Tag-Archive for » Our Father «

Why We Pray

Thursday, October 06th, 2011 | Author:

Avinu Malkeinu, Ein Lanu Melech Ela Atah.  Rabbi Akiva  (50 – 135 AD)

Avinu Malkeinu – Rabbi Akiva lived just after the time of Yeshua, during the time of the Messianic expansion to the Gentiles.  He was a bit younger than Paul.  He had and continues to have enormous influence over Judaism.  In fact, the prayer that is now a part of the Yom Kippur liturgy, is attributed to him.  It begins, “Our Father, Our King, we have no King but You.”  You can hear a beautiful musical rendition here. 

Akiva’s words direct us toward the question, “Why do we pray?”  The answer Akiva provides is two-fold.  We pray because God is our Father and we have no one else to turn to.  Everything that sustains us comes from Him.  As King, He is sovereign over our lives.  Unless He grants us His blessing, we will not survive.  As Father, He is intimately involved in our lives.  His compassionate care is essential.  Secondly, we pray because God’s honor depends on our survival.  We are attached to His name.  He has called us His children.  Therefore, His reputation among the nations is directly tied to the demonstration of His care over us.  God’s fate is in our hands, so to speak, since the witness of His majesty and power is visible in His people.  If we do not survive, God’s name is not glorified.[1]

Of course, this prayer reminds us of another Avinu prayer, the one uttered by Yeshua.  That prayer does not prompt us to ask why we pray.  Instead, it prompts us to ask to whom do we pray.  Yeshua’s Avinu prayer lifts our eyes toward heaven in a glorious exhortation of God’s majesty and purpose and then concentrates that vision in the practical execution of His provision, forgiveness and grace.  But the two reasons for Akiva’s prayer are also applicable in Yeshua’s prayer.  Because God is our Father in heaven, because His name will be hallowed, we have no one else to pray to.  He is the only One deserving of worship.  We come to Him to honor Him.  But just as Akiva noted, God is also intimately involved with us.  We bear His name and, as Moses argued, His reputation.  God is for us!

As we approach Yom Kippur, the day when our Messiah replaced the temporary offerings of atonement, we might consider both of these prayers and hear once more the words that express God in our midst.  Besides, what’s the loss of a ham sandwich among friends?

Topical Index:  Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father, Akiva, Matthew 6:9-13


[1] These insight were formulated by Gordon Tucker in his commentary on Abraham Heschel’s work, Heavenly Torah.  See the footnote on page 203.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 7 Comments

All In The Family

Monday, August 23rd, 2010 | Author:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Yeshua HaMashiach.  1 Corinthians 1:3

Our Father – Paul has just declared Yeshua to be God (verse 2).  But without taking a breath, he immediately offers a salutation from “God our Father and the Lord Yeshua HaMashiach.”  He doesn’t flinch.  He doesn’t backpedal.  He calmly asserts that God is our Father and Yeshua is the Lord, the one we call upon.  It is a great mystery indeed!

At one time Christian theologians espoused the position that Jews did not speak of God as Father.  In an attempt to demonstrate Yeshua broke from Jewish tradition, even men as famous as Joachim Jeremias claimed that “our Father” was unique to Jesus.  Of course, now we know better.  Yeshua was Jewish and so was His language.  Even this little phrase connects Him to His culture and ancestry.

But Paul’s point isn’t about the history of this concept.  Paul has another concern in mind.  The Corinthian synagogue is filled with Gentiles and Jews, but God is the Father of all.  In the Body, there is no difference.  Every man and every woman has exactly the same family relationship to God – and consequently to each other.  This is an important lesson for the Corinthians.  In an assembly where some claimed superiority, Paul drives home the real distinguishing characteristic.  Everyone here is part of the same family.  The only strangers are the ones who have not yet come into the congregation.  If everyone here is brother or sister, why are you attempting to create a hierarchy of relationship importance?  How can some of you claim to be super-family members?  All of us here are brothers of sisters.

We might not live in the rough and tumble world of idolatrous Corinth (we have our own versions of idolatry and debauchery), but we often share the same superiority problem that faced the Corinthian congregation.  Some of us seem to feel we are “called” to be important.  We are the leaders.  We are the elders.  We are the bishops and the pastors.  Ah, but Paul reminds us that we are not more than brothers and sisters.  Any role we play is nothing but a temporary job assignment.  It is not a measure of personal status.  If God calls some to be taxi drivers, accountants, landscapers or foundation directors, each and every one is just brother or sister to the rest.  Jobs do not make the man.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the difference between roles and relationships.  I am quite sure that you have been exposed to the hierarchical concept of “offices” in the church.  Hmm?  Where did that come from?  Do you think Paul placed any superiority on such job assignments?  The man who speaks about feet and hands, eyes and ears can hardly be the man who proposed that some “parts” of the Body are more important than others.  Brothers and sisters, we have one Father and He speaks grace and peace to all of us.

Topical Index:  our Father, 1 Corinthians 1:3, hierarchy

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , ,  | 11 Comments

Surprised?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 | Author:

“Our Father in heaven” Matthew 6:9

Our Father – If you spend any time with Christian commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer, you will soon discover the common assertion that this prayer is unusual because Jews did not address God as “our Father.”  This idea seems to come from the work of a Christian German theologian nearly a century ago.  For unknown reasons, many Christian teachers followed the declaration of this man, asserting that Jesus made a radical break from His Jewish roots when He taught this model prayer.  Unfortunately, no one seems to have questioned this scholarship until recently.

Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson[1] point out that this common assertion simply isn’t true.  Not only are there many references to “our Father” in the Hebrew Scriptures, Jews recite the prayer called Avinu Malkenu every day for ten days prior to Yom Kippur.  In translation, avinu malkenu means “our Father, our King.”  The prayer goes like this:

“Our Father, our King, favor us and answer us even though we have not done righteousness.  Be kind towards us and save us for your name’s sake.”

This is particularly important because it is one more confirmation that Yeshua taught within the context of first century Judaism.  He did not break free from Jewish tradition or interpretation to start a new faith.  In fact, the more we look, the more we find that Yeshua was Jewish through-and-through.  Gordon and Johnson take us on a journey into the Hebrew version of the Lord’s Prayer – and a few startling revelations occur along the way.

While this bit of scholarship might give you another element in the defense of the Jewish “Jesus,” the real message behind our shift of perspective on the Lord’s Prayer is its focus on community, not on the individual believer.  If it was commonplace for the Jews to address God as “our Father,” then we must look to their understanding of the fatherhood of God if we are going to appreciate what Yeshua really taught.  What we discover is the Jewish idea that God is the Father of all Mankind.  That might not seem too startling to those who have embraced the universalism of Christian thinking, but it certainly shifts the usual Christian view of Judaism.  Far too often Christians believe that Judaism is a religion of exclusion, drawing hard and fast distinctions between Jews and Gentiles.  Far too often, Christians characterize Judaism as a religion of rule-oriented separation.  What we have failed to see is the truth in God’s proclamation to Abraham, “through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”

Yeshua called Israel back to its true purpose – to reach out to the nations.  Abraham understood that message and is known for his hospitality toward others and his intercession for others.  To be grafted into Israel is to be grafted into God’s plan to extend grace to all through some.  The first words of our Lord’s prayer suggest that community is central to all thinking about God.  We must put aside the Greek proclivity toward individual spirituality and look toward our Father, the person we find together.

Topical Index:  Our Father, Avinu Malkenu, Matthew 6:9, community

[1] Gordon and Johnson, A Prayer To Our Father, 2009

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 16 Comments

Without History

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | Author:

Our Father in heaven  Matthew 6:9

Our Father – The usual interpretation of this opening phrase focuses on fatherhood.  Questions are raised about how we can understand God as Father if we lack examples of human fathers.  This is, of course, a monumental problem in our culture today.  With more and more children raised in the absence of fathers, and with the sinful passion to simply eliminate the need for a father, our children are pushed one step further away from embracing the true Father.  We need to be reminded of the importance of godly fathers. 

But this is not what I want to look at today.

You may have been taught that the concept “our Father” was new to Jewish ears.  Not so.  It was not at the forefront of Jewish thinking, but there are plenty of examples of the collective understanding of God as our Father in Jewish thought.  Nevertheless, there is something here that shines a new light on this divine connection.  When God is our Father, none of us have any history.

Here’s what this means.  We are all connected through some link in the history of our past.  Somewhere back there, we all came from the same beginning.  The Bible certainly emphasizes our common legacy.  No man is radically separated from any other man.  Enemy or friend, we are all still brothers.  But Yeshua suggests something deeper.  When we pray, “Our Father,” we stand in direct relationship to God.  We no longer depend on our human ancestry to establish our relationship with Him or each other.  He is our immediate Father.  We stand before Him without any legacy or ancestry.  He conceived us (that’s what Jesus says in John 3) and we are His direct children.  This is commonly expressed as “God has no grandchildren.”  That’s true.  But what it implies is pretty deep.

If God is my immediate Father, and He is your immediate Father, then we are bonded together by spiritual blood ties.  We belong to each other.  Yeshua makes that abundantly clear in the pronoun, our.  He is the Father of each of us, all together.  And when we approach Him, we do so as part of His immediate family.  Our presence before Him is not individualistic.  We represent each other.  We are His children, plural.  We need to think of ourselves as His children, plural.  This concept runs deep in Scripture.  When one sins, all are affected.  When one hurts, all cry out.  When one rejoices, all dance.  When one is lost, all are grieved.  After all, He is our Father.

This is the opening thought of the model prayer.  Did you get that?  The very first thing in prayer is to realize our common bond.  Prayer begins with “us,” not “me.”  I have no history to rely on.  I have only you, my brothers and sisters.  We come to Him together.

Maybe we should start praying all over.

Topical Index: Our Father, history, community, children, Matthew 6:9

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 7 Comments