The first of the three God-petitions concerns God’s name. What can we possibly mean by the name of God? If we can get at God's fatherhood from the analogy of human fatherhood, maybe we can get at God's name from the analogy of human names. What does it mean that you have a name?
For one thing, it means that you’re a person, not a thing. Think of the difference between meeting someone whose name you don’t know from meeting someone whose name you know. The whole feel of things is different, isn’t it? We can address them, and they can address us. We’re aware of each other’s dignity and worth. If God has a name, we think about God as though God were another person. Our encounters with God are personal confrontations: our dignity, worth, and freedom meet God's surpassing dignity, worth, and freedom, and we will never be the same again.
To have a name also means to have a secret. Strangers can’t learn your name unless you or somebody who knows you tells them. Just so, there are some things you can find or figure out about God, but if you want to know God's name—if you want to know who God really is—God has to tell you, or somebody who really knows God has to tell you.
To have a name is, first, to be a person; second, to have a secret; and, third, to have a story. To those who’ve watched you grow up and have lived with you, the whole story of your life is captured in your name. Your name was given you at birth by your parents. But that name now has a content you have given it by the story of your life.
So God's name gets its content from God's story. In the Moses story in Exodus, God's name gets its content from the fact that God is the God of Israel's ancestors, of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Rachel and Leah. That’s what’s behind those mysterious words, "I am that I am." This is the final truth about God's name. What the story tells us, what God has shown himself to be to our fathers and mothers, what God revealed himself to be in Jesus Christ—that’s what God is and that’s what God will be; that’s God's name.
Now then, “Hallowed be your name.” “Hallowed” is just a fancy way of saying holy. “Holy” means "separate, different, other." "Hallowed be your name" then means "May God's name be treated differently from all other names. May God's name be respected and honored as no other name." There are two distinct aspects in the hallowing of God's name.
The first aspect concerns God's being, the way God is God. God's being is totally different, wholly other. There is no way we can print "human" in such big letters that it turns into DIVINE. There’s no way we can shout "humanity" so loudly that the echo comes back GOD.
Maybe that’s too theoretical. The holiness of God's being may become more vivid to us if we look at some typical human reactions to an encounter with "the Holy."
Have you ever experienced a sense of the awesomeness of God? Have you ever felt the
un-approachableness of God? God said to Moses, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5). Have you ever found any holy ground in your life?
Have you ever experienced a sense of the overpowering-ness of God? Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up and heard the creatures gathered around God’s throne cry "Holy, holy, holy," and he cried, “Woe is me! I am lost” (Isaiah 6:3, 5). Have you ever felt that way before the holiness of God?
Have you ever felt silenced by a sense of God’s mystery, a sense that God strikes in upon you from outside the realm of the familiar and the understandable, that God is strange and alien and other? And were you in that instant struck dumb in amazement?
Finally, have you ever experienced a sense of the fascination of God? Despite the awesomeness and the overpowering-ness and the mystery of God, have you been intrigued, curious, strongly attracted to God?
When we experience both the dread that keeps us away from God and the fascination that draws us irresistibly toward God—when we experience that double movement even in the faintest way—we know something of the holiness of God. That holiness isn’t in our feelings but in God. As Al Winn says, “Our feelings are shadows cast by the burning light of God's holiness.”
In the first instance, then, "Hallowed be your name" is a request that the holiness of God's being—God's secret, the fullness of who God is—may be seen and felt and reverenced in the earth.
But there’s another aspect in the hallowing of God's name. What God does is holy as well as who God is. God is uniquely and radically good. A God whose actions are unblemished by wrong is a holy God. A God who loves justice and hates evil is a holy God.
In the Bible, God's holiness involves special concern for the powerless and the dispossessed. God’s people are to see that the powerless and the dispossessed receive justice—that will be their holiness. The holiness of who God is separates God from God's people; the holiness of what God does is a link with God's people. God’s people are to act the same way God does. This link with God makes them separate, different, other from the surrounding peoples. They are now a holy people.
In the second instance, then, when we say, "Hallowed be your name," we’re asking that the holiness of God’s actions may be demonstrated on earth by the actions of the people of God—that God's justice and mercy, which are also part of God's name, may be seen in us. We are asking that we who bear God's name may not by our injustice and lack of mercy bring shame and disgrace on it.
To pray “Hallowed be your name" is to acknowledge that we live in a world where the name of God isn’t hallowed. To pray “Hallowed be your name" is to call for the restoration of the sacred in a secular world, for the recapture of reverence in an irreverent world—starting with us.
Father in heaven, hallowed be your name! Amen.
Stay warm, my friends.
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