Title: “Hallowed or Hollow”
Text: Matthew 6:7-10
FCF: Prayer is communication with Christ, and as his followers, we need it to be two-way.
SO: Be Real! Prayer that is not genuine is only words.
Intro:
One of the disadvantages of being a person who learns words in context is that you get them wrong sometimes. I remember when I first read the Gettysburg Address in school, I asked my mom, “Why was President Lincoln trying to keep people digging at Gettysburg?” She was a little bit puzzled of course, until I pointed out the line, “We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hollow this ground.” In my mind that last word made no sense.
Thankfully, my mom knew to make go look up the definition. And now that I’ve been to seminary and can read Greek, I can tell you more about the word. It means to make something holy – and the Greek words for holy and hallowed share the same root. But as we begin to talk about the Lord’s Prayer, I can’t help but remember that confusion – Hallowed and Hollow – because too often our prayer lives are hollow when they should be hallowed.
This morning, I want to take a look just at the first half of a prayer you already know by heart, but I don’t want this to turn into a hollow exercise of thinking. It is my hope and goal that I could point you back to what these familiar words are trying to do in our lives. If you have your bibles, would you turn with me please to Matthew 6:7-10.
“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:7-10, NRSV)
You see the context here – Jesus is trying to make a point about prayer. In Jesus day, prayer had become a very formal exercise. Earlier, when we did the responsive reading, we ended with the most common prayer a Jew would make.
Every day, three times a day, no matter where he was, he had to stop and recite this prayer: שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד (Schma Ysrael, Adonai Eloyhenu, Adonai Echad.) Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord He is the One.
It didn’t matter if the poor guy was standing in the middle of the highway. If 9am rolled around and he hadn’t said it, he needed to stop where was and say that. By the time 9pm rolled around, it was the same thing. You can imagine how it might loose some of its beauty the umpteenth million time you’ve said it.
You may have noticed that it’s been nearly a year since I’ve led you in the Lord’s Prayer. I’d like to tell you that it had nothing to do with the fact that the last time we shared in it, I was so nervous that I messed it up and left out the phrase “Give us the day our daily bread.” I’d like to tell you that it was simply that I wanted to recover some of its newness and glory. Yeah, I’ll go with that…
When Jesus was giving us this prayer, the last thing on his mind was that kind of formality. When Luke gives us this prayer, it says that his disciples had to beg with him to teach them how to pray. I suspect he was afraid that it would become a hollow exercise, something like the Schma that had lost its meaning. But nothing could have been further from his mind.
He wanted his disciples to know one thing. Prayer is a hallowed thing. It cannot be hollow.
This morning, I want to focus on the first three phrases of this prayer – an extended introduction of sorts, and I want you to see that theme as its repeated.
Our Father In Heaven
Look with me at the first phrase if you would – “Our Father, who art in heaven.”
You know, as much as I love this prayer, sometimes I have to admit that the introduction seems a little stuffy. I like the King James English, but lets face it – as you said that, didn’t feel yourself bracing to get a little bit formal and stuffy?
Well, the truth is, Jesus wasn’t get all high and mighty here. When he says “Pater” he was simply saying, “Daddy.” Daddy, I know you are in heaven – but you’re still my daddy.
Daddy no matter how far away you might seem, you’re here with me, and you love me. Daddy, would you listen to me. I need you.
It’s that simple. Jesus was doing a radical thing here. This formal, father figure God who had his very on Temple sitting on the most majestic mountain in Jerusalem was always worshipped, but not always loved. For Jesus to start his prayer with “Daddy!,” he was making a statement. He was saying, God is ready to listen to you. Draw near.
Now, especially in our culture today, there’s always this tension between reverence and familiarity. Sometimes it can be hard for men – especially teenagers – to know how to interact with their daddies.
Even when we’re grown – we remember how they were in charge. I know my daddy isn’t going to pull out his belt anymore if I disrespect him, but there is still that respect. I love him, but I respect him too, and that’s how we need to be praying.
You see, if our Daddy is just another one of the guys – he’s not really our father; he’s just another a guy. Fathers need to have control over their children – to guide them, to grow them. But our God is still a loving, accessible, open God who wants us to be in relationship with him.
The fact that he is holiness itself is sometimes hard to reconcile with that closeness, but we have to keep it mind nonetheless. And that brings me to the next phrase:
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Hallowed be thy name. Even as he is close, he is not like us. He’s perfect, and he is holy. Being holy means that we don’t want to take him lightly. He’s in charge, and woe if we don’t keep that in mind.
A.W. Tozer is famous for two books – “The Pursuit of God,” and “Knowledge of the Holy.” He said something once that has stuck with me. “No religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.” The same is true of a church. No church can ever be greater than the awe in which it holds him.
Way back in the book of 2 Samuel, there’s a story about a guy named Uzzah who was bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to David in Jerusalem. In truth, the Israelites were being way too lackadaisical about the thing, because they had put it on a simple ox cart – something they weren’t supposed to have been doing in the first place. It was supposed to be carried by the priests – but they thought something logical. They said, this thing is heavy. I don’t want to carry it! Let’s put it on the truck over here and let this ox do the work.
Anyways, you know what happens in an old truck – they start going over rough terrain, and thing starts to wobble and sway. So, this guy named Uzzah sees it about ready to tip over, and he does what anyone would have done. He reaches out his hand to steady it. He touches the holy thing.
And how does God reward him? He strikes him dead.
You have to ask yourself – Why would God do this? Well, the answer has a lot less to do with Uzzah and lot more to do with the general attitude about the ark. The ark of the covenant was God’s own personal space on earth for the Jews. God doesn’t get put in the back of the truck.
To treat God like that was an affront, and so God had to remind the Jews about who he was. He was God, and you don’t mess around with God. He is holy. Holy means, holy! Holy is set apart, even as he reaches down to us.
You know, I’m guilty of doing this – but be honest with me, how often have you fallen asleep praying? Have you ever thought about what that is communicating to yourself about your understanding of God? It’s pretty weak, isn’t it?
I guarantee you, if George Bush walked into this room right now, nobody would be falling asleep. All eyes would be on him. Bill Clinton – same reaction. It doesn’t matter if you like him or not. The President of the United States gets a little respect. If you have an audience with him, I don’t care how busy you’ve been, you’re not going to nod off on him.
So why do we think we can get away with this in front of not the president, but the very king of all kings? I’ll tell you why – because familiarity does breed contempt. The danger of getting close is that you lose respect. But we can’t afford to do that.
An Example of Hallowed
When I think about things that are hallowed in our society today, I think about the Declaration of Independence.
If you go to the National Archives today, you’ll see that the lights are dimmed, and you walk into a marble hall where, at the front, there is what is, essentially, an altar to the Declaration. The one thing everybody knows about the building is that every night, the whole assembly is lowered into a vault that is designed to withstand an atomic blast. But do you why the lights are dimmed? It’s because the actual document is fading.
You see, for the first eighty or so years, the thing wasn’t really taken all that seriously. I mean, people liked it because it had been written by the founding fathers, and so it was preserved, but let’s face it – it didn’t really interact with their daily lives. The bulk of the document – a list of grievances against an insane king who had been dead for a lot of years just wasn’t that important.
In 1824, somebody wanted to make a copy, so the guy used a technique that literally stripped much of the ink of the paper. After that, they hung it up in the U.S. Patent Office, in full sunlight, dimming it even more. Even today, in many places the ink is gone.
But do you know why we venerate that document today? It’s because of Abraham Lincoln. At the height of the Civil War, when he needed to show that Emancipation was a good thing, he decided to take people back to their roots. He reminded them of a single line in the preamble to the declaration – a part of the document that probably just would have been a throwaway to Jefferson.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
He had to re-familiarize a people with their own idea of who they were. So, on a cold November morning, on a field at Gettysburg, he urged them to take, as it were, an increased measure of devotion. The brave men who fought here – living and dead – did so in order to preserve the union that afforded them rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And that’s why people began to see the Declaration as important again. Not as a laundry list of demands on a dead king, but a reminder of our relationship to the heavenly one.
That’s why today we spend millions of dollars to keep what few drops of ink are left on a now hallowed piece of paper – because they fix our relationship to that which is above.
But, if we revere a simple piece of parchment, how much more should we respect the God who formed us out of the dust, and give us his own blood?
It’ll take you an hour or so to get downtown to see the Archives, but the good news is, you don’t need a car to see God.
You’ll remember last week, we talked about prayer as a focus on God. I still believe that. And Focus means just that – focus! It’s easy to get complacent about a God we love. So, we have to keep our focus on his holiness too.
But where do we keep that focus? We have to keep it on him.
The Bigger Picture – The Focus is on Him
I like to point out context from time to time. Look at this prayer as a whole. You’re going to see eight phrases in it. How many of them focus on us, and how many focus on God? Count ‘em up. Four out of the seven don’t even mention us - (1) Our Father in Heaven, (2) Hallowed By Your Name (3) Thy Kingdom Come, (4) Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You have to get past most of the prayer before we even enter into the equation. (5) Give us this day bread. And look how its phrased – the focus is still on him, and we’re just the beneficiaries.
The point is this – the focus is not on us, it is on him. And that’s the way it should be. I said it last week, and I’ll say it again this week. If our prayer is nothing but a shopping list of things God is supposed to do for us, who are we putting in charge?
Sons can and do ask their daddies for things, but they don’t presume on their daddies for them.
Ever single phrase in this prayer can be summed up in one thought. God is God, we are not. There is a Father / Son Relationship. There is a Heaven / Earth Relationship. There is a Giver / Receiving relationship. But there is not one phrase that says God needs anything from us.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a role, because I think if you carefully, you’ll see God wants something from us.
Look back again at that first phrase – Our Father. Daddy. He wants our love.
Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed by thy name. Hallowed. He wants our respect. Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be done. Here on earth, as it is in heaven. He wants our actions to match our words.
You know, Arlington Cemetery has had a manpower shortage recently. They don’t have enough buglers, and they have a lot of bodies that need to be buried. And so, somebody came up with the idea of a bugle that would play “Taps” automatically. Some folk were, understandably, a bit upset. I mean, if you’re going to do that, why not just send a tape, right?
Well, the military was trying to balance two things. They wanted to give personal attention to the dead, and they wanted to respect the dead with their best. I think it was a noble effort.
Our prayers can fall into the same trap. Sometimes, I wish I could just play a tape recorder to make sure all my prayers are said. But where would the love be? And sometimes, my love for God gets so out of hand that I forget his holiness.
But it is that very balance that ultimately defines what our prayers should be – a one-on-one relationship that has its gives and takes. It is a personal thing. It can’t be replaced with a mechanical recitation of words. That would be a speech. No, our God uses our words in prayer, but that’s not what he’s after. He wants our hearts.
Would you like to turn yours toward him with? Let us pray.
My misunderstanding of the Gettysburg Address…
Hallowed is what they do with the Declaration of Independence (National Archives, etc…) But it wasn’t always so. Initially, the object itself was an object of veneration, b/c of its connection w/the founding fathers - but the actual grievances that make up the body of the document were no longer valid. For years, it was in full sunlight, fading away in the U.S. Patent Office – until Abraham Lincoln resurrected the preamble (We hold these truths to be self-evident.)
The Lord’s Prayer is sometimes a similar thing – supposedly hallowed, but often ignored.
Concl: Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Lee v. Weismann (1992)
Church and state would not be such a difficult subject if religion were, as the Court apparently thinks it to be, some purely personal avocation that can be indulged entirely in secret, like pornography, in the privacy of one’s room. For most believers it is not that, and has never been. Religious men and women of almost all denominations have felt it necessary to acknowledge and beseech the blessing of God as a people, and not just as individuals, because they believe in the "protection of divine Providence," as the Declaration of Independence put it, not just for individuals but for societies; because they believe God to be, as Washington’s first Thanksgiving Proclamation put it, the "Great Lord and Ruler of Nations."
I must add one final observation: The founders of our Republic knew the fearsome potential of sectarian religious belief to generate civil dissension and civil strife. And they also knew that nothing, absolutely nothing, is so inclined to foster among religious believers of various faiths a toleration--no, an affection--for one another than voluntarily joining in prayer together, to the God whom they all worship and seek. Needless to say, no one should be compelled to do that, but it is a shame to deprive our public culture of the opportunity, and indeed the encouragement, for people to do it voluntarily. The Baptist or Catholic who heard and joined in the simple and inspiring prayers of Rabbi Gutterman on this official and patriotic occasion was inoculated from religious bigotry and prejudice in a manner that can not be replicated. To deprive our society of that important unifying mechanism, in order to spare the nonbeliever what seems to me the minimal inconvenience of standing or even sitting in respectful nonparticipation, is as senseless in policy as it is unsupported in law.
, 2 so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3
For dreams come with many cares, and a fool’s voice with many words.
With many dreams come vanities and a multitude of words; but fear God.
3
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Opening Hymn #109
“Blessed Redeemer”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer
*Responsive Reading [See Right]
*Offertory Hymn #403
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Scripture Matthew 6:7-10
Sermon
“Hallowed or Hollow?”
Invitation Hymn #1
“Holy, Holy, Holy”
Benediction
Congregational Response
May the grace of Christ of Savior / And the Father’s boundless love
With the Holy Spirit’s favor / Rest upon us from above. Amen.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE READING
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God;
to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools;
Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth;
therefore let your words be few.
Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy
Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently,
so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.
Recite them to your children;
Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.
Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, is One.
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
- Ecclesiastes 5:1-3; Deuteronomy 6:5-9; 1-4
Please pray for Marvin Kreel – He’ll be transferred to Oak Springs Nursing Home in Warrenton on Monday.
11/6 – Business Meeting After Church to select a pastor; Katrina relief efforts.
