On this first Sunday in Lent, I’m amazed at how quickly we’ve moved from the manger and Christmas to the journey with Jesus toward the cross. It feels so quick–so sudden. Just out of curiosity, I decided to look and see what the earliest possible date for the beginning of Lent is, and believe it or not, it is February 4! When I discovered that, I offered a prayer of thanks to God that Lent won’t begin on February 4 until the year 2285.

The season of Lent is a time of preparation and opening ourselves up to the leading of God in our lives. Many people talk about fasting or giving things up for Lent, but the reason they do this is not because Lent is time for a glorified diet or a re-do of failed New Year’s resolutions, but so that by getting rid of things that occupy our focus, they might have more space in their lives to pray and to seek after spiritual things. 

Lent is the perfect time to take a habit or routine and explore it more deeply, to ask God to shine a light on it and help us understand why we do what we do. A couple of years ago, our after church Sunday School class studied the Lord’s Prayer, and several of us learned so much and grew so much that we wanted the whole congregation to be able to learn these things too. After all, we say the Lord’s Prayer every single Sunday in our worship services. Is it just something we do because it is a habit, or is there a deeper meaning and purpose for us to understand? After prayer and discernment, Pastor Jeff and I decided to explore the Lord’s Prayer, line by line, during the sermon time through Lent. Whether you’ve prayed this prayer your whole life or are relatively new to it, we hope that this lenten series will be an opportunity for all of us to learn, grow, and be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

Today we begin with the first line of the prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” This line contains so much rich meaning in it we could do an entire series on it by itself. In this line, we call God “Father,” we say that God is in heaven, and we use the strange, infrequently-used word “hallowed” to describe God’s name. I hope you don’t have lunch plans because we could be here awhile. Kidding…kidding.

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount – a lengthy teaching of Jesus in Matthew chapters 5-7, Jesus teaches his listeners how to pray. This is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus says, “Pray like this.” And what does he mean by “this?” Of course he means the prayer that will follow, and that’s one reason we pray this prayer every week. But even more than that, Jesus is telling us what prayer is all about. I love the way United Methodist minister and author Adam Hamilton says this. He writes, “When we pray, we fix our heart on the things we pray for, and we invite God to work through us and others to answer our prayers.” We aren’t just saying, “Hey, God, fix the world for us–though sometimes we have to pray that prayer, too.” In the Lord’s Prayer, we focus our prayers on what we long for in the world, and we ask God to help us be the answer to that prayer. Kind of like the man who was on the roof of his house and asked God to save him from the flood below. The man prayed and asked for help, but he had to be willing to get up and take the rowboat, the motorboat, or the helicopter. The work doesn’t get done just because we ask God to do it. We still have to do our part.

OK, enough background. Let’s dive into the prayer. How do we address God in the Lord’s Prayer? “Our Father.” It’s so interesting to me that Jesus started the prayer in this way. In the Old Testament, there were many names for God. Some of the most common names were “El Shaddai,” “Elohim,” and “Yahweh.” God is only referenced as being like a father 15 times in the Old Testament, and only in two chapters is God directly called “Father” in the Old Testament – both times at the end of the book of Isaiah. (Isaiah 63:16 and Isaiah 64:8, if you want to look them up.) So, if there were so many other names for God to choose from, why did Jesus choose this one as he taught the people how to pray? 

I think the simplest answer is that Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father” because that’s how Jesus relates to God. Jesus extended that relationship to us. Every single one of us can pray to God as our Father because Jesus–the only Son of God–invited us into that relationship. We are children of God who can call on God as “Father.” Isn’t that humbling and amazing? 

But, there’s even more to it than this. When Jesus taught us to pray “Our Father,” he was also reaching way back into the memory of the people of Israel. Back in the book of Exodus, the people of Israel were in slavery in Egypt. God called Moses to lead the people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. God gives Moses this word for Pharaoh: “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, “Let my son go that he may worship me.” Do you hear that? God calls Israel his firstborn son. That means God is their Father. When Jesus tells us to pray to God as “Our Father,” he is inviting us into the relationship he has with God, and he is also reminding us that God has called us to be “people ready for the new Exodus,” as theologian N.T. Wright says it. Because God is our Father, we are called out of bondage to sin and into our new role as people who proclaim the kingdom of God by the way we live our lives. In the first two words of the prayer already, we are focusing on what we long to see in the world, and we are asking God to help us be part of the answer.

This all sounds great, but what are we to do if even saying the word “father” is hard for us because of the pain we’ve endured at the hands of our earthly fathers? Or, what if we never knew our father, or we don’t want to think of the harm done to us by our fathers every single time we pray the Lord’s Prayer? What should we do then? Adam Hamilton, in his book on The Lord’s Prayer, tells the story of Roberta Bondi, a professor of church history at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. She wrote, “Like many other people, having transferred to God the Father all the pain I felt around my human father, I simply couldn’t get past the father language of the prayer to reach God…I was hurting so much and so mistrustful of God.” 

To get through this, Roberta started praying, “Our Parent,” and that helped her get through the acuteness of the pain. Adam Hamilton wrote in reflection, “Knowing this, I wonder if Jesus intentionally chose the image of Father, not because God is like our earthly fathers, but because so many long for the love of a father they never had. Your earthly father is not the pattern for God’s fatherhood, but God is the pattern and example of what a father is meant to be; that is, one who is steadfast, faithful, loving, kind, compassionate, merciful, and present.” 

“Our Father, who art in heaven…” Does this mean that God is “up there” and not here with us? It means so much more than this. Adam Hamilton writes, “When heaven and Father are combined in Matthew, as in the opening of our prayer, Matthew uses the plural ouronois, heavens. Heaven or heavens, in this sense, is distinct from the earth, the material world, and yet it envelops both… heaven isn’t always ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ in Scripture; it is also all that is around us even though we can’t see it. In this sense, God is as near as the air that we breathe.”

Take a moment and close your eyes. Allow your mind to remember a moment in which God felt close to you. What was that like? Did you feel a sense of peace or love? Our Father, who art in heaven… who is with us all the time even when we don’t notice. Who is both “up there” and “right here.” God who is so high above us we can’t even comprehend it, and God who is right here in this sanctuary, who shares the Holy Spirit with us and fills us with every good and perfect gift. 

“Hallowed be thy name…” Hallowed is a word we don’t use often. We might say, “The place where we stand is hallowed ground,” when we are in a place that feels particularly holy or reverent. Or, we might talk about the “hallowed halls” of our schools. The word “hallow” also gets used to talk about those we love who have died – like All Hallow’s Day, or All Saints Day, the day after Halloween (All Hallow’s eve). Hallowed is another word for holy, and in this part of the prayer, we are asking God to make God’s name holy. Isn’t that kind of strange? But, if we remember what we talked about earlier, it might make more sense. In the Lord’s Prayer, we focus on what we long for on earth, but we also ask God to help us make it happen. We pray, “Lord, let your name be holy, and help us make it so.”

Have you ever been around someone, and you could just feel love and warmth in their presence? Or maybe you’ve had a difficult time in your life, and someone offered you patience and a listening ear, and it was just what you needed? There are all kinds of ways we can help others know the holiness of God, ways we can make “hallowed be thy name” known in this community. 

Last year, we took the youth group to Goodwill for one of our lessons. We gave each of the youth a small amount of money, and invited them to buy something we would wear for a fashion show. Our theme for the night was “clothe yourself with kindness,” and this fashion show was a fun way to get the point across. As we were checking out, the person behind the counter asked about our group. We told her what we were doing and she said, “If all churches were like yours, I would think about going back to church.” I’ve wondered what it was that she liked about our group… the politeness of our youth? The laughter and enthusiasm? I don’t know. But in that moment, something happened.

In just a few moments, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer together. This week as we pray, remember that you are a child of God, called into the new Exodus of people who are making God’s name known here in this place, and everywhere we go. May God give us the courage to pray this prayer with boldness, and to mean what we say. As St. Augustine once said, “Pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on you.” Amen.