This past Wednesday the church began the journey to Easter. From at least the second century, the church has prepared for Easter in various ways and for various periods of time. Within the first few centuries, the practice of making a prayerful journey through Lent took an almost universal form: forty days of focused prayer, usually involving some type of fasting. (These fast days didn’t include Sundays, which were always feast days.)
The focus of Lent is penitential, which is why fasting is a part of the journey. Fasting is an embodied or enacted prayer that cries out to God for mercy, confessing that we and those for whom we are praying deserve to be cut off from his blessings in death, but look with faith-filled hope for deliverance.
Fasting, like all prayerful petitions, is future-focused; we are expectantly praying that God would bring about his promised future for us and for the world.
But what are we looking for in the future that shapes the way we pray? Jesus teaches us when he teaches us how to pray in what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” From the address to the final petition, all of the words and phrases are pregnant with meaning, calling up historical events, types and shadows, that are now coming to their dramatic fulfillment in Christ Jesus and his people.
Jesus teaches his disciples to approach God by saying, “Our Father, who is in heaven.” Father. There is a respectful intimacy in that title; a space between us in position that is never breached but is bridged by a deep, abiding, protecting, providing, self-sacrificing love.
“Father” is not a new address for God’s people. In creation, man was created “son of God” (Lk 3.38). Man is the image of God like any son is of his father (cf. Gen 5.1-3). Israel was God’s son, his firstborn (Ex 4.22, 23). As Israel’s mission devolved upon one man, that man, David’s son, the king of Israel, was known as “the son of God” (2Sam 7.14) and rightfully called God “Father.”
The story of God’s son finds its fullest expression in Jesus, who is declared to be the son of God in his baptism, transfiguration, and resurrection. Jesus is the one who calls God, “Father.” He is the one whom all other sons of God prefigured.
But now Jesus is teaching his disciples to address God as Father. How can they do this? Because they are in the same family as Jesus. More precisely, united to the Son, Jesus, they are all sons of God. Together with Jesus, our brother, we call God, “Father.”
Knowing this presents us with a deep, interesting, and encouraging truth about the Lord’s Prayer: this prayer is first and foremost Jesus’ prayer. It truly is the Lord’s prayer. He is praying it first and calling us to join with him in praying. We are taking up Jesus’ prayer, and, when we pray, he is praying with us (Heb 2.12). In prayer, just as in his baptism, death, and resurrection, Jesus is taking up the needs and sins of his people, identifying with us and interceding for us. We are encouraged because Jesus’ prayers are always answered.
While the title “Father” is an address and not a petition, the Scriptural storyline of the title “Father” referring to God calls up certain actions of God in relationship to his son. There is an expectation in the title “Father” that anticipates action. When his children need an exodus from Egypt and the tyranny of Pharaoh, he reveals himself as “Father” (Ex 4.22, 23; cf. also Isa 63, 64). Calling upon God as “Father” anticipates the rest of the prayer that petitions God for deliverance.
As with the prayer itself, so it is with the anticipated exodus: Jesus goes first and then the rest of the sons of God. We know that the Father will hear and answer this prayer because he has already done so with his Son, Jesus. He has hallowed his name, has inaugurated his kingdom, has given him daily bread, has declared him righteous in his resurrection, and has delivered him from the evil one. Because we pray this same prayer with Jesus to our Father, we are assured that he will do the same with us.
