Many if not all will recognize this phrase from the Lord’s Prayer. Found in both the Gospel of Matthew and Luke, it is part of Jesus’s reply to his disciples’ request that he teach them how to pray as John the Baptizer had taught his disciples to pray. Not a bad thing, I think, to seek instruction in prayer even when we are well schooled and well practiced in a variety of prayer forms.
My strong guess is that his disciples already knew what prayer was, how to pray in some form, and were sustaining an active daily prayer life. These were, after all, devout Jews looking for the coming Messiah who he called to follow him. They went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and observed the major Jewish religious holidays. So even being good observant praying Jews, they still looked for more.
Maybe that is enough for us now in this letter? Just the message to keep going and search for new and deeper ways of being in covenant relationship with God through prayer. Go for it!
Jesus begins by saying, “Our Father.” So far, so good, in identifying to whom you are addressing your prayer. I like that our prayer book says “... we are bold to say ... ” as an introduction to the Lord’s Prayer in our Eucharistic prayer. We are bold to say that God is “Our Father.”
And now, we pause and meditate on that because while Jesus continues on with the rest of the prayer, we should, as I am sure his disciples did that night and days after, consider what that means. Yes, we are claiming God as a parent and ourselves as children, and in doing so we are identifying ourselves as brothers and sisters of Jesus. He did say it first, and coming from him it must be true. But the other thing we might meditate upon in that moment concerns who it is that we are bold to claim as Father. What is this Father like, what has this Father done, and what do we ask of this Father as children might expect?
There is a wonderful collect for Advent 3 that says “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.”
Here is a petition to God to act like God and do what only God can do. Likewise, in the Old Testament one can find again and again petitions by God’s people for God to act like God against those who say their God is sleeping, weak, has abandoned them, and so forth. I can imagine someone once praying during the exile, “Dear God, those Babylonians are mocking us for trusting in you. Do not let us be shamed for our faith. Rise up and defend your name.”
This is what we see in the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches his disciples to ask God to be God. “Hallowed be your name” are not words of praise as they sounded to me for most of my years, but mean more like “God, make your name to be hallowed, to be respected, to be honored.” It is a plea that God act like God and in doing so defend his good name and reputation. And then you get the rest of the prayer.
But think, what would be needful if God did rise up and hallowed his name? The rest of what we pray for really is fulfilled in that petition: the full realization of God’s will being done on earth, everyone having their daily bread, everyone reconciled to God and neighbor, no more evil in the world.
I encourage you to think more about what “Hallowed be your name” means to you and for you, and in your prayers during this season of prayer, what you pray God would do to hallow his name.
Grace and peace,
Fr. Bill+