Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
18 February 2018 - Lent Week 1
Matthew
6.5-18
Deuteronomy
6.4-9
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2018-02-18-simon-woodman-lent-1
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2018-02-18-simon-woodman-lent-1
When Liz
and I were undergraduates
at Sheffield University back in the
early ’90s,
the
Biblical Studies department where we were studying
was situated on floor ten of a
building known as the Arts Tower.
This Grade
2 listed 1960s skyscraper dominates the skyline of Sheffield,
and is loved and loathed in equal
measure,
in a similar way to that that in
which the Barbican divides opinion in London
– but the Arts Tower is steel and glass,
rather than brutalist concrete.
Anyway,
there were a couple of normal lifts,
but the main way of getting around
within the building
was to use a thing called the
Paternoster Lift.
Has anyone
ever seen or been in one of these things?
It’s like a giant bicycle chain of
carriages,
each one big enough for
two people,
that runs from the bottom to the top
of the building,
in constant, if rather
slow, motion.
The
carriages have no doors,
and you simply wait for a vacant car
to come along, and step on,
only to then step off at the floor
you want.
It’s both
brilliant and terrifying,
and still going strong I’m told even
all these years on.
Of course,
as you step into the void from the tenth floor or higher,
anticipating the imminent arrival of
something firm to stand on,
you mutter a little prayer to
yourself.
Hence, so
the rumour goes, it is a Paternoster
Lift
because, for those of you whose
Latin is a little rusty,
Pater
Noster is Latin for ‘Our Father’,
the opening words of the Lord’s
Prayer in Matthew’s gospel.
Of course,
it may be that the circular motion of the carriages
is reminiscent of counting the beads
in a rosary,
but I think I prefer the nervous prayer
explanation!
But I
wonder if the Paternoster lift can tell us something significant
about the way people often use the
Lord’s Prayer?
I suspect
that for many, maybe even for some of us,
it’s a little rote-prayer, learned
in childhood and recited when needed,
either because it’s that
point in the service again,
or because it’s that
point in the rosary again,
or because some other
pressing need for prayer has triggered it.
For many of
people, particularly those who have had a Roman Catholic upbringing,
just saying ‘Pater Noster’ is enough
– the opening words infer the rest
of the prayer;
and I think
this tells us something profound
about the nature of the Lord’s
Prayer;
which is
that the way it begins is of the utmost importance.
If the
Lord’s Prayer is the definitive Christian prayer,
I’m going to suggest that the
opening words
are the most definitive
phrase within it.
They define what follows.
The
practice of using the opening couple of words
to signify that which follows
is far from unique to the Lord’s
Prayer
– the Jews
did it, for example, with the prayer known as The Shema,
which we had read to us earlier from
the book of Deuteronomy.
In many
ways, the Shema is a kind of fore-runner to the Lord’s Prayer,
and it similarly gets its name from its
opening words
– Shema in Hebrew means ‘hear’,
and indeed the prayer
begins, ‘Hear, O Israel’…
How things
begin is important,
and the Lord’s Prayer begins, in
Matthew’s gospel, with ‘Our Father’.
Interestingly,
in Luke’s gospel, it just begins with just ‘Father’,
and this is the word I want us to
focus on for a few minutes this morning.
You see, the
language we use about God,
the words we use to describe or
address God,
reveal a lot about who we think God
is.
The Lord’s
prayer, for example, could have begun
‘Our God’, a fairly neutral
statement;
or possibly ‘Our Lord’,
or even ‘Our King’,
both of which would
suggest far great levels of authoritarian divinity.
‘Our King’ would actually have made
a lot of sense,
given that part of what
follows is a prayer for God’s ‘Kingdom’ to come
on earth as
it is in heaven.
But no, the
Lord’s Prayer begins by turning to God
as the heavenly ‘Father’ of those
offering the prayer.
The Jews,
of course, had a tradition of praying to God as ‘Father’,
and although it’s not found
frequently in the Old Testament,
it certainly formed part of the
devotional tradition of Judaism
within which Jesus grew
up.
The most
common images for God that we find in the Hebrew Bible
tend to revolve around God as
Creator, King, or Judge,
and
although God as Father is there, it isn’t common.
Possibly
this was a reaction against those other ancient religions
that believed in the notion of
divine parenthood,
with the gods having sex
with humans
who then give birth to
superhero-type offspring.
Actually, there is an ancient echo
of this in the Genesis story of the Nephilim,
but that’s another
sermon for another day.
Anyway,
when it comes to Israel’s understanding of God as father,
there are two key aspects to this.
Firstly,
Israel considered itself a ‘son’ adopted by God,
particularly so with regard to God’s
decisive action
in bringing them from slavery in
Egypt.
So, Moses
tells the Pharaoh
Exodus 4:22-23 Then you
shall say to Pharaoh,
'Thus says the LORD: Israel is my
firstborn son.
23 I said to you, "Let my son go that he may
worship me."'
And this
idea of Israel as God’s child
can be found elsewhere too the Old
Testament,
from
Hosea (11.1) to Isaiah (54.5-9), to the Psalms (103.13-16).
But the
second way in which Father imagery is used of God, particularly in prayer,
is the way God is spoken of as
‘Father’ to the king of Israel,
for example
in 2 Samuel (7.14) God promises to be a father to the King,
and that the King will be his
special son.
The
combination of these two facets of the fatherhood of God,
firstly as the convenantal father
who rescued them from
Egypt and adopted them,
and secondly as the father of the
King of Israel,
directly
feed into the way
Jesus would have understood the
phrase ‘Our Father’,
when it is used of God.
God is the
father of Israel collectively,
but also specifically God is the
father of its key figurehead,
the king of the line of David.
So, in
Matthew’s gospel when Jesus is referred to as the Son of David,
there is a sense in which he is
being cast
as the key figurehead of
the new Christian community
– it is not merely David who is his
ancestor,
but also God who is his
father.
And this
idea of Jesus as the son of God
becomes important for Matthew
because it
defines the community of those around Jesus
as being those who see themselves as
children of God.
In 12.50,
Matthew records Jesus as teaching that
‘whoever does the will of my Father
in heaven
is my brother and sister and mother’.
The point
is clear: those who, like Jesus, obey their heavenly father
become, like him, children of God.
Just as God
was the father of the King, and also of all Israel,
so God is the father of Jesus, and
also of all his disciples too.
So, in the
sermon on the mount, where we find the Lord’s Prayer,
we also find Jesus telling his
disciples several times
that God is ‘their’ father in Heaven
(5.16, 45; 6.1; 7.11; cf. 18.14; 23.9).
And this
sense that they have been adopted as children of God,
as Israel of old was adopted as a
son of God,
is seen to
carry with it a responsibility to live accordingly
– the children are expected to
behave
in ways that bring
honour to their heavenly Father,
for example by doing good deeds.
In this, of
course, the disciples are being contrasted with the Pharisees,
who are presented as having betrayed
their status as children of God
by focusing on outward
piety
rather than on genuine
transformation of the heart.
So, for us
to say ‘Our Father’, at the beginning of the Lord’s prayer,
is for us to take a momentous step
of faith.
We are not
merely naming God as Father in some generic sense,
we are specifically identifying
ourselves as his children.
We are, in
effect, naming ourselves as the new Israel,
adopted by the God who brings us too
from slavery to freedom,
and who releases us from our
enslavements
to those desires and
temptations
that diminish the image
of the Father in us.
And this
has implications for the way we will live
– we must be those in whose lives
good deeds are visible,
those who imitate the
likeness of our heavenly father.
As Jesus
rather uncompromisingly puts it in the Sermon on the Mount,
‘Be perfect, as your heavenly father
is perfect.’ (5.48).
We should
not pray, ‘Our Father’, lightly!
But there
is another side to being an adopted child of God,
and that is that we are the
beneficiaries of the fatherly care of God.
Not in the
sense that God will automatically give his children everything they ask for
– what kind of good father does
that?
But rather
in the sense that God is attentive to our needs,
knowing what we need before we even
ask him (Matt. 6.8).
In so many ways,
this can be a freeing insight
for the person who wants to come
before their heavenly father in prayer.
I don’t
know about you, but I’ve grown weary of the kind of prayer
that seeks to articulate all my
needs and desires to God.
When I was
a teenager I was encouraged to keep a prayer list,
and to cross things off it when they
were answered.
Honestly,
it was one of the worst things I ever did for my prayer life
– because it reduced prayer to a
functional activity,
as if by my naming of things
in some spiritual formula
I could in some way
affect their outcome.
I’ll say this as bluntly as I know how:
I
don’t think prayer changes God,
or
God’s mind, or God’s activity in the world.
In fact, I’ll go further:
I
have a suspicion that to utter a prayer list
according
to some set incantation such as,
‘in
the name of Jesus Christ, Amen’,
might
actually be sorcery.
I
am deeply concerned when humans think they can control God
by
invoking prayer rituals or practices.
I want prayer
to be so much more
than presenting God with a shopping
list of my needs;
and I don’t
want the guilt that comes
from missing something or someone
out of my prayer list;
and surely
God, if God exists, just knows this stuff already?!
Well, yes
he does, as Jesus says,
Matthew 6:7-8 When you
are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think
that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your
Father knows what you need before you ask him.
God knows our needs before we do,
and so prayer can become
something very different
to just telling God our
needs in the hope that he will meet them.
Prayer to God our Father
is prayer offered to the
one who already knows us
better than
we know ourselves,
and who loves us more
than we love ourselves.
Such prayer is not about changing God,
or changing the
outworking of God’s love in the world.
It is about bringing ourselves into alignment with the love of God
who is reaching out to
us, and through us, and with us,
to draw the world to
himself.
And, as Jesus himself discovered in the Garden of Gethsemane,
prayer does not stop the
difficult stuff happening to us or those we love.
Contemplating the horrors of the cross that lay before him, Matthew tells
us
that Jesus ‘threw himself on the ground and
prayed,
“My Father, if it is
possible, let this cup pass from me;
yet not what I want but
what you want.”’ (Matthew 26:39)
The prayer in
the Garden did not avert the cross,
but it did allow Jesus to embrace
it.
And this is
what it means for us to pray to God our Father;
the future is still before us, with
all the joys and sorrows that it holds,
but in prayer to our loving Father,
we are drawn into the
all-embracing love of God.
And it is
we who are changed by this prayerful encounter.
It is we who are called to set aside
our selfishness, and our fear,
and all the pretentions
that mask the image of God in our lives.
He is our
father, and he welcomes us into his presence
as we draw near to him in prayer.
And I know
the point I’m about to make has been made many times before,
but it is worth making again.
For some of
us, the image of God as Father is deeply problematic.
Human
fathers, even at their very best,
will only ever by poor reflections
of God the Father,
and at
their worst they can be terrible perversions
of what Godly paternal love should
look like.
Some of us
here today will have suffered violence and abuse
from fathers who should have been
different.
Some of us
will have suffered the absence of a father through our formative years.
So I’m just
going to say, if Father God doesn’t work for you, that’s fine.
It’s only an image, it’s just
language.
All
language of God is inadequate anyway, so feel free to substitute.
If Mother works better for you, go
with that.
Or
maybe ‘Idealised Parent’.
Or
whatever language captures for you
the experience of being loved
unconditionally
by one who longs for your presence.
If we’re
going to hallow the name of God,
then we’d better use a name that is
worth hallowing.
But for
now, if you’ll allow me, I’ll stay with the language of God as Father;
as it’s there in the text, and it carries
helpful meaning for many, if not all.
So, ‘pray
in this way’, says Jesus: ‘Our Father in heaven…’
And here we
hit straight up against another preconception of God
that can be less than helpful.
If God is
our Father in heaven,
does this mean that the one we are
praying to
is
some kind of absentee God,
sitting up there, metaphorically speaking,
on a cloud
and
attended by putti and cherubs?
Certainly,
if the medieval artwork of God-on-high is to be believed,
that is exactly what ‘Our Father which
art in Heaven’ looks like.
However we
have to recognise that what is at play here
is a pre-scientific cosmology
that
might have worked two thousand years ago,
but doesn’t really work so well for
us today.
In the
ancient Jewish spiritual tradition,
they pictured the heavens as a kind
of reflection of an earthly royal court.
So, just as
a king on earth had courtiers and attendants,
and sat on a raised throne
indicating his power and authority,
so they saw
God sitting on his throne up in heaven,
surrounded by the heavenly host of
his attendants and armies.
And heaven
was very definitely ‘up’ there somewhere, high above the clouds.
Sometimes, they
thought,
the veil between the heavens and the
earth wore a bit thin,
particularly if you went up a
mountain;
it’s one of
the reasons people in the Bible
often seem to go up to mountain tops
to pray, or to meet with God.
They were, they
believed, quite literally closer to God there.
Well, I’m
pretty sure that none of us think
that going up a mountain takes you
literally closer to God.
Figuratively
speaking, maybe
– I absolutely do get the sense of
transcendence
that a magnificent view can offer.
But not
literally.
I’m not closer to God in an
aeroplane than I am in church!
So I think we
need to intentionally set aside the view
of Our Father in Heaven as a distant
God,
enthroned
above the clouds
and removed from our lives
experiences of the world.
I think
that a more helpful way of thinking of God as our Heavenly Father
is to embrace this language as
speaking to us
of a God whose nature is to embrace
all of the created order.
He is the
God of the heavens and the earth,
the God of nature, the God of all
peoples,
the God of all animals and all
plants.
Our Father
in Heaven is a vision of God
whose love and care extends to the
vastness of all that is;
and so to
think of ourselves as children of this God
is to name ourselves as those
who are called to share with him in
the task of universal love.
Rowan
Williams has said that,
‘Very near the heart of Christian
prayer
is
getting over the idea that God is somewhere a very, very long way off,
so
that we have to shout very loudly to be heard.
On the contrary: God has decided to
be an intimate friend
and
he has decided to make us part of his family,
and
we always pray on that basis.’
So praying
to Father God in heaven
is not praying to the sky,
hoping anxiously that the distant
God can hear and will respond.
There is a
profound paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer
developed by the African Fellowship
of Union Church in Istanbul
that captures this sense of the
heavenly God
who desires
to make himself available
to all people everywhere who call
upon his name.
I
discovered it in a book on the Lord’s Prayer by Nijay Gupta,
which has been very helpful to me in
the preparation of this sermon.[1]
And with
this I’m going to close:
Our Father Who Art in Heaven
You are in
Istanbul, in our flats and hotels
in Taksim and Beyoglu.
You are
within us and in our homes.
You are in
Africa, Europe,
Australia, and the Americas.
In
Yugoslavia and Russia.
You are with
the hungry and dying children in Somalia.
Also in
Liberia, Bosnia, Ethiopia,
Sri Lanka, Kuwait, and Iraq.
Amen.
[1]
Gupta, Nijay K. The Lord's Prayer. Smyth & Helwys Bible
Commentary. Macon, Georgia: Smyth &
Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2017, p.51.
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