Rooted In Papa God

A video version of this Sermon is available at https://youtu.be/sTjFXKSmoPs ..............................................................................

In Freetown in Sierra Leone in the Krio language - a blend of English and African languages- they talk about “Papa God”. I think that is beautiful. As a thirteen year becoming a Christian I heard for the first time about God as daddy. Oh the words had passed through my ears before, but I had never truly heard them before.

“The father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” (eph 3:14)

When I was five my (human) daddy died. Unsurprisingly that left quite a big gaping hole inside of me. For much of my childhood (and indeed adolescence) I would discover surrogate father figures, put them on a pedestal only to cast them down again when they failed to live up to my over idealised expectations.

When I became a Christian two things really helped me

- The one was the point in the prayers when we pray for the departed. Being able to remember my dad before God I found beautiful, peaceful, helpful

- The second was increasingly experiencing God as daddy - Papa God - my earthly daddy might be in heaven, but increasingly I experienced the love of my heavenly daddy with me here on earth.

“For this reason I bow my knees before The father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name”

Church is meant to be a family. Sometime a second family for people who also have good loving human families; sometimes the only family for those whose biological families have failed to be real family. For those who have suffered abuse, or those whose parents have disowned them perhaps because they are gay, or have “betrayed the family” by converting to Christianity from another religion, or just because of whatever mess the parents themselves have been through they have not been able to love their children properly. And the mess passes down from one generation to another until we find healing in God’s family the Church.

That’s why we used titles like Father or Mother for our clergy - because we are a family.

Of course sometimes our church family may feel a bit….

(picture of the Simpson's family strangling each other)

Our Church family is far from perfect because we are broken sinful human beings.

But the more we center on Papa God “The father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” - the more our church family will become healing family - rooted and grounded in love.

We think of Father as a metaphor - we look at our human parents and say “ah God’s a bit like that”. St Thomas Aquinas tells us it is actually sort of the other way around. We may first learn about parental love by looking at our human parentals. But it’s when we look at God that we learn what a true Father, a true Mother is like. “The one from whom every human family takes its name”. Then once we have looked at God and learnt what being Father or a Mother is really about- we can start to apply it to how we should live as human Fathers and Mothers.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

And how do we plug into that?

We need “Christ to dwell in your hearts by faith”

It is often said that “Christianity is a relationship not a religion”

Now this is perhaps a bit unfair to the word religion

NERD ALERT -

Historian Tom Holland has suggested that the opposite is true- that Christianity is the first religion. Before that societies might have their Gods - Roman Gods, Athenian Gods, Babylonian Gods - like countries might have their National Anthem or their National Football Team. But Christianity was the first god thing that people truly made a choice to join for themselves. Rather than simply blinding following what your country, people for the first time, in getting baptised, said I choose to join the church, I choose to be a Christian.

END OF NERD ALERT

But in fact when people say that “Christianity is a relationship not a religion” - the are using the words in a different way

They are saying no matter how often you sing songs by Hillsong or Bethel; no matter what Bumper sticker is in your car; no matter what fancy Christian T shirts you wear - that’s not what makes you a Christian.

As Cardinal Basil said

“Holiness involves friendship with God. There comes a time in our walk with God when we need to move from being Sunday Acquaintances to weekday friends”

A friendship in which “Cor ad cor loquator” - heart speaks to heart. To quote the beautiful Spiritual writer Francis de Salles “Truly the chief exercise in mystical theology is to speak to God and to hear God speak in the bottom of the heart; and because this discourse passes in most secret aspirations and inspirations, we term it a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the the sacred lovers who speak.”