Our Father, Hallowed be Thy Name

Well friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

If you would, humor me for a second and find your hymnal in front of you, it's the gold cross one. Turn to page 323. It's right after page 322, if that helps you. Page 323. There you'll find, in the right-hand column, The Lord's Prayer. This is from the small catechism printed in the hymnal, and it has Luther's explanations to the different parts of the Lord's Prayer in here.

I thought, if we're going to talk about the Lord's Prayer, what better way to start than by looking at the explanations that Luther gives us? He wrote this small catechism to teach little children, but it's good review for us grown-ups too.

Let's look here at the introduction. You guys see that about halfway down on page 323? It says, "Our Father Who Art in Heaven." Let's read together what "What does this mean?" says. "With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that he is our true father and that we are his true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask him as dear children ask their dear father."  

Let's do the next one as well, the first petition, "Hallowed be thy name." And then let's read together "What does this mean?" "God's name is certainly holy in itself, but we pray in this petition that it may be kept holy among us also."  

Let's do the next part, "How is God's name kept holy?" Together: "God's name is kept holy when the word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we as the children of God also lead holy lives according to it. Help us to do this, dear Father in heaven. But anyone who teaches or lives contrary to God's word profanes the name of God among us. Protect us from this, heavenly father." Cool.  

So tonight, we want to talk about both the introduction and that first petition: "Hallowed be thy name." As I talked through it with the kids, I want to talk through it with you as well. And I think it is good to note that the Lord's Prayer is the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples, and then also teaches us, right?

It struck me a couple of years ago that whenever you pray the Lord's Prayer, even if you pray it alone, you still start it with those two words, right? How do you start it? "Our Father." Now, I got to tell you, that always kind of struck me a little weird, right? Because if I'm alone, should I say "my Father?" But then a couple years ago, I thought, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Jesus is praying this with you!" Because he teaches it to you. Whenever you pray the Lord's Prayer, you never pray it alone. You always pray it with Jesus. And so he prays the Lord's Prayer with you, and so you get to say "Our Father."

And then of course, as I was talking through with the kids, you get to call God "Father" and treat him like a father and bring anything to him like a father. He wants you to think of him like a father. Jesus gives you his relationship to the Father by what he does on the cross. So not only is God your father by virtue of the fact that he made you, he created you – because anybody can say that, right? And praise God, he is the God of everybody, and anybody can pray to him. But Jesus gives you a special, deeper relationship with God where you can call him Father, not just because he made you, but because Jesus has died for you and risen for you and gives you the status of a son. That's what we read in the Galatians reading, that Jesus gives you his status of sonship, even if you're a girl, right? You have the same status and relationship that Jesus does to the heavenly Father.

Isn't that wild to think about? When the Father sees you, he sees his son Jesus. And this is a bold prayer that Jesus invites you to pray, that you can pray to God the Father as if he's listening to Jesus himself. And of course, that's not just true for the Lord's Prayer, that's true for any prayer that you as a Christian pray in the spirit, in the name of Jesus. That's why you pray in the name of Jesus, because you're praying to your Father by virtue of the blood of Jesus.

So, do you think that God the Father would listen to your prayers when you pray that way? I would say so! If God the Father is one to listen to Jesus, and Jesus buys you with his own blood, and he takes your place, and he gives you his place toward the Father, he's going to listen to your prayers.

Now, I think it's interesting too that because God commands you to pray – and God does command you to pray – do you think that he wants to listen to your prayers if he commands you to pray? I would say so! Because he commands you to pray, and because Jesus makes God your Father, your prayers are as important as anybody else's.

And I feel like I've got to say that because sometimes I'll have people come up to me and say, "Hey Pastor, um, I've been praying, but I don't think that God is listening to me. I know you're a pastor, so God must listen to you, so would you please pray for me?" And I say, "You know what? Yes, I'll pray for you, but let's talk, because God listens to you as much as he does me. God listens to you as much as he does a pastor. God listens to you as much as he would one of the church fathers of old, like Augustine or anybody else, right? He listens to you as much as he would the Apostle Paul, or Peter. He listens to you as much as he does his own son Jesus. God commands you to pray. He invites you to pray. He wants to hear your prayers. And Jesus gives you the relationship with God the Father to pray."

And I love how the rest of it goes, right? "Our Father Who Art in Heaven." You know what's going on there? Jesus is inviting you to invoke Heaven intervening in Earth. "Our Father who art in heaven," right? Jesus is telling you that you have the right, and even the responsibility and the command, to say, "Hey God, Father, not only are you my father, and you promised to hear my prayers and answer them, but I know where you live! You live at the headquarters, right? You live in heaven! So, bring some of that down here!" That's what Jesus is teaching you to pray: "Our Father Who Art in Heaven."

And then he goes on, and this is maybe where I want to spend most of the time. He says, "Hallowed be thy name." Now, names are important. Who's got a name here? Alright, that was supposed to be a really easy question! At least one person did not raise her hand, but right now, now we've all got names because names are important, right?

And names do several things, right? Names tell you the story, or they bring to mind the story of that person. So if I say "Darth Vader," right? You now know the whole, like, that whole story just gets injected into your head. Now the rest of the church service you're going to be watching the movie in your head, right? Or you say "Donald Trump," and immediately all the current events come to mind, and they all start – you start thinking about the news article you just read and all the stories you know. Or if I say "Taylor Swift," right? Now you got music going through your head now, right? Names kind of bring the story and the things about that person to mind in the moment.

But names also carry a reputation, right? Now you have opinions about them, and now you feel like you have something that you know about them that is maybe useful for yourself. They carry the reputation of the person. That's why you can have a "bad name," right? Where no longer is your name regarded as something good.

And then not only that, but they also carry the relationship. You ever get somewhere and you feel like you should know somebody's name, and you forget it, right? And you feel like, "Oh, am I going to sour a relationship because of this?" Right? Or if somebody calls you "Hey, you!" and you think, "Oh, we got a really deep relationship here." Yeah, right, right. Names also carry the relationship with them.

And not only that, but names also kind of bring that person present. It brings their presence into the situation. That's why you put your name on your lunch when you go to work, right? And you put it in the fridge. It's kind of like your name is sitting there in the fridge, guarding it and saying, "This is, this is, this belongs to John, don't touch it," right? That's what names do, they have that kind of power.

And so the very first thing that Jesus teaches us to pray after "Our Father who art in heaven" is "Hallowed be thy name," because God's name has power. As soon as you hear the name "Jesus," what comes to mind? The cross, the resurrection, maybe his miracles or teachings, right? When you hear the name of Jesus, not only comes to mind the stories, but also the reputation. I'm sure that if you went out into the world, even people who don't believe in Jesus as the Lord and Savior might still have some opinions about him, right? I think generally Jesus probably has a good reputation, right? But it also carries relationship.

Imagine if God never gave you a name to call him by, and you only got to call him "God." And maybe as an aside, that might be something to think about when you pray. It's okay to say, "Hey God," it's okay to pray to God, but that kind of feels like the, like, the Walmart store brand version of what we could address God as, right? God gives us a lot of names to call him by: Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit. He gives Moses the name Yahweh. God wants you to call him by his names, by what he tells you about himself, not just a "Hey you," right? He wants you to remember what he's done and who he is and call him by what he's given you to call him by. And not only that, but it also brings his presence. His name is who he is. It's his presence on Earth.

That's why he gives you the right, the authority, the gift to pray. You're calling on the presence of God here. You're calling upon the name of the Lord, right? You're calling him to do something, to be present in your life and in this world. That's why we pray. And so when Jesus teaches you to pray "Hallowed be thy name," that means that he is, he's asking you in your prayer to confess that his name is powerful to do something. You're invoking his name.

And not only that, but we get that word that we hardly say any time else, right? "Hallowed," right? It gets at "Holiness," where we're saying "holy be your name." Holiness, holiness is kind of hard to define, isn't it? But holiness might, sometimes you hear the phrase "to be set apart," and that's true. Set apart from the normal ways of the world, or set apart from the sin, or the uncleanness, or the death in our world. But maybe a better way of thinking about it is this: it's the sheer force of God's presence and goodness. The sheer force of God's presence and goodness. It's so, so, so good that if you aren't holy yourself, it's going to hurt, right? Has anybody ever tried to stare into the sun? Right? Yeah, yeah, me too, right? I don't recommend it, because it's so bright, right? It's similar to God's holiness. It's so good, it hurts if you're not built in his holiness.

I think maybe we can think about it this way: what makes God holy is that he is the creative force behind the cosmos. He is the source of life. He holds the fabric of reality together. He is good. The holiness of God is his presence. And so when Jesus teaches you to pray "hallowed" or "holy be thy name," right? What he's teaching you to pray is recognizing that it is all from him. It is all for him. It's all about him. It's where everything comes from. He is the top dog, right? He is holy. His name, which is his presence and his power, is holy. And when we start our prayer by saying "holy be thy name," Jesus is teaching us to orient our prayers, and not just our prayers, but our whole lives to God's holiness.

Now here's the crazy part. God's name, in a sinful, corrupt, dying world, God's name is the only thing that is holy. Nothing else is holy except God's name. Except this crazy thing happens, right? If God's name is the only thing that's holy in the world, what does God do with his name? What does God do with his name? He puts it on you, and he makes you holy with his name. God takes the holiness of his name, and he places it on us. That's what baptism does, right? It's the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit placing their signatures on you. You have the name of the Trinity tattooed spiritually on your forehead, right? That's what baptism does. So that the Father signs his name to you to call you his holy child. Jesus signs his name in his holy blood to mark you as one redeemed by his crucifixion. And the Holy Spirit signs his name to you to give you a new, resurrected, holy life.

And so what is true about God's name then becomes true about you. He ties his story to you, so that what he has done through Jesus and the cross and the resurrection now becomes your story. Your story is enmeshed in Jesus's story. And now what Jesus has done, by his reputation, by being the Son of God who has died for the sins of the whole world, and being the one who is blameless and without sin and resurrected, now when he signs his name to you in your baptism, you have the reputation of Jesus. You are without sin. You defeated death. And now not only that, but you have a relationship with him. You bear the name of Jesus tattooed on your forehead. And not only that, but it also invokes God's presence. If the name is the presence of God, you bear it. So just like you might write your name on your sandwich and then put it in the refrigerator at work, right? God has placed his name, he's written his name on you, and he says, "Mine." So next time you put your sandwich in the office at work, you can remember that, right?

And so this all shapes the way that we pray. We call upon the name of the Lord, asking him to make our lives holy because his name is holy. We ask God to make our lives, our world holy. And by the way, just a little bit of a warning: the more you pray for God's holiness, it's likely the more that you will see just how unholy your life is. Anybody ever experienced that? You see, "Oh man, I should be doing a whole lot more praying around here," right? You feel like you got a lot to do in your house, a lot of cleanup to do in your house, a lot of projects to do in your house. Well, praying is all the much more work because of how broken and how sinful and how decaying this world is, and our lives are, and the lives of the people you know are. We need the holiness of God's name in our lives. We got a lot of work to do by praying.

And so here's what Jesus teaches us to pray for as we pray that God's name would be holy, that when we pray, we acknowledge that nothing is made holy without him. If anything is going to be holy in this world, it must be made so by God. Nothing is holy without him. And that means God also wants us to pray against everything that is not holy. I'm not saying that we pray against people, but we pray against all the things in this world and all the actions in this world that are not holy. We pray against sin, and we pray against corruption, and we pray against death, and all the powers of wickedness and evil, and all the unholiness in our world. Jesus wants us to pray against those things and invoke heaven on Earth.

And of course, we also want to start with us, don't we? We pray that God would make our lives align to God's holiness, that God would start with us and make our lives holy. And as we pray for us, that God would make our lives holy, then we also pray for our world. And so I don't know about you, but there's a lot to pray for. And so I might start with, "God, I'm a sinner, and I'm not holy without you making me holy. So continue to make me holy. Make also those that I'm closest to holy. Drive away all that is evil against them. Drive away the sin in their hearts. Drive away the works of Satan in their lives." And you can keep on working outward, right? We pray for our communities, we pray for our leaders, we pray for those who are oppressed, or we pray for those who are suffering. We continue to work our way outward, that God would continue to make this world holy.

You know what the beautiful part is? His answer ultimately is "yes." That one day, on that last day, our Father in heaven will indeed answer every prayer, and God's name will make all things holy. So keep praying, dear Christian, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." In Jesus' name, amen.