GOSPELS 9 FAMILY

GOSPELS 9 FAMILY 

Today I’m doing number nine in the Gospel series and I’m calling today’s word Family. I’m looking in Matthew and Luke, the two longest gospels, where Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer and then teaches them the Lord’s prayer - The ‘Our Father’ – the Father of his family in the earth. The accounts of this are in Matthew chapter six and in Luke chapter 12.  Matthew has a bit more detail, so I’ll go there. 

Reading in Matthew 6:5 ‘And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, so that people can see them. I’m telling you, they already have their reward. But for you, when you pray, go into your room, and close your door, and pray to your Father privately; and your Father who knows every hidden thing will openly show you afterwards how he has answered you’. This kind of prayer works.
Jesus had criticised the show off Pharisees for good reason because they looked good on the outside but all they had on the inside were big egos. He called them hypocrites which means actors. Their prayers weren’t for people’s needs but instead were their opinions of how holy they were. So the first lesson from Jesus was don’t pray for show because you’re just putting your ego on display and not God. And then he gave them that radical prayer alternative. The earliest things that he did and said were radically radical, if you can make such a statement. He uncovered their religious hypocrisy and exposed their religious power plays and started a spiritual revolution and he never let up and in the end, they killed him for it. And Jesus is still speaking and leading that revolution from Heaven today if we want to listen.
I want to unpack that radical prayer ‘Go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father privately about all the inner private things that are going on inside of you, the emotions the anxieties the hopes and dreams the threats and fears and the questions - all those questions all those uncertainties. And then he says - and your Father who knows every private hidden thing about you will listen to you - and what you need to hear or to see or to understand will be made clear and stare you in the face if you keep your antenna up.’ 
The antenna of your togetherness with God that is always there for us.  

This was radical for those disciples to hear for several reasons, as it is for us.
It was radical firstly because no one in all of Israel approached God as being their personal father - It was unheard of. But Jesus said that God was his personal Father all the time – he said he was the Son of God and he said I and the Father are one – and he also said that he only did what he heard the Father say, and that is what drove the Pharisees mad. Jesus said it because it was true, and Jesus wasn’t mad, and he wasn’t a liar. 
The disciples would have heard him saying that a lot and they would have believed it because of all the wisdom that he spoke and all of the amazing miracles he performed. But why did Jesus say to them ‘pray to Your Father? ‘Why didn’t Jesus just tell them to pray to his Father because they would certainly have understood that. But he said to the disciples ‘Your Father.’  What was Jesus saying?
And here’s the second radical thing. Jesus was inviting them to become part of the God family with the Father and himself and the Holy Spirit. He wanted them all to become brothers and sisters with him as their big brother. This is why he said ‘Pray to your Father’
This was the Father’s idea from the beginning, and this is why he sent Jesus to us and to give his Holy spirit to each one of us so that we would know we can become part of his family. This had never been said before - never even been thought of before. That’s why I’m calling today’s word Family – It’s like God 1.01 his big idea. Church should be more like this instead of being like an institution.

He then goes on to teach them the ‘Our Father’ prayer, not just a ‘his Father,’ prayer, but the Our Father prayer. The ‘Our Father’ is not a religious prayer ritual to be said in a pious voice in sombre tones as if the more pious you sound the more spiritual you are. That is missing the point of God’s idea of who you are and who he is and what you mean to him as his child in his family. 
God is all about family. He started the idea. Why does it get forgotten?  It’s probably because many church people have tended to talk about church rules and religion rather than loving and caring relationships. 
I was taught in my early years in the catechism the answer to the question ‘Why did God make us? The answer was ‘To know, love, and serve God in this life and to be with him forever in the next. Amen.’ And most Christians agree with that statement, but some think the emphasis is all about being a servant more than anything else. Its not about God wanting more servants.

let’s look at that for a moment – ‘To know and to love and to serve’. That is a beautiful thing to understand. So how many people do you know, how many people do you love and how many people do you serve in your life? I would say there are many. First. You can’t know someone if you don’t relate to them. And you can’t love them if you don’t know them.
I am not saying that knowing someone is loving them, but it starts there and when the relationship has qualities like acceptance and friendship, you’re on the spectrum of liking and loving. And that could be on a range from say one to a hundred. 
And I’m not saying that liking and loving someone means you have to serve them. But what does serving them mean?
It means that somewhere on a serving spectrum on a range of one to a hundred again you might want to just ‘be there’ for them in one way or another. And being there for someone means you are actually serving them. Just think of some of the ways you could do that and are doing that.

And it is good for everybody if that’s always a two-way thing. from God’s point of view he is committed to knowing and loving and serving us and he understands how difficult it is for us as his children (In our humanity) to be that way for him. loving parents have that same heart for their children They try to be there for their children giving them the best that they’ve got so their children can be the best that they can be. But God doesn’t say if you are not going to be there for me I’m going to punish you and make you suffer. No - he says if you do want to know me and love me and be there for me you will live a fulfilled and meaningful life and you will make the world a better and happier place. If you choose to not live that way you will find you just end up causing yourself unnecessary suffering anyway. 

So the way I see us as being in the God Family with the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is that we can see God the Father as a devoted parent who has given us Jesus as our older brother who is dedicated to us. He has laid down his life for us so we can have his life within us and have the same faith and trust in his Father that he has. And we can see the Holy Spirit as the one who touches our hearts so we can know God and love and serve one another. That is the best kind of life there is on this earth. So Jesus tells his disciples about how Our Father wants to ‘be there’ for all of us in the Lord’s Prayer. I will pray it from Matthew’s Gospel and then I will pray it how I hear the Holy Spirit speaks to me in the Our Father prayer.

Our Father who is 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 forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

 

 

Our Father living in heaven you have the most exceptional and unique name, God. 

We want your way of commanding everything in the universe to play out here on earth as it does in Heaven. 

Please keep looking after our basic human needs every day. 

And forgive us for letting you down the way we do, just as we can forgive others who let us down, often without meaning to

And keep us from the trap of always wanting to have what we want when we want it.

Guard us from the powers of darkness 

For You are in majestic command of everything in the Universe with limitless power, and you give to us a stunning display of design and beauty in your creation now and through out all the ages. Amen 

When we pray to God we can pray with hope and expectation that he can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He is devoted and dedicated to that.