Sometimes the word “imagination” gets a bad wrap. We use the words “imaginary” or “imagination” to dismiss something. “That’s just your imagination” or “Your just imaging that”. When we say it that way we usually mean that we think something is not real and therefore not worth our attention. A child is afraid there is something in the closet at bedtime and so we look in the closet, find nothing there and say, “It was just your imagination.” And so we start to train the child to be dismissive of things that can’t be seen. We teach them to devalue that which is in their minds but that can’t been seen or touched. We also help the child get to sleep, so it’s a trade off.
Modern atheism is big on referring to God as imaginary. If you google “God and imaginary”, you will get a lot of atheists blogs and articles on the topic. They say that God is imaginary the way that unicorns or fairies are imaginary. Therefore, the idea of God should be dismissed the same way that ideas about unicorns and fairies should be dismissed.
But, I think we should embrace the idea that God is imaginary because we all imagine God. We just have to get rid of all the negative value we put on those words. The American Heritage Dictionary defines imagine as “To form a mental picture or image of, to think, conjecture, to employ the imagination, to make a guess.” All of those can be applied to how we as Christians engage God. We form a mental picture or image of God. We think about God. We make conjecture about the nature of God. We employ our imagination. We make a guess about God.
But, there is one definition of the word that does not apply to how engage God. It says, “To have a notion of or about without adequate foundation.” There’s the rub. Our imagination about God does has adequate foundation. It has adequate foundation through our own internal experience of God. It has adequate foundation in our collective experience of God. It has adequate foundation in the communal experience of God throughout history as recorded by many spiritual writing, the most foundational of which for Christians wrote the holy scriptures.
All those experiences of God point to the same reality: a God that can be seen, heard, felt, touched and known but not in a way that can be reproduced in a laboratory or measured objectively. Therefore, some say that God is not real, because only things that can be reproduced in a laboratory or measured are real. But, we say, no. We can see, hear, feel, touch and know God and we have faith in others who have had those experiences, but because we cannot reproduce it in a laboratory or measure it we have to use our imaginations. We have to imagine God. We have to create images for God that allow us to express what we see, hear, feel, touch and know and share those experiences with others.
That is a lot of explanation to get us to the second word of the Lord’s Prayer: Father. Father is an image of God. We imagine God as Father and lots of us agree that the image of a loving Father is a good image for what we experience individually and collectively. It is a good image because it emphasis a relationship with God. It emphasis a hierarchal relationship with God where God is an authority by whom we should be guided and to whom we should listen. It reminds us that God knows things that we as children do not know. The image of God as Father also emphasizes that the hierarchical relationship is defined by and inseparable from God’s unconditional love for us. Further the image reminds us that we are related to God just as a child is related to a parent. We share the same DNA if you will. We are not identical to God just a child is not identical to her father or her mother, but we are not totally different than God either. God as Father is a very good image for God. It is not the only image for God in the Bible or outside the Bible in the imaginations of faithful people after the Bible was canonized. But, it is a very good image and one that Jesus taught his followers to use.
However, like any image, Father also has limitations. It is not a perfect. It does not completely or even adequately capture the nature of God and it presents serious stumbling blocks for some people. Let’s look at the stumbling blocks first. A major block for imaging God as Father is that some people have had very bad experience with their human fathers. Others have had good experiences. In fact, there are as many experiences of fathers as there are children. Some had relationship with loving, nurturing, strong, present fathers. Some had no fathers or even no good father figures. Some had fathers who were in the house but not present, zoned out on TV or drugs or totally consumed by work. Some had fathers who never I said “I love you” or showed that love through affection. Then, some had fathers who were simply evil. They were verbally abusive or physically or sexually abusive. Some still carry deep, painful, debilitating wounds inflicted by their fathers.
Most of us have fathers that are probably somewhere in that big middle between saintly and satanic. Still a significant stumbling block for some can be trying to imagine God as a father when the images of father that we have been given are not perfect or totally positive or worse are deeply painful and evil.
Some people will make the argument and it is a good argument that this is part of the spiritual journey. If we have been harmed by our father, part of our journey is learning to see him as a flawed human being in need God’s Grace and learning to forgive him and learning to receive the fatherly love we need from God since we did not receive it from our dad. That is all true. That is part of the spiritual journey.
On the other hand, some people are able to have wonderful relationships with God only if they don’t imagine God as a Father. Maybe they should be ready to see God as Father but because of their pain they are not ready for that yet. They are not there yet. Fortunately, Father is just an image and there are many other images that people can use. We can call God Mother, Shepherdess, Queen, Rock, Redeemers, Spirit, Creator or even Goddess. Whatever works. Because on the spiritual journey it is much more important that we have a lively, engaged, nurturing relationship with God, than we use an image for God that is painful to us and blocks that relationship. In the end, Father is one of many images for a spiritual reality that is much more important than the image itself.
But, there is another limitation about the image of God as Father. I’m especially aware of this now that I have children. I’ll phrase it as a question: What is the message we send to our children when we first teach them that God, the Creator of the Universe is a man? In our house we explain to our kids that God is not male or female because God does not have a body and you have to have a body in order to be male or female. We say you can call God anything you want. But, then we come back to this prayer that we say every Sunday and often we include in our prayers at night. “Our Father.” It’s like we are teaching one thing and practicing something else.
Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal if we did not live in a such male dominated world; a world where males hold the power still. A world where men have held power for thousands of years across most of the globe and led us into war after war, and massive amount of inequality and environmental destruction. A world where millions of women are the victims of violence at the hands of men. A world where men and women are simply not equal under the law. Men rule the world and continue to destroy it. And here we are, acknowledging that we are using our imaginations as we develop images for God that help us to be better people. And we choose to continue to imagine God as a man in our most basic and foundational prayer. I just wonder what does that teach my daughter about what it means to be a woman (or a man) in this world and what does it teach my son about what it means to be a man (or a woman) in this world.
Its not quite same problem as the educational placemat that we have on our dinner table that has pictures and dates of all the US presidents and they are all men. With that placemat we can say that women have been treated unequally for a long time and that is why there are no female presidents but that is wrong and women can do anything men can do. There should be women presidents and there will be women presidents. With the placemat the future is open. But, with the Lord’s Prayer we can say all that and then we close the future slightly by continuing to say “Our Father”. Its not like our kid’s ever aspire to be God the way they could aspire to be President. God is not job that men or women can have. But, God is God and we close our children’s mind just a little by continuing to only use the image of Father so routinely in our most basic prayer.
I guess, ideally, I would rather say, “Our Mother and Father” or “Our Heavenly Parent” or something gender neutral when we say the Lord’s Prayer. But, I also know that the words of the the Lord’s Prayer as they have been learned from the time we were children are deeply nourishing to us as men and women. Saying “Our Father” touches something deep in our souls. So, maybe this is a topic for community discussion. It won’t be solved from the pulpit. If we ever were to change it, we would have to think it through as a community and decide as a community. The adults would have to decide it was worth sacrificing something meaningful to them for the sake of the children, assuming we agreed that it was important for the children. So, just in case you were waiting for my permission to have the discussion, permission granted.
This is a longish sermon already but I want to close with one other way to imagine God and this is offered by the author John Dominic Crossan in his book on the Lord’s Prayer. This image is pretty, academic, unemotional and unpoetic, I admit, but it is worth raising because it will help us frame the prayer in a new light. Crossan says the best way to express what Jesus meant by Father in his time and culture, was Householder. A householder is responsible for the well being of the entire house and its people, animals and property. A householder is the head of the house and makes sure that everyone has enough and no one has too much. A householder makes sure that the sick are cared for and the land is not abused. A householder makes sure that everyone has work that is suitable for their ability and skills. And to tie this back into our previous discussion, a householder is not by definition male. That’s why we read what is commonly known as the Ode to a Capable Wife from Proverbs 31. It describes a woman who buys wool and flax, brings food from far away, provides food for the household and directs the servants in their work. She considers a field and buys it, she oversees the planting of an entire vineyard. She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hand to the needy. She provides for all the clothing of the household. It says, “She opens her mouth to wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Because she is such an excellent householder her husband is praised in the city gates.
It is this kind of administration of the household that is being evoked by the word Father. God is a householder and the earth is the house. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to be sure that everyone has enough and no one has too much. We ask God to provide for the sick and be sure the land is not abused. We ask God to administer a world that is just and prosperous for all the members of the household and gives us all work to do that makes a difference. From the strongest to the weakest everyone is cared for and everyone thrives. Our Householder. I invite you to try it. It might feel awkward at first. It might never catch on in any translations or be adopted by any community. But I think that is what Jesus means by Father. Not that God is male, but that God has the ability and the authority to manage the household of this earth and to do so with mercy and justice so everyone can prosper together. Imagine that.
Posted by tomharris1972 
Govans Presbyterian Church 