Editor’s note: What follows below are highlights from Archdeacon Brody’s discussion on hallowing God’s name, during a recent prayer conference.
PRINCE ALBERT — The Lord’s Prayer is the only teaching we have from Jesus on how to pray. In the Anglican Church, we pray it twice in every service. Tertullian, living in the second and third centuries, called it “a compendium of the Gospel,” that is, a summary of the Gospel.
This prayer is so central to Tertullian that the answer to the question, “What is the Gospel?” could be answered by this prayer. It seems to me, then, that the Lord’s Prayer is absolutely central to our lives and our faith.
Understanding this prayer is vital to understanding prayer itself. The first thing I need to do is talk briefly about the importance of the name of God.
What is God’s name? What does it mean to hallow or honour God’s name? The Israelites, all the way back in Exodus Chapter 3, had been given God’s name by God’s servant Moses. When Moses is chosen by this mysterious voice from a burning bush, he has a natural question.
“If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13 ESV). And God gives the name to Moses, which forever appears in English Bibles, as the small caps “LORD.”
There was such a respect and an honour for this name that for many years, the way it was pronounced was lost to translators and scholars of the Bible, because devout Jews stopped saying the name altogether, in order not to transgress the second commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
To make a long story short, for some time scholars believed Jehovah was the correct pronunciation, before some other scholars came and made a convincing case that Yahweh should be the preferred pronunciation.
I won’t bore you with the details of why I think Jehovah is almost certainly wrong, and why Yahweh is almost certainly right. But it all points to a question. Is this what it means to hallow the name? Or is it something else altogether? Surely, treating something with such serious reverence is hallowing it!
Let’s look at what the Bible itself has to say, specifically the Old Testament: “Therefore, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them’” (Ezekiel 36:22).
This verse is just one example of how God expects the people of Israel to hallow His name in the Old Testament.
When we start to think of it, this is actually quite a common theme, from the second commandment of “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” to “And you shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you” (Leviticus 22:32), as God expands upon the instructions of the Law.
Here’s the big idea: God’s people profane His name regularly throughout the Scriptures, and the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be thy name,” is a prayer that actively invites us to do the opposite.
Sometimes I’ve heard this part of the Lord’s Prayer spoken of as introductory material rather than a true petition itself, as though what Jesus is doing here is just addressing the one whose name is hallowed, that is, Holy. But I don’t think that’s what is going on here.
What I believe is going on is Jesus is instructing His followers to pray, “Lord, let your name be known as holy among the nations.”
In other words, that whole thing where we mess up and drag your name through the mud? Keep us away from that. It’s really a prayer for us, even as it’s a prayer about Him. It leads us to the natural question: what do we as Christians do that profane God’s name among the nations, that is, among the people who do not know Jesus?
To put it simply, if we are those who are called by His name (James 2:7), then how have we given God a bad reputation?
The first petition of the Lord’s prayer, “Hallowed be thy name,” I believe can be best understood as a petition that asks God to use us for His good reputation, rather than His bad reputation.
