ABBA - FATHER

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON JULY 29, 2007

Luke 11:2 "Lord, teach us to pray."

Thus a disciple of Jesus asks him to teach him to pray. The reply he gets is in 2 parts.

Firstly - the familiar Lord's Prayer. The prayer that all Christians know and use. Not only because it is the prayer that Jesus taught us, but also because it is the pattern of how Christians are to pray.

Secondly, having given the Lord's Prayer, Jesus tells a parable. A parable to underline how we should persist in prayer, and to remind us that God does answer our prayers. Now we all know this. Yet the request by the disciple, 'teach us to pray', is surely about more than praying for something. It seems to be a desire on the part of this disciple of Jesus for a deeper spiritual life. And we could assume that this man heard Jesus praying and recognizes in the way Jesus is praying something different. For the disciples all knew how to pray. They had been brought up in good Jewish homes with daily prayers and blessings and they went to the temple to pray, as was laid down in the Law of Moses.

But this disciple -obviously wanted more; wanted a spiritual experience. Every age wants a spiritual experience, and some people do not necessarily look to Jesus for that spiritual experience. So Jesus concludes this gospel story by saying: "How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" Having taught us the Lord's Prayer, and taught us to pray persistently, and to expect to receive from God - He then reminds us that the Holy Spirit will be given to us for our spiritual life.

Today's parable reminds us that the common perception of prayer is not necessarily correct. Most people think that prayer is about asking God for things. All of us fall into that pattern of prayer - but as Episcopalians we know it is also about praising God, reflection, meditation, confession, and interceding for others as well as our own needs. It is not just about asking God for things - though that is often what we do.

We can smile at Abraham's conversation with God in Genesis 18. Here is Abraham continually telling God what he should do, right down to finding a mere handful of righteous people in that city. And most people think that is how prayer works. The more we beseech Almighty God, the more often God will hear and answer. Jesus seems to encourage that in today's gospel.

Last week I referred to Mary and Martha as representatives of 2 kinds of faith. Most people when they talk of faith mean our hope that God will answer our prayers or our needs. That’s what people think faith is. Certainly that seems to be the faith of Abraham. He really had faith that God would answer and hear him as long as he kept on pleading. We have this wonderful picture in Genesis 18 of Abraham beseeching Almighty God, who is both distant and all powerful. There is God way up in heaven and Abraham is his servant begging for a favour - and he will not be deterred.

When we come to the gospel Jesus turns that attitude on its head. He says: ”When you pray, say ‘Father’.” The word he uses is Abba - which is not some distant father, but one close to us, as a loving father should be. Abba is an intimate word which implies a close relationship of love - not a distant, uncaring God. Thus Jesus gives us a new understanding of not only how to pray, but the relationship we should have with the God we pray to. And this term Abba would have immediately stirred up Jesus' disciples - for he was establishing a new relationship with God, and a new way of praying. That was the relationship that He had, and it was the way He prayed. We have no better example than in the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday night. Jesus didn't make a bargain with God that night, like Abraham. He prayed earnestly and with full emotion. "Let this cup pass." But having said "let this cup pass"- then comes the immortal words: "Nevertheless not my will, but thy will be done."

On Maundy Thursday night we see Jesus praying with as much emotion as any of us might pray. We also see him living out the prayer he had taught his disciples. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come; thy will be done.

But Jesus is teaching them, and us, more than just a way of praying in the words of the Lord's Prayer. He was teaching them the fundamental feature of the Christian faith - its personal character. The Christian faith is more than a spiritual thread to this life, more than a method of prayer, more than spiritual well being and happiness - though all these things seem to be in the gospel. Jesus is teaching us that Christianity is about a personal relationship. Pope Benedict has said this: When we say the Creed we don't say "I believe in something”. We say “I believe in Thee, the Father Almighty”. When we see Jesus' relationship with his Father, his closeness to Him in prayer, we see that the Almighty God draws near to us in this world in the person of Jesus. Jesus is not just a witness, or a prophet, or a teacher - He is the presence of the eternal in this world, so that the eternal might draw near to us, and that we might draw near to the eternal. As St. Paul says in Colossians 2:9 “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him.”

Jesus wants us to have a personal relationship with God in prayer, and faith, and trust. In Jesus we are on first name terms with God. This does not mean we will never doubt or fail or go astray. Like John the Baptist, who also taught his disciples to pray, we may find an occasion when we ask the question "Are you really He?" When that time comes, a time of doubt or questioning, it may only be the words of the Lord's Prayer that link us to God. As I do my pastoral work in nursing homes visiting parishioners who once worshipped with us, now perhaps with alzheimers, I am grateful that the one thing that still links them with God is that prayer they learnt as a child - Our Father. We should thank Our Blessed Lord for giving us some words that we can use when all else fails.

How appropriate then that today's collect prays that "we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal."

One day the Lord's Prayer may be the one thing that does that for us.