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"Hallowed Be Thy Name"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Luke 11:2-4
given March 4, 2007

As we journey through the weeks of Lent, we focus on the special prayer that Jesus commended to his followers. The Lord’s Prayer is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and Matthew’s version of the prayer is more familiar to us. His version includes “carefully crafted poetry and liturgical rhythms; Luke’s version is shorter and less polished.” (1) In Matthew, the lines of the prayer seem to flow naturally into one another. In Luke, it feels like staccato notes.

Last Tuesday, at “Listening to the Lessons” a few of us pondered why Luke’s version is so concise, and one of our members had a clever insight. She said, “Think about it; Luke was a physician. Scientists tend to cut to the essentials and do not use flowery speech. Think lab report.” Perhaps that is the reason.

Today our focus is on the phrase: “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and I believe you will agree with me when I say that “hallowed” is one of those words in our lexicon that has not exactly been worn out with overuse. I spend much of my life thinking about religious faith. I read about it, I write about it, I speak about it, but I rarely reach down into my vocabulary and pull out the word “hallowed.”

Before we go any further, we need to tackle the question of how we pronounce this word. It is a bit of a puzzle to me. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we say “hal-oh-id” rather than “hal-ohd.” I searched, but could not find any explanation why, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pronounce the word the way we sing it, rather than the way we say it outside of the prayer. My best guess is that the word was pronounced with three syllables in the 17th century when the King James Version of the Bible was written, but it’s just a guess.

The word “hallow” means to honor as holy, and I confess that the words “holy” and “holiness” do not pop up in my speech much either. There was a time when virtually everyone in the church was comfortable saying that Christians are supposed to live holy lives. Today, however, some of us shy away from the word “holy” when we are talking about people, because we associated the word in our minds with the kind of person we do NOT aspire to be. This is the kind of person that Mark Twain described as a good person in the worst sense of the word. These are people who act as if they are superior to others and who believe they are closer to God because they live lives that are (by their own estimation) purer than others. However, since all people are prone to sin and fall short of the ideals God wants us to embody, these “holier-than-thou” types seem less than authentic. They strike us as hypocrites because they have character flaws like the rest of us and rarely turn out to be as pure as they advertise themselves to be.

However, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is not talking about people. He’s calling on us to hallow God’s name; to honor God as holy; which happens to be a tidy summation of the third commandment. According to the King James Version, the third commandment reads: “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.” When I was a child, my parents explained to me what that meant. At least in the Jones’ house, it meant “no cussing.” As it turns out, that’s not exactly the point of the third commandment; but for a little boy who had fun using words that made his parents’ eyes bulge, it did the trick. However, the commandment has something grander in mind.

The New Revised Standard Version provides a better translation. It reads: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord.” Wrongful use of God’s name is to use God’s name to endorse ideas and causes that are in contradiction to the character and the will of God. It is to use God’s name to justify slavery, to justify an inferior status for women, to justify war, to justify doing nothing about poverty. God’s name has been misused in many ways.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says that it is not enough to simply refrain from misusing God’s name. We need to go the next step and honor God as holy. But what does it mean to honor God as holy?

It does not mean that we should think of God as ultra-serious and possessing no sense of humor. God sees so many tears and hears so many cries that laughter is surely music to God’s ears. To honor God as holy does not mean that we should be afraid of God or that we should imagine God to be far away. Remember the prayer begins “Our Father,” or probably closer to what Jesus said, “Our Dad.” To honor God as holy does not mean God is only interested in religious talk or that God is austere or stuffy. God wants us to enjoy rich, full lives.

Jesus was schooled in the Jewish faith and knew that the prophet Ezekiel declared that we disgrace God’s name when we live in opposition to God’s will. We dishonor God when we neglect people in need, when we support or fail to challenge injustice and when we “give our primary allegiance to another name such as ‘Caesar’.” (2)

To honor God as holy means to live in a way that is pleasing to God rather than disappointing. “Will Willimon tells of a college student who was the first one in his family to go to college. When someone offered the student illegal drugs with the taunt, ‘Go ahead, try it. It’ll make you feel good,’ the student said ‘No way.’ The drug dealer kept pushing him. He said, ‘Don’t be so uptight. Nobody’s going to know you tried a little dope.’ The student replied, “That’s not the point. The point is that my mother worked long hours every day cleaning houses and scrubbing floors to send me to college. I am here because of her. I wouldn’t do anything that would demean her sacrifice for me.” (3) To honor God as holy means that we not do things that dishonor or disgrace God.

Of course, honoring God entails more than simply failing to do wrong. It also requires positive action. Jesus was well versed in the Torah and knew that the Book of Leviticus says we honor God’s name when we keep the commandments (Leviticus 22:31-32). We honor God as holy when we live in harmony with the ways of God. However, it is not simply that we honor God with the way we live our lives, it includes our attitude and our approach to life.

To hallow God’s name is to recognize the majesty and the mystery of God’s creation and to revere it as sacred. It is to not take for granted, but rather to be in awe of a sunrise; and to feel in our bodies the warmth and energy of the sun’s rays. It is to marvel at the sun’s journey across the sky and to gaze in holy silence as it sinks into the horizon. It is to be still and to know God as the light fades and the first stars begin to appear; and then as the deep darkness of the night becomes full and thousands of stars reveal themselves, to wonder at the vast expanse of the heavens.

To hallow God’s name is to stay in touch with the enchanting world that God creates and that life is a precious gift, and we ought not allow the bumps in the road or the imperfections of others to blind us to the beauty of life.

Robert Fulghum tells about a woman he knows who was being eaten up with anxiety.

It was straining all her relationships, so she finally went to a psychiatrist to talk about her troubles. After listening for an hour, the psychiatrist wrote her a prescription. Then he made her promise that she would not return until she had used it. She went to a pharmacy and handed over the prescription, but when the pharmacist read it, he gave it back to her saying, “I can't fill this, but you can.” The doctor had written: “Spend one hour some Sunday watching the sunrise while walking in a cemetery.” She did, and it helped her to get back in touch with the big picture. (4)

There are many ways for us to honor God as holy. We do it when we engender a deep respect and reverence for God’s creation, when we reach out with compassion to someone in need, when we struggle against injustice, when we recognize that God is more than we can imagine and when we trust God’s wisdom. There are many ways for us to hallow God’s name. One of the most important ways is when we cling to hope no matter what happens to us.

Susan Galloway was married to a Presbyterian minister and they served a church in Pennsylvania. She was a bright, energetic, young mother and a hard-working professional. However, Susan was struck with ALS, and over time, her body deteriorated. First, she lost the feeling in her feet, then she lost the use of her legs. Then she could no longer grasp things with her hands and then her arms went limp. She lost the use of just about everything, but she never lost her positive attitude or her hopeful spirit that was contagious to anyone who came near. As the end approached, she was unable to speak and she was almost completely paralyzed. All she could do was type with one finger on her computer.

Her friends decided to throw one last party for her. They ate and drank and told stories; they laughed and cried and each person said what they wanted to say to Susan. Then, at the end of the evening, before her friends left, she slowly pecked out on her computer screen so everyone could read: “This has been the best year of my life.” (5)

To hallow God’s name, to truly honor God as holy, is to live a Christ-like existence, to be genuinely grateful for the rich moments in life and to trust God’s care for us in this life and the next.

NOTES

Sharon Ringe, Luke, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p.162.
Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins, (New York: Orbis Books, 2005), p.165.
Told by William J. Carl, The Lord’s Prayer for Today, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), p.18.
Robert Fulghum, Uh-Oh, p.121.
John M. Buchanan, “Grasped by the Power of Love,” The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, January 11, 2004.

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