Hallowed be Your Name

      As a nurse tells the story, "A precocious 4-year-old was brought to the ER with a severe cough. She kept up a non-stop conversation while I was trying to assess her lung sounds. Finally, I said, ‘Shhh, I have to see if Barney is in there.’ The child looked at me and calmly stated, ‘I have Jesus in my heart. Barney is on my underwear.’"

     That child knew who belongs where. That’s what we’re in worship to learn. That’s why we’re focusing on these communion Sundays on the Lord’s Prayer. It can be hard to put ourselves out of the picture and focus on God. But if we are going to worship, that is exactly what we must do.

     There is a common worship model which sees the preacher as the performer, God as the audience, and the congregation as the critic. But we are not the audience in worship and we are not the critic. God is the audience, God is the critic, and we are all the performers -- even if that performance is giving reverent attention to God's word as it is read and preached. Actually, you’re the performers. I’m just the prompter.

     Jesus reminds us of the relationship between us and God in the Lord's Prayer. The prayer begins by giving God His proper place. The first three petitions are for the hallowing of God’s name, the coming of God’s Kingdom, and the doing of God’s will. The prayer begins by putting God in the center. All other things can only take their proper place when God is given the central place. So the Lord's Prayer begins with the majesty of God, the purpose of God, and the acceptance of the will of God.

     The first of these God directed petitions is probably the hardest for us to understand. Every Sunday we pray "Hallowed be Your Name". But what do we mean? What are we asking God to do and why are we asking Him to do it?

      The word hallow is not in common use today except for this time of year when we celebrate Halloween.  And even then we don’t think about what it mans.  For us to say, "Father in heaven, may Your Name be kept hallowed or holy," sounds sort of distant. Some associate it with old traditions – the more ponderous the music, the more smoke, the more holy the moment. 

     But holy doesn’t mean boring or traditional.  God’s name can be hallowed with rock as well as Bach.  Holy means healthy. Our word holy actually comes from the old Anglo-Saxon words halig or hale which meant that something was sound, healthy, or whole.  So when we say to God, “hallowed be you name” we are saying that we want God to keep his name in good shape. 

       We don’t think much about personal names today.  For one thing, too many people share our names with us and they can’t always be trusted.  The only other  time I remember that my name carries any particular weight is when I get a call from some collection agency because another Dave Wilkinson in Illinois keeps passing bad checks and not paying his bills. Then the issue is cleared up by the integrity of the last digits of my Social Security number.  With the rise of identity theft that precious Social Security number is what we really protect, not our names.   

       But in biblical times, the name stood for much more than the handle by which a person was called. The name meant the entire character of the person.

      We have the same belief today but with companies rather than individuals. Companies go to enormous lengths to protect their trademark.  Take, for example, the name Rolls Royce. When we see that name stamped on an automobile we immediately have a degree of respect for it. In that name resides the reputation of one of the world's most renowned engineering firms. That name stands for the finest in mechanical engineering. It represents the most advanced research. It bears the stamp of meticulous care and precision. It symbolizes the ultimate in reliability and dependability. It denotes the highest degree of craftsmanship and design. It symbolizes the deal I made last week for product placement in this sermon.  If you see Silver Shadow in the parking lot after worship with my name on it, you’ll know it worked.

      A companies name is on the line in how it’s name is used.  That’s why Rolls Royce solicitors all over to world go after people who advertise themselves as the Rolls Royce of plumbers or something like that. 

      Nowadays it’s done with companies.  But in biblical times the focus was on the individual.  In the Bible the name was seen to represent the character of the person.  That is why God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Jacob’s to Israel. A change of character calls for a change of name.  

      So when we pray, “hallowed by your name” to God we are saying that we don’t want God to change who His is.  We are saying that we want God to keep his name in good shape.  For God’s name is God’s character -- who God is.

     This is why David writes in the Twenty Third Psalm: "You lead me in paths of righteousness or right paths for your name's sake."  David means that God stakes his reputation as God on his behavior toward us -- on leading us right. Psalm 9:10 declares of God: "'Those who know Your Name will put their trust in You." This means that those who know who God is -- His proven love, His mind, His heart will gladly put their trust in Him. They know that God can be trusted so they put their weight down.

     Jesus says that we are to ask God to make His Name hallowed.  What we are actually saying in this part of the Lord’s Prayer is, "God, be yourself" – don’t change a thing. 

     We need to pray for this. Because, quite frankly, if God is changeable, we are all sunk. We need to know what God is like and we need to know that God will be consistent with his own self. We need to know that God never gets up on the wrong side of the bed and never has an off day.

     Now, in fact, God will be true to Himself whether we ask him to or not. But when we pray "Hallowed be Thy Name", we are also praying a second prayer. Yes, we are praying that God will be God. But we are also praying that we will do our part in recognizing God as God. We don’t just want God to hallow His own Name. We are saying that we are willing to do our part in maintaining the honor the name deserves.

     How do we do it? How do we do our part in hallowing God’s name?

     Well, to start with, we hallow God’s name when we worship God as God knows Himself to be, and don't try to whittle him down to a more manageable size. We hallow God’s name when our beliefs about God are accurate.  As God said to Moses at the burning bush:  “I am what I am.  I’m not who you think I am but who I am.”

     We do not truly worship God until we stop worshiping what we conceive of Him to be and start worshiping what he knows Himself to be. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "The prayer that precedes every true prayer is this: ‘may it be the real You I speak to and the real I that speaks to You.’"

     The second way we hallow God’s name is that we don’t empty God’s name of its true meaning by using it casually or as a swear word. 

      A third way we hallow God’s name is that we keep the promises we make in his name – vows of baptism, marriage vows, testimony in court when we swear to tell the truth in God’s name.

     A fourth way we reverence God and hallow God’s name is when our way of life honors God and attracts others to Him. If we are just as likely to collapse under sorrow, if our life is just as frustrated and unsatisfying as the life of the non-Christian; if we are just as worried and anxious, just as nervous and restless, just as guilty of petty dishonesty, of self-seeking, of measuring everything against material values as the person who makes no profession of Christianity, then quite clearly no one will want Christianity because the obvious conclusion is that it doesn’t make any difference.

      When we pray "Hallowed by Thy Name", part of our prayer is that God will enable us to show that we are redeemed, so that in our lives He may be glorified, and that through us others may come to desire to know Him. If we sincerely pray "Hallowed by Thy Name" we will find special pleasure in seeing others come to honor and worship Him as we do.   We will remember that we are not just a family as a church – as enjoyable as that is.  We are a family with a mission to expand the Kingdom of God in this area.

      And if we pray with sincerity "Hallowed by Your Name" – if we don’t just slide over that part of the Lord’s Prayer but really engage -- it's going to show up in our own thinking and conduct.     If you want to become a new person, a better person, realize first that God can receive honor from you.  And then pray that God’s unchanging character and goodness, and compassion will be revealed through you as you pray: "Hallowed be Your Name -- in me."