The Lord's Prayer - Petition 1: Holy is Your Name

Introduction

Last week we had a great magic show from Edgar Manns, but try to remember back before all the dots and scarves and special cards. The week before that we started a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer found in Matthew chapter 6. On that Sunday, Pastor Jim spoke to us about the first phrase “Our Father in heaven” and talked about God as our Father. This week you're in for something a little different.

I have to confess that this sermon is somewhat of a departure for me. Usually when I come to share I have only the vaguest idea of what God wants me to talk about, but even at its best I feel like I'm only rehashing points that many of us have already heard before, and while they are things we should be exorted to again, I have never felt as blown away personally by what I have to share as I do this week.

What has happened to me as I've prepared this sermon has been extraordinary. I don't know if I'll be able to communicate to you what I've been thinking and praying, but I hope that at least some of the light I have seen through the window of my mind in these last few weeks illuminates our thinking for the next few minutes.

Transition

Our text this morning is from Matthew 6:9 -- the phrase “Hallowed be Your Name” or in some of translations “Holy is Your Name”. If you'll recall two weeks ago, Pastor Jim showed us on the overhead projector that the Lord's Prayer can be divided into four parts: an address, three petitions about God, three petitions about us, and a doxology. This first petition states simply that God's name would be holy, or set apart -- considered sacred.

The American Heritage Dictionary (which can be easily accessed as -- wait for it -- dictionary.com) defines sacred as, among other things, “Dedicated or devoted exclusively to a single use, purpose, or person.” My favorite illustration of what it means to be sacred comes from a good ol' boy pastor I knew back in West Texas. He often pointed out that his toothbrush was sacred, it was his toothbrush alone, you see, and no one else could use it, not his kids, not his wife, and certainly not his congregation. It was sacred to Him.

This petition states simply that the name of God (which isn't mentioned here) is to be special, different, reserved.

Now, let me get out of the way the first part of what I am going to share about this passage this morning. When Jim first asked me to preach on this phrase, I immediately thought of every other sermon I have ever heard on this passage of scripture, which all made the same point, and since that point is true and good and useful for us to know, let's get it out of the way up front.

Common Point

In the bible, names are important. Simon's eyes are opened, he declares Jesus is the Son of God and BAM!, Jesus says he is now to be called Peter, because that faith is the rock upon which the church will be built. Saul, on his way to Damascus to persecute believers meets Jesus and BAM!, his name becomes Paul as his life totally changes to reflect his new life as a missionay of belief.

And let's not stop there, even when a name doesn't change it carries import: consider Abraham and Sarah. They are told they will have a son despite their advanced age, and by advanced age, we mean that Abraham is over a hundred and Sarah is over ninety. But despite the absurdity, they do have a son, and what do they name him: Issac, which means “he laughs”.

In the passage where we learn about the birth of Solomon, we read that God loves Solomon so much, he tells Nathan to give him another name, Jedidiah, which actually means, “loved by the Lord.”

Some of you have seen the Natalie Portman movie “Where the Heart Is”. In that movie, Natalie Portman's character Nova Lee Nation is pregnant, and upon telling an African American man the name she's picked out for her baby, the man stops her and tells her “Oh, don't you dare name your baby that. A baby needs a good strong name.” Now I'm not advocating we all name our kids like Nova Lee does (in the movie she ends up naming her child Americus Nation), but the point is the same. To this character, as to the people of the bible a name was significant. You didn't pick a name out of a baby book because it sounded pretty, you named a child or a place to signify an event or something signficant that occured there.

God's name is so signficant, that He warns His people in His Law not to take His name in vain. The Jews took this commandment so seriously that they wouldn't burn objects on which the name of God is written. Archaeologists to this day find caches in Israel, especially near synagogues, of buried pots and jars full of shards of pottery, pieces of scrolls, and anything else that had the name of the LORD written on it because the Jews refused to destroy anything that had the full name of the LORD. They used all kinds of abbreviations and other ways of referring to God, lest they say His name in a situation that wouldn't be worthy of the invocation. This inconvenience acted as an object lesson to ensure that the Jews remembered the purity and holiness of God.

Pastor Jim mentioned two weeks ago that Jesus referred to God as “daddy” or “papa” in the first clause of the Lord's Prayer. Lest anyone think He was flippant in His prayer, or that His intimacy belittled God, this first petition reminds us to proclaim the holiness of God's name, so that we, like those Jews, might reflect on His separateness, His supremacy, His complete different-ness from us.

This is the point I've always heard made about this passage: Intimacy with God doesn't mean a lack of respect. Our omnescient, omnipresent, omnipotent God is far beyond us. That chasm between us and God is unbridgable except by a divine act of recreation. We would do well to remember in our struggles of life that the relationship we have with God isn't one of casual friendship like we might have with each other.

While this is dramatic in and of itself, in my thoughts and prayers about this subject something else has jumped out at me that I'd like to share with you, because the ramifications for us as believers in this community that is so heavily influenced by a very secular campus are astounding.

Uncommon Point

Why were names so important to ancient people, and to Jews in particular? I'm not sure I can answer that question, although I think Jackie and our other brothers and sisters in the OI could almost certainly explain it to us. However, let us examine some often overlooked parts of well-known bible passages that shed tremendous light on the importance of names.

In Genesis 2, verse 18 to 22 we read the following:

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

This is a story presented to us even before the fall of man, before the sin, the serpent, the forbidden fruit. Now, whether or not this event happened in this way is a little beyond the scope of our discussion this morning: go to the adult education series this quarter if you want to talk about the historicity of these early Genesis accounts and what they can and can't say to us today. We usually use this passage to teach that God created woman differently, just like he created man differently than he did all the other animals. Regardless of the scientific method used, this passage teaches that God didn't think man alone was good, man needed to live in relationship, and not just with his inferiors, the animals, and his superior, God, but with equals as well. And as a married man I'm glad he did.

But deep in this Genesis account there's this wonderful little throw away statement that we often just bounce right over: “[God] brought [the animals] to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”

Did you catch it this time? If not I'll read it again, “Whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”

Now, let me briefly answer the cynic: of course Adam doesn't name all the animals: there are bacteria he can't see, and they're mutating so fast there are more of the them when he started than when he begins, so its pretty much an impossible task (just ask any taxonimist -- they have a hard enough time even with modern techniques) not to mention the ones that aren't brought before him in this story, like the kinds of life that only live at the bottom of the ocean.

No, let's look beyond the cynic: what this story is pointing out is the role God intended man to play in Creation: to name things. God names precious few things in the bible, and when he does, it's almost always for the direct situation of one particular person. In general man does the naming.

Have you ever given any thought why that is? I'm going to speculate here that, frankly, it's because God doesn't need to. God doesn't need names for the animals; God's consciousness is infinite, they exist before His conscious awareness at every moment of existence. He doesn't need to refer to a monkey as a monkey when talking to the other members of the Trinity: their rapport is complete and full. In fact the whole concert of representational language is pretty laughable when applied to the Trinity.

Now look at Adam. God brings before him an elephant, and later on the elephant walks off. The only way the limited consciousness of Adam can keep up with the elephant is to have a handle, a representation, a placeholder. So he gives it a name: elephant (or whatever elephant is in whatever langauge Adam spoke).

The implications of this are pretty staggering. God brings Adam the animals “to see what the man would name them”. God doesn't need the names; the names are the creation of man. Man is creating, joining in the act with the creator, and God is playing spectator: He is excited to see what the man is going to do. See, naming the elephant actually adds something to creation that wasn't there before -- this beast is no longer just the object, the collection of molecules, the quantum states of its electrons, the biological processes that make it up. Nor is it just another part of creation, one tiny but unique part amongst an unimagniably vast whole. No, now it is part of a group, a bond, a classification that helps the limited understand more than it could before. It is an elephant, and now it will always be an elephant -- that name is now added to creation.

In that simple act one place where the mundane touches the divine is established. The finiteness of man tries to grapple with the infinite and comes away with: names. A name is a way of control; a name means you understand some part of the object you're naming so much that you can understand it without having to consciously dwell on it. It's a representation, an abstraction, an metaphor, a handle. It's power for the finite to understand something larger than what is readily apparent.

If you've never thought about your fields of study this way, take a step back and think about it. Sharon likes to talk about this controversy in Mathematics between the people who think they are “discovering” mathematics and the people who think they are creating it. Well, hon, I finally have an answer for you. Both; the discovering is the act of seeing that finite part of the infinite that was already there, and the name, the classification, the structuring, that's all new, that is you continuing your God given work from the garden, from even before the fall.

Now, we've gone pretty far afield from today's passage, but if you are with me so far, let's go a little bit further afield before returning. Over in Exodus 3:13-14, Moses is at the burning bush, and the passage says: “Moses said to God, `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?' 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.””

Do you see it now? God DOESN'T HAVE A NAME! God is the infinite. Oh sure, God has lots of names in the bible, and He could have mentioned any of them to Moses. He could've called Himself the provider, the healer, the Savior, or any of the other names He is given by men. But no -- He understands the question even more than Moses, who is asking; Moses doesn't want to know some finite part of God, he wants to tell the Israelites in captivity the representation of their God so they'll know He's got the right one, and God's response is “You can't. I don't have a name in that way. Nothing I tell you will represent me. Creator, sustainer, these are all things I do. But the closest I have to a name is I AM. I was not created; I was not named. I am.”

Now back to the Lord's Prayer. I know, you were afraid we'd never get back here. Rewrite this first section now in the light of this discussion. It might read:

”Daddy, in heaven, there is no name that conveys the totality of You.”

To return briefly to the previous point, this isn't just a reflection of Jewish thought of the time. In face, the scandal is outrageous! To those Jewish teachers, who in their hollowness taught that the holiness of God is only purity and ritual, these opening lines proclaim audaciously to God that “you are my Daddy, though you are infinite and I am not.” They should the blasphemy that we are familial with god despite His holiness.

This is the divine mystery of the Christian faith upon which we are to meditate. Yes, as Pastor said two weeks ago, we are quick to compare God to our own earthly fathers. And yet, the beauty of all of this crazy analysis is that at the end, we see a God so complete and powerful in His being that we cannot even give him a name that would represent Him in his entirety, and yet He wants us to call Him daddy because He loves us. He is willing to risk us comparing the I AM to our earthly fathers because He knows we have to compare Him to something, and in this prayer He wants us to dwell on the truth that any name we have for Him is incomplete. This truth should make us thirst -- thirsty to understand the parts of Him we currently can't. Praying the Lord's prayer reminds us to meditate on exactly how much and how little we know God, and should cause us to want to know Him further.

Additionally, it reminds us that not only does He love us and provide for us the opportunity of relationship, that relationship is two ways. We aren't just mindless drones giving ritual and incantations to God, but like in the Genesis account, He is by our side waiting to see what we'll call the part of his infinite creation we are studying.

Think about that next time you are studying (and I apologize if I say these wrong) the “Ab Initio Computation of Semiempirical Pi-electron Methods” or “Large abelian subgroups of finite p-groups”. God's sitting back saying, “Elephant, that's cool.”

For those of us, like myself, who aren't exactly given the opportunity to discover and classify things in an academic environment, you are still naming. You can't help it; when you put your finite viewpoint on the infinite, you must, by definition come up with something representational. All of us are creative; by that I mean we all create. We don't create from nothingness, like God, but we do create. And the great thing about the infinite God, there are an infinite number of finite viewpoints from which to view Him and create relationships and classifications that help us better see Him for who He really is.

How blessed is the church, therefore, that we can know other people who see God differently from us, that can explain to us their finite perspective on the infinite, that we might see more of God and share their names for Him as well.

Summary

Next time you say the Lord's prayer, think about some of these things. Think about your role in creation, and what God has given you pray the Lord's prayer the onship with Him. May you never pray the Lord's prayer the same way again.

And that's only the first petition. We've still got five more to go.

Let us pray.