“God -- Intimate and Close”

Matthew 6:9

June 10, 2007

        Jesus’ sense of God was so close, so real, and so intimate that he never prayed without addressing God as his heavenly father.  His relationship with God was always expressed from a father-son relationship.  This familiar and ideal relationship has nurtured Christian prayer for centuries.  But addressing God as “Father” can (in some instances) create a great deal of uneasiness in today’s world.

        Paul Tillich, in his book The Dynamics of Faith, states a point I made last week- that all of our language about God is symbolic, “because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.”  In our attempts to describe God we use metaphors, similes, parables, and poetry.  In describing God’s comfort, we are reminded of the words of Isaiah 32:2, where the prophet talks about “the shade of a great rock in a weary land.”  In describing God’s power, we can think of Marin Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” or the more contemporary song “Forever, God is with us.”  In talking about the guidance and care of God, immediately the Twenty-Third Psalm comes to mind, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

        To describe God’s personal relationship with us and the world, the most popular metaphor through the ages has been that of “father” and the “fatherhood of God.”  For centuries we have prayed, “Our father, who art in heaven…” and confessed our faith together by saying, “I believe in God the Father Almighty…”  These metaphors—shadow, rock, fortress, shepherd, and father—have served us well in our attempt to understand and to describe God.

        Rudolph Otto reminds us that it is impossible for the finite human mind to comprehend the infinite eternal God.  For to be God, God has to be illusive, mysterious, and distant.  The Lord declared to Isaiah:

        For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

        So are my ways higher than your ways

        And my thoughts than your thoughts.

        Our desire to communicate to others the reality of God makes the use of symbols and metaphors necessary.  As I stated last week, in our cautious and inadequate expressions, we must keep in mind that God will remain far more than our words and phrases.

        This can be risky business.  A little girl in Sunday school was working very hard on a drawing.  The teacher asked her what she was doing.  The girl said she was drawing a picture of God.  The teacher told her that no one knows what God looks like.  Confidently the girl replied, “They will when I am done.” 

        When we speak, we may feel that not only do we have a picture of God, but also that our picture is the only picture of God.  Once we realize that our language of God is symbolic, we may feel that our preferred symbol or metaphor is the only one.  We are so limited in our expression because our finite minds are trying to express the infinite.  We may distort the image of God by the limitations of the symbols we use.

        Jesus called God “Father,” and it is difficult for us to use a symbol that would convey the same idea of this divine relationship to all people everywhere.  But I think it’s important to try to expand our language about God so that we can more fully represent the nature of this infinite God we address. 

        The Bible reflects the period in which it was written.  The biblical metaphors for God as “Father,” “King,” and “Lord” were used in a time when the monarchy was the foundation of the political order.  The patriarch took care of the other in society.  But for those of us in 21^st century America we may think of other images, not so noble, when it comes to words like “King,” and “Lord.”  Those were not positive experiences in our history. 

        In the agricultural society of the first century, it was inevitable that the poetic imagery of God’s tender care and concern should be drawn from a shepherded and his flock.  This imagery was well known to the people of Jesus’ day.  To them, this imaging of God was vivid.  Sheep and shepherds are not so well known to our world.

        The world has changed.

        However, we must continue to seek to understand what these metaphors meant for Jesus and the people of the biblical writers’ world.  We need to understand how Jesus understood God as his heavenly Father.  What did it mean for him?  Then we can know what it can mean for us?  Then we need to explore modern metaphors that capture the essence of those original and ancient ones.

        Jesus admonished his disciples, “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven.”

        Notice the opening word of the prayer: “Our”—not “my” or “your,” but “our.”  For Jesus, God is the creator/father of all people, from the four corners of the earth.  God is the common longing of the human heart.  The “our” of this prayer cuts across every land, culture, race, and need.  God is not the possession of any one group of people, but all people.

        Then notice that the prayer begins with God.  The very first phrase of the prayer recognizes who God is.  It is only when God is given proper place that all other things begin to fall into place.  The very first words of this prayer is to focus thought and recognition upon God rather than upon self, needs, or problems.  If our first thoughts are on ourselves, we will be disappointed with the results of our prayer and feel that we have failed.  Jesus teaches us in his prayer to get our thoughts off of ourselves and onto God, who for Jesus is “our” Father of all.

        Just prior to Jesus’ teaching the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples he gives two general rules regarding the prayer.  First, Jesus criticizes those who pray to be seen and heard by others.  “But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” 

        The story is told of the time when Harry Emerson Fosdick was invited to Boston on a Sunday evening to preach.  Just prior to his sermon, a prominent Boston pastor led in the evening prayer.  Following the sermon, someone asked Fosdick what he thought of that minister’s prayer.  “It was the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience,” he replied.  The point being made that the people of Boston gathered there were not the audience of the prayer, God was.

        Second, Jesus insisted that we must remember that the God to whom we pray knows what we need: “For your father knows what you need before you ask him.”  We do not come to a God who needs to be coaxed, pestered, or battered for answers.  God is a God of love, who is more ready to answer than we are to pray.

        Richard Foster, in his book Prayer, says that the one thing that should strike us when we read this prayer is the deep, personal, and intimate nearness of God that Jesus experienced and taught.  In Psalm 103:13 the psalmist states:

        As a father has compassion for his children, so        the Lord has compassion for those who fear    him.

        It can be pointed out how striking it is that when the psalmist speaks about God’s gentleness toward God’s people, the image is that of a parent.  God is like a parent in two ways.  First, in being willing to care in extraordinary ways and to stand in complete solidarity.  Second, God is like a parent who remembers where we came from, how we are born, of what we are made, and how utterly fragile and unstable we are.

        Also, Hosea 11:1-4 talks about God who takes the children into his arms and leads them with “cords of human kindness” and the “bands of love” and “bent down to them and fed them.”

        Through the prophet Isaiah, God uses the language of a parent who cares and comforts the children, “so I will comfort you.” 

        It need not be the image of God as a father that startles us as we read the Lord’s Prayer.  Instead, the startling thing about it is the invitation to address God in such a personal and intimate way in the first place.  To the faithful Jew, who even hesitated to speak the divine name, the childlike intimacy of Jesus’ words must have been absolutely shocking.

        The very fist words that a Jewish child learned to speak were abba (which means “father”) and imma (which means “mother”).  The word abba is so personal and so familiar a term that no one ever used it to address God—until Jesus did.  It has been pointed out that there is not a single example of the use of abba as an address to God in the whole of Jewish literature.  Jesus’ utter intimacy with Father God is startling.  Just think about it: The God of creation; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Sarah, Leah, and Rachel; the God of heaven and earth—is our Abba or Imma, Our Parent!

        In the Lord’s Prayer we are invited into the same intimacy with God the Father that Jesus knew upon the earth when he encouraged us to pray, “Our Father.”  We are encouraged to crawl into God’s arms and receive God’s love, comfort, healing, and strength.  We can laugh and weep freely and openly in the arms of Abba.  We can be hugged by a caring and comforting Imma, our Parenting God.

        The whole of Jesus’ life was a prolonged abba experience.  The real test of “our father” thinking came on the cross.  If Jesus was wrong about his life, it would have been seen here.  No crueler instrument of death ever existed.  As a deterrent to crime, the Romans lined the Appian Way with crosses, on which insurrectionists and freedom fighters were crucified, reminding everyone of the price of rebellion.

        Jesus saw the cross and death looming before him.  In Gethsemane he prayed, “O Father, if it be possible! Let this cup pass from me.”  In other words, “Let me avoid what is coming.”  It wasn’t possible.     The masses cried out for his crucifixion.  How close, real and intimate was God then?  As the final hour of life approached, Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them,” interceding for those who placed him there.  Luke tells us that Jesus’ very last words were: “Father, Abba, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  Home at last with his Father.

        Marguerite Henry Atkins wrote a book titled Also My Journey, telling about her years of caring for her husband, who had Alzheimer’s disease.  It is a vivid account of her struggle, pain, anguish, and the hope of faith.  She wrote a poem just before her husband’s death (the words I have modernized some):

        He is my loved one

        But You Lord did create him

          And so You love him more.

        I know You will be near him

           In his death…

        You will hold him close in Your arms

          As a parent cradles a child

           While sleeping.

        That loving, parental image of God brought her hope, comfort, and peace.  She could visualize how in death God was near to her husband, holding him close as a parent would cradle a child.

        Is not this how God cares for us?  So much so, that we can experience the power and strength of Abba, God our Father, like the most positive image of a our Parent we can fathom.  When you pray rest in the comfort of that kind of God.