“Seasons of Lifting Up the Lord,” First Petition, Lenten Midweek #2, Feb. ‘18

1.        Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  “The Lord’s Prayer: A Prayer for All Seasons.” No matter in what season of life you find yourself. That’s how this Lenten series began last week. There was the encouragement to pray the Lord’s Prayer not only at weekly worship but throughout the week, more than once per day—three times, as a Lenten ritual or discipline, noting that the more we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the more we begin to insert petitions with personal needs or thoughts or fears. Last week, Ash Wednesday, the encouragement was to pray the Lord’s Prayer through seasons of needing forgiveness—either needing to be forgiven for our sins against the Lord and our neighbor or needing to forgive someone who’s brought pain to your heart and mind.  Now this day, we pray the First Petition: “Hallowed be Thy name,” for The Lord’s Prayer Is for Our Seasons of Lifting Up the Lord.

2.       The relationship between the Father and the Son was intimate and divine, and on more than one occasion Jesus declared that He and the Father are one (Jn 10:30; 17:21–22). So when the Lord taught us His prayer, He began at the beginning—by lifting up the name of the Father in heaven. This petition is an act of adoration. It is to confess with the apostle Paul, “Therefore God [the Father] has highly exalted [Jesus, his Son] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9–11).

3.       To hallow the name of the Lord is to acknowledge His matchless power: “Holy is your name, Lord, more powerful than the most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, more powerful than the most ruthless dictator, more powerful than the wealthiest of the wealthy.” To hallow the name of the Lord is to confess that the Lord is, certainly, Lord of all that is and will be, that the Lord is in absolute control of all of life and eternity! Luther’s brief explanation is choice: “God’s name is certainly holy in itself”—God is God and there is no other. We’re not in ultimate control of our lives or livelihoods—God is! We’re not in control of our church, our community, our world—God is! We’re not in control of our eternal destinies—God is! That’s good stuff!

4.       By contrast, when you are in the season, the time of your life, that seems “out of control,” when “everything nailed down is coming loose,” when your dreams and plans and hopes are dashed, and when your future looks grim, the petition becomes a source of power and promise, for we are in the hands of a mighty God. His name is holy, in and of itself, quite apart from anything in us.

5.       “But,” the catechism goes on, “we pray in this petition that [God’s name] may be kept holy among us also.” And Luther explains, “How is God’s name kept holy? . . . When the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it.” So while His name is already holy, we are to hallow it, that is keep it holy, too.

6.       That means when among us God’s Word is preached, taught, spoken—by pastor to people, by Sunday School teacher to students, by parent to child, member to friend at work or on the golf course—purely as the Bible presents it to us. Not to be twisted or manipulated to fit into our biases and personal opinions, not to be compromised, and not to be put on the shelf, but to the Word of God is to read with trembling, humility, hope, and promise, with confidence and wonder.

7.       And then there’s the matter of life—leading holy lives according to God’s Word. Lives that are sexually pure. Lives that use our money, our energies, our every hour for Him and for our neighbor, not for ourselves. Lives that don’t bend to the sinful views of society, no matter what courts or politicians or the voices of secular wisdom tell us. All these things reflect on the name of God, and our every sin against God’s Word, Luther writes, “profanes the name of God among us.”

8.       I remember when I first became a Pastor, having just graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO back in 2007, my Grandpa Eugene Taggatz, who is now with the Lord, saying to me in love and warm fuzzies before I’d preach, “Don’t embarrass the family name.” We’d laugh, but speaking or living other than according to God’s pure Word is no laughing matter. Whatever we do, whatever we say, we reflect the name of our Father in heaven. That’s a daunting task and privilege!

9.       Still, it remains true that God’s name is hallowed above all by something to which we contributed nothing. As Jesus was teaching us this prayer, He was looking ahead to the cross, to His sole mission on this earth to save a world from sin. On the heels of Palm Sunday, Jesus was left alone with His thoughts, knowing what lay ahead, fully aware that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and chief priests hated Him so much that they wanted Him dead, hanging on a cross, aware also that Roman soldiers spared no pain, were relentless in their scorn, brutal in their scourging. And so Jesus prayed with a clear mind and a heavy heart in John chapter 12, “What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Hallowed be thy name. “Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it’ ” (Jn 12:27–28)—the Father referring to His Son, who began His journey on this earth in Bethlehem’s stable, was raised a carpenter’s son in Nazareth, was baptized by His cousin in the Jordan River, preached to multitudes, healed the lame and deaf and blind, rid the temple of easy, meaningless worship, called the impious “hypocrites like whitewashed tombs,” raised a little girl and his good friend from the dead, and proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom. Through all of that, the name of the Father has been glorified.

10.   And the Father says, “And I will glorify it again” (John 12:28). In the Upper Room, in communion with Jesus’ disciples, in the garden, greeted with a kiss of betrayal, at court, with chilling shouts of “Crucify him!” echoing through the chambers, on the Via Dolorosa, carrying the weight of the cross and the sins of the world on His bloodied back, all the way to Golgotha, “Place of a Skull.”

11.   Through the cross, the name of the Father is made holy. Through this selfless sacrifice, the name of the Father is made holy. Through the unbounded love of God revealed so dramatically on the hill called Calvary, the name of the Father is made holy.  “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” Amen.