Portrait of a Father
Chuck Warnock
Chatham Baptist Church, Chatham, VA
June 17, 2007
Matthew 6:5-15, NIV
5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9"This, then, is how you should pray:
" ’Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
11Give us today our daily bread.
12Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.[a]’ 14For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Introduction
Today is Father’s Day and I want us to look for a few moments at the portrait of a father that Jesus paints for us in Matthew’s gospel. What Jesus is doing here is Matthew’s gospel is the same thing that he has done so many times before – challenging the traditions that the first century Jews followed blindly. Traditions that created a social and cultural climate in which religious expression was a part.
Jesus Teaches Us How to Talk to Our Father
So, the tradition was to do your praying in public, because you wanted people to know you were a righteous person. Righteous people, at least Jews, in first century religious life demonstrated their righteousness so that other people could see it. So, they prayed aloud and with great ceremony in public – street corners, public markets, busy walkways – wherever a crowd might gather because then the most people possible would know of your righteousness. Same thing with helping the poor – make a big deal out of it, make the coins clink into the pot, make sure others see you giving your donation. God wasn’t really in the picture here, because the show was for the benefit of others.
But, Jesus changes all that. First, he tells them not to do these things to be seen by people. Big change – what was the point of praying or of giving if not to be seen by other people?
Then, Jesus says something that shakes the traditions of the Jews – he calls God “father.”
I took a course at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond a couple of years ago. The professors for the seminar were Dr. Dan Bagby, and Dr. Cecil Sherman.
Meeting Cecil Sherman in person was a real treat. In class each day, we began with prayer. One day Dr. Sherman prayed and his prayer began something like this –
“Almighty God,” and then he paused for moment and continued, “your son said we could call you Father….” I thought it was one of the most profound public prayers I had ever heard. Dr. Sherman summed up the majesty of God, mediated by Jesus His Son, so that now we had the privilege of speaking to God as our Father.
Jews of the first century did not address God as Father. They might address God as Lord, The Holy One, blessed be his name, or use some other term of great respect and distinction. But never, Father.
Jesus changed all that. Because the first thing that Jesus wanted his disciples, and us, to know was how to talk to God.
When our kids were small and we were invited out to eat by church members, Debbie would always tell Laurie and Amy where we were going, and who we were going to be with. And she would say, “You can talk to each other, and you may answer someone if they speak to you, but don’t talk unless someone talks to you.”
The other day when we were with Amy, and Debbie recalled those instructions, Amy said, “But I always had a story I wanted to tell.” Which was exactly why we told them not to speak unless spoken to!
We were teaching how to talk to others. In the same way, Jesus teaches us how to talk to God, and we start by calling God, “Our Father.”
Not, My Father or Their Father, but Our Father. The Father of us all. The Father who created us. The Father of whom we are all children. Our Father. The one who gave us life.
When Debbie and I were growing up, there was a fad among some families to let the kids call their parents by their first names. So, instead of Mom and Dad, I would have called my parents, Charles and Marilyn. Except I never did. Not once. At least not to their faces. Why? Because that was not acceptable in our household. By the same token, Jesus teaches us what we are to call God – our Father – with all the implications that title carries. Father is a name of intimacy and respect.
My mother’s oldest sister, Ruby, was about 20-years older than my mother, who was the second to the youngest of 10 children. Ruby married, had children, and then her husband died, leaving her with two small children to provide for. She owned a boarding house in Atlanta for several years, and some years later married Mr. Beasley. And, Aunt Ruby always called him, Mr. Beasley. Never, my husband, or John (I’m not even sure what his first name was), but always Mr. Beasley. But she said it with affection and respect, and the way she spoke his name was very endearing.
So, what we call God indicates a lot about what we think of God and what God thinks of us. And Jesus said, “When you pray, say – Our Father.”
Our Father’s Kingdom is His Will for Us
But this Father of ours is somehow also not like us either. He is in heaven. Now when we think of heaven, we think of the place people who love God go when they die – the place where God is. But, in Jesus’ day, heaven was the place of God’s unfettered rule and reign.
So, Jesus says, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.” In our little world, things aren’t what they are supposed to be. But, when we talk to our Father, we long for the day when things will be what they are supposed to be – like they are in heaven where God is.
So, not only do we know what to call God, and to reverence God’s name, but we also know what to ask God – we ask for his will to be done here like it is always done there.
But, talking to our Father about his will is not really that mysterious. When Debbie and I were teenagers, a frequent discussion in our youth group was finding God’s will for your life. That usually meant either 1) help with decisions you were facing: or, 2) what you were going to do for your life’s work.
But here Jesus tells us three things that are the Father’s will for us.
Our Father Provides for Us
We talk to our Father about providing for us – our daily bread. Reminiscent of the manna in the wilderness, our Father intends that we depend on him for our needs each day.
The story is told of a monk who asks the abbott if he should keep two small coins that he has “in case he gets sick.” The abbott replied, “Keep them.” On his way back to his cell, the monk continues to wrestle with the question of the two coins, and returns to the abbott. “In the name of God,” he asks the abbott again, “should I keep these coins or not?” To which the abbott replies, “Those coins are your hope. When they are gone, will your hope be in God then?” Our hope for each day – and all the things we need – is in the Father.
Now if this sounds very monastic and dreary, the Father also surprises us. My father’s first ministry out of seminary was at the Baptist Sunday School Board in the old audio visual department. He traveled a good deal with that job, and everytime he went on a trip and returned home, he always brought me something.
I remember asking him, “What did you bring me?” and he’d pull out some small surprise that let me know he had thought about what I might like. That’s how our heavenly Father provides for us – not just the daily bread, but the surprises of life that give flavor and vitality to our living.
Our Father Forgives Us
Secondly, our Father forgives us. Our home in Columbus, Georgia, where I grew up, was a modest 2-bedroom frame house with a garage and workshop out back. My friend, Charles Norris, and I had made a clubhouse in the back of the old workshop. We’d work on our model cars, or play chess, or just hang-out back there.
Charles’ parents smoked -- mine didn’t. So one day, Charles snuck some cigarettes out of his house and into our clubhouse, and we puffed away for a few minutes, coughing and sputtering with each attempt to inhale. Well, my dad saw the smoke coming out the window of the workshop, and thinking we had set the place on fire, came running out of the house, only to catch us in the act.
Hard as this is to believe, I was not a perfect child, so I had intimate experience with my dad’s leather belt. But this time he just told me to come in the house. We went in, and sat down in the den. And he just looked at me with such sad disappointment.
It was his birthday – January 26. And to make things worse, he had caught me smoking. And his disappointment sat heavy in the room. My lame excuse that Charles had gotten the cigarettes and given me one didn’t make things easier. He told me he expected better of me, and that no gift I could give him would be better than to live my life differently that other people did. Tears came to his eyes, and to mine, as I asked for his forgiveness, and he hugged me and told me he forgave me.
Our Father Calls To Us
But this portrait of a Father would not be complete if we did not realize that the Father who created us is also the Father who calls to us. Jesus words, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” imply that God our Father is with us on the journey.
Our Father calls to us. He calls us into his presence. Who refused to come when their Dad called “Come on, I’m going to the store, do you want to go?” Who ignored the promise of time with Dad or the treat of being alone with him on an errand.
One of the characteristics of our Father is that he calls us to come into his presence.
And so God calls Abraham our of the Ur of the Chaldees to journey with him to a land he had never seen. God calls Moses, a Jew raised by Egyptians, to lead the nation of Israel of of the Egyptian bondage. God calls David to be a special king, to be God’s man for all time. God calls Isaiah and Jeremiah, and other prophets to bring unpopular messages, but messages of invitation to the presence of God.
Then, because those calls go unheeded, our Father sends his Son to call disciples, and eventually us, into his presence. The church becomes the gathered children of the Father, coming in response to God’s call to life everlasting. But our response is because our Father called out to us.
Simon Chan, professor at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, says this in his book, Liturgical Theology –
“We don’t decide: now that God has spoken what should we do? The call brings into being the assembly that makes a true response to the Father, causing us to cry out, “Abba, Father!”
So, our Father calls to us. In those growing up days in Columbus, Georgia, the summers were long and hot, and we didn’t have air conditioning until I was about 12. I would be outside playing, sometimes riding my bike down the block to see friends. As supper time came around, my Dad would step out on our front porch and call, “Chuck – suppper” and my job was to stay close enough to home to hear that call.
Our Father loves us. Our job is to stay close enough to home to hear him when he calls us.
