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SERMONS Sean Gilbert Well, somewhat within keeping of our Simply Sharing lunch to follow, I thought I’d attempt simplifying my own approach as much as possible. So that rather than a whole text to concern our minds with, just one word, and indeed the pivotal word, I think, in relation to Jesus teaching on prayer throughout the gospels. And that word, not all that surprisingly, is “Father”. When you pray, say, “Father…” Now right at this point I need to stress the metaphorical nature of the word. It is not an image of God to be taken literally or even with a fixed sense of gender in mind. Jesus could well have said “Mother”, such was the all-embracing experience of God that he was seeking to communicate and more importantly invite others into. For whichever way you look at it, this naming of the mystery in such intimate and personal terms represented (and still represents) a shaking of the religious foundations. An overturning of a fearful or an anxious worship of God, whereby favour is bought, salvation procured, often by the most absurd ritualistic ways. “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge (intimate) of God, rather than burnt offerings”. No religious hoops then, no spiritual contortions, simply a confession of faith, a naming of love and goodness that lies outside of us on one level, yet paradoxically, is always seeking to be known within us as well. And it occurs to me that such a naming of God, such a positing of God, is critical to the very shape and feel of the Christian life. For when God is both understood and experienced as Origin of life, Generous author of life, Giver of love, Ground of all being, Mother, Father (and the list could go on), our very point of reference, which arguably all of us have, knowingly or unknowingly, is one that leads us further out into life, never in fear, but in hope and expectation that this relational goodness will be ours to share. In other words, by naming the mystery, by confessing the mystery, we are affected deeply by it, changed by it, encouraged and formed by it. So that in the words of Thomas Merton – this week’s focus in our Pentecost Study: “You don’t get to God through a system. You speak from the heart. That is the basic idea, (and that is what the book of Job is saying) and that is what prayer is and that is what we have to do. God is jealous of (for) us, not for God’s glory but for our freedom and spontaneity and the reality of this personal love for God. You realize “that prayer takes us beyond the law. When you are praying you are in a sense, an outlaw. There is no law between the heart and God.” Now it is my sense that it takes a certain maturity and trust to begin taking more notice of the heart than the structures or scaffolding that we daily surround ourselves with. But by consciously, deliberately, shockingly using this metaphor of “Father”, this is exactly what Jesus would have a person of faith or a faith community to do. To let go of the predictability and the conformity, not to mention the distrust of our own life experience, and to bring out into the open the opposites of those, that is our hidden desires, our heartfelt yearnings and the giftedness of our authentic selves. So that the Father/Mother experience, the experience of welcome, acceptance, forgiveness and love, shapes everything else we seek to do in the name of Christ. It is as if breathing out the name of God, we then have the opportunity of breathing in the very essence and being of God. In the words of St Paul to the community in Galatia: “As you are now daughters and sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his son crying (confidently) “Abba, Father”, so that you are no longer slaves, but daughters and sons, heirs, by God’s own act.” A Christian life then not born of arrogance but of sincerity is the foundation of love that is the launching pad for all else in a fruitful life. We name not just a great and complex mystery then, by confessing the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God to be true, we seek to embody its simple gift of graciousness and compassion to the world. Let us take a few moments …
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