"Its Friday but Sunday is Coming"

Of the many times I've heard Tony Campolo speak it has been this particular talk titled "It's Friday but Sunday is Coming" that has shaped my thoughts of Easter.

Today the day is rainy in Michigan so I am "forced" to sit at my desk to ponder and pray and to visit some of the "old" books which have influenced my thinking and my life. One of those books is titled THE PRAYER THAT SPANS THE WORLD by Helmut Thielicke. (1960) Here are a few of his thoughts -- please read the whole book

First - "To the Reader"
"These sermons, delivered to congregations in Stuttgart, were addressed to people who continued to assemble throughout the horrors of air raids, the declining days of a reign of terror, and finally through the period of total military and political collapse and the beginning of occupation...

"The preacher saw upon the faces of his hearers the destinies from which they had come or which they were approaching. He sensed the tension they were feeling ... He saw on those faces the torment of doubt and despair, the hunger and thirst for a valid comfort and encouragement that would stand the test in hours of work, in hours spent in underground shelters, suffering agonies of body and mind.

"All that the preacher read in those faces and also what filled him to the brim, since he too was a participant, is doubtless reflected in these sermons. And the Lord's Prayer was able to contain it all.

"..."And to the author it seems important that they should keep in view a world in which the furies had been unleached, a world that was forced to reveal itself - the actual world in which these addresses were delivered. This meant that any kind of phrasemaking and glorification of the world in ruled out. Here only the whole truth and the naked truth can stand; here only the center of the gospel message can make us free." Helmut Thielicke

Second, - Pages 21,22

"No, we cannot say 'Our Father'! We really cannot!
Only on one condition - and that condition would be tantamount to a miracle - could we say 'Our father.' And that would be if the Father has first spoken to us, if he had revealed himself to us and we therefore had the guarantee that he was actually and beyond all conjecture with us in the dark forest and that when we cried 'Father, Father' we were not merely victims of the illusions of our own yearnings.

"And this is the point in our train of thought at which we clearly see the tremendous importance that this prayer is to be attributed to the fact that it is Jesus Christ himself who teaches us to pray the Lord's Prayer...

"... suddenly we realize that it is fatefully significant that Jesus is one from whom we receive this holy prayer of all Christiandom. Jesus in the invisible backgrouind of every one of its petitions. All of them are nothing less than geometrical loci that meet in Jesus, even though Jesus himself is never mentioned.

Page 29

"Out of the flood of thoughts that pour in upon us when we say 'Our Father' I have chosen and dealt with one in this first sermon... this though can be summed up as follows: Absolutely everything depends on this one fact, that it is Jesus Christ who teaches us this prayer. Jesus alone, in his life and his death, is the guarantor that there is a Father, that God is nevertheless at work in this cruel, hard, and fatherless world, building his kingedom of mercy and the secrecy of the Cross. So every sermon on the Lord's Prayer must of necessity be central to the preaching of Christ; otherwise it romantic fantasy, nothing more.

"Now everything will be all right, so long as we hear his good voice calling us above the howling of wolves, and above the sound of branches snapping, above all the ominous noices around us.

Pages 31,32

"God is always there first. God has always spoken first;... Jesus Christ walked the earth, died and rose for us, ascended into heaven, and brought us to the Father. God is always there first, and therefore our prayer is always only and answer to this simple fact. Take Bethlehem and Golgotha out of the world and the cry of God will be slienced and praying becomes meaningless...

"Never can we realize this wonderful fact that a voice is calling to us from Bethlehem and Golgatha and the open grave, and that our tongues are free to pray, so that now the note of praise and thanks may enter into our response: 'Praise to thee, O God our Father; you are the one who walks in the night and calls us. Now all is well...

Page 41 -42

"But Jesus lives and breaths in the atmosphere of eternity. For Jesus, prayerful conversation with the Father is the familiar home to which he is constantly returning. For Jesus, our native home is an alien place...Indeed, his sacrifice is that he comes to be with us in the far country. But Jesus does come; he wants to be our brother... We should all be orphans were it for Jesus. There would be no one to hear us if Jesus had not opened the gates of heaven...

"But now we have a shepherd. Now the gates of heaven are open. Now we have a Father. What can ever cast us down, what can ever unhinge us as long as we can look into that countenance and as long as we can say in the name our brother Jesus Christ. "ABBA FATHER"

To each of you who happen to read this blog

Wilma and I wish for you an Easter filled with grateful hearts for Jesus -- the one who truly spans the whole world!!!

Bill