Seeds for 06/07/2023 - Matthew 6:9-13, part 3
Scripture: 9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’”
Observation: I’m still looking at the first couple phrases: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Jesus addresses His Father, the first person of the Holy Trinity, and invites us to join Him in that way of approaching God. A child begins life in the arms of his or her mother or father. Nurture, warmth, connection, and closeness. This is so normative that when it is absent we bristle and when it is overturned we are scandalized, appropriately so. There ought to be intimacy. Jesus brings this familial intimacy into our prayer life when He teaches us to pray, “Our Father in heaven.”
At the same time, Jesus keeps us connected to God’s holiness in the next breath: “hallowed be your name.” Jesus literally prays, and has us to pray, for the third commandment to be obeyed, that we would honor the holiness of God’s name. This includes both casually profaning Jesus’ name in our everyday language, and clumsily, carelessly, or craftily attaching His name to our issues and opinions rather than holding to the humility of Lincoln: “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” To hallow God’s name is to treat it as sacred, which indeed it is.
This tension lends scandalous weight to Jesus’ invitation to familiarity and warns against casual over-familiarity. We may imagine ourselves resting in the palm of His hand, but we dare not envision ourselves cuddling up to Him like He’s a teddy-bear.
Theologians refer to this dynamic tension as bringing together transcendence and imminence. Transcendence is God’s quality of being great, awesome, and high above us. Imminence is God’s quality of being close, drawing near to us, even being inside us.
Religions tend toward one or the other. Christianity holds together the transcendence and imminence of God. “Almighty Maker of heaven and earth” and “the Lord is my shepherd.”
Jesus teaches the both/and reality of God’s awesome holiness and His loving intimacy in just two brief phrases with which we begin to address God in prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Application:
Which way do you think of God more often — transcendent, great, and holy? or imminent, near, and intimate?
How can praying the Lord’s Prayer keep you connected to the holy love of God in Jesus?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, keep me both in awe of you and close in your arms of grace. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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