(Ezekiel 36:22-23; Matthew 6:9-10)
Two weeks ago, I challenged you to do two things: to listen for God and expect him to speak to you, and to pray the Lord’s Prayer every day, specifically for this church. I hope you started doing both of those things, and I hope you’re still doing them; and as you’ve been praying the Lord’s Prayer, I hope you’ve been thinking about what it means to ask these things of God. In particular, I hope you’ve been thinking about these two verses: do we really know what we’re getting ourselves into here?
Take this first one. Our Father in heaven, may your name be made holy. Be made holy by whom? You may remember a little while back I talked about the “divine passive”—the Jewish practice of using the passive voice to say that God did something without using God’s name, just to be sure they didn’t use it in vain. That’s what we have here; this means, “Father, make your name holy.” But what does that mean? We don’t ask God to make the water wet or the fire hot—they already are, by definition. God doesn’t have to make his name holy, it already is. So what do we do with this?
Two things. First, we need to understand these three petitions in light of the line that concludes them: “on earth as it is in heaven.” Second, his name represents God as he reveals himself to us as a person whom we can know and with whom we can communicate. Kenneth Bailey illustrates this with Moses at the burning bush—his first words are a request to be told God’s name. If he doesn’t know God’s name, he can’t communicate with God; it’s only the name that makes relationship possible. So, yes, God’s name is holy, his character is holy, and in heaven, everyone knows it and everyone knows that’s a good thing—but down here on earth? Not so much. That’s why Telford Work, in his marvelous book Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, titled his chapter on this petition “The Reputation of God.” That’s a bit too small, but it makes the point.
When we pray, “Father in heaven, make your name holy”—we’re painting a target on our foreheads. If we’re asking that his name would be recognized as holy on earth just as it is in heaven, if we’re serious about that, we don’t get to specify that happening through somebody else: it’s coming down on us. Praying “Father in heaven, make your name holy in me and in our church” doesn’t actually change the prayer at all, it just focuses our attention on what we’re saying here. Father, change my heart, change my life, change the hearts of our congregation and the life of our church, so that when people outside the church look at us, they will see the holiness of God and praise him for it.
If that’s starting to frighten you, it gets better—and by better, I mean “even scarier.” Consider this holy God, consider Isaiah’s reaction when he’s given a vision of God’s holiness, and then think: not only do we pray that he would make his name holy, we pray that his kingdom would come, on earth as in heaven. A lot of folks say this is just a prayer for the end of time, but I don’t buy it; yes, the kingdom of God is still in the future, but it’s also already here. We’ve talked about this before. In Christ, the kingdom of God breaks into this world—and he leaves us behind as his body, in whom by his Spirit the kingdom of God is still breaking into this world. We are the beachhead, we are the embassy, we are a colony of heaven among the nations of earth. We pray that the kingdom of the holy God would come, and the answer he gives us is—us. Not in our power, not in our wisdom, not in our riches, but only by his Spirit; but still, his Spirit in us.
As we are praying that God would display his holiness unmistakably in us, so too we pray that his reign and his authority would be revealed—would be realized—in us. This is partly a matter of our obedience, our dedication to seek and to follow his will, and so the third request ties in closely here; again, we don’t get to pray, “May your will be done—but only through those people over there; let me do my own thing.” If we say it and we mean it, we’re putting ourselves front and center, asking God to change our hearts and our minds so that we would do his will. Tell truth, even if we say it and don’t mean it, I’ve known God to take people at their word and grant this kind of request even when it was insincere, only offered for appearances. Prayer is a dangerous thing.
Beyond obedience, though, this is about our allegiance. I said last year that our model for faithful discipleship is the Jews in exile under kings like Nebuchadnezzar, Belteshazzar, and Darius; in the Wednesday afternoon group right now, we’re working through Daniel, and one of the most striking things about the first part of that book is the absolute clarity Daniel and his friends had that their true allegiance was to God and God alone. They served pagan kings faithfully because that was how God had called them to serve him; part of their service to those kings was to make that point clear. Thus in Daniel 3, the three young men tell the king, “It doesn’t matter what you can give us, or what you can do to us; it doesn’t matter what God does for us, or doesn’t. Regardless of all of it, we bow to him, and we only bow to him.” That was the kingdom of God made visible.
This isn’t easy, and in a worldly sense, it isn’t safe. God doesn’t promise to keep us safe, he just promises to bring us through. Those three young men, after all, got themselves thrown in a furnace going somewhere north of 1000°. If we show the holiness of God, we will be called unloving (and worse) by those who demand we compromise. If we show allegiance to his kingdom, we will be called un-American (and worse) by those who put this country first. And if we commit ourselves to do his will, we’re going to find that he meant what he said about laying down our lives; we can’t refuse to do something just because it’s too risky, because sometimes he calls us to risk everything for him.
At least, in a worldly sense, for the only thing he calls us to risk are the treasures of this world, which are here for a season, then gone like the dew; and he calls us to risk them, to put them all at hazard, in order to wean us from our trust in them and our dependence on them, that we might learn to trust in him alone. He wants us to hold all our riches and all our plans lightly, with open hands. For those who reject God, this is where many, perhaps most, turn away; like the rich young ruler, they’re not willing to let go—not willing to give up control. As Telford Work puts it,
The line between the greatest faith and the bitterest unbelief is nothing more than the willingness to kneel.