{"id":77,"date":"2016-02-14T10:30:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T15:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=77"},"modified":"2016-02-14T10:14:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T15:14:05","slug":"hiya-dad-learning-the-lords-prayer-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2016\/02\/14\/hiya-dad-learning-the-lords-prayer-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiya Dad &#8211; Learning the Lord&#8217;s Prayer 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-77-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/hiya_dad.m4a?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/hiya_dad.m4a\">https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/hiya_dad.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/40daysLent-1024x615.jpg?resize=300%2C180&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"40daysLent-1024x615\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-81\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/40daysLent-1024x615.jpg?resize=300%2C180&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/40daysLent-1024x615.jpg?resize=1024%2C615&amp;ssl=1 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This past week New Hampshire conducted its presidential primary and the thing that struck me most was not the results but the process: individuals going to candidates at forums, meetings, even on the street and asking questions. It made me wonder: what would you like to ask Jesus? Suppose he appeared to you as he did to Peter, to John, to Mary, to Paul. Suppose you had just a moment, as they had, what would you ask?<br \/>\nThe gospels are full of questions. Rabbinic teaching to this day is a dialogue: a question is posed, the rabbi, the teacher, ponders the question in the light of Torah and tradition. So the greatest prayer in our worship comes, not as a teaching from nowhere, but as a response to a question.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, \u201cLord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.&#8221;<br \/>\nJesus answers, according to Luke, with what we now call, The Lord\u2019s Prayer, beginning, \u201cOur father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But this prayer comes not only as a response to the disciple\u2019s question, it comes as a response to God. The sailor in a storm, the soldier in a battle, the spouse in a hospital waiting room, pray in response to something larger, some great event that moves their spirit. In the same way, our prayers are evoked, our prayers come in response to God\u2019s great creative work. Wherever we go, there are moments of beauty that call to us, that speak to us, and the response is a prayer. <\/p>\n<p>Surely the disciple asking the question knows how to pray. Prayer has a long history, so long we can\u2019t mark it\u2019s origin. Anne Lamott famously said there are just two real prayers: \u201cHelp me help me help me\u201d and \u201cthank you thank you thank you\u201d. Surely in the dawn of human consciousness, both prayers were offered. For in that dawn, living on the edge of survival, humans must have felt the same fear we feel when we are threatened. And in that fear, their souls must surely have cried out for help, help from some power greater, some force stronger, some actor who could change things in their favor: \u201chelp me help me help me\u201d. So too, in times of satisfaction, when the hunt was successful or perhaps appreciating the beauty of a moment, of a scene they had come upon, their hearts opened like ours and they said, as we do, \u201cThank you, thank you, thank you.\u201d Over centuries, those simple prayers became ritualized, formalized into specific words. Humans imagined a rich former time when gods walked and they invoked them with prayers and worship they believed would benefit their communities and themselves.<\/p>\n<p>In Jesus\u2019 time, prayers were public performances. Ancient near eastern religion included the adoration of statues meant to symbolize gods and ceremonies that were intended to mimic their actions. In Babylon, for example, a New Year\u2019s festival involved leveling the great dirt road outside the city, constructing a platform on which the king rode into a stadium where he slew a lion, replicating one of the stories of the god Marduk. Roman religion was practiced at great temples, through a system of sacrifices of animals. Much of the ancient near east practiced such prayer. We have a reflection of those ceremonies in Jesus\u2019 teaching. Matthew\u2019s gospel precedes the Lord\u2019s Prayer with Jesus\u2019 condemnation of ceremonies his disciples must have seen. He speaks of a procession of prayer, with a trumpet going first; he speaks of people standing in synagogues and on street corners, loudly proclaiming their prayers. Instead, he tells his followers, go to some place private and offer a prayer that looks like this\u2014and then he teaches the Lord\u2019s Prayer.<\/p>\n<p>With this history of ritualized, public prayer, where the words of the prayer themselves are specified, where the point is the effect on the crowd, and the honor the prayer receives, the prayer Jesus teaches and its context is striking. First, he teaches that prayer is private: its location is in the quiet room of the soul. Prayer is not a public ceremony, it\u2019s a private conversation. <\/p>\n<p>Second, he begins his prayer with a shocking statement of intimacy: \u201cOur Father\u201d. It doesn\u2019t sound that intimate in English, does it? We miss the effect. In Jesus\u2019 original language, however, the opening word is \u201cAbba\u201d. Now Abba is a term of intimacy; it doesn\u2019t so much mean, \u201cour Father\u201d, as \u201cDaddy\u201d or \u201cPoppa\u201d; you can supply another word if you wish. The Bible is perfectly comfortable with images of God that imagine a mother\u2019s love, in fact the prophet Hosea pictures God like a woman working in a field, drawing us with what are called cords of compassion. What the text really means is a sort of leather leash mothers used to keep track of children while they worked. In loving families, parents are often called by some word, some name, that is less a name than a claim of relationship. Instead of saying, \u201cour father\u201d, I think sometimes we should begin this prayer, \u201cHiya, Dad\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>Imagine that; try it out in your head: \u201cHiya Dad\u201d. It claims something about God, and at the same time it says something about you too, doesn\u2019t it? It claims a relationship imperishable, unbreakable. It speaks not only the identity of the one addressed but also our own place. For no equal calls someone Daddy, no other power speaks this name; it is a child thing, to say it is not only to say who God is, it is to say that we are children of God. This is the meaning of \u201cour Father\u201d: that we have an imperishable, intimate, unbreakable relationship with God defined by God\u2019s care for us and God\u2019s intention to help us grow up. It is to say that we are before God children, who may at times run off, get into trouble, but ultimately are called back and cared for by a power greater than we can imagine, nurtured by a love we cannot escape. Calvinists have a name for this love, they call it \u201cviolent grace\u201d. It means simply that God can save us even when we don\u2019t want to be saved. So indeed, to pray, \u201cour father\u201d, abba, is to recognize God loves us even when we don\u2019t want to be loved, even when we, like an angry adolescent, say to God, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to walk with me, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHiya Dad\u201d claims a relationship and the relationship precedes anything else. There is no thank you here, no request for help, nothing but that one shocking claim: you and God together are bonded in some way that is beyond any earthly attempts to break the bond. Perhaps that\u2019s why he immediately locates this parent \u201cOur father who art in heaven.\u201d Where is heaven? Another time thought of the universe as layered, earth here, heaven above, some kind of underworld below. But heaven is much more than geography. Heaven is the place where God\u2019s intention is fully realized, where God\u2019s rule, God\u2019s will, is fully expressed. To say \u201cwho art in heaven\u201d is also to claim a relationship, it is to say that we have a home there, we have a home in heaven with this dad, this parent, this mom. For part of the heart of the relationship is to say, this is who our people are, this is where we come from. One of my favorite camp songs says, \u201cI\u2019ve got a home in glory land that out shines the sun\u2026\u201d Maybe you know it. Heaven is home, a true home, and like home, we come home through this prayer. It\u2019s meant to transport us, remind us who we are: children in the home of the loving God. <\/p>\n<p>So the final part of the opening of the prayer shouldn\u2019t surprise us: \u201challowed be your name.\u201d I guess more misunderstanding comes from this than any other part. When I was a kid, I didn\u2019t know the word \u2018hallowed\u2019, I thought it meant \u2018hollowed\u2019. I didn\u2019t understand why God\u2019s name would be hollowed out, like a gourd. Hallowed is actually, of course, just an old English way of saying, \u201cGreat!\u201d or \u201cPraised!\u201d It is a reminder, right form the beginning, of God\u2019s greatness. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.\u201d Hi dad, I remember home, and how great you are. Perhaps Lamott is right in general about prayer but this prayer does not begin with anything God has done for us, or anything we hope God will do. It isn\u2019t about doing at all at the opening. Before the doing, before the hope, there is just this great, ringing affirmation of relationship. Hiya dad\u2014I\u2019m yours, I\u2019m your child; I know you\u2019re in heaven\u2014I know you are my home. Hallowed be thy name\u2014I know your greatness, your goodness, and I live within it. This is the beginning of Jesus\u2019 prayer and it\u2019s meant to be prayed as the beginning. Right from the beginning, before we ask, before we are asked, we are meant to remember: whose we are, who we are.<\/p>\n<p>This week, I want to give you an assignment, and it\u2019s simple. Just prayer this one line, this one sentence, each day as a prayer. Do it right: go somewhere private, alone, no cell phone, no TV, no screens at all, just you and the quiet. Breathed, wait until you are calm and then pray the prayer. And then, see if you can find your own words. What word expresses the intimate caretaker for you? Where is the home of that one? What praise would you give? \u201cOur father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.\u201d We are meant to pray this in our homes, in our hearts. Let us indeed claim our relationship and our home with God for we do indeed, have a home in glory land that outshines the sun.<br \/>\nAmen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past week New Hampshire conducted its presidential primary and the thing that struck me most was not the results but the process: individuals going to candidates at forums, meetings, even on the street and asking questions. It made me wonder: what would you like to ask Jesus? Suppose he appeared to you as he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,3,13,2],"tags":[15,16,14],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent","category-sermon","category-theology","category-worship","tag-calvinist","tag-prayer","tag-violent-grace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1268,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/1268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}