The Park Road Pulpit
Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors
Living in the Holy of Holies
Exodus 3.1-6 and Colossians 3.12-17
Amy Jacks Dean, July 6, 2003
If you know anything about us, you know that our best retreat, our most beloved place, our ultimate get-away has to do with the lake. You probably get tired of hearing about the lake, and that’s really too bad, for it is the place that keeps us sane. People often ask us which lake we go to – Lake Wylie or Lake Norman. The truth is we rarely go to either one of those lakes. Most often, we pull our boat the 2 ½ hours to the big city of Cross Hill, SC where Russ’s parents have a house on Lake Greenwood. Now, when you hear that my in-laws have a house on Lake Greenwood, I can just see what you are imagining. You’re seeing something large and nice with great furniture and a sunroom and big open rooms with a gorgeous view and a perfectly landscaped yard. Well, you can get that image out of your head. It would be better called a lake cabin – but to us, it might as well be the Taj Mahal.
They bought the house (cabin/shack) in the 70s?. Itty, bitty kitchen and tiny den (really, that’s all one very small room). A small bathroom and two bedrooms – one small one on the front of the house facing the water and one very small one in the back corner of the house. (Remember this room – we’ll come back to it several times today.) That’s it. Probably about 600 square feet total. You’ve heard of a barn-raising? Well, when Russ’s brother married we had a shack-expansion so that he and his new bride could live there for free during those first lean years of marriage. So, the family knocked out the exterior wall in the den and elongated the house turning the tiny den into a small great room – complete with cathedral ceiling and a fireplace! The once little shack was looking more homey. We added all of 200 square feet. When they moved out after about a year, the place returned to its original use – a close-by getaway retreat for the whole family.
As the family expanded with children, we realized that this wasn’t working There was no place to sleep everyone. So we had to add on. We tore out the kitchen and made all of the old house just sleeping quarters – it is a space full of beds now – in all corners of the old house – nothing but beds – except in that back little tiny bedroom. It’s basically empty except for a few life jackets and an old refrigerator that we use for overflow. The new addition is quite nice with a good-sized kitchen, a large great room, an upstairs loft, another bathroom with a double sink. It’s nice. It’s where we live when we go there and the other house is for sleeping. Every nook and cranny in the old house is filled with beds – except the very tiny back bedroom.
Everyone in the family has had ideas about how to make that room more usable. It usually involves knocking out a couple of walls which could expand either the other bedroom or the bathroom. Everyone is in favor of this notion – except for one – Russ’s mother. Now, I hate to talk about my in-laws, but she is stubborn about this room. We can never fully understand why this room holds such sentiment, such warmth, such meaning for her. It is a space in which none of the rest of us wants to go. It seems to be a space where mice would like to build nests to me. Or, if I were a snake, surely that room is where I would go if I were going to find my way into a house. It is a room that gives me the creeps! That room has become the target of many family jokes. Years ago, with the first mention of converting that room into usable space and the strong objection by the matriarch in the family, the room got named: The Holy of Holies.
When I think of hallowed space, I think of The Holy of Holies. We have joked that when Russ’s mother dies, we should have her cremated and her urn placed in The Holy of Holies. We will return to this room later.
Today’s phrase of the Lord’s Prayer takes up this issue of Holiness. “Hallowed be your name” is a phrase that rolls from our lips without a second thought. And therein lies the problem – the problem with the prayer as a whole for that matter – but specifically with this particular phrase. We say “Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed by your name.” Do we even realize what we are saying when we utter those words? To hallow something is “to make or set apart as holy.” We’ve already talked about the importance of God’s name the week we dealt with the second word of the prayer. Today, we will deal with what it means for God’s name to be hallowed – what it means for God’s name to be holy.
In his book The Trivialization of God: The Dangerous Illusion of a Manageable Deity, “David McCullough teaches that the church has lost its sense of awe and mystery pertaining to the holiness of God. McCullough believes that we have whittled God down to a nice and comfortable deity who fits neatly into our precise doctrinal positions; a god who supports our social crusades and outreach ministries, but never stirs up the waters; a god who approves of our casual spiritual experiences and our obligatory and perfunctory worship. [He suggests] that reverence and awe for God have been replaced by the hushed yawn of familiarity and the rigidity of legalistic tradition. We have lost the sense of God as radical encounter with the holy” (The Lord’s Prayer in Times Such as These, Frank A. Thomas, page 37) In other words, “we have become too common with God.”
It is so easy for me to see this as I critique and judge the more contemporary slant of worship that seems to be the trend these days. Where the atmosphere seems to be more like a theater or a concert and where the dress is very casual and comfortable – all in an effort to make people feel more at ease, more at home, and less threatened by the Church and the One in whose name we have gathered. It is so easy for me to be harsh, sarcastic and cynical with this method of becoming too common with God – making God almost less Holy to me. Which, I’m sure directly opposes the intent of these worshippers who are trying to call attention to the Holiness of God with songs of praise and hands of adoration as if they could actually touch God.
It is much more difficult for me to see the log in my own eye. Sometimes, in my own way and in my own arrogance, I think that I have God figured out. In enjoying the questioning aspect of faith, in pushing the edge – sometimes slightly and sometimes forcefully – of classical Christian thought, I have used logic and science and history and ethics to become too common with God, as if I could actually know the mind of God. In my rejection of what seems to me now to be faulty theology, I have the tendency to make Holy the thoughtful pursuit of God. It is the quest for knowledge that can become Holy, for me. The prayer is not “hallowed be my understanding of God.” It is Hallowed by your name.
In either case, from both sides of this theological conundrum, I am confident that the God, whose very name we set apart to make Holy, must be offended by the arrogance on both sides.
Having offered that confession, let me shift gears and focus on the real “take home” aspect of this portion of the Lord’s prayer. At first glance it would seem that in looking more closely at this phrase from the Lord’s prayer, we would focus our whole attention on God – Hallowed by your name, you would think would be all about God. I was interested in my study this week that many of those who have become students of The Prayer focus their emphasis of this phrase, not on God, but on us. In praying Hallowed by your name, we are saying something about ourselves as well.
Think of Moses and the burning bush. This story illustrates for us that an encounter with the Holy is actually a call to action. That calling may terrify us, just as it did Moses as first “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” I wonder – was he afraid of God or of what God was about to ask him to do. Standing there, on that hallowed, holy ground, God said, “Go tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” You see, throughout Scripture, you get the feeling that God despises oppression – that God hates it when anyone is taken advantage of, when anyone is abused, when anyone works for a wage that is demeaning (a wage where you could not possibly take care of your family), when anyone doesn’t have food enough for their family, when anyone doesn’t have proper clothing or good shelter, when anyone is mistreated, when anyone suffers at the hands of oppressive individuals or oppressive institutions or oppressive governments. God despises that. And when that happens God sets bushes aflame and waits to see which one of us will stop and notice that it is not being burned up. And that same God whose name we flippantly hallow each and every week in this place is wanting to get our attention – is wanting to say us, “Remove the shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And in standing on this holy ground, in the very presence of a Holy God and saying Hallowed by your name, we have accepted a call to live holy lives ourselves. Don’t be afraid, Moses, be glad that you associate with the likes of God.
I’ll tell you the truth, the Vision Team is hard at work trying to figure out how you the congregation is going to hear what we have learned. We have learned from you that you want to be an outreach mission agency in this community. That has surfaced and resurfaced as a core value that we all hold dear. Recognizing that we all children of God and people of inherent worth, (how many times have you heard that – it has almost become as common as “hallowed by your name), we have heard you say – in small groups, in Wednesday night gatherings, in written surveys – that what we do in mission is of utmost importance. And we have heard from community leaders that the need is in fact great – in fact greatest in our own neck of the woods. How convenient. And the Vision Team is hashing out how to bring our desire and the community’s need together. Frederick Buechner says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And that place, my friends, is holy ground. No different from a burning bush that will not be consumed. The issues of our community will not go away any more than that bush would be burned up. How long will we stand and watch the burning bush before we finally recognize the voice of the Holy God who calls to us and says, “You are my chosen ones, holy and beloved”?
Each and every week, when the words Hallowed be your name roll from your tongue, you should hear in that phrase a calling. It is a calling to be holy yourself. “Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote after the great persecutions of the early church, explained that what Christians pray for in hallowed by your name is an ability to mirror the characteristics of God so that anyone looking at us can see in us something of who God is.” (A Place to Pray, Roberta Bondi, page 42, footnote (all Bondi quotes are from this source)) Roberta Bondi says that “life as a human being, made in the image of God, is holy because God loves it and has always loved it, and so in some mysterious way it is the site of God’s beloved, holy presence.” (page 46) Hallowed by your name is about God and about me. Bondi gives some wonderful examples of what it means to pray Hallowed be your name.
Hallowed by your name means “help me know truly that I don’t have to prove that I am a person of value. My life is already holy to you, may I make your name holy by accepting my own worth with gratitude.” We don’t have time to say all of that in the Lord’s Prayer.
When Bondi stands before her students to teach on the first day of class, Hallowed by your name means “my God, show me a glimmer of your holy, mysterious beauty in each of them so I may lay aside my own anxieties and be with them in the way they need.” We don’t have time to say all of that in the Lord’s Prayer.
In considering all the people with whom she shares this world Hallowed by your name means “may I not turn my face away in callousness, judgment, or cynicism from any human life, from anyone who reflects your image, whether it be an image of your glory or of your humiliation.” (All examples are from pages 47-49)
It is interesting to me to look back on how the shack, turned cabin, turned house of incredible get-away on Lake Greenwood has changed. It is a completely different place from the one purchased in the ‘70s. Except for a little room that we, smilingly, call the Holy of Holies. Like Moses, I’d be afraid to stay in there, but I find myself being drawn back to this house where a small back room sits in the corner of a little cabin in Cross Hill, SC. Every time we enter this retreat center, someone in our family declares that they want to live there forever.
Hallowed be your name. That is where we are supposed to live. May it be so.
O God on this weekend where we have celebrated our freedom, remind that all of your people are not free – even within our own part of the world. There are people who are oppressed, abused and neglected – and though we sit in your very presence this day with words spilling from our mouths that say Hallowed by your name, we know that we have not fully lived out our calling. We offer our humble apology that we have not recognized the holy in ourselves, much less in the rest of your creation.
So trouble us this day. Stir us this day. Call us to live out the holy possibility of each moment – and turn impossible into reality. Help us to pray Hallowed by your name and mean it. Amen.