The Presbyterian Layman Foundations of the Faith
Hallowed be thy name
Robert P. Mills, Posted Monday, Mar 26, 2001
Suggested Scripture Readings: Genesis 11:1-9 Exodus 3:13-15; 20:7 Matthew 6:9; 33 |
For most modern Western Christians, another person’s name is rarely more than collections of syllables, a convenient way of distinguishing one individual from another. To be sure, hearing another’s name can bring to mind that individual’s attributes and characteristics. And we may intentionally choose Biblical names for our children. But, most of the time, we attach little import to the name itself.
The attitude was very different in Biblical times, when people’s names often were endowed with considerable significance. Consider Samuel, literally “asked of God;” Isaiah’s son Shear-Yashub, “a remnant will return;” and Jacob, “he deceives,” whom God renamed Israel, “he struggles with God.”
Even more important to God’s people was God’s name, which was virtually indistinguishable from the person of God (Mal. 1:6; Isa. 29:23; Ezek. 36:23; John 12:28; 17:6). So, when Jesus taught his first disciples how to pray, they understood names in a way that largely has been lost to us today.
Recovering this Biblical understanding will add an important dimension to our practice of prayer and afford us a deeper appreciation for why Jesus said that, when we pray, our first request of God is to be “Hallowed be thy name.”
Names and relationships
Unexpectedly encountering God at a burning bush in the desert, Moses asked, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” (Ex. 3:13).
The question, as Brevard Childs notes, “contains both a request for information and an explanation of its significance. … By requesting his name, they seek to learn his new relationship to them.”
In response to Moses’ request, “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say to the Israelites, “The Lord, the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation’” (Ex. 3:14-15).
We do not stand or fall by the greatness of our name. We stand (and do not fall) by the greatness of the name of God. – Jan Milic Lochman, The Lord’s Prayer |
This exchange teaches God’s people a lesson that is crucial to our understanding of prayer: We know God only because God has made himself known to us. God has given us his name, which we are to remember, so that we may know who he is and how he relates to us and, in turn, who we are, and how we are to relate to him.
In Hebrew, the name God revealed to Moses is Yahweh, from the verb “to be.” In this self-revelation, God tells us that we are not relating to an abstract concept, one that we have named with a series of syllables. Rather, as God’s people we are in communion with a personal being, the very source of being, who desires a relationship with us.
Unfortunately, as Moses soon would learn, God’s people are easily tempted to pursue and pray to other gods, which are not deities at all but simply inanimate aspects of creation. Jesus knew how these idolatrous tendencies disrupt and distort our relationships with the living God. So, he taught his disciples to call God “Father” and to start their prayers by honoring God’s name.
Our priorities
Asking God to hallow his own name does not, of course, suggest that God can make his name more holy than it eternally is. Rather, this petition helps us bring our priorities in line with God’s.
Shortly after he records the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew shows us Jesus’ priorities, “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33).
The natural tendency is to put ourselves first, to assume that we are at the center – not only of our own lives, but of all life. A vivid illustration of this temptation is found very early in Scripture, where God’s human creation decided to “build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4).
What happened, of course, was just the opposite. The building project failed. The Bible does not record the name of a single individual involved. God confused the language and scattered the locations of those who sought to make a name for themselves.
To begin our prayers by asking God to hallow his own name is to subvert the expectations of our culture, which insist that we must make a name for ourselves. If hallowing God’s name is not yet an instinctive part of our prayers, we can use the Lord’s Prayer as a guide. Donald Williams suggests a process that might go something like this:
“Hallowed be thy name. May your name be set apart, honored, revered and respected as holy – by me and by others. By me: Is there anything in my life which would dishonor rather than glorify it? As you point those things out to me, I confess them, repent of them and ask your help in overcoming them. By others: I am grieved when I hear your name being taken in vain, when people do not respect you in general. How may I live so that my association with you will inspire others to reverence you as I do?”
Christian maturity consists, in large measure, of overcoming the temptation to put ourselves at the center of our lives and our prayers. As Tom Smail writes, when the center of our prayer “ceases to be ‘Lord, bless me’ and has become ‘Bless the Lord,’ when we begin to praise God for his grace, power and love as Father, then the name of the Father is being hallowed by being made first and central.”
Resisting anonymity
“God has a name,” Walter Luthi writes. “Nameless, anonymous letters, letters without signatures, are usually vulgar. But God is no writer of anonymous letters. God puts his name to everything that he does, effects and says. God has no need to fear the light of day. The Devil loves anonymity, but God has a name.”
In the words of Jan Milic Lochman, the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer “resists anonymity.” It resists secular impulses to reduce human origins to a biochemical accident and human life to impersonal processes. It does so by reminding us of the personal name of God. And in so doing, this opening request also “protects our humanity.”
God spoke wonderful words of comfort to his people through his prophet, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine” (Isa. 43:1). God has given his name and he remains faithful to it. Moreover, Lochman writes, God has lovingly given each of us “a lasting name, the identity which is grounded by God and before God and which is inalienable … We do not dissolve into namelessness. Before God we are inexchangeable.
We do not need to “make a
name for ourselves” because God’s name, God’s person and presence, is always available to us. Again quoting Lochman, “It is sobering and yet also comforting to know that other names do not save. Above all, my own name does not save. We do not stand or fall by the greatness of our name. We stand (and do not fall) by the greatness of the name of God. Free, then, from the compulsion and delusion of those who would make a name, in the liberty of those who are called children of God, we pray, ‘Hallowed be thy name.’”
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