Our Father In Heaven

I have to admit that the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven”, bothered me for a long time.  As a child I remember watching a sci-fi movie where the leading character is able to see into the depths of space, to the end of the universe.  It began simply, with being able to see through walls, but as his vision increased, he peered into space.  My childhood take was that if he looked far enough, he would finally see God, watching from the distance of billions of light years away. 

So where is God?  So far away that I can not even begin to comprehend it – that is how things came together in my childish mind.  And as I grew, I’m not sure I put away childish things very quickly.  Others don't either -- as a pastor I have people tell me that their prayers don’t make it up to God, that at times they don’t even make it past the ceiling.  They see God as one who is up there and out there, so far removed that we may have to speak up for Him to hear us, or speak long to get His attention.

In the last blog I spoke with great gratitude about Jesus directing us to call God “Father.”  That phrase speaks of such intimacy, closeness, and love. A tremendous privilege, to call God "Father."  Is Jesus now trying to correct our misunderstanding  – “Yes, God does want you to think of Him as Father, but don’t jump to conclusions – He is so far from you that you can’t even comprehend it” – have we misinterpreted what Jesus was getting at?

No, not at all – in fact, Jesus is helping us understand what kind of Father God is. 

For one thing, He is our heavenly Father.  Whatever our relationship with our earthly fathers might be, God is so far beyond that.  I can use this example – my Dad was almost completely deaf.  From my earliest recollections I had to yell to get his attention, and I became increasingly aware of the fact that his hearing aid did very little good.  He mostly read lips.  Carrying on a conversation with Dad was extremely difficult.  When I was in college Dad had a device which was suppose to enable him to hear me on the phone.  I would call home and try to talk to him – and you could hear the sadness in his voice when he would say, “I’m sorry Robert, I can’t hear what you are saying – here’s your mother.” 

My earthly father had trouble hearing me and carried on very few conversations throughout our times together – our Heavenly Father has no such problem.  He hears our shouts and our whispers, and He is always eager to carry on a conversation night or day.

Our Father in heaven – if I think of that phrase in distance terms, I don’t think of God being far removed but of God having an exceptional vantage point from which to see.  My daughter says there is a mountain you can climb in Arizona and see the whole city of Phoenix laid out before you.  We are so near-sighted in the living of our lives, but our Father in heaven has the vantage point of expanded vision.  He misses nothing.  He takes it all in.  We are never lost from His sight.  He doesn’t go around scratching His head wondering what’s going to happen next.  To say God is in heaven is to say He sees all.  Everyone of us.  Personally.

Our Father in heaven – I believe that also emphasizes His closeness.  Scholar N. T. Wright emphasizes that earth is our sphere of life and God is hidden from us for the time being in the spiritual sphere of life.  He is not distant – He is closer than we can imagine.  I think of the scene in 2 Kings 6 when Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the enemy.  The servant was terrified, but Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened.  When they were, he suddenly saw the hills full of chariots of fire, the army of God.  They were there all the time – Elisha knew it, but his servant didn’t. 

When I dwell on the opening phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, using it as a pattern and a starter for my own prayer, my heart and soul goes in these kinds of directions.  I spend time with the Father knowing that He hears.  I relax in His superior vantage point, knowing that He knows what is going on and will direct me as I trust in Him.  And I ask Him to help me live with the awareness that I am never separated from His presence, that I don’t have to worry about my prayers making it beyond the ceiling.  I pray that I might have eyes to see His presence with me always through His Son Jesus.

Our Father in heaven.

Father

My wife and I recently had the joy of visiting our children. Our daughter Alyssa and her husband Paul live in Arizona, and our son Chad and his wife Becki live in Kansas. The time in Arizona was vacation time, tolerating what Alyssa seemed to think was “cool” weather (85-90 degrees) but immensely enjoying our all-too-brief time together. Our stay at Chad and Becki’s house was for a different reason, a much needed study break while Chad and Becki were at work. I still remember the shocked look on Becki’s face when she came home from work, saw all the chairs removed from around the dining room table, and my books and papers strewn all over the place. “Oh my!” were her only words. I wonder what she was thinking?

It was during that study time and as a result of a word I heard several times that this blog (or maybe a series of blogs) came to mind. The word was “Father.” Most often “Dad,” a time or two “Pops,” even a “Daddy” – but also the word “Father.”

I was taught what is called “The Lord’s Prayer” at an early age – my most distant memories include praying that prayer as it is written and has been prayed through the centuries. I have to confess I largely prayed it without comprehending what I was saying. They were only words that tumbled off my lips, filled with the faint hope that God might be moved by this magical incantation.

When I became a Christian in truth and not just in description, I turned from the formal prayers I had memorized to more personal, spontaneous prayers. The Lord’s Prayer became something seldom repeated, on special occasions or in community services.

And then one day I discovered the prayer again.

I was preaching a series on the Sermon on the Mount, and I stared at the words of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 and wondered what I would do with them. It was in that process that I realized that they were not so much words to be repeated as a pattern or structure to help us in our praying. I immersed myself in each word, spending time in prayer dwelling on the meaning of each phrase. I discovered that the prayer was of immense help, guiding me in a conversation with the One who, through His Son Jesus, wanted me to call Him Father.

Think about that for a moment.

Everyone on the face of this earth who knows me calls me by my name or title – Bob or Robert or Dr. Johnston or Pastor or whatever. But from the billions of people in this world there are only two people (or four if their spouses so choose) who have the right to call me “father.”  So few among so many.

This is how Jesus instructed us to address God. He could have given us many other titles or names – they are all found in the Bible. But I find myself deeply moved and eternally grateful that God wants us to think of Him as “Father”. I recognize that some, based on their relationships with their physical fathers, may find that difficult, depending on how their fathers treated or mistreated them. But stripped of all the limitations we earthly dads have, to call God “Father” speaks of tremendous love, extravagant grace, enduring compassion, and eternal relationship.

Jesus told a story about a foolhardy kid who turned his back on all the good things his father had taught him. We dads worry about that, and we are deeply concerned when our children seem to forget what our best gifts to them have been. In the story Jesus told, the child took off on his own for who knows how long, wasted everything he had, and finally came to his senses. He determined he would go home, not as a son but a servant. While he journeyed home rehearsing his speech, his father, who evidently had been on the look out, saw him in the distance. It was then that this father did a rather undignified thing in his day – he ran. With all his heart and strength, he raced to his young prodigal. His son started his speech but was stopped short – his father embraced him, gave him the symbols of sonship, and poured out on him prodigal love.

I think of that passage when, upon the nudging of the Lord’s Prayer, I call God “Father”.  I think of the extravagant gracefulness of that father, and realize that Jesus wants us to think of God in this way, as one who is absolutely delighted to have us come to Him in prayer. That invitation changes absolutely everything about prayer – and for that I thank our Father.

Words

It has been a while since I have written a blog. There are lots of reasons – a busy schedule, days that rushed by, distractions and preoccupations, stress, two sermons and a Bible study every week, fatigue. But the most honest reason – I lacked the words.

I am in Arizona visiting my daughter and son-in-law, taking a vacation, goofing off.

And thinking about words.

A lot of a pastor's life revolves around words. Every Sunday I stand in the pulpit of the church I pastor and speak words. But they are not just any words – they are careful words, thoughtful words saturated with prayer, Bible words, hopefully Spirit-led and Spirit-filled words.

Scholar Thomas Long says sometimes words are just words. I can get up and say all sorts of things, about my love for my children and how I adore my wife and how grateful I am for my church family – but all those things could be just words, Long says. No meaning. No truth. No depth.

Words.

I am reading Eugene Peterson's book Tell It Slant and he observes that though Jesus spoke words, He never wrote words, at least any that have been preserved. The words He wrote using His finger as a pencil in the Jerusalem dirt the day religious leaders tried to trap Him (John 8) were gone when the dust settled. Jesus didn't write any words – He left it to His followers to write the blogs, the Gospels, the accounts of what Jesus did and how He changed their lives and eternities. Words, yes – but words with power and meaning from the One who was the Word become flesh and who was and is God's ultimate Word to us.

When words are spoken honestly and with heart, they expose our hearts, tell the truth, impact others. That is why words must be chosen carefully. That is why our words must reflect who we are and Whose we are. I just happen to say a lot of words that people hear, twenty or thirty minutes of them on a Sunday morning, a lot more on an evening Bible study, and who knows how many in the conversations I have.

I hope I say them well – I pray my words will ultimately be words from God Himself.

I realize that words are not just Sunday things for me or you, they are everyday things, and for the person who follows Jesus, our words must never cease to reflect the One who has changed our lives and eternities. Whether our words be many or few, our conversations long or short, something of the grace of God, the love of Jesus, the presence of the Holy Spirit needs to slip through.

When that happens, don't our words become more than just words?

Eugene Peterson observes that though Jesus both preached and taught, He also engaged in lots of conversations about subject matter which at first might not seem spiritually important. He told stories about farmers and judges and victims, about coins and sheep, prodigal sons and heart-broken fathers, wedding banquets and going to war, midnight awakenings and begging for bread, about cooks and beggars and manure. The stuff of life, in other words. The many things that occupy our time and fuel our words. Conversations that are pregnant with opportunities to say more than just words.

It occurs to me that with all the talking we do, we need to be aware that God wants to say some pretty important things through us. Some of those things happen when a pastor gets up to speak on a Sunday, but they also happen every day of the week in all our conversations. As Christ-followers, we reflect our Lord, and when we converse about all the mundane things of life, we need to remember that our words say something not just about us, but about Him as well.

No wonder James advises us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Maybe then our words will be more than just words.

The Journey With Jesus

I decided back in January to spend a year with Jesus. Reading a chapter a day in the Gospels, I could read all four Gospels four times in one year – actually, 356 days if I don’t miss any. I am on my second pass through and it has been an interesting journey.

First and foremost, I have found it difficult to read just one chapter a day. Some days I get so caught up in other things I miss reading a chapter – other times I start reading, and I can’t stop, I want to see what happens next. But all in all, as I said, I am on track – I finished my first pass through before the end of March.

Second, because I spent 2009 preaching through Mark’s Gospel, my journey has actually been a bit jarring. I got to know Mark really well in 2009, preaching close to fifty messages from the book. I knew something of the rhythm of the book, the journey with the Lord, and so when I began to read the other Gospels as an attempt to continue the journey, I noticed something striking. Each Gospel gets at Jesus in a different way. It is like four different pictures of the same person, taken from different angles. You begin to notice things. Matthew is so orderly, and he waits until chapter 8 to give the miracles Mark gives in chapter 1. Luke has the rich parables that speak of the Father’s love for us. John knows we have read the story before, so he lets us see things from a different perspective, catching us off guard, including things not told elsewhere, like the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Four different angles to understand and appreciate Jesus more.

Third, I have been amazed at how respectful Jesus is of the decisions others make. He is content to share the good news of the Kingdom and then let us decide. He believes fully that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and converts, something I need to remember. He looks with love as a rich young ruler chooses to walk away, but he doesn’t go running after him and say, “Wait a minute, maybe I can make it easier for you, how about you sell just half of what you have?” He lets us make our own decisions, even if those decisions have dire consequences. I have been encouraged to trust God’s work more, and to love others more deeply with no strings attached.

At times my reading is more disciplined – I read through four chapters in Joshua for my Wednesday Bible study, I pour over a half dozen passage in preparation for Sunday night, I print out and pray over the text for Sunday morning... oh yeah, I have to get that Gospel chapter in! Those are the days I wonder if it does any good – except the Lord has an amazing ability to bring to my attention some passage, some verse, some word. Sometimes I think it is like the meals we eat – we may devour some meal mindlessly, preoccupied with something else – but at least our bodies have been nourished. I have learned that God can take what we expose ourselves to and do amazing things.

Isn’t that just like God?

The first pass through I read from the New International Version. This quarter I am in The Message. It is one of my favorites for devotional reading of Scripture – in many ways, it is like a Bible and a commentary rolled into one. I recommend it highly.

This morning I read these verses from Matthew 6: “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

And so I did.

Christ the Victor

John 13:1 declares, “... Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love.”

The full extent – the breadth, the length, the height, the depth.

Literally John says, as the New American Standard words it, “He loved them to the end.” To the point of completion. To the very end of His strength, His heart, His soul.

To the wondrous cross.

How can we get at such extravagant love? It always exceeds our ability to comprehend or fully understand, and so all we can do is give an example, an approximation, an image.

There is a classic image of the cross that has always intrigued me. As Good Friday approaches, maybe it will enrich your meditations on the tremendous sacrifice of our Lord.

Through the years the image of what Jesus accomplished on the cross has been called Christ the Victor. There on the cross Jesus struck the deathblow to evil and sin.

Like a warrior He went to battle – only this was a battle unlike any the world has seen.

Typically a warrior sought to defeat his opponent by inflicting a wound so severe that it renders a response impossible. That is not what we see on the cross – it looks just the opposite.

But there is another way to defeat an opponent. Instead of hammering an opponent into submission, a warrior could choose to stand still and take his enemy’s best blow – to absorb all the blows, one after another, until the enemy literally exhausts his power and collapses.

That is what Jesus did on the cross. He suffered the worst that evil could hurl at Him.

Rejection by His own people in the streets of their capital city.

Hatred from all the experts in His own religion.

Injustice at the hands of the Roman court.

Disloyalty and betrayal by two of His closest associates, Peter and Judas.

Abandonment by His followers.

Public shame at being stripped naked and ridiculed as an impostor, “King of the Jews.”

The agony of the torture of crucifixion.

And in it all, the constant pressure of temptation to give it all up, to smash these ungrateful creatures with thunderbolts from heaven.

Jesus just stood there and took it -- taking on Himself the sins of the world, holding Himself in place – it wasn’t nails that held Him there, He chose to stay there. He took all that was thrown at Him, suffering to the end, taking every sin that could be thrown at Him -- and finally dying.

Had sin won? Was it left standing? Who would get up?

We know.

“Jesus, my redeemer, name above all names;
Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Hope for sinner’s slain.
Thank You, O my Father, for giving us Your Son,
and leaving Your Spirit till the work on earth is done.”

Grotesque Display

I have been preaching a series of reflections on the cross in the church I pastor, a series entitled How Deep The Father’s Love For Us. The title comes from a beautifully written and reflective musical piece by Stuart Townend. The words of this modern-day hymn have often been in my mind these past few weeks. The first couple of stanzas go like this:

How deep the Father’s love for us,
how vast beyond all measure
that He should give His only Son
to make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon the cross,
my sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life;
I know that it is finished.

I look for every way possible to grasp more completely what our Lord accomplished on the cross. I have come to the conclusion that we could never grasp the enormity of the pain we cause God if not for the cross.

Writer Henri Nouwen tells the story of a family he knew in Paraguay. The father was a doctor and he spoke out against the military regime of the country and their human rights abuses. In retaliation, the local police took revenge by arresting the doctor’s teenage son and torturing him to death.

The people in the town were outraged and wanted to turn the boy’s funeral into a protest march, but the doctor chose another way of expression.

At the funeral, the father displayed his son’s body as he had found it in the jail -- naked, scarred from the electric shocks and cigarette burns and beatings. All the villagers filed past the corpse, which lay not in a coffin but on the blood-soaked mattress from the prison.

It was the strongest protest imaginable, for it put the great injustice and the horrifying wrong on grotesque display.

That is what God did at Calvary – He put His Son on grotesque display. We see Him there, with the blood and the bruises and the torture – and as we pass by, we are confronted with the fact that we are the ones who put those nails in His hands. We are the ones who, through our sins, beat him and bruised him and tortured him.

The prophet Isaiah exclaimed in Isaiah 53:4-5, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows... he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.”

How would we ever grasp the pain we have caused God except for the cross? How deep the Father’s love indeed!

Snickers Bars and Lent

I grew up in a tradition of Christianity that practiced Lent, the forty days leading up to Easter. I have to admit that as a child, I didn’t really understand or appreciate Lent – it was that time of year when I was supposed to give up something that had some value to me and I was supposed to learn something. I normally chose Snickers bars. I really love Snickers bars, especially if they are frozen. It was tough to set aside my habit for forty days. Of course, I would never give up Butterfinger bars – that was my true favorite in those days. I would crunch them up and put them on ice cream. Every day after school. For forty days. But I did give up Snickers bars.

When I became a Baptist I gave up many of my childish ways, which included the practice of Lent. No church I have been a part of these last forty years has practiced any form of Lent, and it only enters my mind when I see it is time for Lent on the Christian calendar and many of us Baptists (not all) wonder what it is all about and skip it.

I must admit that I have thought about Lent more this year.

Part of the reason is that I have had some conversations about Lent with some of my church congregation. They have wondered what it is about, if it is a good idea or not.

The other reason is my Wednesday evening Bible study where we have spent time surveying the Old Testament, and we have come across these predictions in Deuteronomy that once the children of Israel got fat and prosperous in Canaan, they would forget all about God. As long as things were tough in the wilderness and they had to rely daily on God’s provision of manna and water, they maintained at least some level of dependency on Him. But once they got into the land of promise, the milk and honey was too much for them. As Moses predicted, they forgot about God.

The observance of Lent is never mentioned in the Bible nor found in a Bible dictionary, which is one reason many Christians do not observe Lent. As I understand the history of Lent, it came into existence when Christians became fat and prosperous, when it was no longer dangerous to be a Christian and we began to enjoy a life of ease like other people in the world. As one writer put it, we began to enjoy our soft couches and our leg of lamb. The pattern of the Old Testament was repeated with people forgetting about God, at least in practice. Lent was a period of time to reflect, to do without so that we might become attuned once again to how dependent we have become on things. It is not about Snickers bars or Butterfingers, but about what our treasure is and where our hearts are. My childhood practice really never cost me much, which is why Lent did me little good. It never struck at the heart of my addictions, of what was truly important to me, what I craved or yearned for or felt life would be over if I lost. If my belly cried out, “I can’t live without a Snickers bar,” my mind would say, “Buy a Butterfingers – this will all be over in forty days.”

I read recently that Lent is like practicing dying – by spending time in reflection on what God has done, marking forty days with true self-denial in some form, we learn the depth (or superficiality) of our Christian faith while at the same time gaining some freedom. We die in order to live – we loosen the grip of whatever it is that tends to control us, and in the process we discover new life.

That sounds a lot like Jesus – “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul?” “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me?” “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be.”

I have some Christian friends who practice Lent, some in their congregations and others personally. Forty days of self-denial in the wilderness enabled our Lord to have a sharp focus – we don’t live by bread alone, nor to simply please others, or to sell our souls for whatever kingdom we might desire. Maybe forty days of giving up something that is truly important to us, of limiting the influence of that which we feel we have to have, might bring a sharper focus in our lives. What’s more, if we can change our practice of faith for forty days, maybe it will be effective for a lifetime.

We don’t have to wait until next year for Lent to come around. You don’t have to say, “Too bad, Lent is almost over, I will do it next year.” No, that is the marvelous thing about being a Christ-follower – any day is a good day to start some self-denial. To give up something. To substitute something better, like giving yourself for the sake of others instead of gratifying yourself.

I let my wife read this blog before I printed it, just to make sure it wasn’t a bunch of nonsense. She said she liked it. Then I mentioned to her that maybe she could give up chocolate chip cookies for 40 days.

She looked at me in horror and decided this wasn’t a very good blog after all. A bunch of nonsense.

Maybe I hit a sore spot – but then, what was I doing telling her what she should give up? What about me?