An Encouraging Word

When Jesus came teaching his Disciples, he actually was beginning a revolution.  He began his ministry by declaring that the Kingdom of Heaven was near.  The Sermon on the Mount is a revolutionary document in which Jesus teaches us that our righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees, the best of their day.  He goes so far as to say that we must be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect.

 We pray each Sunday the words, “Our Father, who art in Heaven . . .”  Have you ever stopped to think how revolutionary those words are?  In the routine of our prayers, we may neglect or forget just how revolutionary those words are.  (They are, after all, a part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ revolutionary inaugural message).

When I was in college I heard someone say for the first time that there are people in this world who have a difficult time calling God “Father”.  For the most part, their own families were dysfunctional and their fathers were either absent, abusive, weak or otherwise simply less than what they would have wished them to be.  I had never made this connection before because frankly two of the best men in my life were my dad and my grandpa.  Furthermore, two of the powerful men in my dad’s life were his “Pa” (his step dad, my Grandpa) and his own Grandpa.  With all of that in my lineage, I had not thought of others who had a challenge in calling God “father.”

 I attended a meeting several years ago in which a female pastor mentioned that one of her parishioners had a difficult time calling God “Father.”  When the pastor told our group that she told the lady that we could not change how we referred to God, another female pastor, a very angry and bitter feminist pastor, barked out “Why can’t we change the title that we call God?”  I didn’t respond because I wanted to see the dynamics of the group.

However, had I responded I would have asked how fair it was for us to change calling God Father because some people had a problem with it.  I know others who love to call God “Father” because their experiences with their own fathers was so good or their memories of their deceased father is important to them.

But the reality is that my answer would have missed the point in the same way that the angry feminist’s response missed the point!

Here is the point:  when Jesus came teaching the Sermon on the Mount, he referred to God as perfect and as the Father in Heaven.  Furthermore he taught his followers to pray “Our Father”.  No one called God Father before Jesus taught this prayer.  It was a revolutionary idea.  Jews thought of God as the father of the nation as a whole, but no one prayed to God as “Father.”  It sounded disrespectful.  They did not have the right to pray to God as Father, nor the permission.

But Jesus teaches us to call God Father in prayer, because of the intimate nature of prayer.  And here is the key point:  It doesn’t matter whether your own home life saw father as positive or negative.  Jesus was inviting his followers to share the same relationship with God that he himself shared.  My friends, that is a revolutionary idea.  That is what we do each time we pray.  We join Jesus’ revolution!  So pray! 

Yours for learning to pray,                                                                                          Bob Jackson, Pastor