Matthew 6:9-13

The disciples' prayer: "Hallowed be Your name, You Kingdom come…” 

One man knelt to pray when day was done, and prayed: "O Lord, bless every one, lift from every saddened heart the pain, and let the sick be well again.” And then he woke another day, and carelessly went upon my way. The whole daylong I did not try to wipe a tear from any eye. He did not try to share the load of any brother on the road. I did not even go to see the sick man just next door to him. Yet once again when day was done, he prayed, "O Lord bless everyone.” But as I prayed, unto my ear there came a voice that whispered clear, "Pause, hypocrite, before you pray, whom have you tried to bless today? God’s sweetest blessings always go, by hands which serve Him below.” And the he hid his face and cried, "Forgive me, God, for I have lied. Let me but live another day, and I live the way I pray!”

For many Christians relationship with God is reduced to attending religious meetings, and prayer is reduces to needs, both our own and of other people’s, that we lift to God in expectation that He will take care of it. But in the Lord’s prayer Jesus teaches us that our lives should show reflect our prayer. And prayer is not, first of all, a list of needs but a desire for the Lord to be manifested in our lives. Therein lies the essence of the first two petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come...”

"Hallowed be thy name" is probably the least understood line of the Lord’s prayer and is often understood as just speaking the name of the Lord respectfully but Jesus had much more in mind here. The name of the Lord is not made up of the "G", "O" and "D" letters. In Hebrew culture, the name revealed nature, personality and character. Psalm 20:7 says, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, 
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God." It is clear that in hard times people will remember not that God’s name is Yahweh but while some will rely on human help and means of defense, the psalmist will remember the character of God, that He is faithful, that he is the defender, that he honors those who trust in him, and this memory will give him confidence! And Jesus teaches us to pray that the nature and the activity of God would be hallowed, that is – may shine through and be honored in our lives. But as we saw in the parable of the man in the beginning, the name of God in prayer is honored only when human life is subject to God's power and strength.

Last Sunday we said that only those can address God as "Heavenly Father " who have come to know God the Father through repentance and submitting their lives to Christ, those who know both the love and the holiness of God. And praying, "Hallowed be thy name" requires humility before incomparable purity and righteousness of God. And that is why many people stumble at these words, falling into hypocrisy, as the man in today’s parable. We gladly and sincerely cry out to God, "Father" but as we say "Hallowed be thy name" our hearts fill with shame for all the dark corners of our lives where the name of God is not honored, and in fact, where we do not want to honor it. Many people believe in the existence of God, in their mind they understand that He is holy, just and loving but still do not truly honor Him because they do not live in a constant awareness of God’s presence in the world. It is only possible to hallow God's name by living in a world where God is present everywhere, living a life in which God is never forgotten. And this sense of presence should not be connected only to church or other holy places; this feeling must accompany us everywhere, at all times. Many people’s tragedy is that they only occasionally have the sense of God's presence and only occasionally they watch what they do and say but in most cases they don’t. Some people watch their mouths while in the church but as they go out they swear like a trooper, some are very courteous in the Christian assembly but at home they are tyrants, some pray during worship that God would help them sort out their lives but at the first difficulty they buy a bottle...

But with "Hallowed be thy name" we say, "May our whole life be pleasing to You, O God! May our every step bring honor and glory to Your Holy name!" It's like David prayed, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer" (Psalm 19:14). But how many corners in our lives do we cherish as our hiding-places? We put career, an important person, riches or addictions (that we cherish) before the Lord. And only when we say these words earnestly, we proclaim: "God, I open all the closets, I sweep the garbage from all corners, I'm cleaning out all that messes up my soul and keeps me from truly worshiping You, and shining Your holy name in my life". If we, indeed, with all our hearts lift our eyes to the Father in Heaven and stand before Him helpless and trusting, crying: "Father! A lot of dark corners still remain in my heart, where I did not honor you, and only you can cleanse them. Holy God! Ascend to the throne of my life and reign according to Your will!" Then and only then we begin to feel like God applies His miraculous powers, healing and cleansing to our lives.

In this prayer we ask God to be the Lord of our lives, and when we give into his hands all that we have, everything we value, we are automatically drawn into the powerful flow of inevitable change and we become completely different people. Martin Luther said: "The stone lying in the sun does not need to be ordered to get warm. It will be warm."  We really start praying, "Hallowed be thy name" when we cease to hide from God ours faults and our "favorite” sins, when we throw open the doors of musty and dark cellars of our lives, when we give up to the Father our selfishness, our behaviors, our studies, duties, work, hobbies, rest, relationships with the opposite sex and our secret thoughts. And when the Lord steps on the threshold - the darkness accumulated over the years is dispelled. His hands fearlessly touch our rotten ceilings, moldy walls, corners covered with cobweb, and transforms everything beyond recognition (freeing us from our pernicious habits, in which we are seeking comfort, calming our anger, like the storm at a sea, and giving us the ability to love, cleansing our mouths from slanderous talk and filling them with praise, removing a cataract from our eye that was distorting our view of the world, God and other people and allowing us to see for the first time the world and other people through the eyes of God). When we say to God, "Hallowed be thy name in all of my life," the Lord enters in and makes a complete make over of our lives - so that it is fitting even for the King of heaven to dwell within us.

And when all our life and our actions are open to the Heavenly King, He lives and works through us and we can confidently continue to pray by saying: "Thy kingdom come ..." The coming of the kingdom of God was the hope of God's people in all ages. In all its sorrows and difficulties Israel was expecting that God would send his anointed One to rule over the earth and when Jesus came He established the Kingdom of Heaven.

And we do live in anticipation of the consummation of that kingdom but the words "Thy kingdom come" are not just an impatient exclamation of the one who is tired of one’s earthly life. Rather, it is the prayer of the one who opened all of his or hers life for God to reign in it and now prays for the coming of the kingdom of heaven on earth to all nations, so that all people would accept Christ and peace and prosperity would be established everywhere. It is a prayer for the speedy fulfillment of God's plan here on earth, even through pain and suffering of this world. God is building his empire and the glory of love silently; he works miracles when we think that he is sleeping. Tragedy, disaster and misfortune hide His works, like scaffolding that does not allow us to see a magnificent facade of the new palace! We so often think that God is silent, that He withdrew from us, that the warmth of his presence has gotten cold but it is at this moment he lays another brick in the wall of a building for the benefit of us and of this world.

And when we pray "Thy kingdom come" we are called to join in with what Christ came to accomplish in this world, to seek God's power to advance His kingdom. Annie Johnson Flint wonderfully spoke about this in her poem:

Christ has no hands but our hands

To do his word today;

            He has no feet but our feet

                        To lead men in His way;

            He has no tongue but our tongues

                        To tell men how He died;

            He has no help but our help

                        To bring then to His side.

            We are the only Bible

                        The careless world will read;

            We are the sinner’s Gospel,

                        We are the scoffer’s creed;

            We are the Lord’s last message

                        Written in deed and word –

            What if the line is crooked?

                        What if the type is blurred?

            What if our hands are busy

                        With other word than His?

            What if our feet are walking

                        Where sin’s allurement is?

            What if our tongues are speaking

                        Of things His lips would spurn?

            How can we hope to help Him

                        Unless from Him we learn?

Praying, "Thy kingdom come" primarily relates to each one of us and requires the submission of our will, our heart and our life. And God’s Kingdom will come only when each one of us will make a personal decision and will abide by it. Chinese Christians offered up a well-known prayer: "Lord, Revive Thy Church starting with me," and we can rephrase it and say, "Lord, establish Your kingdom starting with me." Praying for the kingdom of God to come, then, is to pray that we can fully subject our will to God's will and became the community of people dedicated to the proclamation of the kingdom of God that Christ proclaimed.

Christ told his disciples: "You are the Light of the world, you are the salt of the earth", referring to the need of the disciples to participate in the transformation of the world. This transformation begins, first of all, with our own lives when we stop hiding from the Lord our dark closets of the heart, the sins and habits, and allow Him to cleanse us so that whether we are in church, at home or at work or anywhere else, we would live in constant awareness that God is here and that every word we say or deed we do will either honor him, glorify His name, or on the contrary dishonor Him, it will either bring his kingdom closer or will postpone its coming. Those many people who might never get to read the Bible what will they read in our lives about God? Perhaps the lines of our life are so tainted that God cannot be seen on detected in them? Maybe our feet are walking in sinful ways and our lips speak words of hate and slander crucifying Christ on the cross once again?

Or do we surrender our lives, becoming his hands that do His work today? His feet leading others to God, His lips, speaking of the love, forgiveness and holiness of the Lord, His sacrificial death and resurrection? When we pray "Thy kingdom come," do we really believe that when He returns again He will connect our feeble efforts with His own presenting the new world to God?

Living our lives by the Gospel ideals we demonstrate to this world what life under the Lordship of God may look like. Jesus calls us live worthy of the Gospel, to be the light and the salt. And when He teaches us to pray, "Hallowed be Your name and Your Kingdom come” He calls to ask for nothing less than the total transformation of our lives and through us of the whole world.