Our (Father)

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
But rescue us from the evil one.
For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever. Amen.
–Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9-13

If Jesus is the Son of God, then it is right for him to pray: “My Father.”

But he prays: “Our Father.”

Out of all the family and friends who hold Travis Irwin in high esteem and love him with deep affection, only three can ever call him their father. That is because he had only three children: My two sisters and me. My brothers-in-law or my wife could call him “Dad” as some in-laws do, but he is not the man who fathered them.

Travis Irwin is my father and my sisters’ father; he is not your father.

So it would be incorrect and strange, even among people who love and respect him to the utmost, to address Travis Irwin as their father, too.

But Jesus prays to his Father: “Our Father.”

When Jesus speaks, he wastes no words. Not one of them is empty (see the Book of Isaiah 55:11).

No. When Jesus prays “our Father,” he means his Father and our Father (see Gospel of John 20:17).

“Huh,” you may say to yourself. “I guess I’m OK with that as long as those who call God ‘Father’ are obedient children.”

But who does Jesus teach to pray this way?

The disciples who “came to him” (Matthew 5:1) are brawlers, cheats, cowards, doubters, liars, potty-mouths, simpletons, terrorists, thieves, and prone to possession by demons and the devil himself.

They are anything but “obedient children.”

And Jesus knows this when he includes them in “our Father!”

“I’m not so sure,” you may say. “I mean, what about people who deny the existence of God or don’t want to know God or refuse to obey God? Surely Jesus doesn’t mean they can call God their Father, does he?”

In fact, he does.

Go read the Gospel of Luke 15:11-32.

Jesus tells the story of a son who loves what his father’s money will buy more than he loves his father. When he tells his father that he wants his inheritance now, he means that his father is worth more to him dead.

The father cashes out his IRA and gives the money to his son, who runs off to Vegas with it. There, he blows every penny on booze, drugs, gambling, and prostitutes.

He ends up a junkie with an STD, eating at the soup kitchen, sleeping below the underpass, and selling sex acts to earn his next blow or bottle.

Drunk or high (he can’t remember or tell), he’s in the middle of one of those sex acts when he hits rock bottom. He’s cold, dirty, hungry, and wasted.

And desperate.

He’s not sure that he’s sorry for what he did, but he is sure that he wants a hot meal, a shower, some clean clothes, and a warm bed in a safe place.

And he can think of only one way to get what he wants: Go home and hope that the old man will take him back.

He’s crafty. After all, he manipulated (or thinks he manipulated) his father into giving him his money. And, living on the streets, he’s had to be shrewd as a snake just to survive the nights. He’s had to learn how to tell a good sob story to get tourists on the Strip to give him a few bucks for “bus fare.”

Now he comes up with a scheme that starts with getting money for bus fare for real: He’ll go home to his dad, make a big show of saying how sorry he is for everything he did, and offer to work alongside the hired hands. He doesn’t plan to stick around for long–he’s not sure his dad will even let him on the property–but if he can get just a couple of nights at home, he can get clean and fed. Maybe he can even get a few bucks to buy a ticket to the next town. He can start over there.

He scrapes together the bus fare and off he goes, his plan in motion.

Meanwhile, back home, Dad makes the same trip into town at the same time every day. He stops at the diner then swings by the Greyhound station to watch for the arrival of the daily from from Las Vegas. Every day, he sits on a bench to watch the passengers stumble out of the station onto the street.

Every day for seven years.

Then one day, among the passengers coming out the revolving door, he spots a bearded, dirty face. The mouth is missing some teeth. The man who owns the face looks like a rag-wrapped skeleton. The eyes dart this way and that like an animal creeping out into the open.

The eyes! The father knows those eyes! They are sunken into the sockets, but they are still the eyes of…his son!

The father doesn’t bother with the crosswalk as he races across the street (a pickup truck zooming by almost hits him). He leaps over a fire hydrant and seizes the stick of a man by his shoulders. He looks into the eyes and…

“Son! My son! My son! Oh, my son…”

The father’s voice tumbles into sobs. He pulls his son and all of his infection and odor and who-knows-what-else into his tight embrace. He lets his face fall on the matted head and anoints it with his tears.

On the bus, the son rehearsed a speech. A speech that is half-honest. A speech about not being fit to be a son or to call the father “Father” anymore.

But the old man cuts him off at the preamble. He cuts him off with a claim that the father-son bond is intact. The father will forever call this prodigal his beloved son and he will forever claim to be the prodigal’s father.

This is the story Jesus tells to give us a clear picture of God who is our Father–even (and especially) when we disobey or don’t care.

So, then, the good news is that when Jesus prays “our Father,” he means it and he means for us to know it. If you are hearing or reading these words, know that you are a child of the God from which all creation and life comes. And you may pray to God, as Jesus, “the firstborn within a large family” (Romans 8:29) teaches us to pray: “Our Father…”

Grace and peace.