The first in a series of 5 on The Lord’s Prayer
An excerpt from the Marilyn Manson fansite webpage …
Join the Marilyn Manson Family
And become a most unholy missionary for AntiChrist Superstar
“The righteous father wears the yellowest grin.”
Lo, as you walk through the valley of the shadow cast by a god who promises mercy and forgiveness but delivers none, will you fear or be feared? Marilyn Manson’s Church of AntiChrist Superstar would like to make that decision an easy one for you to make… Become a missionary for AntiChrist Superstar: Join the Marilyn Manson Family and ensure the salvation of your immortal soul. You will belong to an elite group of individuals who are strong and prepared enough to withstand and retaliate against the terrible tortures which will befall all who have not accepted AntiChrist Superstar into their hearts and heads with complete and utter reverence. Believe in AntiChrist Superstar, Our Lord and Savior, and you shall be saved! Loose your ancestral stanchions. Children, you shall no longer bow your heads in shame and self-repression…. be FREE! You shall no longer falter under the weight of the pious and the guilt they would heap upon you for living your life as you see fit. You shall no longer feel alone and unwanted: you are WANTED here…. you BELONG here…. WE are your Family now….
Does the quote above disgust you?
So it should, the preying on young people’s alienation to join a wierd cult is sickening – especially when it is done cynically just to boost CD sales to earn money for the above so-called ‘artist’.
However, disgusting as the above maybe, we can learn something from this.
You shall no longer feel alone and unwanted: you are WANTED here…. you BELONG here…. WE are your Family now….
The above quote from the website is meant to create a sub-culture of young people whose allegiance is NOT to their family, or peers, or country or economy, or culture – but to radically re-create these people with a new identity in a new culture – a new family (however sick that ‘family’ may be).
Because this example is so anti what we take to be acceptable and right, it actually serves to give us a window into what it would have meant for early Christians to pray these words:
OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME;
For the first stanza of this the most well known prayer in the world is in fact a statement similar in intent (though obviously wholly different in content) to the intent of the Manson website – that is to create a people with a new identity that radically disconnects them with their old way of being and changes them into members of a NEW family with a entirely different way of life to what they are used to.
We are so used to Christianity being an accepted part of our western world that we take for granted that we can be loyal to both God and our culture, our country, our economics and our family. However this is a lie.
The early Christians knew that to pray this first stanza of the Lord’s prayer meant that their only obedience was to God, and that to the rest of the world they were ‘aliens and strangers’.
To pray this prayer was to radically re-create their identity in a new community – the community of Jesus.
Because of this – the early followers of Jesus were treated by their societies/families with reactions similar to what we have to the Manson website.
If we are to learn what it truly means to pray this Prayer that Jesus taught we must start with the understanding that what it calls us to is a fundamental break, a disconnection with this world and what it tells us we must be to be good citizens. We must learn that the first line calls into question our very allegiances which we are told must be foremost in our lives – our western civilization, our countries – even our very families.
With this opening line, Jesus was showing his disciples – you are part of a new family now – a radically different family to anything the world has seen before, and the rest of the prayer goes on to show just how this new family is to live and how it is different.
Let’s take a more detailed look at this first stanza
OUR – the very first word reminds of the fact that we are first and foremost people of a community – not individual believers. In our society we are so used to thinking of faith as a personal, private matter – but here there is no ‘My Father’ it is only ‘OUR Father’. To be a follower of Jesus is to necessarily belong to a new family – a new community. But who is the ‘OUR’ referring to? First and foremost it is Jesus. For Jesus is the one who prays and fulfills this prayer – when we pray OUR we are are referring to our and Jesus Father – Jesus father is our father, so we are brothers and sisters to Jesus. Secondly, we then become brothers and sisters to whoever else prays this prayer (it is estimated that 2 BILLION people worldwide prayed this prayer last Easter sunday!). So we pray OUR we cannot help but be reminded that we are first and foremost not individual believers, but brothers and sisters of Jesus who are joined to other brothers and sisters of Jesus
FATHER – It was common in Jewish prayers for God to be reffered to formally as Father in Hebrew, but standing behind this FATHER is not the formal Hebrew, but the Aramiac term ‘abba‘ – ‘daddy!’ So with this second word we are not being invited into a formal structured family arangement, but into an intimate relationship. The person we are addressing in this prayer is like a daddy to us. With this comes the sense of a relationship of itimacy and childhood innocence – Jesus tells us that we must become like children to enter the kIngdom and this can be seen to here have connotations of the innocent, all-trusting relationship that should exist (but tragically so often doesn’t) between a dad and a child. The child depends completely and fully on the dad, the child seeks to make the dad happy, the child knows that they are loved unconditionally (though they have no idea what the word means!). To address God as our daddy is to be invited into a intimate and personal relationship.
NB. to refer to God as FATHER is in no way to claim that God has a male Gender – God’s FATHERHOOD is not like human fatherhood and encompasses the qualities of human motherhood (nurturing, forming, truth telling etc …)
WHO IS IN HEAVEN – but here we are reminded that the person that we are invited into this intimate relationship with is no ordinary person. This FATHER resides in heaven – is wholly different to who we are. This FATHER who we are invited into relationship with is none other than the LORD of history and creation. This reminds us that the new family that we belong to is no ordinary family. It is not a family that belongs to this world – rather it is a family whose head lives in heaven. It is a family whose only true home is heaven – the Kingdom of our God. To belong to this family is to belong to a family whose strength cuts through every other allegiance. This family is constituted in heaven, and nothing in this world can claim to have a stronger or higher hold on us. To claim allegiance to the family whose Father is in heaven is to claim a bond that nothing else can break – not angels, powers, principlaities or even death.
HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME – and this is not a relationship to be entered into lightly. Even though it is a relationship of intimacy, it must also be a relationship of awe – to know God as HOLY – that is different/separate to us. The only true consitution of this relationship can be in our worship and adoration of our FATHER as we declare his hallowedness (holiness). To then worship our Father as holy is to recognise that we too must holy, and for us to be holy means that we must be obedient to the calling and command of our Father (and his command … ‘this is my son [JESUS] – LISTEN to him!’).
You shall no longer feel alone and unwanted: you are WANTED here…. you BELONG here…. WE are your Family now….
To pray this first stanza then is to recognise WHO is our true family, and WHO we truly belong to and WHERE we truly belong.
To pray OUR FATHER, WHO IS IN HEAVEN – HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME
is to say I belong to a NEW family – my TRUE father lives in heaven and I am his child. He is holy and I must be like him. This is my true – my only allegiance. I belong not to this world, to its governments, idols and powers – I belong only to my daddy in heaven and first and foremost I will seek to make him happy.
AMEN
Q’s for reflection
How much of our faith reflects MY rather than OUR FATHER?
What can we do to be a people who are a people of OUR FATHER rather than MY FATHER?
What is the balance between awe and intimacy with OUR FATHER – how do we maintain both aspects?
How can we be a people who are HOLY that is set-apart yet at the same time live the radical genrosity and inclusive love of Jesus for the outcasts/the lost?
In what ways does the world seek to undermine our true and only allegiance to OUR FATHER? How can we recognise and fight against these attempts to compromise us?