August 28, 2011
"Hallowed Be Thy Name"
W. Gregory Pope, preaching
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Series: The Lord’s Prayer
Exodus 3:1-15; Isaiah 1:10-18; John 17:25-26
HALLOWED BE THY NAME. It is the first petition of The Lord’s Prayer.
It is a call to worship and humility, an invitation to reverence and adoration.
Great religion is about adoration, Someone you bow before. If you do not, you will soon bow before yourself. If that which you bow before is not God, it will be other people or other objects that cannot be a true center.
It is why we come to church. In T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, he goes into a famous old church in “Little Gidding,” and this is what he writes:
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report.
You are here to kneel.1
“Hallowed be Thy name.”
Names In the Ancient World
In the ancient world, names meant everything. Today we think of names simply as something necessary in order to communicate with one another. Can you imagine if no one had a name how difficult it would be to relate? It would make gossip so much more difficult!
In the ancient world of the Bible, the name of a person carried with it the mystery of that person’s personality and character; at times it even said something about the purpose of their life.
Mary was told to name her son Jesus, Matthew writes, “for he will save his people from their sins.” The name “Jesus,” “Yeshua,” means “God saves,” and his life vocation was to live a life of salvation and healing, to reveal the love and forgiveness of God that saves us from ourselves. So, the name Jesus tells us something about him.
There is Simon Peter. He was first known as “Simon,” a name that meant “one who is like a flittering dove in every direction.” But “Peter,” the name Jesus gave to him, means “rock” - the one upon whose confession of Jesus as Messiah the church would be built. Names were of great significance in the ancient world.
Names are not of such significance with us in the modern Western world. Very rarely do we give our children a certain name because of its meaning. Take for example, Cindy, my wife. Her name, “Cynthia,” means “moon goddess.” But I don't think her parents were into worshiping the moon when they named her (although, it was in the 60's and you people did strange things back then).
When Cindy and I chose Kristen to be the name of our first daughter, I could sound real spiritual and say we chose it because it meant “Christian one,” but we didn’t, we chose it because we thought it was a pretty name.
The people in biblical times would think something was wrong with us for being so careless in naming our children. Those us from the East take more care in the naming of children.
Hollywood knows the power of a name. How many of you would go see a movie starring Marion Morrison? Don’t know who he is? Well Marion thought he needed a name change. He changed his name, and millions have turned out to see John Wayne.
The trend in our day to choose a name either because it sounds nice to us or tough or someone in our family has that name.
Names are precious and sacred. A person’s relationship to us is expressed in the name he or she calls us. A name can be filled with intimacy - honey, sweetie, Abba. Or a name can be a formal means of address replete with all appropriate honor and respect - Mrs. Jones, Mr. President, Dr. Wade. To call God Abba is like meeting Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, and having her say, “Just call me ‘Beth.’” It is shocking almost to the point of feeling inappropriate.
The Name of God
In biblical thinking the name of a person stands for the nature, even the presence, of a person. A name is weighted with presence. That’s why the name of God is reverenced so highly in the Hebrew Scriptures. To speak God’s name was to be in God’s presence.
So what is God’s name?
That’s what Moses wanted to know when God called him to confront Pharaoh about setting the Hebrew people free from Egyptian slavery. “Who am I to say has sent me?” Moses wanted a name. “God” is not God’s name. The word “God” is a common noun Moses and the Hebrews wanted to know the nature and character of the One who sent him.
And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. Well that’s not a name. It’s like the guy on Jersey Shore who calls himself “The Situation.” What’s up with that? That’s not a name.
What God said to Moses is written in Hebrew “Y-H-W-H.” It is the most reverenced of names for God. It is often translated “the Lord” in our Bibles because the name of God could not be spoken by the Jewish people. In fact, it was only spoken once a year by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement as he entered the Holy of Holies.
In the Bible, God and the name of God were interchangeable; they often meant the same thing. That is why we read “in the name of the Lord” or “bless God’s name” so many times in Scripture.
That is why it was listed as one of the Ten Commandments: In Jewish minds, to abuse or misuse the name of God was the same as abusing or misusing God.
We pronounce this name given to Moses as “Yahweh.” But in truth it is unpronounceable. Because of that it is variously translated: I am who I am. I will be who I will be. Toni Craven translates it: Follow me and I will show you who I am.
It’s not so much a name as it is a verb.
So what does this say about our God? And what then does it mean to pray, “Hallowed be Thy name”?
This part of the prayer calls us to reverent worship, to honor the mystery of God.
Rudolf Otto referred to God as “the Holy.” He coined the phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that is, mystery at once awesome and attractive.
Mysterium-mystery describes the hidden character of the Holy, beyond imagination, not just because of our own intellectual limits but because of the very nature of God. The Holy is laced with more fullness exists than we can grasp.
Tremendum-tremendous describes the awesome character of this mystery that is beyond our control. We cannot domesticate the power of the Holy. This gives rise to a sense of reverence and a sense of our smallness in the face of such majesty.
Fascinans-fascination describes the attractive character of this mystery experienced as love, mercy, comfort, overwhelming grace. We hunger with an immense longing for this goodness, which gives the Holy the power to entice and lure our hearts.2 Have you felt lured by God?
The very nature of the Holy is incomprehensible, unfathomable, limitless, ineffable, beyond description. The living God literally cannot be exclusively compared with anything in the world. No matter how much we know, the human mind can never capture the whole of the living God in a net of concepts, images, definitions, or doctrines.
Augustine said, “If you have understood, it is not God.”3 If you have fully figured out who God is, then you are dealing with something else, some lesser reality. The living God is unspeakably Other, fundamentally unnameable. God’s selfhood and identity cannot be expressed or contained in a name.
The reality of the living God is a mystery beyond all telling. The Holy One is so far beyond the world and so deeply within the world as to be literally incomprehensible.
There is a great old story of Augustine the 4th century bishop walking alone the Mediterranean shore, puzzling over some point about the Trinity for a treatise he was writing. Deep in thought, he half-watched a small child going back and forth from the water’s edge, repeatedly filling a pail and pouring the water into a hole dug in the sand.
Intrigued, Augustine finally asked the child what he was doing. “I’m trying to put the sea into my hole,” the child replied. “You can’t do that; it won’t fit,” said the adult with common sense. The child, who turned out to be angel in disguise, replied, “Neither can you put the mystery of the Trinity into your mind; it won’t fit.”
To use another water metaphor, this one from theologian Karl Rahner, we are like a little island surrounded by a great ocean; we make forays into the sea, but the depths of the ocean forever exceed our grasp.
God is not an object that can be contained by the human mind. One writer puts it this way:
“God is like the air we breathe: we can never grasp it in our hands. God is like the horizon: we can never see it all in one single glance. God is like the universe with all its black holes and quasars: we will never comprehend it all.” The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing says, “God can be loved. God cannot be thought.”4
No expression for God can be taken literally. None. Our language is like a finger pointing to the moon, to use a Buddhist metaphor, not the moon itself. We speak of God by way of analogy and metaphor and symbol formed by experience. It’s why we need art and music.
John Crossan says, “The cloud of unknowing is pierced only by the gleam of metaphor.”5
Paul Tillich helped clarify for us that symbols are images, gestures, concepts, things, even persons, that point beyond themselves to something else, and at the same time, symbols participate in the reality they point to.
“We are always naming toward God, using good, true, and beautiful fragments experienced in the world to point to the infinite mystery who dwells within and embraces the world but always exceeds our grasp.”6
Thomas Aquinas spoke of the necessity of giving to God many names. The Bible itself witnesses to multiple expressions for God.
There are images of God taken from personal relationships such as father, mother, husband, female beloved, companion, friend.
Images taken from political life such as advocate, liberator, king, warrior, and judge. (No donkey or elephant, even among the images drawn from the animal kingdom), where God is depicted as a roaring lion, hovering mother bird, angry mother bear, protective mother hen.
There are some evocative images of God taken from the experience of women, including the female figure of cosmic power, might, and creation in the book of Proverbs known as Wisdom/Sophia, and images of God as a woman giving birth and nursing her young.
And other earth-images such as light, cloud, rock, wind, fire, refreshing water, life itself.
No one name, image, or symbol alone is absolute or adequate; we need them all.
Lest we fear the mystery of God leaves us in darkness, hear these words from Jeannine Hill Fletcher who says: “[Our] incomprehensibility [of God] is not so much a sad reflection on human limitedness, but rather the exuberant celebration of God’s limitlessness . . . It means that the human person glimpses the mystery of God not as absence but as overabundance.”7
The Word Becomes Flesh
The celebration grows as we embrace the heart of Christian faith, the almost unbelievable idea that the infinitely incomprehensible holy mystery of God does not remain forever remote but draws radically near in Jesus of Nazareth and the Living Holy Spirit of God.
Karl Rahner prayed to God saying: You must adapt Your word to my smallness, You must make Your own Word some human word, for that is the only kind I can comprehend.8
And so, God spoke a word in the language of our common humanity: the Word became flesh, the Infinite became finite, and dwelt among us in Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen, God Incarnate, full of grace and truth.
He came preaching the reign of God, entering the suffering of others, seeking out the lost and marginalized, expressing what God is and always has been: prodigal love. On the cross he placed the infinite mystery of God in solidarity with all the vulnerable and suffering of the world, and offers a resurrected future for all the defeated and the dead.
The Word became flesh so that God who is love could enter into deep personal union with the world that God so loves. The holy mystery of God surrounds the lives of all people, enfolding us in an intimate and radically redemptive love. This love is nothing other than the gift of God’s own self.
The unnameable holy mystery we call God has come near in Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, “Our Abba in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
God’s name is holy. As God’s people we bear the name, the identity of God. We are baptized into God’s name. With our lives we either honor or profane God’s name. With our lives God’s reputation is on the line.
Ways God’s Name is Hallowed
In the light of Jesus, God’s word become flesh, the name of God finds its supreme sanctity in love - “God is love.”
To honor God’s name is to love - to love God, to love each other, to love God’s creation. It is to regard the name of God as the truest and dearest, highest and holiest of all names. Dedicating our lives to God’s purposes in the world, so that God’s name and true identity will be known throughout the world. Jesus says we honor God’s name by loving God and neighbor.
There is an old morning prayer that goes: “O God, to whom this world with all its goodness and beauty belongs, give us grace joyfully to begin this day in Your name, and to fill it with an active love for You and our neighbor.”
Jesus prayed, “Abba, glorify thy name. I have made your name known to these my disciples and will continue to make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them.”
Ways God’s Name is Profaned
To dishonor God’s name is to fail to love - whether that be in the form of hate or cruelty or unkindness or simply ignoring those around us - to fail to love is to dishonor the name of God. If we pray these words and hate or despise or look down upon another human being, we have made a mockery of prayer and profane God’s name.
The prophet Isaiah lived among a people profaning God’s name. Worship embodies an ethical dimension. The prophets angrily blast perfunctory worship.
Through Isaiah God said to Israel, “I have had enough of your worship services and offerings. When you pray I will not listen, for your hands are full of blood. Go wash yourselves. Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Defend the orphan, the widow, the vulnerable.”
God’s name continues to be disgraced today when TV preachers and politicians turn the gospel into a personal political agenda.
We have catchy phrases and cute blasphemous slogans that we do not really mean, like “In God We Trust.” We trust in the gods of war and Wall Street. When our way of life is threatened we kill. When Wall Street is volatile, our idolatrous hearts become volatile. And the best our elected representatives can do - after they pray - is give tax breaks to the richest and cut basic necessities for the poor and elderly. Because our great god capitalism in which we trust will take care of everybody! In God we trust? The prophet Amos would call that blasphemy of the highest order!
When the church - our church or any other church - claims to worship God but fails to help the poor and unfortunate in concrete ways of justice and generosity, God’s name is dishonored.
When injustice and discrimination abound and the church decides to keep silent, God’s name is disgraced. For we are claiming to worship God, we say the right things and use religious language, but God’s values are ignored.
Our destruction of nature, says Wendell Berry, is not merely bad stewardship or stupid economics; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into God’s face as if they are worthless, meant only for our exploitation.
We profane God’s name when our beliefs concerning God are not worthy of the God Jesus brought near. To speak of God as savage, vindictive, harsh and cruel, is to profane God’s name. Or when God is presented as a God of battles and a kind of nationalistic ally. Or when we draw pictures of God to suit our own theories of racial superiority. John Wesley was right when he said of one who had such beliefs: “Your god is my devil.” To speak of God in such a way is to participate in the reason countless thousands have been repelled by the church and its image of God. If we are to hallow God’s name, we must see to it that our conception of God is truly Christian, meaning “God is love.”9
Nietzsche flings a challenge to every professing follower of God when he said: “Show me that you are redeemed and then I will believe in your redeemer.”
We cannot do this without God’s help. So we pray for God to be enthroned upon our hearts. That our hearts might become the temple of God, the dwelling place of God.
As we adore the holy God in our worship, we become more holy ourselves. As we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we come more closely to resemble the One to whom we pray.10
So through the prophet Isaiah God calls Israel to repentance and cleansing: “Come let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.”
During the silence I invite you to a prayer of breathing the unpronounceable name of God - “Yahweh.” To speak the Name is to inhale and exhale the breath of God. “Yah” (inhale) “Weh” (exhale)11
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1. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, New York: A Harvest Book. 1963, 51
2. Elizabeth Johnson, The Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, Continuum, 2007, 8-9
3. Augustine, Sermon 117.5
4. Albert Haase, Swimming in the Sun, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1993, 58, 60-61
5. John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, HarperOne, 2010, 35
6. Johnson, 20
7. Johnson, 38
8. Quoted in Johnson, 39
9. William Barclay, The Lord’s Prayer, Westminster John Knox, 1946 46-47
10. William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us to Pray, Abingdon, 1996, 45
11. Richard Rohr, Religion/Spirituality: Both/And, Audio CD, Disc 1