The First Petition: May your name be hallowed.
Luther instructs his readers, “It is true that God’s name is holy in itself, but we ask in this prayer that it may also be holy in and among us.” Need we be reminded by the good Dr. Luther that our use of God’s name is often far from holy? Is it used as slang more often than it is called upon in prayer, praise and thanksgiving? Like the name of a lover on our lips, this name is precious and sacred; to say it with contempt or in anger is to reject the One who loves us most.
Names are very sacred to human beings. The ancient understanding of knowing a person’s name was to know something deeply intimate about them. It is really no different for humanity today. One of the most important things we can know about another person is their name. I have often taught my children the importance of remembering the names of people they meet, especially classmates and neighborhood children. Our daughter would often say as she met a new neighbor, “My friend wants me to come over to play this afternoon.” I would respond, “What is your friend’s name?” “I don’t know,” she would reply, “I forgot to ask her.” How can two children really be friends if they do not know this most basic information about one another? Friendship begins with introducing yourself to another, “My name is Amy. What is your name?”
When I was studying to be a pastor I had many situations when I had to work very hard to remember a whole host of new names, for example when I went on internship. I took the church directory and studied it diligently until I learned every person’s name in that book. Perhaps part of that endeavor was influenced by a story my mother would occasionally repeat about the pastor with which she grew up. My mother, Janice, had a twin sister, Judith, and they spent the first twenty years of their lives in the same parish with the same pastor. When my aunt married her high school sweetheart and they were sent to San Diego because he was in the Navy, my mother was the only Wilson twin left in worship on Sunday mornings. She would continually be frustrated by the pastor’s inability to remember if she was Janice or Judith.
Our name is a vital part of our identity. If you do not think so then imagine another moniker for yourself! Rather than the name you were given by your parents, can you see yourself as a “Susan” or a “Kimberly,” a “Michael” or a “Robert?” At our baptism we are also given another name. . . God’s name. Luther reminds us that as Christians, as beloved children of God, through this naming (and the sacraments) we are incorporated into God himself. Not only that, but “everything that is God’s must serve for our use.” We are granted and gifted with all good things through the One whose name we share.
For Luther, the greatest treasure that we have is God’s holy name. Because it is so sacred we are to see to it that it is kept holy on earth in the same way that it is holy in heaven. How do we do this? Do we have any control over how God’s name is used around us? Does this mean that we are charged with the duty of policing and chastising those who break the Second Commandment, shaming them into submission all the while suggesting that they expand their meager, prosaic vocabulary? I am not sure how successful we would be if we attempted such a feat. Rather, the hallowing of God’s name happens in our words and actions, our teaching and modeling for others as we point to the one in whom we put our ultimate trust and fidelity.
As ones who are called children of God, we have a duty to behave like good children so that our words and deeds are a positive reflection on our holy Parent. We have all witnessed the toddler meltdown at the supermarket, where the mother (maybe we were that mother) threatens the unruly child, then bribes her, gives her “the look” and tries every other tactic to make the child settle down and behave. Onlookers turn away from the scene in scorn. The mother suffers certain embarrassment. In the end the child is not blamed, but the mother who could not keep her child from being unruly and disobedient. As children of God we do not want to reflect poorly on our heavenly Father. We do not desire that others would see our actions and words and would therefore assume that our Father deserves reproach and dishonor because of his children’s shameful behavior. Instead through our honorable, loving, merciful, kind words and deeds we point others to our loving Father.
We know God’s name and thus we are intimately connected to him as he shares it with us giving us a new identity. We have received such bountiful blessings from our Father that out of obedience and gratitude we hallow God’s name through the way we live our lives. We use his name to praise and thank him; we speak about his kindness to us; we marvel out loud of his mercy and grace. These are not empty words! These are words of truth of which we are blessed to speak, and others are blessed to hear.
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