Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
Teach Us to Pray
Matthew 6:9-13
Many of us have probably mindlessly prayed the words of the Lord’s Prayer and never really thought about what we were really praying for. And that’s part of what gives rise to this sermon series we’re starting today. The other is that most of us have never been taught to pray. My father was a minister and never in all my days in the church have I been taught to pray, not even in seminary. We’re going to take the time to really understand what Jesus was teaching us in the Lord’s Prayer.
As we begin, we need to recognize that this prayer is the most authoritative and important prayer that Christians ever pray because it was given to us by Jesus himself. It is the only prayer where Jesus teaches us how to pray. This prayer is so important that in the early church believers were taught to pray this prayer three times a day, in the morning, at noon and at night. Every time they received Holy Communion they were to pray it and when someone was baptized, they were to pray it. Throughout the history of Christianity, it was consider one of the three most important things for a Christian to memorize along side the Apostle’s Creed and the 10 Commandments. The Apostle’s Creed was seen as a summation of the Christian faith and the 10 commandments as the summation of Christian ethics and the Lord’s prayer was the summation of Christian spirituality. Thomas Watson, a 17th century Christian preacher said, “It was a heap of massive gold.” And yet for many of us, we just pass right through it when we pray.
There are six petitions or things we ask of God in the Lord’s Prayer. The first three have to do with our relationship to God. The last three have to do with ourselves. Before we ever ask for forgiveness or our daily bread or deliverance from temptation, we start off first focusing on God and his will and his kingdom. So the first thing Jesus teaches us is that prayer starts with God and then moves to us. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are already asking for things which God wants to do. God wants his will to be done. God wants to give you your daily bread. God wants you to receive his forgiveness. God already wants to do these things. God knows that you need them and he knows what you’re going to pray even before those words cross your lips.
So, what’s the point of praying? In prayer, instead of convincing God to do something, it is confessing your faith in the God who already wants to do these things. You are stating that you believe God is holy, that he can forgive you and that he can feed you. In the Lord’s Prayer, you are confessing what is already true and you’re claiming that. So that when you pray, you are lining your will up with that of God’s will when you pray the Lord’s Prayer. With that in mind, let’s begin to look at the Lord’s Prayer.
The first word is Father. Jesus teaches us to have an intimate and personal relationship with God. When you go to the store to buy a Father’s Day card, you look at the cards which say Father or Dad. There’s a difference between those two. For me, I am always drawn to the cards with Dad because Father is just too formal. Whenever Jesus talks to God he uses the word Abba which means Father but it is more like a child’s use of the name Daddy. It signified an intimacy and familiarity of God, a close relationship. Part of what Jesus wants us to realize is that relationship with God is meant to be intimate and familiar. He doesn’t want us to pray like this: “O Great Spirit in Heaven or O Light of all Lights….” No, he wants us to pray, Abba, Dad or Daddy in heaven.
God is a personal being. He’s not a force that gives us life. He is a personal and intimate being. That is grounded in the fact that when God created us it was out of His desire to give love away. God created us to be recipients of His love. He created us for the very reason we have children, not to be our servants but because there is something within us which longs to give love away. And that’s how God feels about us. But we also know that God created us not only to receive his love but to reciprocate his love. He created us to understand his love, to experience his love and to be able to respond to his love by giving love back. So when you pray and talk to God, you are entering into that relationship or fellowship with the Lord. That’s why when you pray, we call God Dad or Daddy and not Father.
But this raises some questions for us. What do you do if a person had a not so positive relationship with their father? How does that affect a person’s relationship to God as Father? Or what if that person was physically, emotionally or spiritually abused by their father since we know that 36% of all children have some kind of experience like that growing up. How does that affect their relationship to God as the Father? Or what about a child who grows up with no father in their lives? Adam Hamilton tells the story of visiting a family in his church, a single mom with two children, one was a 5 year old girl. The father had left and moved to Texas to avoid paying child support. When Adam walked in, this little girl wrapped her arms around his leg and then said, I got a birthday card from my daddy, do you want to see it?” Adam said Absolutely. She went to her bedroom and brought out a card which was torn and tattered. When he looked at it, he saw it was 2 years old. But she still carried that card with her wherever she went. She didn’t remember what her daddy looked like but she had a longing to be in relationship with her father. And regardless of our relationship to our earthly father or the lack thereof, deep within us is a longing to be in relationship to God the Father. God’s desire is for this little girl to have the relationship with Him that she did not with her biological father. I think that’s what’s Jesus is saying when we are to see God as the Father. We all have a yearning to have a relationship with God the Father. Maybe your dad wasn’t all that, but your heavenly father is. He loves you, stands by you and never leaves you and never forsakes you.
Now Jesus says he’s our father. He doesn’t teach us to pray, “My father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…give me my bread….forgive me my sins.” Every part of this prayer is in the plural. Part of Jesus is teaching is that Jesus is expecting us to pray together. Christianity and the faith journey is not an individual endeavor but a communal one. We are meant to do life together. He intends for us to pray together. He intends for us to be together, to be unified as one. Part of what this teaches us is that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. The people who grate against you in church are your brothers and sisters in Christ. The people who hurt you are your brothers and sisters in Christ. The Republicans and Democrats, The Catholics and Baptists and the non-denominationals are all your brothers and sisters in Christ. All who pray this prayer are of the same family. They have the same Father and they are all your brothers and sisters in Christ. This reminds us that the faith is not individual. It’s not about me and my faith but it’s our faith and our Father in heaven.
“Our Father, who art in heaven.” How many of you have ever heard a child ask, “Where’s heaven?” When Jesus says “Our Father in heaven” and when he says regularly “our heavenly Father”, he’s saying something specific about his understanding of God and heaven. The Greek word for heaven is ouranos and that word has three different meanings. It meant simply air or it could mean the sky above or the atmosphere above or it could be the heavenly bodies out there in the sky at night. Heaven was all of those things. It was the farthest reaches of the universe. It was above us and looking over us and it was all around us like the air. This is the air I breathe was a song inspired by the Lord’s Prayer. What Jesus was saying is that God is all around us. He’s as close as the air you breathe, God is looking over you from the heavens and God is ruling over all the cosmos as far as you can see. Psalm 139:7-10 captures that. “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” God is everywhere You can’t run from him. You can’t hide from him. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, he is there. Chester Lewis was a key member of this church for over 25 years and instrumental in our acquiring this property. In his last hours, the sitter who was with Chester saw that he had become agitated, which is common with many who are close the end. She held his hand and was able to calm him as she continuously repeated these words, “You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone.” And those are words for us too: “You are not alone..” No matter what you are facing or will face, You are not alone.
Jennifer Ross tells the story of her little brother who was born mentally challenged. She was now 39 but when she was a little girl, she would walk by her brother’s room and he would be praying. He always displayed enormous trust in God. And then in the midst of his prayer, he would stop and ask, “God, are you there?” And then he would answer his own question by saying, “Oh, yeah God, you’re under the bed.” He was content all of his life in knowing that God was under the bed. And then she said, I have a lot of questions and doubts in my mind. But I have a feeling that when we get to the end of life, we’re going to meet God face to face and then we’ll realize is that Kevin had it right all along. Such a simple trusting faith and God was right there with us under her bed all the time. Not just under your bed but next to you and wherever you go, God’s presence is there.” He is our father who is in heaven and what makes it heaven is God’s presence. Heaven is everywhere.
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” which means holy. This is the most important phrase for us today. There are several things this teaches us. The first is balance. The prayer starts off with the wonderful title dad or daddy signifying intimacy, familiarity and closeness. It’s almost so close that we are uncomfortable, which is why we say Father rather than dad. But sometimes we can be too familiar and you forget that God is also holy. In the same breath that we call God dad, we also pray that his name is holy. That’s what it means to hallow God’s name, to call it holy. It’s to revere God and stand in awe of God. On the one hand you have the closeness of God and on the other, the awesome holiness of God. Both of these are important. You need to have both to have balance. If God is just holy then he is far and distant God. If all you have is closeness to God and you don’t have the fear, reverance and awe of God then you are also in danger of taking God for granted in who he is and you lose one of the great catalysts to live holy lives yourself. God is holy. He is to be feared and revered
Second, we are to handle his name with care. What’s in a name? A name is everything in the Bible. It captures the essence of the one who bears that name. So much so, that when someone has a significant life change in the Bible, they change their name. When Jacob wrestles with the angel, he is never the same and his name is changed to Israel. When Simon encounters Jesus and begins to follow him, his name is changed to Peter. When Saul is struck down by the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, his name is changed to Paul. The name describes who that person is and who they shall become.
Third, we are to revere everything of God. When Jesus is teaching us to revere God’s name, he is teaching us not only to hallow his name but everything that God stands for. This is why we are not to take God’s name in vain but to consider it holy. You remember when Moses encountered God at the burning bush, Moses asked God’s name because he needed to know to whom he was talking, his name, his character and his being. God says his name is Yahweh which means I am that I am or I will be who I will be. I am life itself signifying that all life comes from God himself and so that name is holy. And that means anything that we do in the name of God is a sanctification of the name, an honoring of the name. Jews never even said the name of Yahweh. In the Scriptures the name of God was written “YHWH” without the vowels so it could not be pronounced. When they came to the name, they said “hashem” which means “the name.” It was so holy that they would not pronounce it. But how different that is with how we deal with the name God.
Here’s how I’d like to challenge you this Lent. For some of you, God is a word you say when you hit your finger with a hammer or when a car cuts in front of you. And that’s inconsistent with hallowing God’s name. To hallow God’s name is to so revere it that you wouldn’t even say it unless you’re talking about God reverently or when you’re talking to God. Lent is a wonderful time to give up bad habits in your life and so if that is a bad habit, consider hallowing God’s name and no longer use God’s name in that manner.
Fourth, There’s another question for us today and that’s, Who’s name do you want to be hallowed?” The Psalmist says, “Not to us, O Lord, but to thy name give glory.” The Psalmist is saying I don’t want the praise and glory but want to give it to you O God. But here’s the struggle for many of us; we like our name to be hallowed. We want people to notice the things we have done and to have the recognition and accolades of what we have accomplished. We like our name to be hallowed. We see this in the story of Herod Agrippa I after the time of Jesus in Acts 12. Herod wanted to be worshipped. The people had to suck up to him or he would not feed them from the royal coffers and so they invited him to a royal feast to butter him up. “On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. They shouted, "This is the voice of a god, not of a man." Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.” Verses 21-23 Now that’s pretty gross!
The Scriptures tell us that God exalts the humble but humbles the proud. And when God humbles the proud, it is not a pleasant experience. So all of those things you do for God, are you waiting for someone to notice and pat you on the back or did you do it to hallow God’s name so that others might see God’s glory? “Not to us, O Lord, but to thy name give glory.” Together may we always hallow his name.
