The Lord’s Prayer

1.       Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name

Passages: Exodus 3:13-15; Psalm 103; Matthew 6:5-15

Big Idea: God puts our leaders into their positions and will hold them accountable for their actions.  We need to give thanks for our democracy (especially as we celebrate Australia Day) and also be diligent in prayer.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

Lord Teach us to Pray

I don’t know about you but I find it hard to pray.  And when I do pray I find it hard not to be distracted; I find it hard not to find my mind wandering.

When I was at Theological College I was told that a good book on prayer was ‘Prayer’ by Ole Hallesby.  I bought it and put it on my shelf where it filled in a nice space but didn’t help my prayer life.  I have a couple of other books on prayer which fulfill the same purpose – they are shelf-fillers.

So I resonate with the disciples when I hear them ask ‘Lord, teach us to pray’.  There is something in this request.  I echo that request.  It is not just a request to know some words to say; it is also a request to be taught how to be regular in prayer; how to be focused in prayer; how to be deliberate in prayer; how to pray so that we are encouraged by answers to prayer.  It is a request to get closer to God who loves us more than we can ever imagine.

I read during the week that

The great British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill was once famously chastised with the words, ‘Winston, if you were my husband, I should flavor your coffee with poison.’  With his usual lightning wit he replied, ‘Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it!’

How could he get away with saying that?  He could get away with it because he was speaking to his long-time friend, Lady Astor.  There was a relationship which allowed that level of conversation.  In our own relationships we find that as well.  We know that the closer the relationship the deeper the conversation.  There are people with whom I will talk about the weather but I won’t talk about my job.  There are people who I will talk to about my job but I won’t talk to them about my marriage or my parenting.  The closer we are to someone the

more we share more of who we are and the more they share more of who they are.

This too is part of the disciple’s request.  They want to get closer to God.  They want their conversation with God not just to be about the weather; they want it to be about their job; they want it to be about their marriage; and they want the conversation to be a two-way conversation.

So as we begin this series on the Lord’s Prayer I want you to know that this is where I would like us all to end up.  I would like us all to end up being brought closer to God so that as we move on as a parish our personal, our public and our corporate prayer life reflect the relationship we have with God.

God who is our Father in heaven.  So let’s start there.

Our Father in heaven

The word that is translated ‘Father’ in our Bibles is an Aramaic term of respectful intimacy.  So it is more respectful that ‘Daddy’ and it is more intimate than ‘Father’.  It is probably something akin to ‘Dad’.

And we need to pause and think about the sheer gall in addressing God as Dad.  Here is the transcendent Creator of all things, the living and Almighty God, the ruler and judge of all things – and we have the cheek to walking into his presence and say ‘Hi, Dad.’   God, who is normally addressed with word after word describing his power and his majesty – Jesus could have started this prayer with ‘Our Creator’, ‘Our Sovereign’, ‘Our Judge’ – we are told to address Him as ‘Our Father’, ‘Our Dad’.

And we are told to address him as ‘Our Dad’, not ‘My Dad’.  This helps us to realize we are in this together.  Because God is my Dad you are my sister or my brother and I need to care for you as my sister or brother.

But what does it mean for God to be our Dad?

Some of you will know my Dad, Keith.  When I pray to God as my Father am I to think of someone who has the same attributes as my Dad?

Yes and No.

Earthly fathers like Keith, my Dad, and me are flawed.   My flaws as David’s Dad and Keith’s flaws as my Dad are not to be projected onto God our Father.  He is far greater than even the best human father any of us has known.  But the good things that Keith has done and will do for me and the good things that I have done and will do for David – give us a taste of what God our Father wants to be and do for us.

So what does it mean for God to be our Dad?

There seem to be two primary aspects to this.

Firstly there is the aspect of liberty, salvation and hope.  In calling God Father, Jesus was evoking some imagery from the Old Testament that his hearers would have known.  When God called Israel his son (Ex 4:22-23) it showed the depth of relationship that existed and it was in the context of the Exodus.  The Jews took these verses in Exodus and used them as reminders that God their Father was the one who liberated them; the one who saved them.  In using that word, Father, in this prayer Jesus is evoking those images of salvation.  In calling God Father we recognize that He is our savior, He is our liberator, He is our hope.

The second aspect of God being our Dad  is the aspect of intimacy.  Calling God Father or Dad is a recognition, primarily, that we are his children.  As his children we enjoy his tender love – the provision of our daily needs, the pardoning of our sins, the protection from harm, the discipline to show us the way to go, the daily blessings.  We enjoy His constant attention – God listens attentively to our prayers; he is as close as breathing; he is not far off that we need to yell to get his attention- he is near and he wants to listen to us and he wants to respond.  We enjoy the image of God running toward us to welcome us home, time after time.  We enjoy a Father who is never forgetful, never late, never grumpy or selfish, even when we fail to appreciate what he does for us every day.

Our Father in heaven – what a privilege; what a joy; what a hope; what a responsibility!!

Having recognized God as Father, what is it that we want to talk to him about?

Hallowed be your name

It is interesting to note that in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus first begins by getting us focused on God before he allows us to focus on ourselves.  So we begin by asking that God’s name be hallowed.

We are not really into names in the west – may parents didn’t call me Michael because it meant ‘who is like God’.  They just liked the name.

But when it comes to God’s names they are not just names, they tell something of who he is.  So when we pray for his name to be hallowed we are praying that his character be recognized and honoured.

Yahweh, Elohim, Abba, Jesus, Jehovah, Jehovah-Jireh, Yahweh-Shalom, El Shaddai – each of these are names which show a different aspect of God’s character and when we pray that his name is hallowed we are not just picking on one we are encompassing all of them.

When we pray ‘Hallowed be your name’ we answer that prayer in our speech, our action and our outreach.  We want ourselves and everyone else to speak with reverence about our Father.  Just like if anyone says something untrue and disparaging about my Dad I go to his defence – so it should be with our heavenly Dad.  We want to reverence God in our homes with our children – show them that God matters and needs respect.  We work at God being respected in the media.  Do we join in with the religious bagging or joke telling at work or in our social clubs – not if it brings God’s name into disrepute!!!  How can we pray ‘hallowed be your name’ and then go out and bag God’s name in public.

We want to show that God’s name is hallowed in our behavior.  We are God’s promotional campaign and our lives should answer our prayer.  And we want to hallow God’s name by telling others about him.  As one author puts it: Nothing shows respect to our Father’s name so much as people turning back to him in repentance and faith to rejoice in salvation and his glory. (Coekin p 61)

Conclusion

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Let me finish with a quote:

I once heard my thirteen-year-old son giving his eight-year-old brother some shrewd financial advice.  The younger boy was desperate to buy a new electronic Gameboy with the latest game, ‘Crash’, on it.  This was clearly a matter of life and death.  Realizing that he didn’t have enough pocket money to buy it himself, the poor boy collapsed in total despair.  His older brother came up with a classic line which just about sums up their financial strategy for life: ‘Just ask Dad!’  I was no match for the heart-rending appeals that followed, and my son was soon enjoying his brand new game (much to the despair of his mother.)

The Lord’s Prayer begins, wondrously, in a similar vein.  Our older brother, the Lord Jesus, who has known the Father for eternity, is telling us from his own personal experience how to face life’s challenges.  ‘Just ask Dad!’ he says.  Or, to put it in his original words, ‘This is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven …”’. (Richard Coekin, Our Father, p 41-42)

Let’s pray.  What more do we need to say God.  You are our Father and we are your children and we just want to say thanks.  Amen.