Hallowed be thy name ... is anything holy anymore? (towards Sun, Oct 21)

Once we get past addressing God and reminding ourselves it's God we are praying to, the first thing Jesus says to pray for is that the Name of God be hallowed.

What an unusual word "hallowed" seems these days.  

To hallow something means to give it especial respect and reverence, to set it apart as having unique and even fearfully unapproachable meaning, to consider it holy.

Is anything holy these days?  Anything hallowed?


I'm old enough -- probably you are too, to be able to name things that used to be regarded as holy in our society, that are not any more -- like the sabbath, the Bible, using the name of God in public, the church sanctuary, family devotional time, attendance in worship, priests.  What can you name that used to be hallowed, and is not now -- at least not the same way, and not as universally?  How do you feel about the changes that have come?

But this doesn't mean nothing is holy or hallowed in our time.  Doesn't it seem there's something about being human (like, our soul) that inclines us naturally to need something to be holy, and held as being of absolute importance -- something we can give ourselves to, over and above any other consideration?  And if we don't turn to God for that, we naturally -- and probably unconsciously, elevate something else to that status.

In our day, in the absence or devaluation of things traditionally holy, does it seem thatr we have hallowed (given halos to) things (created goods) like celebrities and celebrity culture, "the economy," "national interest" and even more personally engaging things like leisure, recreation and the sports and entertainment industries. 

What do you think seems "hallowed" -- given special and unquestionable worth, in our time?  In your own life?

I wonder if part of our problem is that even when we hallowed religious and churchy things, we were actually substituting created good things for God.  Just religious and churchy things.  And when the limitations of these things showed through the veneer of holiness we put on them, we had nothing left to lead us beyond earthly substitutes.

So ... pray for the name of God to be hallowed, Jesus says.

And what does that mean?  In biblical parlance, the "name" of God is really just shorthand for what God most deeply and eternally reveals about God's self -- how God is, what God wants, what God does in the world.  

So what on Earth (and for heaven's sake) is God's name?  And how today can we hallow it? Circle all our life around it, like a halo?

That is probably the question at the heart of our worship this Sunday.  Certainly not a bad question to make the hallowed centre of our lives as well.