“Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, September 14, 2025
Reading: Luke 11:1-4
We are continuing our series on the Lord's Prayer and this time we find ourselves in the Gospel of Luke. The first time we looked at the Lord's Prayer, we were in Matthew's Gospel. The prayer is pretty much the same, but the setting is slightly different. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus teaches the disciples to pray while he's teaching everybody the greatest teaching there ever was. The Sermon on the Mount. But in Luke's gospel, something different is happening. Jesus is praying by himself when a disciple approaches him and says, “Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples.”
What that means is that the prayer we now know as “the model prayer”, began as a model-ed prayer. Something very important for us to remember in our own lives, that prayer isn't something people just figure out by themselves. It's something they often learn from somebody else. It is modeled. It is taught best by being done. And that's true of my own life.
I remember waking up on a Saturday morning, eager to get to my favorite cartoons, going down the stairs and having to sneak past the door of the front room because I knew my mother would be in there with her legs crossed, her study Bible open and a copy of our daily bread talking to Jesus. Sometimes she'd be sitting quietly. Sometimes she'd be crying. Sometimes she'd be laughing. And sometimes she'd just be talking normally. I'd go into the living room and turn on the TV and every so often I had to turn it up so that my mum's voice wasn't drowning out the sound of the Powdrpuff Girls. (Great cartoon, by the way.)
But because of that, because of seeing her engage with God on a daily basis, I learned very early on that I could talk to God about everything. I could go to God and be silent. I could go to God and be quiet. I could go to God and cry. I could go to God and yell at him if I needed to. By praying, mum taught me to pray.
I'm saying that because if you have children or grandchildren, nieces, nephews, young friends, neighbours, spouses, and you want to see them get into a deeper prayer life with God, the first place to begin is by getting yourself into a deep prayer life with God. Model prayers are first modeled prayers.
Then arose the question, “Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples.” We all have questions about prayer, don't we? Like how are we supposed to do it? Should we be kneeling down, standing up, hands together like this, head down, head up to the sky, arms out like this? Then there are deeper questions like, if mum serves leftovers, do we have to say grace again?
These disciples just wanted to know how to engage with God the way that Jesus did. And so, Jesus begins the prayer with intimate words, “Our Father.” That's where we started last week, isn't it? Reverend Dr. Jason Byassee had the amazing task of preaching the entire sermon on two words of scripture.
“Our Father” are powerful words. We learned last week that “our” tells us our communication with God is communal. That God is our God, not just my God. So, when I go to God in prayer, I'm not going by myself, I'm going with the entire Church behind me. That's comforting news if you're a little bit nervous when you pray. The other thing we learned last week is that the word “father” is very relational language. It tells us that we are of God, from God. That God loves us and cares for us and protects us. The words “Our Father” teach us to approach God with a sense of nearness, a sense of intimacy. We learn from those words that God is infinitely immanent and that's something we see modeled throughout the texts of scripture.
In the early chapters of Genesis, God is walking through the garden talking to Adam and Eve. In Exodus, we read of Moses speaking with God face to face and God visiting Moses and the elders. Even in the New Testament, we talk about being baptized in the Holy Spirit, immersed in God. We talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit, God coming to live inside of us. God is so close that we feel like God's part of who we are.
Yet the rest of the sentence seems to tell us the exact opposite. Our father, near, close, relationally bound with us. Our father in heaven? We don't even really know where that is, do we? Let's be honest. Our Father in heaven, somewhere so far away, you can't see it with a telescope. You can't really picture it in your mind. Revelation gives us wonderful images of streets paved with gold and temples with jasper and bronze and onyx and all these wonderful stones on it. But what is it really? I don't know, it's where God is. It's where God rules and reigns and invites us all to live in his presence.
So, the amazing thing about this first sentence of the prayer is it describes God both as very, very close to us and extremely far away, all at the same time. That's a great mystery of God's nature, isn't it? That God is right here with you all the time, even within you if you believe. And yet sometimes it feels like God is nowhere to be found. Where is this place called heaven that the scriptures speak of? As we encounter God in this great mystery, the natural thing to flow from our lips is something that describes how completely different God is than everything else we experience.
Jesus doesn't say, “Our Father, Father who is in heaven, awesome is your name, or great is your name, or really cool is your name.” He says, “hallowed be your name.” Another translation says, “may your name be revered as holy.” Holy means set apart, sanctified, made different, totally other. Because God's name isn't like any other name you'll ever say in your whole entire life. God is something completely different and God's name is to be revered. And so, we go to God in prayer. In fact, when we think deeply about it, we might struggle to even articulate what God's name is.
What is God's name?
Is it God? Surely it must be because when I was a kid, if someone told me something surprising and I said, “My God,” I'd be in big trouble. That's taking the Lord's name in vain, isn't it? Yeah, if the Lord's name is God. But the Lord's name isn't God, is it? God is a descriptive word. We know that because other religions have gods too. Some of them have one god and some of them have many gods. So, “God” can't be the specific name of our god. It must be something else. It's a similar thing in Hebrew. One of the most common names for God that we see in scripture is the word “El”. It just means “God”. The word “El” was used not just by the Israelites, but by many of the surrounding tribes and peoples, like the Phoenicians, and you can find it in Ugaritic texts as well. They all called their god “El” because it was a generic name for God.
To be more precise, the Israelites would attach attributes to God's name, to specify the God that they were talking about. And so, we have constructions like El Elyon, God Most High, or El Shaddai, God Almighty, El Olam, God Everlasting, El Hai, the Living God, El Roi, God My Shepherd, El Gibbor, God My Strength. The Israelites knew very early on that in order to distinguish God from all the other gods that people claim, they had to talk about who their God was to them.
It's a similar thing that we do in our own lives, isn't it, in prayer? If you ever ask me to pray for your healing, I might start my prayer by saying, “God, our great healer.” If my pockets are empty, I might go to God and say, “God, my provider.” If I'm feeling really sad, I might go to God and say, “God, my comforter.” Because I need to get specific with the God that I need to interact with at that time. Who are you to me in this moment? That's what I'm going to call you.
In our efforts to be good pluralists and good friends with our neighbors, we often say things like, “well, you know, all religions lead to God really, or everyone's really worshiping the same God in different ways.” But that can't really be true, because if we know who somebody is by what they do, then different stories and attributes of God end up being different gods all together. Just like if somebody said to you, “Hey, you know Dayle Barrett?”
And you said, “Yeah, I know Dayle Barrett…. Really tall Asian guy with long blonde hair, fixes tires for a living?”
You must be talking about a different Dayle Barrett, right? You use the same words, might even live in the same city, but a completely different person because all the attributes and behaviours are different. So, who is our God? God is whoever created the earth, parted the Red Sea for the Israelites and rose Jesus from the dead. That's who God is. And if your god didn't do that, it's not the same God as mine. Sorry.
All those things tell us who God is to us, but they're still not His name. Names are even more specific than that. You find in Hebrew texts they often call God “Adonai”. Adonai is a Hebrew word that means Lord. It's also a plural construction. It’s like a royal “we” but it doesn't mean Lords, it means a Lord that's greater than any other Lord. Adonai is where the word Adonis comes from that the Greeks use. It's a word that Jews will use to refer to God if they want to avoid saying a sacred, holy name. Adonai, Lord, ruler over everything, the one who's in control. That's what we're saying when we say, Lord.
That's not really a name either, is it? I mean, Lord isn't the name of God any more than pastor is my name, or that reverend doctor is Jason Byassee’s name, or that prime minister is Mark Carney's name. Lord describes what God does. God rules and reigns and has control over all of the earth. But that's not God's name, is it?
Titles are useful though, because they remind people what you want from them. When I first came to the United Church, I met a pastor called Reverend Dave Love, amazing man. I'd just call him Pastor Dave. We became great friends, and we'd go out for lunch sometimes. One day we were sitting there and I said, “Hey, pastor, are you going to order?”
He was like, “You don't have to call me pastor, just call me Dave.”
And I said, “I'm never going to do that.”
He says, “Why?”
And I said, “Ah, I get it. You think when I call you pastor, I'm honouring you. That's not what I'm doing. When I call you pastor, I'm trying to remind you that you're a servant. The same way that when I go to a doctor, I call them doctor, not because I'm trying to honour them, but because I want them to heal my body. If I have a friend called Dr. Charlie, he can be a great guy. We can hang out. We can do our thing but if I want Dr. Charlie to heal my body, I don't want Charlie. Charlie might be busy that day. Charlie might be tired. Charlie might not feel like doing surgery. But Dr. Charlie has an obligation to pull his tools out and fix my broken leg. Dr. Charlie is who I want to speak to.”
So, the reason why I called my pastor, Pastor, wasn't to set him above me in any way, is to say, I don't care how you feel today. If I need you to pray for me, you better pray. You're my pastor. That's what you do.
Similarly, when we go to God, we go to God with who he is to us. God Almighty, because I want you to be greater than everything else. God my shepherd, because I want you to lead me. God everlasting, because I need you to be there no matter what happens. God my strength, because sometimes I'm weak. The living God, because sometimes life just doesn't seem like it's worth living. And yet none of those things are God's name.
So, what do God's friends call him? In Exodus, Chapter Three, we hear a story of a man called Moses, who indeed was a friend of God. Moses approaches the burning bush, and God reveals something to him that he'd never reveal to anyone else. This is what it says in verse 14:
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’
What is God's name? What's the thing that makes God turn around when his friends say it?
God's name is I AM. I AM that I AM. Some translations say, I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. My favourite though comes from the Septuagint. The Greeks translated it as ego eimi. It means something like “I am being”. Oh, that's really cool. I am being. God is being itself. God is all the is-ness there ever could be. (Grammar check).
What does that mean? It means that the God that we serve is the one who sustains and holds all creation. The one who when he breathes out life flows from him and brings things into being. The one who if he decided that you shouldn't be not only would you not be today, but you never would have ever been.
The alpha, the omega, the beginning and the end, the essence of all that exists. Being, existence, life and vitality, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, all that there is and all that there ever could be. John says,” by his hand all things were created and without him nothing was made that was made.” Being, existence comes from the very nature of God.
For God, as one writer says, is our all in all.
But even that name is hard to wrap your head around, isn't it? What does that even mean? It's so holy, so transcendent, so far from our human thinking that we'd struggle to even say it out loud or put it in a sentence. It's holy. It's revered. It's set apart. So much so that the people of Israel don't even utter the holy name of God. You've seen it written down, four letters, Y-H-W-H. You've heard it said, and maybe you say it sometimes yourself. But I stopped saying it a while ago, and I'll tell you why. Because when the scriptures tell us not to take the Lord's name in vain, I think there's something really specific about that holy name of God. I think that in the same way that familiarity with people can breed contempt and we can forget who they are, we can do the same with God. So having a name that I don't use for God, having a way that I don't feel comfortable approaching God reminds me that as near as God is and as close as God is and as much as God loves me, as Isaiah said, “God's thoughts are not my thoughts. God's ways are not my ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth. God's ways are higher than my ways, and God's thoughts higher than my thoughts.”
I don't say the holy name of God because Israel never said the holy name of God. Jesus never said the holy name of God. The apostles who were all Jews never said the holy name of God. And Christians never said the holy name of God, didn't even know how to pronounce it until the 1800s. A German literal critic started studying Hebrew and he was really interested in Hebrew and decided that he would make a good guess, an educated guess, a good hypothesis about what the vowels were in between the letters Y-H-W-H. And so now there were words that people could use. In many modern songs, modern praise songs, in many modern liturgies, even in many modern versions of the Bible, you see written out a version of what people think God's holy name might be.
Now I'm not telling you whether you should say the holy name of God or not, that's between you and God. But I'm just explaining to you why I don't. Hallowed be thy name. Different, separate, other. Treated in a way we don't treat anything else, is God's holy name.
One of the most famous quotes about names in the whole world comes from the story of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Juliet says, “What's in a name? A rose by any other name… would smell… as sweet” go on, you were all in English class, well done. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. It sounds good, doesn't it? Except if you pay attention to the story, their names end up being the most consequential thing in their entire lives. Like, they pretty much die because of their names, right? Four-hundred-year-old year-old spoiler alert.
Names are incredibly important. They were even more important at the time these texts were being written because names carried power. They could open doors for you. They could close doors for you. They could protect you. They could put you at risk. Especially valuable were names you would give to other people.
Once I went for a job in a school in Southeast London when I was there. The interview was going well and towards the end they were like, “Dayle Barrett, are you related to Byron Barrett?” That's my big brother. My brother had a great career in schools.
I said, “Yeah, that's my older brother.” And they spent the rest of the interview telling me how great my brother was. “Oh, yeah, he's really good at music. He's great with the kids. He's got a lovely personality. I love his wife.” Just going on and on and on about my brother.
They didn't even stop talking before I knew I had the job. I was like, “Great.” Because my name went before me. Something we share, something we had in common went before me. And they had an idea of who I was based on the name that I carried. It's the same reason that even if you've traveled to Germany a million times, you've probably never met anyone with the last name Hitler.
Right? People decided a long time ago we're just not going to use that name anymore. It's got a bit of baggage on it. So even if there were people who were related to the most infamous Hitler, that name is all but gone from history. I doubt you're ever going to meet someone bearing that name.
Names open doors, names shut doors, and names can protect people. When these texts were being written, we lived in what I like to call almost a state of nature. We didn't have grand civic societies with police forces and ways of being protected from the masses. If you owned land and animals and resources and had a family, what protected your home was your ability to project to everyone else that you could defend your own land. What it meant to own land was to be able to defend it. If you go to some parts of the world today, you'll still see there are lots of tribal groups where the names of those people protect that land. It's the reason for name giving in marriage and the name giving to children. When a name is given, what it says is, If you mistreat this woman or these children, this is the people who's gonna come after you for that. What it says is, if you do wrong to this group of people, this is the family you're going to have to deal with afterwards.
Of course, now we have a very different society, there's police forces, people are way more able to protect themselves in different ways. But the tradition comes from protecting people by a name. If you grew up in a small town, you'd know there are certain names that have a good reputation and certain names that have a bad reputation. And those things can open and close doors for you. The reason I'm saying all this is because it's that important that God decides to give us His name. This is what it says in Revelation, Chapter Three, verse 12.
He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and I will write on him My new name.
God is holy, God is great, God is powerful, God is above all things. Yet God wants to give us the most valuable thing anyone can ever give to another person. God says, “I want to give you my name, bride of Christ. I want to give you my name, my begotten children.” And what does it mean to carry someone's name? It means that everywhere you go, the things that you do have a bearing on them. If I go out and act reckless today, people might think differently about the Barrett family. It has an impact on my dad and my mother and my brothers and my nieces and my nephews and everyone in my family, because there's a pride, there's a reputation that goes with the name.
The scriptures tell us here that God offers us His name, His holy, unspeakable, set apart, higher than everything else, name. If that feels a bit daunting to you, hear these words from the first epistle of Peter. He said:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
If you're praying and it feels like heaven is really far away and that God is really far from you. If you feel like you're not sure if you can access the Holy of Holies and speak to the one who holds all things in being, I came to remind you today, friends, that God says he has begotten you. That God has made you his child. That God wants you to bear his name. And that that means that when we pray to our Father in heaven, we are praying to someone living in our own home.
Proverbs tells us, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are saved.
Today, if you're feeling like you're not sure if you can pray, if you're not sure how to access God, maybe just say these words, “God, teach me to pray.” You can go to him and be silent. You can go to God and be quiet. You can go to God and be tearful. You can go to God and yell because you bear God's name, and God loves you that much. So, may God's name be revered as holy in our prayers, in our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds, in our whole entire lives, to the glory of God the Father. Thanks be to God. Amen.