Recent Sermon from Myers Park Baptist Church

Current scholarship, qualifying his claims, is questioning the absolute uniqueness of Jesus’ use of Abba as an address to God.³ But there is little doubt that Jesus’ use was startlingly novel. For Jesus it was an address which expressed a remarkable intimacy, trust, confidence and affection.

The word "father" had other associations in the Hebrew tradition. God the liberator had freed his "first-born son" from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 4:22-3). God the covenant maker had created a covenant relationship with Israel the son, Israel the daughter. But there appears something startlingly new about the way Jesus prayed to God as Abba. God is a parent who loves us perfectly, provides for us faithfully and takes immense delight in us.

At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus and a Voice from heaven said, "This is my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased." This scene depicts the "Abba-experience" which was, I believe, the heart of Jesus’ spirituality. God delighted in Jesus; Jesus delighted in God. In the gospels every prayer of Jesus began "Abba," except the prayer which quotes Psalm 22.

In the gospels the Aramaic Abba is actually in the text only in the Markan Gethsemane prayer. In the other prayers the Greek word "pater" is used. In my rendering of these prayers I have chosen to take the Greek word "pater" and translate it backward into the Aramaic Abba rather than forward into the English "father."

But we do not stop there. Jesus also said we, his disciples, could pray to God as Abba too. "Our Abba in heaven." This new way of praying was so central that the church felt that praying Abba was itself a manifestation of the Spirit of God and Spirit of Christ in them as they prayed (Gal. 4:6; Romans 8:15). Abba, Abba, Abba . . . .

God is the child’s Abba, as the child freely unselfconsciously babbles God’s name. God is Israel’s Abba: a God saving and setting her free. God is the world’s Abba, gracious provider of all there is, "the faithfulness at the heart of things." God is the disciples’ Abba: in following Jesus we discover our own belovedness.

Should we pray Abba as in Luke or "Our Abba" as in Matthew? Luke’s Abba may be more original, but the meaning of praying Abba in community and as part of the whole of God’s creation should never be lost. All through this prayer we pray "our" as part of a community and part of the world God loves. So "Our Abba" better preserves the character of the prayer.

"Our Abba in heaven." "Who art in heaven" reminds us that the God just pictured in the human analogy of a father and a parent is beyond all we know of mother, father, parent.

Sometimes we use human analogies and earthly metaphors for God, saying: God is like, God is like, God is like . . . . Other times we bow beneath the holy otherness of God and say, God is not like, not like, not like. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways," says the God of Israel (Isa. 55:8). "Who art in heaven" says that God is beyond our best images for God.

Here is another reason I prefer to use Abba rather than "father." Its foreignness helps preserve the mystery of God and blurs, however slightly, the patriarchal sense of "pater."

Father, or mother, as a name for God can be a window open to God or a shut door, depending on our experience. Abba throws some mystery back into the word, as does the phrase "who art in heaven." God who is like a father or mother is also unlike any mother or father we know. Abba in heaven.

"Who art in heaven," however, should not signify God’s remoteness: A God way up there, someone distant from us and from earth.

Let us picture heaven as the realm of Spirit which interpenetrates the material realm of earth. Heaven is the Spirit realm unseen, intangible, yet, to use Reynolds Price’s metaphor, "real as music." The realm of heaven mingles with all created life and infuses creation itself.

Heaven is not the same as earth, as matter and spirit are not the same, but it enters matter as air enters our lungs and is carried on our blood to all parts of the body. Spirit upholds matter. It is life-force; it is what Gandhi called soul-force. It is God breathing. If God stopped breathing the universe would stop.

"The kingdom is within you, entos you," Jesus said -- which means that heaven and its kingdom are that close, as close as your breath.

"Our Abba in heaven." The prayer begins with Jesus’ deepest sense of his belovedness and of our belovedness. God is Abba to us all. So we pray Abba in heaven.

"Hallowed be your name." We do not pray to any god or to God in general: "To whom it may concern." We pray to a God specifically revealed to Israel and to Jesus. The name God gave to Abraham was "El Shaddai"or "God of the mountains," often translated "Almighty God" (an interesting and not altogether satisfying move from concrete image to abstract concept).

The name revealed to Moses as prelude to Exodus was the verb YHWH. We only guess at the word’s pronunciation: "Yahweh." It is a form of the verb "to be." Its translation is elusive, but most translate it "I am who I am." Martin Buber translates it, I AmThere.⁴ The Jews out of reverence will not pronounce God’s name. They instead substitute Adonai.

But Adonai is the title of a male authority figure ("Master"); and Yahweh has been therefore rendered "Lord" in subsequent translations of scripture. From "I am," a verb, to "Lord," a male authority figure: Think of the implications.

Liturgical theologian Gail Ramshaw after extensive study and reflection offers this translation of Yahweh: "Living One."⁵ I like that.

Why did God give Moses a name with an elusive meaning, wrapped in mystery, a name virtually untranslatable? I like the suggestion of Dr.Toni Craven, professor of Hebrew Scripture at Brite Divinity School: "When God gave this name to Moses God was saying, "My name is Yahwah." If you follow me I will teach you what this means." We learn God in the following of God.

When someone calls your name, you turn your head, almost without thinking. The Hebrew people drew back from saying God’s name so they would not presume to control God by the use of God’s name. It is easy to slip into a form of magical religion - - where we think we can conjure God or control God by what we do or say. We are tempted to think or hope that by praying the right way long enough, often enough, God will turn, hear us and answer us. Jesus said, You need not worry about trying to curry God’s favor or get God’s attention. God’s ear is already inclined. God is already coming to help.

To hallow God’s name is to turn from prayer as magic. Yahweh or Abba is not abracadabra. To hallow God’s name is to set it apart in our hearts and in our minds and on our lips, set it apart and make it holy. It is to regard the name of God as the truest and dearest, highest and holiest of all names. There is one name before which we bow our heads, one name that causes us to kneel.

To hallow God’s name is also to take up the cause of God, to dedicate oneself to what God is up to in the world so that God’s name and character be known throughout the world, and God’s healing work done. God’s great cause, the will of God for the world, was signified by Jesus by the words "Kingdom of God." It was the main subject of his preaching: