Sunday, February 20, 2022

A Name Like No Other

A few years ago, David Rose was working his job at the garbage dump. He had a habit of glancing through the new deliveries to see if there was anything that might be better off salvaged. And one day, he spotted a big box that was filled with curious items. In it was a top hat. And with the top hat came a cigar case. And there were about two hundred letters tossed in there, written from one Mrs. Mary Dorgan to her son Joe, an enlisted man, in and after the final year of World War II. Somebody had taken all these things and thrown them away as useless junk. But David, bored and curious on the job, started to read a few of the letters. And bit by bit, he realized what he'd found. You see, the woman was a cook; her husband was a butler. And the pair had been working for a British politician. Maybe you've heard of him: Winston Churchill. They'd given their son a few gifts she'd gotten from him. Like Churchill's top hat. And one of Churchill's famous cigars. Not only that, but with her behind-the-scenes view to Churchill's life and dealings, her letters offered intimate domestic insights. Whoever had thrown all this away either knowingly treated them with contempt, or else (more likely) was simply ignorant that what they had was so special. But it was special – no ordinary items, these – and so David resolved to treat them as special. He rescued them from the garbage dump and had them appraised – everything together was worth over £10,000.1

And perhaps – though I certainly don't know – it might have reminded David of a story from a couple decades before, when a town councilwoman named Maxine Smith was touring an industrial estate in Scotland, hunting down some misplaced robes and memorabilia. And she'd been directed toward a shed out in the garden, and given a key. But when she got there, she found the door propped open by a curious doorstop: an old bust, a shoulders-up statue of a man. It had been repurposed to keep the door open. Checking some records, Maxine realized it had been accidentally abandoned in the shed decades earlier when the town council was reorganized. But what had come to be used for such low and mundane purposes as keeping the shed door open, what people had just been ignoring as common, was in fact a work by the greatest French sculptor of the 1720s. It's worth about two million dollars today. Now it's in a museum, surrounded by other busts. Because it's special, and it deserves to be treated as special and noteworthy. It wasn't worth less when it was being used as a doorstop, but it wasn't being treated in accordance with its proper worth. Now it is.2

And all this isn't even to mention the Michigan farmer who spent thirty years using a 22-pound meteorite as a doorstop, until he finally got it appraised at $100,000.3 Or the English farmer who dug up a pointy metal thing and used it as a doorstop for years, until he finally showed it to someone and learned it was a 3,500-year-old ceremonial dagger.4 (Have you checked out your doorstops lately?)

But the point is this: It would have been fair for lovers of Winston Churchill to hope and pray that his top hat and cigar case would be discovered and treated as special by everyone, rather than discarded as junk. It would have been fair for lovers of French sculpture to hope and pray that lost busts be discovered and treated as art and not as doorstops. It would have been fair for students of astronomy or archaeology to hope and pray that any stray meteorites or ancient daggers be discovered and treated for what they intrinsically are, and not scorned as common items. And in much the same way, when Jesus gathers his disciples and teaches them how to hope and pray to the heavenly Father he's introducing them to, the first thing he invites us to want and to pray for – before any other request we make, before any other desire we cultivate – is that our Father's name – that is, our Father's identity, our Father's authority, our Father's reputation – would be cherished as special and shown off as special and adorned as special, rather than be treated as something common or contemptuous.

Jesus knew, and his first disciples knew, that the One they were calling 'Father' was the God who had guided Israel under the terms of the old covenants. In the exodus, we're told, God “saved [Israel]” – why? “For his name's sake” (Psalm 106:8). And one of the first things he told them, when he gathered them as his people, was to be very respectful and conscious of his name (Exodus 20:7). He ordered that the priests who ministered to him, in particular, “shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God” (Leviticus 21:6). In turn, the Israelites were told to hallow their priests, that is, to treat their priests as holy figures: “You shall hallow him, for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I the LORD, who sanctify you, am holy” (Leviticus 21:8). To Israel, he said: “You shall not profane my holy name, that I may be hallowed among the people of Israel: I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Leviticus 22:32).

Building on those commands and that vision, Jesus – the Holy High Priest of all creation – urged us, as children adopted into his Father's family, to yearn for the hallowing, or displaying as holy and recognizing as holy, of God's name. “Hallowed be thy name” – but what are we asking? It's like saying, “May your name and identity and reputation be treated as transcendently pure, separated from everything profane and everything creaturely.” It's like saying, “May your name and identity and reputation be glorified, regarded as absolutely significant, and so separated from everything commonplace and everything unimportant.” And it's important that this is the first thing Jesus wants his new brothers and sisters to pray for, the first thing Jesus wants us to want, second only to simply abiding and basking in our Father's presence. It makes sense that this should come first! After all, it would have been obvious to anyone in Jesus' day that a person is always deeply concerned for his father's reputation, because the father's reputation shaped the family's reputation, and vice versa. We are, in the end, going to be seen and known in light of our Heavenly Father's reputation.

So what does this all mean? If we're asking for God to act in ways that hallow his name, what are we asking God to do? What is it we're prioritizing? What ought we be hoping for, desiring with this focus and intensity?

First, when we ask God to hallow his name, we're asking God to inspire and move us, his creatures, to praise him, to worship him, to celebrate his name. “Let the name of the LORD be praised, both now and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised” (Psalm 113:2-3). If we have even the first clue who God is, who our Father is, then we'll see that his name is worth celebrating and praising. “It is fitting,” an early Christian said, “that God should be blessed in every place and time, with a view to the fitting remembrance of his gifts from every person.”5 Later Christians recognized that this prayer is a prayer that God “grant us that we may bless his name with our mouth.”6 We're asking him to open our eyes to all he's given us, to open our ears to testimonies of his greatness, to open our hearts to his grace, to open our mouths to praise his name as above all names, as the most beautiful sound and most majestic thought.

Second, when we ask God to hallow his name, we're asking God to teach us that 'most majestic thought': loftier conceptions of him, correct conceptions of him – in other words, to give us good theology. 'Theology' just means the things we say about God, the ways we understand God and the things connected to God. And it's important that our theology be healthy – sound, not unsound. It's important that it be orthodox – filled with untwisted appraisals of God, not distorted by mistakes and misunderstandings. Christians in the Middle Ages were especially good at seeing that this was part of what we're asking in this prayer. One commented that we're asking for God to “give us the grace that we may understand that nothing is as holy as his name.”7 Another paraphrased this prayer with the phrase, “May knowledge of you become clearer in us.”8 But even the earliest Christians saw this as part of it: they prayed, “We thank you, holy Father, for your holy name... and for the knowledge and faith... which you made known to us through... Jesus.”9 There's more to knowing God than theology, but not less. It's vital that we learn, that we be taught, because God is worth approaching straight-on and cherishing for who he is. We should yearn to understand him better. We should hunger for deeper and more accurate knowledge of God.

Third, when we ask God to hallow his name, we're asking him to spread this praise and this orthodoxy not just to us who already believe but to the world – and that happens when he empowers missionaries, evangelists, and everyday witnesses to spread the good news. In our day of religious tolerance (a good thing!) and individualism (maybe less good), it's sometimes difficult for us to remember that, when our neighbors near or far and even our friends don't believe in God through Jesus Christ – when they don't know him, when they decline to give him the proper praise and glory that's his right and his due – then that should actually grieve us. When anyone out there neglects to recognize and treat God's name as holy, we should find a cause for sorrow there, both because they're cheating God and because they're starving themselves.

So “the name of the LORD will be,” must be, “declared” (Psalm 102:21). Even in the Old Testament, there was hope that “a foreigner” would “come from a far country for the sake of [God's] great name” (2 Chronicles 6:32; cf. 1 Kings 8:41). Israel's purpose would prove successful insofar as those around them also would learn to “love the name of the LORD (Isaiah 56:6) and to “trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7), such that “all nations will... honor the name of the LORD (Jeremiah 3:17). And now that the light of the gospel has arrived – now that Christ has won the victory over death – there is all the more reason to want this.

So this is a prayer where “we desire and pray that all may... enter into the light and joy of the gospel.”10 It's one that takes seriously the realization that “the more you believe, then better is the name of God sanctified in you,” so it means, “May your name be sanctified in the hearts of... unbelievers...”11 It's a prayer that those who don't yet believe will come to believe – even if they're enemies and persecutors of the Church, even if they now can't stand to hear of God, this is a prayer that they'd come to trust, honor, and love his name, and approach him in faith for his great name's sake. But “how are they to believe in him of whom they've never heard” the fuller riches of his grace? “And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14). So we pray here for evangelists, for missionaries, and for our own witness, that God would grant success in announcing this good news and that our neighbors would come to appreciate the value of God's name. As was once said, “We wish not only for his name to be made holy on our own behalf, but also for those who have not yet had the fortune to achieve the grace of baptism”12 – and for those who've lost sight of it.

Fourth, then, when we ask God to hallow his name, we ask him to give fruit to the spread of the gospel by what he does when someone is baptized and so born again into God's family. Because, make no mistake: when you see someone being baptized, you're witnessing a miracle – that's the God guarantee. And it happens because of the invocation of God's name – which turns out to be not just the name of the Father, but also of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It's a joint identity, a joint authority, a joint reputation shared by the Trinity. The apostles were sent out “baptizing into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Being baptized, we were changed: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11), and so “your sins are forgiven for his name's sake” (1 John 2:12). Here's where we meet the cleansing power of God's name, the justifying power of God's name, the forgiving power of God's name. God's name is the power that enters you, and that you enter into. From here on out, you're marked by God's name. From here on out, your life is all tied and tangled up in God's name. And that's because in baptism, God chooses for his name to live on us and in us. As early Christians prayed: “We thank you, holy Father, for your holy name which you caused to dwell in our hearts...”13 And in this way, as it was in the Old Testament, so also under the New, a Temple is being “built for the Name of the LORD (1 Kings 3:2) – only now the temple is built in and from our hearts, each brick engraved beautifully with the holy name, and each heart hopefully being hospitable toward God's name. So we pray that this temple for God's name would be built bigger, brighter, better. We pray that God's name would be shown as holy through more and more new births, more and more baptisms, more and more times his name creates life out of death and salvation out of destruction. And we pray that we, the baptized, would be receptive to that ongoing miracle.

Fifth, when we ask God to hallow his name, we ask him to act to help our deeds highlight his good name to others and to stop our deeds from sullying his good name to others. When we're baptized, when we're marked publicly with God's name, suddenly our reputations become tangled up in God's reputation. What we say and what we do can affect how people in the world view the God whose name is written all over us. It was the same in the Old Testament, when the nation of Israel carried God's name. That's why first Isaiah and then Paul had to charge that “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24; cf. Isaiah 52:5 LXX). When Israel was hypocritical, when Israel fell publicly short of her profession, then the nations around them perceived less reason to exalt her God's name; instead, they scoffed at God on account of God's people.

And now the same is equally true of Christians. One of Peter's disciples wrote to the Corinthians, when they were acting up again, and complained: “Blasphemies are brought upon the name of the Lord through your folly!”14 And doesn't the same happen today? How many church scandals fill the news waves? How many pretexts have we given our unbelieving neighbors to dismiss everything we say? Not that our scandals excuse unbelief – even then, people remain “without excuse” (Romans 1:20) – but certainly our unholy conduct has the potential to scandalize. So when we pray this prayer, we're asking that God not allow our unholy practice to get in the way of his name being recognized as still holy by others. Hopefully, he'll do that by stopping us in our tracks, and getting us to prevent before we can do anything scandalous! But if not, we at least beg him to not allow scandal to result – we ask that he'd give our neighbors the ability to look past us to still see him.

The other side of the coin, though, is that our actions and attitudes can sometimes be helpful for our neighbors to see him. Some ancient Jews actually used the phrase 'hallow God's name' to describe doing good deeds for unbelievers in such a way that they'd reinforce God's reputation. Some rabbis passed along an imagined story where, in the days of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac's birth caused the nations to mock Sarah, and as punishment, God afflicted the Gentile noblewomen so they couldn't nurse their babies. In desperation, they came crawling to Sarah, begging her to nurse their children. And Abraham convinced her to do it by saying to her, “Hallow the Holy One's name!”15 Just like in that rabbinic story, there are plenty of things Christians have done, down through the ages, that have hallowed God's name by manifesting his mercy and care toward others. And so when we pray this prayer, we're asking that he'd help us do them and also to give our neighbors the ability to not just see us doing charitable deeds, but see God's goodness and God's holiness in those charitable deeds.

We're asking that the credit for anything good we do goes to God, even if that means that we on earth should get little or none. Because it's his reputation we want magnified. It's his glory and his praise we should be chasing. We know we'll be “glorified with him” one day (Romans 8:17). But in the meantime, praying this prayer is adopting with joy the words of John the Baptist as our own: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 2:30). God must be glorified, Christ must be credited, and the cost is not taking credit ourselves, not seeking glory ourselves. We ask God to hallow his name, even if our name suffers for it. That's what we must want.

Finally, when we ask God to hallow his name, we ask him to manifest his holiness by his redemptive discipline. We invite him to correct us and prune us, but to have mercy on us at the same time. The Old Testament was quite clear that “the Holy One shows himself holy in righteousness,” that is, in judgment (Isaiah 5:16). It was in judgment that God could “show himself holy” by asserting his rights and punishing sin.16 In particular, Ezekiel tells us, God judges his own people to correct them and prune them so that they “shall no more defile my holy name” (Ezekiel 43:7), because God says he is “jealous for my holy name” (Ezekiel 39:25). How respectable would be a father whose warnings are all idle threats, who never insists on his children giving him appropriate respect, nor disciplines them to help them grow? God is a Father who does insist on respect, and who enforces it from time to time by judging his people. And we ask him to do that, because it's for our good.

On the other hand, the prophets pointed out that, since Israel bore God's name, a severe punishment for Israel could actually have the opposite effect. When the Israelites were scattered in exile, “wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, 'These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of his land!' But I had concern for my holy name...” (Ezekiel 36:20-21). In other words, God saw that this punishment, if carried too far, would be counterproductive. And so other prophets prayed on exactly this basis: “Do not spurn us, for your name's sake (Jeremiah 14:21). They made their bid for mercy precisely by urging God not to let his struggle with Israel become a lose-lose situation. And so God determined to show mercy “for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 20:14). God resolved to “vindicate the holiness of my great name” by setting limits to his punishment and redeeming Israel from exile (Ezekiel 36:23). And just as then, so also now, we ask God to vindicate his holiness – that is, show himself as awesome beyond compare, and so hallow his name by public acts of deliverance beyond what we deserve.

When we say to God, “Hallowed be thy name,” we're asking for all this. We're asking him to move us to praise and to teach us his truth. We're asking him to spread the gospel and move others to give it a receptive hearing. We're asking him to give new life in baptism and build up a temple of hearts for his name. We're asking him to point our good acts toward his reputation and prevent our scandals from tarnishing it. We're asking him to give us needed discipline, but to show us mercy by delivering us in awesome ways that everyone can see.

And this petition is pressing toward a vision of the end. See, up until now, God has been holding back. Fire from heaven? God was holding back. Plagues in Egypt? God was holding back. Parting the sea? God was holding back. Healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead? Even in all that, God was holding back. But in pleading with God to hallow his name, we're asking him to stop holding back. And the day is coming when he won't hold back – when he'll finally wrap up history in such a way that the Name he shares with his Son and Spirit will compel every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father (Philippians 2:9-11).

God will manifest his holiness in ways no one can deny. He will vindicate his holiness once and for all, in judgment and in mercy. All will see God for who he is (1 John 3:2). No one will have subpar theology. Then, and only then, comes the new creation where God's name will be exalted perfectly above all and by all. Every believer will be fully a saint, and will worthily bear God's name on their lives and celebrate that saving name forever, with full appreciation, knowing as we are fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12).

That is ultimately what we're asking for whenever we say to God, “Hallowed be thy name.” And what Jesus is teaching us is that, if our priorities are right, there is absolutely nothing we desire, absolutely nothing we crave, absolutely nothing that would amaze us and delight us, more than this. So when we prayer, we rush right there – right to pleading for this, for all this, for this more than anything, now and forever. Hallowed be his name!

1  Carri-Ann Taylor, “Binston Churchill: Winston Churchill's Iconic Top Hat and Cigar Found on a Council Rubbish Tip,” The Sun, 24 March 2019, <https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8710622/winston-churchill-cigar-top-hat-rubbish-tip/>. See also “Sir Winston Churchill's Cigar and Top Hat Found at Rubbish Tip,” Sky News, 25 March 2019, <https://news.sky.com/story/sir-winston-churchills-cigar-and-top-hat-found-at-rubbish-tip-11674785>.

2  “Louvre to Exhibit Balintore Shed Door Marble Bust,” BBC, 26 September 2016, <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37471349>.

3  “Michigan Meteorite Used as Doorstop for 30 Years 'Worth $100,000,'” BBC, 5 October 2018, <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45765458>.

4  “Internationally Important Bronze Age Dagger Saved for the Nation: Rare Antiquity Used as a Doorstop to Go on Display in Norwich,” National Heritage Memorial Fund, 23 November 2014, <https://www.nhmf.org.uk/news/internationally-important-bronze-age-dagger-saved-nation-rare-antiquity-used-doorstop-go>. See also Trevor Heaton, “Archaeologists Hail 'Incredible' Norfolk Bronze Age Discovery,” Eastern Daily Press, 23 November 2014, <https://www.edp24.co.uk/lifestyle/archaeologists-hail-incredible-norfolk-bronze-age-discovery-714496>; and Erin Blakemore, “This 3,500-Year-Old Dagger Made a Really Great Doorstop,” Smithsonian Magazine, 19 January 2015, <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3500-year-old-dagger-or-really-great-doorstop-180953923/>.

5  Tertullian of Carthage, On Prayer 3 (late second or early third century)

6  Aelfric of Eynsham, Homily on the Lord's Prayer (late tenth century)

7  Aelfric of Eynsham, Homily on the Lord's Prayer (late tenth century)

8  Francis of Assisi, Exposition on the Lord's Prayer (early thirteenth century)

9  Didache 10.2 (mid- to late first century)

10  Richard Klaver, When You Pray: An Analysis of the Our Father (Newman Press, 1955), 42.

11  Maurice de Sully, On the Pater Noster (late twelfth century), in Jane Bliss, ed., An Anglo-Norman Reader (Open Book, 2018), 323.

12  Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 10.1.18 (late sixth century)

13  Didache 10.2 (mid- to late first century)

14  Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 47.7 (late first century)

15  Rabbi Berechiah (early fourth century), citing Rabbi Levi II (third century), as quoted in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 22.1

16  Qumranite War Scroll, at 1QM 17.2 (first or second century BC)

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