Our Father

Yeah, the Jesus way is what we're calling our summer series going through the sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at TLC. And I just have to say, isn't church fun? I just love church. Is this plain old fun? And you get hot dogs after the service too. By the way, I've been asked to tell you that we have regular hot dogs. We also have vegetarian hot dogs, actually vegan dogs. I don't know what's in them, but I don't know. And maybe they're imaginary dogs. I don't know. But there's vegan dogs. And we also have gluten-free hot dogs. What that is is a hot dog without a bun. So those are available for you afterwards. I'm excited.

Well, as you may know, terrible situation on college campuses across America, college students rioted. They occupied and vandalized buildings, including whole halls and offices of presidencies all over the country. And they even put such pressure on the president of Harvard that the president of Harvard resigned. You're all familiar with the headlines. Oh, did you think that these were headlines from 2024? All of this happened in our nation in the years between 1776 and 1800. Every single thing.

As famed church historian J. Edwin Orr puts it, "Not many realize that in the wake of the American Revolution," which we're remembering this week, "there was a moral slump in America. Drunkenness became epidemic. Profanity was everywhere." And in case you think, "Oh, well, it's everywhere today." In the years following the American Revolution, there was what was known as the filthy speech movement in the United States. It was one of the most popular movements in America at the time. And their goal was, I am not making this up, to incorporate as much profanity as possible into everyday language. So it really was everywhere.

Women, for the first time in the history of the colonies, lived in fear of assault. And a lot of it was beginning on college campuses, which were largely atheist. Around 1776, there was a poll done at Harvard. They found no Christians on the entire campus. Not one student, not one faculty member. A similar poll was done at Princeton, a much more Christian place. They found two. And only five who did not belong to the filthy speech movement of the day. Only five. Shows you how ubiquitous that movement was.

Christians were so few on Dartmouth's campus by the 1790s that the few handful of Christians who were there met in secret and they kept their minutes in code, like some sort of a communist spy cell, because they lived in fear that they would be outed as Christians. This is not some alternative history of the United States. That was what we were. 1776 to about 1799. The country was so politically polarized. This is a cartoon that appeared in a newspaper of the day of a brawl that happened on the floor of the Senate. These two United States senators were engaged in a debate on the floor of Senate, the Senate, when it just went south. And feel free to draw any comparisons you care to make. But this was our country. 1776 to 1800.

Now you might be thinking, well, what about the churches? Well, every church and every denomination was in steep decline. Sometimes you hear people talking about the rise of the nuns, people who are not associated with church anymore. Well, it was much, much, much worse in those days. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that Christianity was "too far gone" in America ever to be redeemed. Some of the founding fathers were in agreement. Thomas Paine said, "Christianity in America will be forgotten in 30 years." How did that situation change?

Well, did the Christians rise up in protest? Did the Christians pick up arms? No, one day in 1794, when conditions were at their worst, a man named Isaac Bacchus, who was a Baptist pastor at a pretty small church, actually, he sent letters to pastors of every Christian church in the United States, just suggesting that they unite in prayer. Now, think of this time, this was not exactly the golden age of interdenominational cooperation, right? But the churches knew their backs were to the wall. They didn't know what else to do. So they prayed.

Across denominations, they set aside the first Monday of each month to pray peacefully, and they found they liked it. Soon they began praying in groups every week, and then a prayer movement swept the country. Christians started cooperating instead of fighting with each other. They started serving instead of stewing about the state of the nation. And out of that prayer movement came the second great awakening. Out of it came the whole modern missionary movement. Out of it came the education system, Bible societies, Sunday schools. Out of that came the abolition of slavery. What I'm saying is prayer makes a difference. Prayer changes the world. Can I hear an amen from the church this morning?

Listen, obviously I drew the parallel because we face some of the similar tensions today that I just recounted to you from the very first days of our democracy. So instead of stewing, instead of worrying, instead of getting unconstructively angry, pray. Pray for the world. Pray for your neighbors. Pray for the students. Pray for the academic leaders. Pray for our elected leaders. Jesus told us to do that. How do we do that? Well, it's a good thing we're starting a section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus taught us how to do it.

In this series, we're going through the Sermon on the Mount verse by verse. And I'm so, I have been so looking forward to this. This morning we come to the Lord's Prayer. The words of the Lord's Prayer or in your tradition, you might have referred to it as the Our Father. They're so beautiful. In fact, somebody said more people have said the Lord's Prayer than any other set of words that has ever existed in any language.

There's only one problem. The words of the Lord's Prayer are so familiar that they suffer from what I call the Pledge of Allegiance Factor, right? The Pledge of Allegiance, the flag of the United States of America. You said it every morning in class and you never thought about the meaning of the words. They were just like a chant. But there are amazing truths in these words and learning what Jesus Christ really meant in this prayer really will change your life and not just your prayer life.

Like it's just good for you to pray in a vital way. I don't know if you saw this, but the Wall Street Journal had an article headline, "The Science of Prayer." And they quoted a lot of researchers that have investigated why prayer seems to help people. Well, they don't know why, but they know this. Prayer can help you in so many different ways. It can calm your nervous system in measurable ways. It can make you less angry. It can make you less irritable. Look at that. Less nervous, less angry, less irritable. Raise your hand if you could use that right now. Can I see a show of hands? Raise your hand if the person you came to church with could use that right now. Yeah.

But one of the most frequently asked questions I get as a pastor is this, "How do I learn how to pray better?" Like, my prayer life is okay, but I want it to be revitalized. I want it to be like I imagine prayer could be. Well, what did Jesus have to say about that? We're going to look at the Lord's Prayer, which I treasure. Some of you know I pray through the Lord's Prayer every morning. I've been doing that for about four years. Four years ago, I taught on the Lord's Prayer, and that little sermon series changed my life. And since then, I've studied so much of what's been written about the Lord's Prayer.

I sometimes I'll spend an hour praying through it in the mornings. I just love it. But consequently, I just want to say that probably very little I have to say this morning is original. As I've studied this over the last four years, I've picked up so many things from scholars that I thought were enlightening. For example, the very first thing that you notice before Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, he teaches them how not to pray. And he points out two mistakes that religious types often make when it comes to prayer.

And we looked at the first one last weekend, Matthew 6:5. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. And we saw last weekend that the word he uses for hypocrites back then was actually the Greek word for play actor or mask wearer. What he's saying is don't make prayer a performance. Right. And that is something that religious types tend to get into. And honestly, without thinking, I can do it to myself, where every time I am when I'm at a Thanksgiving meal or just at a family meal, so often people say, well, let's get the pastor to pray.

And I always think to myself, yeah, I guess I am licensed to do that. And so they asked me to pray and I'm tempted to go all, as I said last week in movie trailer voice on people. And, you know, oh, beneficent and benevolent God, we are so grateful for your manifest. Grace is upon us. You know, all of that kind of stuff. And that's what Jesus is talking about. Don't make prayer into a performance. But then he says a second thing. He says, don't make prayer into a formula. Don't make it into a formula.

He says, verse seven, and when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans, for they will think they will be heard because of their many words. See, the Gentiles in those days looked at prayer like it was a magic spell almost. The idea was if I do this, then I get that. If I know the right words to pray and the right technique to pray, then prayer is going to work for me. Kind of this magical thinking. But what Jesus is saying here is that prayer is not transactional. Prayer is relational.

I mean, Jesus keeps coming back to this whole idea of your religion, your faith, your relationship with God is not transactional. You know what I mean by transactional? Like when you go to the store, your relationship with the store is transactional. You pick out your eggs or celery or whatever and you give them your money and they give you the stuff that you chose at the store. That's a transaction and so often we can view our faith as some kind of transactional. I go to church, I read the Bible, I pray correctly and I pray a lot. And then somehow I earn a blessing from God or good luck or something. That's very easy to fall into and it's a transactional view of religion.

But our relationship with God is not a transaction. It's a relationship. It's all 100% based on His grace. And that's why Jesus says, do not be like them. Don't be like the performers. Don't be like the people who think it's a formula because your father knows what you need before you ask him. Look at that word father. That is the key to understanding Jesus Christ's concept of prayer. Say father with me. Father.

Jesus Christ is saying, do you want to learn how to pray better? Do you want to improve your prayer life? Don't look at the religious types. It's what He's saying to His followers because they tend to make prayer into a performance and into a formula. Do you want to learn how to pray? Look at kids who have a good dad. Look at how relaxed and safe and casual and intimate their interactions are with their father. So easy, so loving. That is how you learn about prayer.

Look, I'm a father, right? We have three grown kids and I know that as a father with our three children and our five grandchildren, a sixth on the way and their wonderful spouses. I got to tell you something. When my phone goes ding and I realize that one of my kids is sending me a text or is calling me and now the oldest one, Freddie, also has a watch. So sometimes he calls me too and I see it's one of them. Man, I will drop anything to connect with them.

And here's the thing. They may not be telling me anything new. Freddie never tells me anything new when he calls me. He just calls me. Hey, Fred, what's up? Nothing. What are you doing today? I don't know. Hey, why'd you call? Just wanted to say hi. Bye, grandpa. Oh, he could call me 17 times a day and say that and I love it. I don't care. I want to pick up because it's them. And that's what Jesus is saying in verse eight. You ever wonder, well, if this is true, why should I even pray then? He already knows what I need.

Jesus is describing that phone call I just described. Of course your Heavenly Father knows what you're up to, but he loves to hear from you because it's you. And he just loves you so much. So with this idea, right, this is Jesus kind of like thesis about prayer. Then Jesus moves into what we know as the Lord's Prayer. He says in verse nine, this then is how you should pray. Now I want you to notice he doesn't say this then is what you should pray. He says this then is how you should pray. Pray like this in this spirit. He's not as concerned with the precise wording. He says, like this.

And you start our Father in heaven. Can you say those words with me? Our Father in heaven. With that introduction, what I want to do with the rest of our time together is just look at those words. That's all. Just examine those words together. And then in the subsequent weekends, we're going to look at subsequent lines from the Lord's Prayer. I'm so excited about this. Have I said that already? This is just going to be I pray and I'm confident that it's going to revitalize your prayer life.

So the first word he says is what? Say it with me. Our. Very important. Plural. Not singular. You know the words I and me never appear in the Lord's Prayer. He is our Father. Look around this room. He's our Father, every single one of us. This praying our Father means I pray with family. You're not alone. You're praying. You're in a family of God's children. And that includes Asian and Latino and African and European and black and white and brown and indigenous people. He's our Father. They're our brothers and sisters. And like family, we look out for each other.

This is timely because it's something we just got a couple of days ago. Some of you know that Julian Pizarro, the pastor of TLC and Espanyol, our Spanish congregation, which meets every Sunday at 11 o'clock over there in Munsky Hall. He's from Chile. And on February 2nd of this year, forest fires raged through the part of Chile that Julian is from. Just to compare this fire to our CZU fire in 2020, we lost about 900 homes. They lost over 15,000. Well, one of Julian's friends churches burned to the ground. The pastor's house burned to the ground.

And so you might recall that in February, we sent some assistance from our Benevolence Fund. That's the fund that we collect for every month. The same weekend that we take communion, we collect for the Benevolence Fund. And we sent them some money. They are rebuilding the church. They are rebuilding the pastor's house. And their senior pastor there in Chile, Alex Ugarte, just sent us this 60-second thank you video, and I thought you'd like to see it.

Hello. I'm Alex Ugarte, the owner of the Sona Cero, the photographer. I'd like to thank you for your support. For being part of me, for my family, for my family. I'd like to thank you for your support. For the opportunity to be part of the community and for the people in the city. I'd like to thank you for your support. Your social economic support. But with you, with the people who are here today, and with you, with you, an English that is part of the community. And I'd like to thank you for your support. And for me, for being a very good person, and for the people who are here today. Thank you.

So thank you, church, so much for your help. But why are we helping him? Because he and his church, they're our brothers, they're our sisters, so we help each other. The Bible says this in Galatians 3:26–27. I love these two verses. Let me hear you read them out loud with me. So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. Keep reading. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Amen?

We don't have to have uniformity. Not ethnically, not politically, or any other way. But we have unity in this. We have one Father. It is our, not my. That is such an important concept, especially in a divided world. Then the second word is Father. Say Father with me. Father. Now just think about that word. This is amazing. Jesus Christ doesn't start our king, even though he is a king. He doesn't start our power, though God has all power. He says our Father.

And I want you to know that when Jesus said, "approach God by calling him Father," people were shocked. Let me put this in context. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, God is referred to as Father, but almost in every instance it's Father of the nation. Kind of analogous to how we refer to George Washington as the Father of our nation. They had a more spiritual view. They looked at Yahweh, Jehovah as the Father of their nation, and that's brought up 14 times. So that's beautiful, but look at this shift. In the four gospels, Jesus speaks of and prays to God as Father, personal Father, 60 times. Six-zero. God is our Father in a personal sense.

In fact, it goes deeper than that. Jesus used the Aramaic or Hebrew word Abba to refer to God as Father. That's the word for Papa or Dad in English. Jesus is saying, "Don't be like the performers. Don't be like the guys who turn it into formula. When you pray, pray like this, Dad." Wow. This means God's not impersonal. He's personal. God's not just a force. He has a name. God's not far away. He's close to you. And Jesus establishes this, and then this becomes a theme of the New Testament.

Look at all the other verses or some of the other verses about God as Father. Jesus' disciples wrote about this a lot like the disciple John wrote, "To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become," what? "Children of God." I mean, that's the secret. That's the main thing that I hope you get from this message today. Saying "Father" means this is who you are. It means I pray as a beloved child. The more you get that this is the central image here, the more you internalize this, the more this is just going to rock your world.

About four years ago when I first did this series on the Lord's Prayer that changed my own life, I told a memorable story about a long time Santa Cruz resident. She lived up in the Santa Cruz Mountains for decades. Her name was Diane. Diane Disney, Walt Disney's daughter. And this is such a good story that I want to tell it to you again. She wrote the cover story for this Saturday evening post magazine. "My Dad Walt Disney" is what the article was called. This is so great. She says, "Until I was six years old, I had no idea what it was my father did for a living. The news was broken to me by a playmate at school."

So she's in kindergarten or first grade. Somebody comes up to her, "Do you realize who your father is? You know those cartoons we watch? Yeah, he makes them all." So that night when Dad came home from work and flopped into his easy chair, I approached him with awe. But then doubt crept in. He didn't look famous to me. He just looked tired. So I asked a crucial question, "Daddy, are you Walt Disney?" "Well, yes, honey," he replied. "No, I mean, are you THE Walt Disney?" He nodded. "So it was true!" "Daddy," I said, "please give me your autograph." Here she is very little before she realized who her famous dad was, but she says she walked around in awe for weeks. "My dad is Walt Disney." Can you imagine suddenly realizing that?

Well, now you can walk around in awe because you realize who your daddy is. Well, a couple of things on this idea of God as father. First, God the Father is not biologically male, obviously. Jesus said God is spirit and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Yet when Jesus chose to reveal what his relationship to God was like, He almost always refers to Him as Father, Abba, Papa. And He encouraged us to do the same. Now, that can lead to some confusion and turbulent feelings. My suspicion is that some of you listening right now struggle with this idea of God as a father because of your dad.

People tell me all the time, "René, I have a really hard time understanding God as father because my dad left. He abused. He abandoned. He beat us. He was not a good dad." So much to say here, I strongly suggest talking this over with a wise friend or a counselor, but in brief, what I would say to you is do not judge God by your earthly father. Judge your earthly father by your heavenly father. You know, rather than saying, "Well, my dad was a jerk. I guess God's a jerk." Say, "God is the template for what a loving father is supposed to look like." In fact, here's a verse that meant a lot to me growing up without a dad myself.

In the Psalms, God says this, "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling." And again, you know this well if you've been attending Twin Lakes for any amount of time. I was a toddler, my sister just a baby when our dad died when he was 36. Yet I grew up raised by a single mom mostly, and I had a blessed childhood. But my security came from this idea. I can't tell you how many times my mom would quote this verse to me. And I still hear her heavily Swiss accented voice. When I would be bummed, you know, that I didn't have a dad, she would say, "René, your earthly father is not here, but your heavenly father will be with you wherever you go."

Then she would say, "Every time you walk to school, every time you have recess, every test you take, every time you play spelt," and she would go on, "He is there with you." That revolutionized my life. It personalized my relationship with God. Prayer is simply talking to your loving dad. That's the image. And if you realize that if a picture paints a thousand words, this is what Jesus is saying about your prayer life. That's you. This is just going to change the way you pray.

You know, you won't feel like when you pray you're going to, like God's in middle management with a clipboard, you know, taking notes on you for the inevitable performance review. God's not like that. You won't feel like God's some impersonal cosmic force that you've somehow got to align your soul crystals up just right to get on his frequency. God's not like that. God is, Jesus says, a loving dad. That's powerful. And if you get that, you won't say, "Well, what words do I need to say when I pray?" "What if I do it wrong?" All that goes away because you just go talk to dad.

In fact, maybe you can just pray one prayer today. "Thanks for being a dad. I've always needed a dad." One more line I want to look at today. Jesus says, "Our Father in heaven." Ray Pritchard says, "That's usually a throwaway line for most of us." Our Father in heaven, we tend to think of it as like God's way up in heaven, way so far away from us in our troubles. God watches from a distance. That's not what it means.

He says, "The phrase in heaven refers to heaven as the seat of all authority and power and dominion and greatness." You see the point? It means I pray to the one who has all power. Put it together. It means our dad's the king. How cool is that? As one pastor put it, "He rules over all nations and all kings and all kingdoms and all races and all genders and all religions and all political affiliations. He rules over all times and places and peoples. There is no one and nothing that is not under the control of your Father." Amen?

If you really get this, what are you going to be afraid of? What are you going to be worried about? Here's another verse about this, Romans 8:15–17. He says, "He adopted you as his own children." Watch this. "Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ." You know what this means? It's kind of like the rest of that Diane Disney story. Walt and his wife Lillian adopted a little girl after they gave birth to Diane and they named her Sharon.

And when people would come up unthinkingly and say, "Now which one is yours and which is adopted?" They would say, "Well, they're exactly the same." We love our girls exactly the same. It doesn't matter which one is adopted and which one is not. Apply that to this verse. You've been adopted by God and this means God loves you and God loves me with the same love as he loves Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son. You are heirs together with Christ. Man, do you see how rich this is?

Now here's the thing. You don't really believe this. Not deep down inside. And you know how you know you don't really believe this deep, deep down to your core because I don't really believe it. Not way down deep. There's a pastor named Steve Cuss, which I always thought was a great name for a pastor. Pastor Cuss. Anyway. Steve Cuss points out the difference between what he calls precious beliefs and core beliefs. You can have a precious belief, a treasured belief, like God is your heavenly Father and you're a co-heirs with Christ. And you really treasure that. It's special to you. Really.

But your core beliefs often go way down deeper than that. They're older than that. They go down maybe all the way to your childhood. They may be even subconscious. And often your precious belief might be Jesus. Your heavenly Father loves you. The Holy Spirit empowers you. But your core belief is I am weak. I'm destined for no good. I've got to perform to earn people's love and favor. And part of Christian discipleship is learning to align our core beliefs with our most precious belief.

And when we do that in this case, then I mean, how could you ever feel sorry for yourself again? How could you ever lack in confidence again? How could your prayer life ever be drab again? You see how important this is? We tend to rush through our Father in heaven and we don't really get it. We don't really get that really the most profound prayer you will ever pray is our Father in heaven. And if you really understand what that means, that this is really the prayer and everything that follows is kind of a PS. That'll change your life because this means, what have we talked about? I pray with family. I pray as a beloved child. And I pray to one who has all power.

The bottom line is this. The foundation for vibrant prayer is simply adore your heavenly Father because then everything goes from rote to real. I'll close with this. I spent many summers in Switzerland living with my grandparents when I was growing up about every other summer for the whole three months. And we lived in a town in Switzerland called St. Gallen. Now Gallen or Galen was an Irish monk who came down from Ireland. He had been a disciple of St. Patrick in the 700s. And he came to this valley when the residents were completely barbaric and he was a Christian missionary and he wanted to tell them about Jesus.

And he started this abbey which has one of the oldest libraries on the planet. This library started in the year 816. Not 1816, 816. So you can imagine even for a kid it was super fun to just stroll down from my grandparents' house and go look around this library. I mean old globes and mummies and old manuscripts. I mean it was like a movie set. It was amazing. Well one day I saw there under a glass display case the very first sentence ever written in the German language. This was written in the year 911. Before this German it was a spoken language by those tribes but it had never been written down until these Irish missionary monks studied it, heard it, and started writing it down with the Latin alphabet.

Now it didn't indicate what this was, but as I peered closer at it I suddenly realized that I could actually read it. It's not written like modern German but it sounds like modern German if you sound it out. "Fatter unser tu bist in Himmel." You know what that means? Our Father in Heaven. And the rest of it is the Lord's Prayer. And I realized that some anonymous monk who did this who came all the way down from Ireland 12 centuries ago to reach my ancestors at a time when they were literally still drinking blood out of deer skulls and worshiping oak trees said if I could translate just one part of the Bible for those people it's this.

Man, if they only knew this about their Father in Heaven this would connect with their hearts. And you know what? He was right. And looking at this piece of parchment it occurred to me and I started crying, the Lord's Prayer has meant something to human beings for 20 centuries. The Lord's Prayer was prayed by believers way back when Rome fell and when the black plague swept through Europe and at the height of the Renaissance and at the low of the World Wars it's been prayed in locker rooms and 12 step rooms and hospital rooms. For 20 centuries it has seen people through their most difficult hours.

So I can't think of anything better in our own turbulent times that are in some ways an echo of the first 25 years of our nation to pray together the Lord Jesus' words that have inspired His disciples for 2,000 years. So would you pray this out loud with me for our closing prayer today? I would love to hear you say this. Not just say this but pray this. Our Father who art 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. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Amen. Now we're going to do something a little bit different as we close. I want to give you a chance to just sit in that for a couple of minutes. As the TV is moved off stage and some musicians come back, they're just going to play some instrumental music and we're going to put some prompts on the screen so that you can just be with your Father and just pray silently just for a minute or two. Maybe you've got some concerns on your heart. You can bring them to your Father right now and just pray, "Father, please help." I invite you to think of your blessings. Literally count your blessings, two or three of them, and say, "Father, thank You so much for Your blessings to me." And most importantly of all, think of how your Heavenly Father loves you. He just loves you. He just loves to just be with you and just say, "Abba, I love you too." Just spend some time talking with your Father right now. And I can tell you this, your Heavenly Father has really been looking forward to this moment, to this time with you. And in a minute or two, I'll come back up and we'll sing a closing song together.