God "Father." Some fathers are distant, cold, or harsh, and children who grow up with such fathers can be terribly confused about God. Some people ask why we use "Father" instead of "Mother." We know God is not a male, and men frequently do not behave in Godlike ways. The Bible itself is adorned with feminine images for God; and I love these words from the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich:
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he reveals this in everything, saying to us, "I am the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am the wisdom and the tender love of motherhood; I am the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am the great supreme goodness of every thing; I make you to love; I cause you to long; I am the fulfillment of all your desires."4
We call God "Father" for one reason only: when Jesus spoke to God, he called God "Abba," an Aramaic word that a little child would use when curled up on the father's lap; even a grown child would continue to use this endearing term of affection. Jesus enjoyed such an intimate relationship with the "almighty" God that he spoke to him tenderly as "Abba." The disciples noticed and marveled. Jesus' whole mission, we might say, was to invite them (and us) to discover what it is to curl up on the lap of almighty God, look up, and simply say, "Abba."
Jesus taught us to pray "Our Father." This intimacy seems presumptuous; how dare we? For we are so different from God, so distant, so un-dependent, so frivolous and naughty at times. Jesus grants us an astounding permission: you, even you, can be on such intimate terms with the holy God. This is all grace, of course. When an infant is baptized, we witness the humbling, hopeful truth that we are small, vulnerable, entirely dependent on the unearnable mercy of God, and we remain forever that way. We always live before God as those who are, as Karl Barth phrased it, "inept, inexperienced, unskilled, and immature. [We] may and can be masters and even virtuosos in many things, but never in what makes [us] Christians, God's children."5 Jesus said, "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). Notice also Jesus taught us to pray "Our Father" (instead of "My Father")! We do not believe alone; we need not go solo, and in fact, we cannot. We are saved to be part of a community, part of a family: the body of Christ. And we may even pray on behalf of those who do not pray and acknowledge for even them that God is our Father.
We may also recall that in the biblical world, sons were apprenticed to their fathers; they learned their trade from watching and mimicking the fathers. So, "saying 'our father' isn't just the boldness of walking into the presence of the living and almighty God and saying, 'Hi, Dad.' It is the boldness of saying 'Please may I, too, be considered an apprentice son.' It means signing on for the kingdom of God" (Tom Wright).6
LESSON 7
. . . THE FATHER ALMIGHTY (PART 2)
His father saw him, and was filled with compassion. (Luke 15:20, AP)
Two famous paintings can help us probe deeply into the Creed's first sentence. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg houses Rembrandt's final effort (among many) to capture the return of the prodigal son on canvas. Rembrandt knew personally the acute agony of loss, having lived long enough to see three sons, two daughters, and his wife die. Henri Nouwen wrote a lovely devotional reflection (The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming) on this painting, asking, "Had I really ever dared to step into the center, kneel down, and let myself be held by a forgiving God?" instead of "choosing over and over again the position of the outsider looking in." In the world, we strive feverishly for meaning, ignorant of God's firm, tender embrace. Studying the hands Rembrandt painted of the father holding his son come home, Nouwen wrote,
In them mercy becomes flesh; upon them forgiveness and healing come together. . . . I felt drawn to those hands; I have come to know those hands. They have held me from the hour of my conception, they welcomed me at birth, they held me close to my mother's breast, fed me, kept me warm. They have protected me in times of danger, they have waved me goodbye and always welcomed me back. Those hands are God's hands. . . . They are also the hands of my parents, teachers, friends, all God has given me to remind me how safely I am held.7
Nothing sexist here, as Nouwen observes how the hands are painted differently. "The father's left hand touching the son's shoulder is strong and muscular. I see a certain pressure, especially in the thumb. That hand seems not only to touch, but, with its strength, also to hold. How different is the father's right hand! This hand does not hold or grasp. It is refined, soft, and very tender. It wants to caress, to stroke, and to offer consolation and comfort. It is a mother's hand. The Father is not simply a great patriarch. He is mother as well as father. He holds, and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles." Rembrandt was near death when he painted this in 1668, and as it turns out, Nouwen himself died in 1996 while working on a documentary film about this painting.
Around the year 1300, Giotto devised a series of frescoes that narrate pictorially the life of St. Francis. In the third bay of the upper basilica of the cathedral in Assisi, we see the dramatic moment when Francis, being sued by his father Pietro Bernardone, abandoned his worldly goods, and even all ties with his father. His nakedness shielded by the cloak of the Bishop Guido, Francis lifts a hand toward heaven, where God's hand of blessing gestures toward him. It was at this moment that Francis solemnly announced, "Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father; my father from now on is 'Our Father, who art in heaven.'" For Francis, to call God "Father" was a declaration of allegiance, choosing to serve God even if it elicited his earthly father's wrath. Perhaps we may be pressed to make a similar choice, remembering what Jesus said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father . . . he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). To call God "Father" is not all warm and fuzzy, but exacts a radical obedience from us.
A DEEPER REFLECTION
I Wish My Father Had Done That
To plunge into the Apostles' Creed may seem as foolish as jumping into an old cement pool that hasn't held water for years. People say to me, "I've got to figure out my faith for myself. Nobody else can tell me what and how to believe." And we do need to figure it out for ourselves. But I don't know about you: if somebody says to me, "James, you've got to figure out your faith for yourself," I begin to feel lonely, boxed in. Even though I had the privilege of studying and earning degrees in theology, I have no wish to be a soloist; I prefer joining the choir. If I think of myself as a solitary mountain climber on my way toward God, I'm not sure I would risk the journey: who will catch me when I make a mistake? The odds that my thoughts about God happen to be the ultimate truth for all reality are embarrassingly small. We need one another. We need ancestors, friends from distant lands, saints of old, little children. The image for believing is not the solitary mountain climber, but rather friends and family sitting around a table breaking bread, having extended after-dinner conversation together. We help one another believe. We help one another grow into our faith. We help one another correct those places where we have misunderstandings of God. We help one another believe when it is hard for us to believe.
I want to believe in something that is bigger than me and my thoughts about God. Sometimes I talk to people who don't believe in God, or those who are not sure they believe in God. They do have awfully good questions, and however valiantly I may try to resolve them, my regiment of pro-God arguments can never decisively win the day. Yes, we use our brains, we rally our ideas, firm in a faith that is far from irrational, proud of a faith that thrives on intellectual rigor. But at the end of the day, the only compelling case to be made for God would be the dramatically changed lives of those who believe in God. Exhibits A, B, and C as proofs for God would be the lawyer abandoning his career to serve the poorest who have no other advocate, the stone-cold marriage revived, the woman divulging remarkable traces of joy in the face of adversity. The only logic on which we might rely is deeply personal. To say "I believe in God" is
