Among my 50 or so neckties, I have one favorite: my father’s tie.
It’s an old Botany 500 tie, manufactured in Philadelphia – just after late 1950s thin, but well before early 1970s wide. A solid red tie with a pattern of very small blue and tan squares with the signature “500” near the tip, it was the quintessential mid-20th century businessman’s look.
For some reason, I remember my father, who died in 1991, wearing this tie more than any others – maybe because it was a basic red, or maybe because it’s mine now and I’d like to think of it that way.
As I cross, flip, turn and tuck the tie into a half Windsor, I can never help but to think of my dad and how many times he had stood before a mirror, like me, performing the very same ritual.
I thought of the numerous times I saw him wearing that very same tie, walking in the house just after five o’clock. Often in the summer, I’d run the two blocks to the corner where he turned onto our street to meet him. He’d see me, smile, pull over, and let me in, and we’d drive the rest of the way home together.
I thought about those days when I would be too sick to go to school and Dad would come home for lunch a few minutes past noon. He’d ask me how I was feeling, press his cool palm against my feverish forehead, and then head off into the kitchen where Mom had a lunch ready for him. After eating, he’d lay down on the couch for a quick nap, tie still tight up on the collar and laid perfectly straight.
Looking in the mirror as I tighten the tie around my collar has a way of transporting me back to that very place and time, sustaining our father-child relationship.
Prayer has a way of doing that, too, sustaining our relationship with our heavenly Father.
Consider how the Lord’s Prayer isn’t just about teaching the disciples how to pray, it is teaching about the fatherhood of God and about the father-child relationship.
There are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament, one in Luke and the other in Matthew, each aimed at two different audiences. Luke was writing to Gentile Christians while Matthew was writing to Jewish Christians.
Since God is rarely addressed as a father in Jewish prayers, Jesus teaches his disciples to approach God as they approach their fathers. However, the Gentile Christian audience’s experience with their fathers would have been vastly different from the Jewish Christians.
Jewish fathers were seen as representatives of God within the family, especially in their role as teachers and spiritual leaders, fulfilling the religious duties in accordance with Mosaic Law.
The fathers in the Greco-Roman culture, the Gentiles, had complete control over their children including the right to decide on marriage, education, and whether his newborn child will be raised in the family, sold, or even killed.
Luke changes his audience’s perspective on fatherhood by presenting God as a Father who cares for his children, one who is generous, loving, and attentive to His children’s needs like a cool palm on a feverish forehead.
In calling God “Our Father,” Jesus is telling us that we don’t have a distant relationship with our Father across the space of time, but a very personal, a very immediate relationship, a familial relationship, a father-child relationship with God that is based on caring and love.
God is a loving Father, we are His beloved children, and we are called to live with trust, obedience, and intimacy with Him. It is this father-child relationship that defines our Christian identity.
Just as we choose to put on a necktie, we choose to enter into prayer. We take a moment, we pause, we prepare. A tie doesn’t magically wrap itself; it takes a deliberate hand and a moment of focus. So does prayer. It starts with intention: a decision to connect with God our Father.
Even though my father has been gone now for more than 34 years, my 60-plus-year-old tie binds the gaps of time and joins a loving father and child in heart very much like a prayer.
Deacon Dean Johnson serves at Church of the Holy Family, Sewell.
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