(A Dialogue Sermon)
And he said to them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation.' " — Luke 11:2-4
Man: If two of the sacred idols of our nation are said to be motherhood and apple pie, no one has ever exalted fatherhood and hamburgers to the American pantheon — although hamburgers are getting close! Despite the complaints of the feminists about patriarchal systems, American matriarchy has fared quite well.
Woman: Well, I have to admit that fathers have not come off too well in recent American history. I remember the old program Bringing Up Father, where not only the mother but even the children knew more about reality than the father. I admit I remember the long-running cartoon strip Dagwood and Blondie. Blondie is forever superior to the bungling Bumstead as are his know-it-all children. Even the family dog, Daisy, outsmarts Dagwood, whose very name suggests his inferior status.
Man: Yes, it reminds me of the salesman who came to the door and said, "Are you the head of the household?" and the father answered, "I certainly am. My wife and children are out shopping!" I'm also reminded of what the Duke of Windsor once said, "The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children."
Woman: Or what Erma Bombeck said about parents. She said, "You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in, look you in the eye, and ask if anybody's home." Or I like the way Ogden Nash put it when he wrote: "Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, and that's what parents were created for."
Man: Possibly, but patriarchal systems are not always what they seem. For example, historically, Japan has had a patriarchal culture where the father was indeed the supposed ruler of the house. A seminary professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, himself a native of Japan, said that was a fiction. Officially Japan was patriarchal but behind closed doors the Japanese wife and mother ruled the roost.
Woman: Yes, that might be true. However, we certainly have had a predominance of patriarchal images in religion. Feminists have rightly pointed out patriarchal systems where the male is dominant not only on earth but also in heaven. Men, it would seem, were not only in control of families and churches, but of the heavenly realms as well.
Man: I understand what you are saying. However, even in recent patriarchal times, women have often run the church behind the scenes. Think of the enormous influence and impact of the nuns in the Roman Catholic church. And consider our mainline Protestant seminaries of today. Over half the student body is female. Fewer and fewer men are going into the ministry. Some would claim the men have been "feminized" out of the church.
Nevertheless, in the church, feminized or not, we still pray to "our Father who art in heaven." We read a Bible where the overwhelmingly dominant image of God is male and Father.
So in keeping with the Lord's Prayer to the Father, let us explore some of the masculine attributes of God and their helpfulness to boys, men, and fathers. There are three to explore — adventure, time, and ethics.
I.
Man: Probably one of the most dominant motifs of the Bible is adventure.
Woman: Oh, I like that motif. In my mind adventure has to do with wandering, sojourning, exploring, discovering, leaving home and taking risks, leaving security for the potential rewards of insecurity, risking discomfort for a lofty promise or hope. It is true that often in the Bible the model man is the nomad, the pilgrim, the one who seeks a fairer country and follows the nobler life. However, it would be much better if on occasion men would stop and ask for directions.
Man: You know, real men don't ask for directions! You remember the old joke that the reason Moses and the Israelites wandered for forty years in the wilderness was because Moses refused to ask directions. However, in the Bible the prototypical wanderer, Abraham, got his directions from God. God appeared to him, urged him to leave his country, his homeland, and relatives to go to a new land, a promised land where God would bless him. Rather than remain in the womb of the past, Abraham is summoned to leave the matriarchal nest to follow his adventuring God into a foreign land of promise.
Woman: Of course it is fair to recall that later in Israelite history, Moses is summoned by God to be an adventurer. When God appears to Moses on Mount Sinai and Moses asks his name, God calls himself "I am that I am," or "I will cause to be what I will cause to be." He then adds that he is the same God who had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Among the peoples and religions of the time, Moses might well have expected God to say, "I am the God of this mountain. I live here, I dwell here." Instead this God is movable, not only in space, but time. He was present to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees and now he is present to Moses hundreds of miles away in the Sinai Peninsula.
Man: Well said and since God himself is an adventurer, he expects his people to be the same. So Moses led his people in the Exodus and the wilderness wandering where Israel was molded into a unique people of God. By contrast, matriarchal religions and gods tend to keep people in the confines of the womb, in the nest, in the comforts of the home and the security of the city. They favor the known over the unknown.
In the biblical religions, where God is Father and masculine, God's people are called to adventure and sojourning. They are challenged to explore, to discover, and to launch out into the unknown to make it known.
Woman: True, but you forgot to mention the women. Abraham's Sarah went with him on the adventure. So did Moses' wife, Zipporah. Don't forget they also left the comforts and securities of the past for risky adventures into the new future.
Man: You are quite right. However, we can urge boys and men to pray to God as Father so they have a heavenly role model for adventure, discovery, explorations, risk-taking, and the promise of new worlds and new realities. They are encouraged to leave home in the best sense of the phrase, to love God as an adventuring Father even more than the security of earthly fathers and mothers. They are challenged to leave the womb, to fly from the nest, and to be shaped by the God who leads them from the securities of the past to the challenges of the future.
II.
Woman: I agree. Another attribute of God as Father has to do with how we conceive time.
I have noticed that matriarchal gods and religions tend to conceive of time as cyclical. In other words, time repeats itself in endless cycles much as do seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
It is to be noted that the biblical, patriarchal religion conceives of time as linear. Rather than going around in circles or cycles in endless repetition of the same patterns over and over again, biblical time moves along a line. It has a beginning and it has an end. Time is going somewhere.
Man: That's right. We Westerners often forget how embedded in our culture is this notion of linear time. We speak of BC and AD, before Christ's birth and after his birth, when the line of time was intersected with a divine event. This event was not a part of the eternal cycle, but was an "interruption," so to speak, a time-arresting, time-altering event to change the course and nature of time.
Woman: We further observe that in Judeo-Christian culture we speak of the coming end of time, the eschaton, when history as we know it will cease and be consummated in God's grand scheme of things. Think of the fascination with the Left Behind series by LaHaye and Jenkins. Consequently, Christians are urged to redeem the time because what we do in temporal, linear time affects our destiny in eternal time.
So we can understand the challenging words of Jesus where he urges us to love God over mother and father, who tend to be identified with the cycles of time — birth, growth, and death; birth, growth, and death! He who loves father and mother, that is security, more than the kingdom is not worthy of the kingdom, said Jesus in his startling words. Young people who want to wait around to bury the older generation before they commit themselves to the progress of God's cause in linear time will be left behind, said Jesus.
Man: Challenging words indeed. I think you will admit that matriarchal goddesses of the fertility cults were identified with soil, seedtime, and harvest; soil, seedtime, and harvest in endless, repetitive cycles. So we quite naturally speak of mother earth, not father earth.
Biblical, patriarchal God calls people to break out of repetitive cycles to make progress in the fulfillment of time. What has been is not always what will be. There is something new under the sun, but only to those courageous enough to break the grip of past cycles and patterns to launch out into the new horizons of future time.
Woman: I see your point. Such a God is a good role model for boys and fathers. Not a bad role model for girls and mothers, either, I might say! If women have sometimes accused men of being boring, stuffy, and anchored in the past, this biblical God urges men to "get with it." As God tells us through Isaiah the prophet, "Behold, I am doing a new thing."
Man: Exactly, boys and men who think they always have to go "back to God" have it wrong. The biblical God is "out there." He is God of the future, beckoning us to leave the grip of the past for the liberation of the future.
III.
Man: A third attribute of the biblical Father God has to do with ethics, behavior, and distinguishing between right and wrong and acting accordingly.
Speaking of ethics, I am reminded of comedian Henny Youngman who spoke of his father. "My father was never home," says Youngman. "He was always away drinking booze. He saw a sign saying, 'Drink Canada Dry,' so he went up there."
Woman: Another comedian said, "Hollywood kids always have a problem giving gifts to their father. It's not so much a question of what to buy — it's who to give it to."
However, returning to this matter of ethics, we should note that matriarchal religions and goddesses tend to emphasize consolation, comfort, and accommodation to the cycles, customs, and traditions of a people. Feminine deities are perceived to be more earthly, compassionate, and approachable. Rather than challenge us to some new thing, they tend to encourage us to relax and accommodate ourselves to the "way things are" because that's the way they've always been and always will be.
Man: There is a lot to be said for preserving established values and traditions. However, on the other hand, the biblical, masculine God tends to challenge the status quo and to interrupt the repetitive cycles of the way things have been in the past. No matter how ingrained, the past is never quite good enough. God is always calling people to a new future, especially in ethics and behavior.
That is seen clearly in the Old Testament prophets and of course in Jesus. Prophets characteristically are lonely because they stand out against the crowd and against the "herd instinct" and "group think." "Everybody's doing it" is never a legitimate excuse for those prophets who march to the beat of a different drum. "It's always been done this way" is a slogan loathed by those challengers of official corruption, deceit, and oppression.
Woman: Yes, I can concede that emphasis. Matriarchal deities are tied up with soil, seasons, and cycles and are very much identified with the present time and space. The biblical patriarchal God does transcend soil, seasons, and cycles. He is above all particular, limited time and space. Therefore, one can understand why he imposes high moral and ethical standards on all times and peoples to help them grow up into the moral maturity he planned for them.
Man: Would you not agree then that such a God is a wonderful father figure for boys and men of today? They are challenged to "stand up like a man" when it comes to important issues and morality. They will refuse to go along with the crowd just because it is the "in" thing to do.
Woman: Yes, I often have admired Martin Luther in sixteenth century Germany, standing before the earthly authorities, his life hanging in the balance. Rather than deny his strong reformation principles, he said, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me."
Man: There was Martin Luther King Jr. who said, "I have a dream." It was a courageous dream on which he staked his life for a better day of equality for all Americans.
Woman: Our heavenly Father calls all fathers, men and boys, as well as girls and women and mothers, to be adventurers, to make a difference in time and to change the world for justice, integrity, peace, and love. Amen.
