Sunday noitcelfeR

 

God's Prayer

I have a wonderful pastor. She manages to find ways to surprise me with her gentle insights into God.

She just began a sermon series on "The Lord's Prayer," which I've always thought of as God's Prayer. Or rather, what God wants us to pray. 

Today, she began with just the first two words, the address: Our Father.

It's a sexist term, yes. I don't believe in a gendered God. "Male and female, he created them in his image." But some languages don't have a genderless pronoun, so there it is. No big deal.

She pointed out these two words embody three concepts to keep in mind when we ask ourselves such existential questions as Who am I? Where did I come from? What am I doing here? Where am I going?

The first concept was the nature of God as our source of existence. Jesus called God "Abba," which is more akin to "Papa" than "Father," or as Americans would say, "Daddy." That throws a lot of patriarchal imagery out there for most people unless they understand the full nature of Scripture. God is God, beyond male and female. 

More importantly, we don't pray "Dear Lord." Jesus did not want us to understand God as a master of servants in this prayer. Paul can talk about being a slave to Christ, but God doesn't make us slaves, which Paul points out later when he says we have received a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry "Abba, Father!" (see above).

So let's call this concept the "Parenthood" of God.

The second concept was the nature of all people as God's offspring. Jesus told us to pray "Our Father," not "My Father." With that one word, we declare that we are not the sole inheritors of God's grace. Paul spoke of us being co-heirs with Christ. John repeated Jesus' commandment to "love one another." Jesus looked out over all those who had come to hear him and said, "These are my brothers and sisters," which means they are also our brothers and sisters. One family. No exceptions. 

The third concept was that God is eternal, and in perceiving God as eternal, we acknowledge that we also are eternal, mortality notwithstanding. If we are indeed God's offspring, not simply God's creation, we have God's DNA. This is not to say we are all Gods, or mini-Gods, but we do have the nature of God in that we are called to be eternal through oneness with God.

That means in order to truly pray "Our Father," we must be seeking that oneness, and not just mindlessly rattling off the words or singing the song. We must use those words to open a gateway into eternity and enter into God's presence.

So, parenthood, family, eternity.

That's a lot in two words, but when my pastor pointed these concepts out, I was so enriched, I had to make her reflection my reflection today.