well as of the world around him. With basic expressions of care and attentiveness the mother gives the child first a sense not of the world and reality but actually offers the child a sort of mirror for him to understand himself. Her thoughtful expressions reflect back to the child what he is feeling. A mother typicallygives the child what he needs and protects the child from what he cannot handle or whatwould be destructive. This is necessary and usually natural for mother and child in thefirst stage of life.In time the baby begins to take certain things for granted namely the basic lifesustaining care and nurture given by the mother. If these basic blocks of life cannot bereasonably taken for granted then life emerges as a constant threat, nothing can beexplored or enjoyed or related to appropriately because there always hangs over him theinstability and threat that at any moment destruction will overtake him. Look ahead for amoment to Jesus’s words just a few paragraphs later.

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear

. This is only possible or can only become possible when we have been nurtured in a motherly context of

3reliability and consistency. God is pictured in the Bible in just this way at various timesand places. In Isaiah there are all sorts of mothering images of God because of the people’s experience in exile. As we read close to the end of the Isaiah,

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you

. We never loose this motherly aspect of God.So hopefully a child forms an intimate, secure, and reliable relationship with hismother. While this is foundational and extremely healthy this relationship cannotcontinue the same way for long. Over time a mother cannot and actually should not beable to respond perfectly to the child’s wants and needs. If this were so then the mother when remain just another appendage or limb of the child able to function at his will.There must begin to be some slippage in this relationship so that the child sees that this person, his mother, is actually

not

just a part of himself. And this is good because in thisshort time the child has learned that he does not need to worry about what he will eat anddrink and what he will wear. He begins to learn that there is a trustworthiness to the lifearound him. At this point a vitally important step can take place in a child’sdevelopment. A child learns to be alone, even if this means that the mother is still in theroom watching. Up until that point there can be great anxiety on the part of a child if hismother is not there when he wants him. After being nurtured in a stable relationshipthough the child is okay to be by himself and begin to explore the world. This then setsthe stage for healthy decisions and relationships.Listen again to how Jesus leads up to the Lord’s Prayer.

When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners

to be seen by others

Jesus sees that prayer can be something that establishes your identity among others.Prayer was not only a private act but also public and social act.Perhaps in a less dramatic fashion we still hope that our prayer will secure us and mostoften we want to be secured by our place among our peers and community. Jesus says inresponse to the hypocrites that they have already received their reward. They sought to be seen by others. They thought their prayers could establish their place and security inthe world. And so whatever the world will give them is already their reward.On the one hand I am saying that a healthy pattern of motherly security for aninfant is necessary but it must change as the child develops. On the other hand Jesus issaying then that you cannot then charge out into the world chasing after that same sort of direct and affirming feedback from the world around you. Your mother is not meant tosustain your life as you were when you were a child and the world around you certainlywill not do this. But still we distort the caring and patient eyes of our mother and try tomultiply them in drawing attention to ourselves through pride or false modesty. Or elsewe turn and run and hide from these eyes in shame or fear. In time every mother mustallow and nurture their child to be alone but not quite alone.Jesus says,

when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen

. You have grown. You can no longer engage with God as amother who, early in life, is a direct physical extension of your needs and desires. Youmust learn to exist and to thrive apart from how this first relationship functioned. In thistransition we can either rush outward to try and grasp, capture and control the approval or attention of other people. Or we can slowly and perhaps with some fear enter intosolitude and then in that closed room we can realize that in fact we are not alone. Indeedthe one who bore us and raised us is still with us.