Hallowed be thy name
Hallowed be thy name, Loving God,
Larger than any Lord,
bigger than Hail to the Chief and God Save the Queen to an infinite degree
beyond the red carpet rolling out and more than concrete streets studded with stars,
bigger than any stock can buy and no need for an entourage of yes men.
Hallowed be thy name
not Caesar’s or the CEO
not the President or Emperor or Her Majesty
not power, not privilege, not pomp, not production.
Hallowed be thy name, Love.
Hallowed be thy name;
Grace and Generosity,
Courage and Compassion,
Life abundantly embodied for All.
Hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
Will bound in love and
Woven through with compassion for all that is and was and ever will be.
A will driven to blot out the sins of injustice and exploitation
degradation and depletion
A kingdom built on more than the violence of victory,
or peace made by forced quiet
a kingdom built by the strength of struggle and solitary,
justice that makes peace,
a place for all to dwell warm, beloved, and well-fed.
Earth as it is in heaven
looking nothing like pearly gates and St. Peter’s big ring of keys
no bouncers or boundaries or golden streets.
Earth as it is in heaven looks like the holy glimpsed here and now,
hallowed, hallowing, manifest before our eyes
tender to the touch and felt in the heart.
Manifest in release,
Present in recovery,
Celebrated in liberty and
Awake to making jubilee.
Hallowed, heaven here and now.
May it be so. Amen.
--
Jesus says, “Our Father” and follows it up with, “hallowed be thy name.” Perhaps you have said this or mumbled this or heard this and thought…hallowed…I don’t use that word very often. It’s not really something we use much. Abraham Lincoln used it in the Gettysburg Address referring to sacred ground. But most of the time I have heard it in a sentence like, “and then he matriculated from the hallowed halls of Harvard.” It’s sort of awkward and it feels a little elitist. Jesus, however, didn’t think of hallowed as related to the best schools in Jerusalem, but in a much more concrete manner. His disciples ask him to teach them to pray with a sense of their mission. They know how to pray; they do it actively in their culture. When they ask, they reference John the Baptist and point to prayer as a transformation, as a missional statement that they answer with their very lives. So Jesus begins the prayer naming God as parent, intimate, relational…Papa, Dadda, Mama, and then says, "hallowed be thy name.” This language means something to Jesus and the disciples; it doesn’t to us because in his context, the name you hallow is Caesar. Caesar’s name is hallowed, honored and lifted up. Caesar’s will is done and dominates your every breath and your very well-being. Jesus says, “hallowed be thy name” and says no to the systems of domination and oppression with every beat of his heart.
Jesus is turning the political language of the day on its head. We might imagine it like the tune “Hail to the Chief” or “God Save the Queen.” We may not have emperors with quite the same power in our culture, but we can imagine how we roll out the red carpet or put names on Hollywood stars or Broadway lights, we can imagine the powerful board chairs and CEOs demanding flocks of ‘yes men’ and ego stroking. Jesus is looking at the most present power of his day and saying that is not power, that is not the will we follow, that is not the way we make earth as it is in heaven.
Hallowed is connected to honored and honoring, valued, lifted-up and hallowed sounds so past tense that we might be wise to imagine it in our own English vernacular as HALLOWING…as in we are active here and now in the work of honoring God’s Loving Divine presence that courses in and through and around us. Jesus invites his disciples past and us in the present to pray this prayer.
Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Obery Hendricks in his book, “The Politics of Jesus,” (which you will have to find used because it is out of print) gives rich context to this prayer and writes as one of 3% of Black Scholars in the American Academy of Religion. He writes that we might understand this prayer as, “manifest your presence, show us your presence, help us see glimpses of your presence.” This is a calling out to honor God that invites us to look for God showing up in love and justice and compassion around us. Which calls us to actively reflect on where we embody God’s will and where we don’t, where we make earth as it is in heaven and where we make hell.
Heaven can feel so far off in the Christian tradition. There might be some fun ways to imagine like the Highwomen’s Heaven is a Honky Tonk or St. Bridget imagining heaven as a lake of beer, every drop a prayer and the people dancing on the shore. For the most part, we are prone to imagining it as a personal prize for doing good in this life or at least saying the right prayer. We imagine it as a place with homes and rooms like ours…but perhaps better like you have your own personal barista in the kitchen. The streets are made of gold and the gates are made of pearls and somehow we have turned St. Peter into an eternal bouncer with a big ring of keys. We put up rules and boundaries and walls and borders when Jesus prays about earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus is focused without flinching on earth as it is in heaven, on God’s will not Caesar’s or King Herod’s. Again and again he names the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near, the Kingdom of God is within you. And he shows us what this looks like by feeding people, healing people, including people, loving people.
In Luke chapter four, he begins his ministry with the scroll from the prophet Isaiah.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
Earth as it is in heaven looks like good news to the folks that never get good news in the world, it looks like release to the captives and liberation to the oppressed. It looks like recovery from all that ails us and it is actual financial transformation that frees people from generational poverty when Jesus says, “the year of our Lord’s favor” or “the year of jubilee.”
Maybe it looks like warmth of hugs and connection to you. Maybe it looks like everyone going to bed safe, warm, and well-fed. Ponder what it looks like and what it feels like and what earth as it is in heaven asks of you. Mexican author, Gabriela Olmos writes a beautiful children's book called “I Dreamt…A Book About Hope.” (Her book is beautiful and out of print, but we keep asking for more).
She writes:
I dreamt of Pistols that shoot butterflies…
and of drug lords who only sell soap bubbles.
I dreamt that wars are always fought with flowers…
and that soldiers prefer shadowboxing to shooting each other.
and in my dream, bombs were bursting out gales of laughter.
I dreamt that phones could turn any hurtful words into songs…
and that danger could be cut into confetti if only you could find the right pair of scissors.
And I dreamt that robbers are good for stealing nightmares…
while jokes are the best way to drive a kidnapper away.
When I woke up I remembered that for many kids life is more of a nightmare than a sweet dream.
And that it will always be that way unless we kids choose to learn from the trees…
Some of whom are crushed by the pavement
But I know others who fight back and break open the sidewalks
and grow despite everything. And it is they who help us all to breathe.
What do you dream? What is the will of love in a world of exploitation and dehumanization? For what do you long as make earth as it is in heaven together?
May we have the courage to pray it and live it with every breath.
Amen.