Imagine being one of Jesus’ disciples, and watching him pray. We know that just before the crucifixion, he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane – and sweating blood. It must have been quite a sight.
And so, one of his disciples came up to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
I bet if you asked random people on the street if they could say the Lord’s Prayer, you would get about an 80% hit rate. Even if people don’t go to church anymore, they probably still learned the prayer as kids.
This one, here in Luke, is a condensed version. By condensed, I don’t mean that someone forgot to say, “And forgive us our trespasses,” and instead jumped right into “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Who would do that anyway? It’s condensed compared to the one we find in Matthew, and shorter than the common liturgical prayer that we have committed to memory … some of us, anyway.
And, as is often the case when we have committed words and phrases to memory, we quit reflecting on their meaning and purpose.
Hallowed be your name
The word hallow isn’t often used in English language anymore, but it means to “make holy,” “to set apart,” “to consecrate.” In other words, we are to set God apart as holy, to venerate, respect, and stand in awe of God. Also, a person’s name encompasses more than just a descriptor referring to “that one over there” – a name is the very essence of who a person is. To hallow God’s name means to set God apart as one worthy of our praise, our love, and our respect. For all that God is and does.
And what is the true opposite of hallow? We might think it is to desecrate, which means to “treat a thing with violent disrespect.” But this is not so. Think of Love. The real opposite of Love is not Hate, because hate is constantly thinking of the object of the hatred. The real opposite of Love is apathy – because apathy doesn’t care – and doesn’t think of the other at all. And just so with hallow. The real opposite of making something Holy, venerated, and consecrated is not violent disrespect. No. The enemy of to hallow is to make something mundane, to make it ordinary, to make commonplace. When we do not hallow God’s name, we are making God no more important than a garden hose, a coffee mug, doing the laundry, or wiping up spilled milk from the counter. It would not be violent disrespect – that is, desecration – instead, it would be making God’s name something we can toss around when we need it, or when we want it. God’s name becomes nothing more than a tool in our hands, because it carries no more importance to us than anything else in our lives.
Your kingdom come
Before the world turned to various forms of government, the world was ruled by kings, and the King’s will was the rule of the land. What the king wanted, the king got. The trouble with humans, with all of us, is that we would rather that our will is the law of the land. Just ask any toddler – or teenager – or grumpy, old retired person. We are a people who value self-determination and who value self-reliance. But when we quit hallowing God’s name, and instead make God’s name nothing more than a commonplace tool to accomplish our own desires, bad things happen.
Several years ago, I was speaking with a coworker about current events. And as we spoke, my coworker became more and more angry with me because I kept insisting that if we wanted to see real change in the world, that we as Christians had to push for an unbridled love of our neighbor, rather than forcing non-believers to live under the laws we might consider to be the will of God; in essence, we would proclaim the Gospel through our actions and give them an example that they want, rather than demanding they live up to our beliefs and moral code. My coworker insisted that it was clear that the laws of this land should follow God’s moral code, as adherence to God’s moral law was the best way to run any country. And, they insisted, there should be strict penalties for not living up to God’s law – including for non-believers.
And then I had to say, “What you’re describing is a theocracy.” And, I had to ask, “Who interprets and decides what God’s will is? Is it only the people in power that can interpret God’s will?” And then a follow up question, “How is what you’re describing any better than the Taliban or Al Qaeda? Is it just because you believe in your god versus their god?” Apologies to Dale Carnegie, but I did not win friends and influence people that day.
History shows us that people claiming to know God’s will has never produced good results. Consider the Third Reich. In Germany before WWII, there were Protestant Christians who actively supported the Nazi regime, calling themselves “storm troopers for Jesus Christ.” These were the type of people who believed that Jesus had selected them to bring about his kingdom on earth through violence, power and the rule of law. And, the Nazi Party took advantage of this type of thought and encouraged protestant churches to such a degree that the German Christian movement eventually released a statement that said:
“the eternal God created for our nation a law that is peculiar to its own kind. It took shape in the Leader Adolf Hitler … This law speaks to us from the history of our people … It is loyalty to this law which demands of us the battle for honor and freedom … One Nation! One God! One Reich! One Church!”
These Christians had taken a tortured, beaten, and crucified God who died for our sins and turned him into a blond haired, blue eyed gun toting war monger so that they could bring about God’s will on earth through violent hatred – and then claim that God was on their side as they murdered millions.
There can be no kingdom without a king. And if God’s name is not hallowed, but instead made mundane and commonplace – a tool in our hands to use whenever we need it – then God is not king of our lives. Which then begs the question: who is?
Give us our daily bread
This phrase, “Give us our daily bread,” is the core of the prayer that everything else rests on. We use the word “bread,” but what we mean is “everything that we might need to survive.” It is built on the ruthless trust that God will take care of our every need.
It is not a plea for what we want, because we often confuse what we need with what we want, as evidenced by the immortal words of Janis Joplin: “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.”
What we need is not always what we want. And what we want, is not always what we need. Praying for God to provide us with our daily bread is a declaration of our complete reliance upon God.
There is a story from the Desert Fathers, mystics and monks who lived in the Egyptian desert during the 3rd century about trusting God – it goes like this:
Abba Doulos, the disciple of Abba Bessarion, said: When we were walking along the sea one day, I was thirsty, so I said to Abba Bessarion, Abba, I am very thirsty. Then the old man prayed, and said to me, Drink from the sea. The water was sweet when I drank it. And I poured it into a flask, so that I would not be thirsty later. Seeing this, the old man asked me, Why are you doing that? I answered, Excuse me, but it’s so that I won’t be thirsty later on. Then the old man said, God is here, and God is everywhere.
God is here, and God is everywhere is a statement of ruthless trust in a God who is to be revered, whose name should be hallowed, and who also provides for our every need. It is not a bad thing to prepare for the future, but when we trust in our own preparations rather than God’s provision, that is when we step into murky waters. Do we trust God, or do we trust our own resources and ourselves more? And if we trust ourselves more, then that again begs the question: have we really hallowed God’s name? And if we haven’t hallowed God’s name, then God becomes commonplace, and we strive for our own kingdom… you know… rinse and repeat the cycle.
Forgive us our sins – as we forgive those who sin against us
Martin Luther King, Jr. said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Change takes time, but change for the better will come. He, much like others of his time, were committed to peaceful means to bring about the change that they wished to see. Despite the violence he and others faced, they continued to forgive those who had wronged them, and continued to love those who persecuted them.
They could have chosen the path of violence, but instead they chose to continue peacefully, putting trust in God’s great arc of justice. It was through this continued choice to remain peaceful in the face of violence that other people began to see the evil and hatred in those attacking protesters like King. And people began to see the need for change, slow though that change was in coming.
Forgiveness is the most radical form of trust in a God who provides. Because if God can provide for us in all things, then God can certainly provide for us in the face of evil. Being unable to forgive – both others and ourselves – really comes down to a question of how much we trust God to provide, even when all seems lost.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
This idea that God would bring us to temptation is not what this phrase means. James 1:13 states, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.”; For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does God tempt anyone.”
Instead, it is more of a request that God would strengthen us. It is a prayer that when the difficult times come, we would have the strength to endure it, and the power to look to God for our help and salvation – to Trust God in all things. It is, in a sense, the equivalent of “Give us this day our spiritual bread, so that we might not fail to hallow your name.”
[First person plural, not singular]
Finally, the most important thing to remember is that the prayer is not about “My Father in heaven,” or “Give me my daily bread,” but instead: Our Father… Give Us… We forgive…
Human nature is to harm those who harm us, to seek out for ourselves as much as we can, to prepare our own little kingdom, and to name ourselves masters of our own domain. To lean on our own understanding, rather than trusting God.
But we are a community of believers, and a community will not grow without forgiveness, and a community cannot forgive unless it expects God to provide, and we cannot expect God to provide unless God is the king of our lives, and that happens when we consecrate and hallow God’s name.
And the disciple said, “Teach us to pray, Lord.”
And Jesus did just that.
Here again is the prayer, in different words:
Our father in heaven,
Let us remember that you are great and mighty, and completely beyond us, so that we stand in awe of You.
Do with this earth, this country, this town and even my own life as you want, because I believe that what you want is what’s best for everyone.
Provide for us in all things, from the littlest thing, to the biggest thing, so that we do not feel that we need anything.
Remind us that you want all of us to be one in You, and help us to forgive each other, so that we can live in unity, constancy and peace.
And when it happens that I’m given the opportunity to do things my own way, grant me the strength to work for the good of all, and not just my own interests.
Why? Because all the power, all the glory, and all the majesty belongs to you – not me.
Amen.
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on July 27, 2025.]
