A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH God is the God of all of life. Let God be God "He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Father, Hallowed be Your Name, You

There once was a small Kentucky town that had two Churches and one whiskey distillery. Members of both Churches complained that the distillery gave the community a bad image. "Besides," they said, "the owner is an atheist." They tried many times to close the place down, but were unsuccessful. At last, they decided to hold a joint Saturday-night-prayer-meeting. They would petition God to intervene. Saturday night came and all through the prayer-meeting a terrible electrical storm raged. To the delight of the Church members, lightning struck the distillery and it burned to the ground. Next morning, the sermons in both Churches were on "The Power of Prayer." Fire insurance adjusters promptly notified the distillery owner they would not pay for his damages. The fire was caused by an "act of God," they said, and coverage for "acts of God" was excluded in the policy. Whereupon, the distillery owner sued all the Church members, claiming they had conspired with God to destroy his building. The defendants denied absolutely that they had done anything to cause the fire. The trial judge observed: "I find one thing about this case that is very perplexing. We have a situation where the plaintiff--an atheist--is professing his belief in the power of prayer, and the defendants--all Church members--are denying the power of prayer.

Many of us can identify with that judge's feelings. We talk a lot about prayer--about the importance of prayer, the efficacy of prayer, the necessity of prayer, the different kinds of prayer. And we do a lot of praying--morning and evening, and sometimes in between. Once a week we come to Church to pray some more, together. Our trust and hope in prayer as the ultimate problem-solver is deep-rooted and profound. Yet, it is true, that for many of us, prayer itself is one of our problems. Sometimes we do become perplexed about prayer, and find ourselves praying for guidance on how to pray.

One reason we become confused about prayer is that we have been taught to expect so much from our prayers. Jesus himself says in the Eleventh Chapter of Luke, Verse Nine, "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you." And when we ask and God doesn't seem to be answering, we begin to wonder and to doubt. We can begin our approach to this problem by going back to the First Verse in Chapter Eleven, where we find one of the first disciples asking Jesus for guidance in prayer. "One day Jesus was praying in a certain place," St. Luke writes. "When he had finished, one of His disciples asked Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray' ... He said to them, 'When you pray, say, FATHER, HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME, GIVE US EACH DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR SINS FOR WE TOO FORGIVE ALL WHO DO US WRONG; AND SUBJECT US NOT TO THE TRIAL" (Lk.11:1-4).

You may have noticed that in Luke's Gospel, the Lord's Prayer is made up of five petitions to the Father. You may not have realized, however, that on the first depend all the others. You can just forget about everything that follows if you have missed the point of the first petition: "Hallowed be Your Name." It has been said that the manner in which we offer the first petition of the Lord's Prayer is "a matter of life or death."

For the Hebrew people, a person's name had far greater significance than it does for us. We say, "What's in a name?" And shrug it off. But, for the Hebrews, everything was in the name. The name, literally, was the person himself, and if you knew a person's name you knew that person at the core of his being. What we really mean when we pray "hallowed be Your Name" is "hallowed be God." When we pray "hallowed be Your Name" we pray that God Himself, in His essential being, be "hallowed." Moreover, we are not praying for God to become hallowed; God already is the "Holy One." We are praying that God may be acknowledged by us and by all men everywhere as the Holy One; that we and all men everywhere will revere God as God; that we and all men everywhere will let God be God.

When we set this in the context of the Bible, we find that all the Biblical writers were in agreement on this point: that the one unconditional requirement that God makes of all human life is that we acknowledge God as God; that we acknowledge the fact that He is God and that we are not God. At the very beginning of the Bible, in the Adam and Eve story, we are told that if we want to be alive, if we want to realize our humanity's true potential, all we need do is let God be God, acknowledge that God is God and that we are not God. When we do this the life of Grace begins to flow into us and, through us, to other people. But when we refuse to let God be God, we cut ourselves off from the Source of Life Itself, our humanity is diminished and ultimately we are destroyed. We are dead spiritually. Until we understand this first petition correctly, until we pray it and mean it, there is no point in praying for anything else. It all depends on this.

There is the story of a little girl who went to Summer Camp for the first time. She was seated on the edge of her bunk, crying. Her counsellor came in and said to her, "What's the matter, are you homesick?" "No," the little girl replied, "I'm here-sick." We are being told, and perhaps we would agree, that most of us these days are both homesick and here-sick. And some of us are getting sick of hearing how sick we are and how sick the world is. We're sick of hearing about rising crime rates. We're sick of hearing about violence. We're sick of hearing young people complain about the older generation's lack of understanding. We're sick of hearing the older people complain about the younger generation's failure to act responsibly. And yet, we seem to just fiddle around on the surface of things and wonder why things aren't getting any better. What Jesus and the Biblical writers are making clear to us is that at the heart of the matter is our unwillingness to acknowledge that God is the God of all of life and we are not God. And, because the world has been unwilling to do this, it is being drained and diminished and destroyed. When we refuse to hallow God in every area of life, both individually and corporately, we cut ourselves off from the only Source of the fulfillment we seek.

All of us have disaster-areas in our lives in which we are not hallowing God's Name. It may be a relationship with a brother or sister or parent or husband or wife or child or neighbor. It's an area in which we demand to have it our way and refuse to let God have it His way. And because of this we cut off this relationship from the Source of Life Itself. And the diminishment and the destruction and the death of our humanity is right there--in the marriage, in the home, in the market-place, in the neighborhood, and even in the Church.

There is the true story of a pastor who played a round of golf with a perfect stranger one Saturday morning. When they came to the eighteenth hole, the stranger said, "I enjoyed playing with you. Would you like to join me for another round tomorrow morning?" The pastor replied, "I'm afraid I cannot. I work on Sunday mornings." Still unaware that his golfing partner that day was a clergyman, the stranger asked, "What in h--- do you do on Sunday mornings?" To which the pastor replied, "I've been asking myself that question for many years!" I think there are many clergymen who are asking themselves that question these days. And that is precisely the question all Church members should be asking themselves these days. What are we doing? Are we here today ready to submit our individual lives to God's scrutiny? Are we ready to submit our corporate life, as Christian Community, to God's scrutiny--knowing that whatever we do or do not do either hallows God or profanes God?

I want to persuade you to make the opening petition in the Lord's Prayer an important part of your life this week. Just this one petition! Write it down and with your pen still in hand begin to meditate--on the Name, on the hallowing of the Name. And put down on the paper, or at least in your own mind before God, your whole life--everything you think and believe and do and dream and hope for. Then, ask yourself, "Am I hallowing or profaning God through this?" And then, pray for the Church and for your involvement in the Church. Pray that everything we do will be a hallowing of God. Pray that nothing we do will be a profaning of God. Make this your prayer in the coming week so that together we may feel God's loving presence, together we may feel the healing, together we may feel the Life of Grace flow through us. For God is God of all of life! "Our Father--hallowed be Your Name!" Say it because you mean it. It's a matter of life or death!"