The Essence of Prayer : Living in the Name of the One we call Abba (Reprise of an Advent Post)

With Lent's focus on Prayer, today's Gospel asks us to look again at the model or paradigm of all Christian prayer, the Lord's Prayer. After all, it summarizes what Jesus' vocation was all about, how he prayed, how he lived, what had priority for him, and what, by extension, constitutes Christian existence. Learning to pray this prayer is not a one-time task, and recitation of it is not without risks and challenges. Instead, we are invited to learn to pray as Jesus did, to pour ourselves into its petitions, day by day and "layer" of self by layer of self. It calls us, and provides a concrete way, to allow our hearts and lives to be shaped as Jesus' was --- first by the Kingdom or sovereignty of God, and then (and only then) by our own. Yes, it teaches us to pray rightly, but more, it initiates us into a life of prayer; more correctly said perhaps, it molds and shapes us into the very prayers we are called to BE. (I am convinced that the admonition to "pray always" is a statement of the purpose of human life, and that prayer is not only an activity we are to undertake, but something we are to become. When we call Jesus "the Word made Flesh," we really are calling him an incarnate prayer, a Word event whose whole being glorifies (reveals and allows God to be) God in space and time.)

One of the things that comes up again and again is just how deceptively familiar the prayer is for us. We recite it daily, sometimes several times a day; and yet, almost every petition holds surprises for us. We simply don't know what the words mean or what they summon us to. The invocation is a particularly striking example. Luke's version of the prayer has simply, "Pater" (or "Abba"), while Matthew's has the more litugically suited and formed, "Our Father, who Art in Heaven!" Some people in parishes have problems calling God "Father," because they treat the word as a metaphor, and as an instance of human patriarchy or paternalism writ-very-large. Others love that God is called "abba, pater" because it apotheosizes or raises to divine level their own patriarchal pretensions. And yet, both groups have gotten something very basic wrong, namely, the invocation to the Lord's Prayer is not merely a metaphor describing divinity's "paternalness" --- one characteristic among others including maternalness. It is instead a NAME, and as a name it is symbol, not merely metaphor, and it FUNCTIONS as a name does. It symbolizes the whole reality of the person, not just those characteristics we know, but the profound mystery the person is. The Lord's Prayer begins with the revelation of and permission to invoke God BY NAME even if Matt's elaborate formulation obscures this for English readers. In Christ we are allowed, and in fact, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to call upon God as Abba, where Abba is a personal word of address which does far less to describe God than it does to give him a personal place to stand in our world and in our hearts.

We will miss this though, if we do not move beyond the prayer's familiarity and merely treat the invocation as a description of or metaphor for God. Remember, for instance, that the word "Abba" is in the vocative case, the case used for direct address. Remember that Jesus used the term "Abba" with a unique intimacy and familiarity, not as a description of God, but as direct address and name. Remember that his usage was unprecedented in Palestinian Judaism (Judiasm of the diaspora was somewhat different), not only because Jews tended to avoid referring to God as Abba (pagans did that all the time!), or because using Abba as a name and speaking it directly was too presumptuous (Divine names were not spoken or even written out), but also because the times they did refer to God as Father, it was in a collective sense and more metaphor or descriptor than name. Remember too that in Matt's day people LONGED to know both the REAL Name of God, and that their prayer was truly effective. So desperate were they for access to the real God that they stood on street corners reading from magic papyri which listed every known name of God. When Matthew warns us about using empty words in our prayers this is the practice he is referring to, a practice driven by the need to know and invoke God by name --- a need to pray with genuine authority and power, a need to allow and experience God's personal presence in all its ineffableness.

But, along comes Jesus with his unique relationship with this One he calls by name as Abba, thus addressing God with an unheard of familiarity and intimacy. He speaks, lives, and teaches with a new kind of authority. To put it plainly, Jesus is on a first name basis with God; he speaks in the NAME of God. Their relationship is unique and the exchanges between them equally so. When we attend to his prayer, we see that Jesus calls upon God BY NAME as "Abba, Father." He gives this One a personal place to stand in the world in the way only invocation can do, invocation in both narrower and broader senses: that is, addressing or calling upon another by name and living one's life in the name of that other implicating them in all one is and does. Jesus reveals (makes real in space and time) a new Name for God. God is no longer known simply the One who will be who he will be [ehyeh asher ehyeh, YHWH]; he is Abba, and the One whom he will be is revealed definitively in Christ in terms of unfathomable love and mercy. By extension, Christians are those marked by this name, who, through the adoption of baptism live within its power and presence, who "call upon" or invoke God in this way. It is the symbol or name marking our vocation in this world, just as it marked that of Jesus.

As I have written here before, the life of Christian prayer is a life of invocation. The task before us and which we reflect on anew each Lent is to learn and embrace what it means to live as those who call upon and live life in the Name of another --- and not just any other, but the One Jesus revealed as "Abba, Father." The Lord's Prayer initiates us into this life, and the first line, the only non-petition in the entire prayer, embodies or symbolizes the whole of this vocation. It is both invitation and challenge: not only to take this Name upon our lips, but to glorify the name of God with our lives, to become those who truly are adopted daughters and sons of the One we call Abba, Father.

Invocation: The essence of the Christian vocation (Reflection developed from the July 17th post):

Today's readings (Exodus 3:13-20, Psalm 105, Matt 11:28-38) center on God's revelation of his name and the instruction that we invoke it in our lives and ministry. Because of this I found myself thinking about a film that came out a couple of years ago. Two images in particular have stuck with me, and they are relevant to today's lections.

The first involves an emotional interview with the head of the camp (the film is a documentary of a religious Summer camp) where she expounds on the evils of Harry Potter. She is especially concerned that children not be taught or try to emulate the use of spells and incantations (the superstitious or "magical" use of formulae and names in order to influence or control the forces of nature, etc). As she rightly implied, such things demonstrate a lack of trust in the providence of God --- and more!

The second image is of a young girl trying to take with utter seriousness the lesson she had just learned about the importance of praying and living in the name of Jesus Christ, and the injunction to invoke the name of the Lord. She is jumping up and down shouting at a badly-thrown bowling ball, "Go straight, in the NAME OF JESUS, Go Straight!!!" Rarely have I seen anything more ironic than the juxtaposition of these two images. It probably goes without saying that something here has gone terribly wrong with an important piece of Christian teaching. Indeed, invocation has been distorted into incantation, the very thing the camp head decried!

Today's first reading is the key to understanding what is involved in genuine invocation of God's name. Although the lection uses the translation I AM, for the name YHWH, the Hebrew is more dynamic and filled with promise: it really means "I will be the One who I will be" and includes the implication that God will be faithful to himself, and will abide with us in season and out. When seen in this light the revelation of God's name is really a summary of what is involved in the covenants God makes with mankind. It reprises God's side of the covenant(s) and implies what our side will mean as well.

Invoking God's name means calling on the One who reveals himself as he who "will be who I will be." Thus, it also means letting this actually happen --- letting it be realized in our lives. It means that we allow ourselves to be open to the WHOLE person, not simply to aspects or characteristics of them we understand already or find congenenial. When we pray in the name of the Trinity, for instance, we open ourselves to a love greater and more sustaining and comforting than anything we can imagine. But, it is also a love which judges and purifies, chastens and challenges.

In this sense invocation is an act of vulnerability, not one of control. It does not mean insisting things go as we want, but rather, that we will allow them them to go as God wills and empowers. In the imagery of today's Gospel, we take upon ourselves the yoke of Christ, the freeing burden of humilty and obedience.

Invocation has a second and related sense then: it is our own acceptance of a commission or vocation to live our lives in the name of another rather than in our own name. It is not our prayers only that are to be undertaken in God's name, but every breath, action, and aspiration or accomplishment of our lives.

The story I began with says it is easy to get this wrong, easy to turn invocation into incantation, easy to trivialize and distort what should be the most profound act we undertake, the continuing ratification of God's covenant with us in a way which glorifies the Name of God. And in this week where the LAST Harry Potter book is awaited with bated breath in some circles (and Stillsong is among these), it is a good time to examine our own praxis with regard to the invocation of God's name. Does it really glorify God (that is, does it reveal God, or allow him to reveal himself, on his own terms)? Is it really an act of vulnerability and the ratification of the covenant, our commitment to letting God be the One he wills to be with and for us and our world? Or, has it degenerated into a more or less subtle form of incantation?