Hallowed Be Thy Name: Luke 11:2-4 - Second Sunday after Pentecost

I had some unfilled elective requirements during my senior year of college, so I decided to sign up for piano lessons.

I’d taken a break from the piano at the beginning of high school to focus on the trumpet, and I’d been wanting to get back to it for a long time.

Like all my other courses, I’d received a list of books from the instructor that I needed to buy. One of those books was called Skills and Scales. When I saw how expensive it was, I decided not to buy it. I thought, what do I need this for? I know how to play scales!

Unfortunately for me, the instructor was not impressed. In my pride, I was forced to relearn something I already knew: scales are the foundation of all music. They are to the musician what jumping jacks are to the athlete: the fundamental exercise of the hands, the ears, and the mind.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

I’ve come to think of the Lord’s Prayer in a similar way. Previously, it struck me as odd the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. Surely, they’d watched Jesus pray thousands of times. Surely, they were taught how to pray when they were children. But prayer is so much more than talking to God and asking of God.

Prayer is the substance of your relationship with God, and the Lord’s Prayer serves as its foundation.

The first words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father,” immediately establish that prayer is not a solitary act. Prayer is a communal act. Even when you pray privately, you are praying as one member of the Communion of Saints. And you are reminded that you are not the center of the universe. You are one part of a vast universe that God loves.

The second petition, “hallowed be your name,” which we will focus on today, also serves to keep the focus of your prayer off yourself. For when you make yourself the subject of your prayers, and your needs and wants as the object of your prayers, you deny God the ability to be God. I loathe to consider how much I’ve done this. We all do this, and thankfully, God hasn’t banned us from praying to him. But we cannot reduce God to a divine Santa Claus, and prayer something akin to sitting on his lap at the mall.

When you pray “hallowed be your name,” you are praying for God’s good name to be made known in all the world. If you recall from the Book of Exodus, this was the reason why God elected the children of Israel to be God’s own people, and why God liberated them from slavery in Egypt and brought them to the Promised Land: so that all the world would know that “he is the Lord!” God seeks to do nothing less in you and through the Church. Anything good that God gives you, or anything good that God accomplishes in you, is so that God’s name will be glorified. It’s not all about you.

At this point, you may feel discouraged about praying and asking of God. But don’t forget the whole reason why you pray in the first place: you pray because God is good. You pray because God wants to be in relationship with you, and the very fact that you pray at all pleases God, even when you do not “pray as we should.”

You cannot hide your heart’s desires from God. So, you may as well pray about it with God.

But how would your prayer life be different what if you approached every prayer with an earnest desire for God’s name to be glorified in you? On the night of his arrest, Jesus prayed that God would be glorified in his suffering and death (John 17:1-5). What if you saw your situation of need in light of God’s desire to show forth his goodness to the world? Suddenly, your sickness, your sorrows, and your struggles take on a whole new meaning.

You don’t need to tell God what to do. You may know what you want God to do, and God may do that very thing. No matter what the outcome God will use all things, good and bad, to show forth his glory. If you pray for God’s name to be glorified in you, you can be certain God will answer “yes.”

What if we, as a congregation, prayed for God’s name to be glorified before our neighbors and our communities in our worship, in our service, and in our daily lives? Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that we’re a small congregation going through challenging times. Suddenly, the focus is off ourselves, and instead we are allowing for our lives to be used for God’s higher purposes!

This is why we pray the Lord’s Prayer as often as possible, and why we need Jesus to teach us to pray aright: not to compel God to give us what we want, but so that our lives and gifts, our joys and sorrows may all serve the higher purpose of showing forth God’s goodness o the world.

So, Lord, remember us in your kingdom and teach us to pray, and let your name be hallowed in us, so that your good and gracious will shall be fulfilled in us.

So he said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, may your name be revered as holy.

    May your kingdom come.

    Give us each day our daily bread.

    And forgive us our sins,

        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

    And do not bring us to the time of trial.” (NRSV)