This year for our ecumenical midweek Lenten worship series, we are focusing on the Lord’s Prayer, looking at one or two lines per week, influenced by the devotional book The Lord’s Prayer for Lent, by Vern Gundermann (available for Kindle on Amazon here). For this first Ash Wednesday service, we’re looking at the opening “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” The texts for tonight’s service are Isaiah 64:4-9 and Matthew 6:1-18.
Ash Wednesday is the only one of this series for which we had an in-person service; the remainder of the series this year is entirely online. I’ll do individual blog posts for the weeks I preach, but you can watch the entire series from myself and Pastor Joan Thomas online here. Here’s the message for Ash Wednesday.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
During the season of Lent this year, we are walking through the Lord’s Prayer. This season is traditionally a time for more intentional prayer, along with fasting and giving, so it’s a good time for us to slow down and dig into this great example of prayer Jesus gives us.
One of the gifts of the Lord’s Prayer is its familiarity. There’s a reason we pray these words together every time we gather for worship. More than once I’ve had the privilege of being at the bedside of someone who is dying, and they’re at a point when they are no longer able to speak, just a few hours or days before the end of their earthly life, and even though they can’t say anything or react to very much of what’s going on around them, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, they’ve been able to mouth those familiar words along with me. It’s really an amazing thing to know that at the end of their life, sometimes even as their last words, someone is praying these words Jesus taught us.
But the familiarity can be challenging too. These words are so familiar that it’s easy to say them without giving any thought to what we’re actually praying. I picked a less familiar translation to read tonight, hoping it would sound just a little bit off to you.
Another challenge to the Lord’s Prayer is that I truly don’t think Jesus intended this to be the only prayer we pray. He gave his disciples an example of prayer, not a word-for-word formula. The Lord’s Prayer is meant to be a foundation for our prayers.
So, my hope is that during these midweek Lenten services, we can think about what we’re saying when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and be inspired to value the gift we’ve been given, the gift of being able to talk with God and intentionally spend time with God. My hope is that we grow as people of prayer, so that everything we do as a church congregation and as individual Christians is grounded in a prayerful relationship with God.
Tonight, we’re looking at the first lines of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”
The beginning of the Lord’s Prayer is about establishing who God is, and there’s a great tension just in that first phrase, “Our Father who is in heaven.” The “in heaven” part makes sense, I think. God is the Creator of the universe. It goes with the second line, “Hallowed be thy name.” God is holy. God is set apart from us.
It fits well with the stark message of Ash Wednesday, which is remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Remember you are dust, means remember you are not God. If you ever start questioning whether you are God, first of all, that’s probably a good time to get some professional help, but also, remember you are dust. Ground yourself by remembering you are going to die. You are not eternal; therefore you are not God.
That’s an uncomfortable fact, so we do our best to deny it. Living in the shadow of mortality is hard. We are at risk of death every day, from ordinary mundane things like car crashes and heart attacks and just tripping on the street. But we get through life by ignoring the odds, pretending we’re invincible. We act like we are gods, like the rules of this broken world don’t apply to us.
I would have thought living through a pandemic would change the way we see death, but at least for me, I don’t know that it has. Actually, it’s amazing how quickly we adapt and even this new reality becomes normal. Perhaps this prayer is an opportunity to remember. Perhaps Ash Wednesday is a jolt to jar us into recognizing our mortal reality, our fragile existence, remembering who we are.
Remember you are dust means remembering the story in Genesis 2, when God took the dust of the ground, molded it, and breathed life into it. You and I are part of the creation, not the Creator.
God is apart from the world—that’s what hallowed means: Holy, set apart. God is God and we are not God. We are dust. But then, right in the same line of the prayer, right in the first two words, Jesus tells us how to address God.
When you pray, pray like this: Our Father. Jesus tells us to address God, the almighty, the eternal creator of all things, as familiarly as we address our parents. You are invited to relate to God as your heavenly Father, because you are a child of God. The same ashes that remind us we are dust are traced in the shape of a cross, the sign given to you at baptism. The sign of the cross marks us as belonging to Christ. We are set apart as belonging to God, claimed by our maker, adopted by our Heavenly Father.
That’s not a new idea, by the way. In the first lesson, Isaiah says we have all become unclean. All our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf. Our lives are temporary; our best efforts blow away. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. But, Isaiah continues, “O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
Our prayer is always a prayer of humility, putting ourselves in the right place compared to God. All that we are depends on God’s grace. To parade our faith in front of people, to make a big deal of giving to the poor in order to impress other people and say look how great we are, misses the point entirely. The point of Lent—and the point of prayer—is for us to orient ourselves towards who we are and who God is, to turn towards God with our whole lives. We come to God in humility, and with humble gratitude, we share the love that has been given to us.
Beloved of God, you are dust, and to dust you shall return; and you are a child of God, a creation of the Divine Potter who shapes and molds dust and breathes life into it. As you enter into this season of Lent, into this journey which leads through the cross of Jesus to life and resurrection, remember who you are, and remember who God is. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. You are not God. But God who is eternal, who is holy, who is in heaven, is your heavenly Father, who claims you and calls you Child, and God breathes life into dust.
Amen