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“Sacred Unity, Giving Birth to the World”

Sermon by Peter Terpenning
July 25, 2004
Luke 1:1-13

            My subject today is prayer, and specifically, the Lord’s Prayer from Luke 11 and Matthew 6. It’s kind of a hard subject to address for I find that it tends to be an emotional one for many people. Either they love it or they hate it. The Spiritual Life Commission has been talking around the subject for months, wondering if we should change the way we say the prayer in church to be more inclusive. That is, should we start with something other than “Our Father”? But we are careful, for we know that this prayer, like other writings at the heart of the faith, such as Psalm 23 and Christmas Carols, are changed at great peril. People are attached to the words, and have deep emotional ties
            My own experience is a good example. When I first came back to God after moving away during my teenage years I was in trouble. I thought I was going crazy, experiencing panic attacks and paranoia related to drug use. One night, out of fear and desperation I prayed. I did not know how to pray, so I fell back on the Lord’s Prayer, for I figured it was a safe prayer, having come from Jesus after all. The result of the prayer was a kind of mystical experience that filled me with peace and a sense of God’s protection and I was able to sleep. I doubt if a day has passed since then that I have not said the Lord’s Prayer, usually at bed time. I am emotionally attached to it.
            Luke and Matthew both have the prayer. In Matthew it is a little longer and includes the words, “Our Father who art in heaven” and “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” and “deliver us from evil”. Current scholarship attributes the differences to the fact that Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience and Luke to a Greek audience. Matthew includes more elements of the traditional Jewish Kaddish Prayer which mirrors the Lord’s Prayer closely.  Neither version includes the blessing at the end that we use “for yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever”. That was a later addition. The great debate over debts versus trespasses versus sins in the part about “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” is not resolved either for Matthew uses a word best translated debts or trespasses and Luke uses a word translated as sins.
            There is not much question about most of the translation. The problem for contemporary scholars is the first line: “Our Father, who art in heaven”. Some scholars insist Jesus prayed in Hebrew. Abba is the Hebrew word used and is a familiar form of address, often used by children and best translated “Daddy”. This familiar address shows the closeness Jesus felt to God. But most scholars agree now that Aramaic is the most likely language for the prayer. Aramaic is not so simple. Generally, the Aramaic words do not mean only Father. Aramaic is a poetic language, not easily pinned down in modern English. The words that begin the prayer in Aramaic are “Avroon Bathsemia” (spelled phonetically). These words have to do with the Spirit of God that blew over the waters at creation. It is a sound of wind. It implies a unity of all things, a unity, a divine connection to the Creator. This creator is giving birth to the world – not just once – but continuing. Like Meister Eckhart, the medieval Christian mystic said, “God is lying on a birthing bed giving birth to the world”. So the imagine of this God who Jesus addresses in his prayer is of a divine parent, a sacred unity, blowing through the world, giving birth to the world. Hardly a male image, but not totally feminine either.
            Based on this, we could just as correctly say mother or parent, loving creator or sacred unity. The Spiritual Life Commission suggested we test out different names in our worship and see if any become comfortable for our congregation. But let’s consider the rest of the passage and I think it will cast some light on the problem.
            Most scholarship on this passage in Luke includes the prayer as part of larger lesson that we read concerning the man seeking help from his neighbor and God as a parent who will not give the children a snake when they ask for a fish. For Luke the issue is not what word one says to God, but the nature of God that is important. When the friend goes at night to ask for bread our translation of the word persistence leads us to think that we have to browbeat God into hearing us. However, the word is better translated “shamelessness” and reminds us that the neighbor is beholden by the rules of hospitality in Hebrew culture to give the man the bread.  The friend is approaching with absolute confidence that his neighbor will give him what he asks for. This is the way we are to go to God, says Jesus. An honorable God will answer. Like a loving parent, says Jesus, who knows what the child needs better than the child. So we approach God with trust: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened.” We know how to give good gifts to children, how much more must God?
            Prayer is successful, not because we say the correct magic words, but because of the nature of God. It is God who answers – and according to Jesus – this God is a loving, good parent, an honorable neighbor, a friend. So whether we say Father or Mother or Sacred Unity – or maybe we just say, “Help!” and God will answer because it is God’s nature to answer – not because we know the right words.
            Now the problem that remains is that I think many people doubt the basic loving nature of God. We look at the ruins of the 20th century, and human history – present wars not excepted, and we wonder where the evidence is that God is a loving, dependable parent. Many people have prayed for the recovery of a dying loved one, only to bury them days later. A Jewish author I read this week asked how anyone can pray the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Israel next to the graves of Auschwitz? Who can talk about giving us this day our bread when we consider the present day Holocaust happening in Sudan?
            The answer, continued this author, is to remember that both the Lord’s Prayer and the Shema were prayed in Auschwitz by the victims. Like Job, we do not profess to know God’s will. It is not for us to place our human limitations upon God. Security is more than safety. Life is more than bread. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Prayer is our link to a Creator who we can trust. Frederick Buechner called it “breaking the silence” between us and God.  Through prayer, we reach across the dim mirror through which we view reality. We do not understand – we seek the peace that passes our understanding. Prayer is one step of a mystical relationship that is possible with God. Getting back to Luke – he witnesses that Jesus taught people to trust God. We can ask, we can search, we can knock, and expect God to be there. Not with the answer we expect, for we do not know what to ask for, but God can be trusted.
            Frankly, for me, it comes down to the decision to trust Jesus that God is. God is a loving parent, a creator giving birth to the world, a sacred unity that I can tap into as I learn to pray and meditate and quiet my mind. I am part of this sacred unity – part of the pattern of the universe and though it may not be clear to me; no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. I pray, not because I know how, but because I trust the nature of God, this Sacred Unity that is giving birth to the world.