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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today at the noon meeting of the Kilgore Rotary Club, I spent more time than I will tonight, talking about ashes, Ash Wednesday and Lent, and the imposition of ashes. The observance and practices of both Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent have deep roots in the Bible and varied emphases over the nearly two millennia of the Christian Church. For example, Ash Wednesday was originally a day to exclude certain sinners from the church, using ashes, a symbol of grief and mourning, but Ash Wednesday later came to be the day when all members of the church began a season emphasizing sorrow over sin and faith that God forgives that sin. Similarly, Lent was originally a time that those adults who were preparing for Baptism at the beginning of the Easter observance would fast and undergo instruction, but Lent later came to be a time when all members of the church prepared for the Easter observance by learning and growing in the faith. You get a sense for what has come before our time.
Where many of us grew up with midweek Lenten services that focused on our Lord’s Passion, more recent emphases have again focused on learning aspects of the faith. Last year, as our Midweek Lenten Vespers made use of the penitential psalms, readings from a combined passion narrative, and sermons that considered a particular verse from each night’s narrative, I was struck by the ways that different aspects of the Lord’s Prayer came up in the readings about our Lord’s Passion. So, this year, as our Midweek Lenten Vespers again make use of the penitential psalms and readings from the combined passion narrative, the sermons—beginning tonight, Ash Wednesday, through our five Midweek Lenten Vespers services, through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and even through to Easter Sunrise Matins—the sermons on those occasions will consider different aspects of the Lord’s Prayer: its Introduction, its Seven Petitions, and its Conclusion. So, tonight, we consider the Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, Who art in heaven”.
You may know that Jesus gave His followers most of what we know as the Lord’s Prayer in what is called “The Sermon on the Mount” in St. Matthew’s Gospel account (6:9 ff.), and you may know that St. Luke’s Gospel account records Jesus’s giving a similar model prayer in answer to a question while teaching and journeying from Galilee to Jerusalem (11:2 ff.). Both of those prayers include a form of addressing God as “Father”, even as the individual Passion narratives found in each of the four Gospel accounts give us examples of Jesus’s Himself praying to God and addressing Him as “Father”. I will mention a couple of those examples as we go, but we begin with the matter of God as our Father.
In the beginning, the Lord God formed the first man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7). God created the first man and woman, and through them He created us. Well do we confess in the three ecumenical creeds belief in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Praying to God as “our Father” is not an idea new to Jesus but is found already in the Old Testament, where, not surprisingly, in at least one place such a prayer is linked to God’s having formed us, as a potter shapes clay (Isaiah 64:8). One can hardly imagine such clay rebelling against a potter (Isaiah 45:9), and yet such rebellion against their Father and maker is exactly what the first man and woman did, and such rebellion against our Father and maker is exactly what we, their offspring, do. As a result of their sin, we are by nature sinful and unclean, and so we commit countless sins of thought, word, and deed. Like them, we on account of our sin deserve nothing but death now and for eternity.
After the first man and woman sinned, God told them they would return to the ground from which they were taken, and He likewise says to us: you are dust, and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:19). Lent, Ash Wednesday, and especially our use of ashes tonight, remind us that we are without any value, loathsome, and insignificant apart from God’s goodness. The ashes signify our shame, humility, and disgrace, but, as we depend on Him, He lifts us from the ash heap (1 Samuel 2:8; Psalm 113:7). As the first man and woman presumably turned in sorrow from their sin, believed God’s promise to send a Savior from their sin, and wanted to do better, God presumably forgave their sin. When we similarly turn in sorrow from our sin, believe God sent a Savior from our sin, and want to do better, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. He forgives our sin on account of what His Son, Jesus Christ, did for us.
On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and addressed His Father with an extended prayer—His longest prayer recorded—a prayer for Himself, for His disciples, and for all believers (John 17). For Himself He prayed that He might be glorified and in Himself being glorified give glory to His Father. Jesus was glorified and gave glory to His Father in His being lifted up on the cross and resurrected from the grave for you and for me, to save us from our sins. In St. John’s Gospel account, Jesus strikingly refers to His Father as anyone else’s Father only once, after His resurrection, when He tells Mary Magdalene that He was returning to His Father and her Father (John 20:17). Only by way of the crucified and resurrected Jesus is His Father Our Father, as we address Him in the Lord’s Prayer. As Jesus had earlier in St. John’s account told Thomas, Philip, and the other disciples, Jesus is the only way to the Father—no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. To know and see Jesus is to know and see the Father. Jesus is the Father’s Son by virtue of their shared divine nature and relationship. We are the Father’s children by grace. We, who have rebelled against our Father and maker, are, by grace on Jesus’s account, forgiven of all of our sins and so restored to a right relationship with our Father. So restored, we put to death the deeds of the body and live by the Spirit, by Whom, St. Paul says in Romans, we cry, “Abba”, Aramaic for “Father” (Romans 8:13, 15).
Early Christians in fact used that Aramaic word “Abba” to address God, as St. Mark records Jesus Himself praying in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). (Incidentally, the name of the Swedish pop-music group “ABBA” has nothing to do with that Aramaic word but is an acronym formed from the first letters of the group members’ first names.) Bible commentators sometimes say that the Aramaic word “Abba” may be better translated as “Daddy”, because of the intimate relationship it represents. The age of the believer does not matter, for even the newest‑born’s words eventually bubble up into babble that addresses its male parent in whatever language it hears and so is learning. At whatever age we are baptized, we receive the Spirit of adoption and are in fact adopted as God’s children (Romans 8:15). The cleansing water of Holy Baptism is pointed to already in the Old Testament by the water of cleansing, which consisted in part of water and ashes (Numbers 19), even as cleansing soap can be made from ashes. Once baptized, when we know and feel sins in our heart, we confess them privately to the pastor and receive from him individual absolution that is as valid and certain, in heaven also, as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself. Baptized and so absolved, we, like our Lord (John 18:11), drink the cup that the Father gives for us to drink. In our Lord’s case it was suffering and death, but in our case it is a cup of wine and His blood that gives us the benefits of His suffering and death: forgiveness of sins, and so also life and salvation. We are made part of the divine family, we eat the family meal, and we pray the family prayer. Even when we pray it alone, God is still “our” Father, the Father of all believers. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther teaches us in the Small Catechism, God is our true Father, and we are His true children. We can boldly and confidently ask Him, our dear Heavenly Father, as dear children ask their dear earthly fathers.
Some people have better experiences with their earthly fathers than others. No matter your experience with your earthly father, God our Heavenly Father is perfect. We are taught to address Him as “Our Father, Who art in heaven” not because He is confined to heaven or as if heaven is the only place He is. Rather, His being in heaven distinguishes Him from any earthly father and indicates how much greater than them He is. He is not limited as they are. He is the creator over creation. He is in majesty and glory, but He is also here where we can access Him: in His preached Word, in the water of Holy Baptism, in the words of Holy Absolution, and in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. In these ways He gives us that which we need and pray for the most: the forgiveness of sins. We indeed pray for other things, as we will hear in the Lord’s Prayer sermons still to come during the special services this season. Ultimately, we ask whatever is in agreement with Jesus’s Name in which we pray, and our Father grants those prayers, as He granted and still grants the prayers of our Lord Jesus Christ for us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +