This is sacred stuff. This is the Lord's Prayer. Some of us have been reciting this prayer since we were old enough to talk, and some of us have elevated this passage of scripture out of and over and above other scriptures. This is Jesus, and this is Jesus teaching us to pray. And prayer, writes Richard Foster, "is the central avenue God uses to transform us…The closer we come to the heartbeat of God, the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ…In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God's thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves." Foster calls prayer "the main business of our lives." So this is important, sacred stuff; and the Lord's Prayer is the prayer of prayers.

Last week, we prayed, and talked about praying, "Our Father Who Art in Heaven." Today, "hallowed by Thy name."

Hallowed means holy, consecrated, sacred, revered, greatly respected, preeminent. Like the words holy and consecrated, hallowed implies a sense of being set apart, or held in a sacred place in our regard. I have many friends that I love, people I respect and principles I revere - but God is still more loved, far more respected and the source of all the principles I revere. He is over all, in all, through all that is good. God is hallowed. If I have a collection of valuable things, even keepsakes that are sacred, God is more valuable and there isn't a treasure chest nice enough or a display shelf big enough or strategic enough in its location to adequately display how esteemed God is.

This is a bad illustration about something relatively trivial, but it helps to understand the word hallowed. I save scorecards from every gold course I play. Some are like trophies that remind me of the days when the stars were in alignment and I shot decent scores. Others just remind me of all those beautiful park-like settings that entranced me for a few hours and were ruined by a bad golf. These scorecards are tacked to a door in our garage, the sacred space where Sue invites me to decorate the way I might have decorated my bedroom as a boy - banners, poster, keepsakes from NCAA tournaments and ticket stubs from every kind of event. Above, over and preeminent is a hallowed scorecard. It harkens me back to a glorious walk on a foggy morning, and then a sunny afternoon, on a shoreline on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula. It was a day so privileged and an extravagance so unusual that I hold its memory in a sacred hallowed place. The scorecard from Pebble Beach isn't likely to get lost in a pile or left behind in a move.

Now understand, please. Golf is just a hobby. Like any good hobby, it's a passionate hobby. But God and His ways enjoy a much more revered place, not just in my garage, but in my heart. He is hallowed.

Realize this word hallowed is different than other expansive words like great or wonderful or majestic or powerful. Yes, God is great, wonderful, majestic and powerful. But realize, God is all of that whether I realize it or not. Hallowed speaks to the place He has in our hearts; the value with which we hold Him in our minds' eyes. In other words, God can be great and majestic, and still not hallowed if there is no preeminence in our thinking. God can be wonderful and powerful, and still go unhallowed by ignorant people. In other words, when we pray "hallowed be Thy name," we're telling God where He stands in our lives. It's more about relational standing than actual standing. God, of course, doesn't need us to remind Him how great He is. But He loves to hear, and we need to acknowledge how large He looms in our values and assessments.

Hallowed be Thy name. There's something in a name. I can tell you that the name Sue does something to me. It lights me up. It harkens me to a thousand memories and lights up the whole switchboard of senses and feelings. That's my wife - that name - that's my wife. Among all the people in the world, men, women, or children, that one women is preeminent in my thinking and our covenants and our tender moments and our growing history together are sacred, not just because they should be, but because they are.

So much more, even, the name of Jesus. J'shua, God saves. Jesus has taken hold of our lives. Jesus gives meaning, purpose, hope, forgiveness, value, guidance. The name Jesus has power. Those who trivialize that name Jesus do so at their peril. Those who are running from Jesus can hardly say the name without it sticking in their throats. For those who know Jesus and love Jesus, the name Jesus means life. It's a sacred name, Jesus, revered and preeminent.

That same Jesus taught us to pray to His Father, "hallowed by Thy name."

God has many names in scripture. The most common is the Old Testament, Elohim. El is small "g" god. Elohim means God of strength and preeminence. The immoral, debased God of the Canaanites was called El, but the Hebrews took the name over and raised it to new heights - Elohim.

There is another name, still more sacred. YHWH, translated as Yahweh by some and Jehovah by others. YHWH is the name that God gave to Himself in the Old Testament. It is His holy name, or His proper name, and it means, "I am what I am" or "I am that I am." This name YHWHY was so sacred to the Hebrews (and still is to some Jews) that it was customarily forbidden to say the name aloud.

But notice that Jesus, in the Lord's Prayer, teaches us to refer to God not as Elohim or Yahweh or other names, but as Father, and there's something sacred about that, too. No longer mere servants, now we're friends. No longer slaves, now we're children of God and heirs of the Kingdom of God. That is sacred stuff. That name, Father, Abba, Pater is sacred. Hallowed by Thy name, Father. We hold you, Father, in a sacred place.

One way or another, this instruction to declare God's value in our lives should inspire us to find words, our own language, really, for declaring our reverence and respect for God. While not many of us use the word hallowed anymore, are there other words? Have we found our voice?

Again, in other sacred relationships, we find a love language; a way to express the preeminent place of that person. (Love language: acts of service, words of affirmation, gift-giving, quality time, physical touch). Have our adorations and affections found a voice in prayer? How do we tell God His value?

In any sacred relationship, we first observe the qualities of the other person and take note of the force those qualities have on us. Then we experience the relationship and live in the force of it. It splashes and washes over us until our senses are live with the impact of it. Then we find our voice. We express the value of the other in a language that makes sense and feels authentic; a language the other has receptors for. Scripture says that God inhabits the praise of His people. That says to me that God enjoys this powerful relational exercise. Tell me again why you love me! Okay, if you'll tell me again why you love me.

Oh, how sad it is to see and to know how much goes unsaid in our sacred relationships. Sometimes things go unsaid because so much is unnoticed and underappreciated. Sometimes things go unsaid because we don't know to hallow or revere.

"Honey, why don't you ever tell me you love me?"

"Well, I told you on the day we got married. If anything changes, I'll let you know."

It's funny because it's so sad. It's so sad because it represents relational starvation.

We starve our relationships with God with an underdeveloped sense of reverence and an underdeveloped language to give expression to what we really feel and believe about Him.

Which shouldn't surprise us. We live in a nation of iconoclasts. Iconoclasts "destroy religious images; oppose their veneration and attack beliefs and institutions." (Webster) Iconoclastic behavior tears down icons, pulls heroes off their pedestals, thrills whenever celebrity blood is in the water, and generally loves to topple people who dare to rise above the throng in any way. Iconoclasts mock reverence and scorn ceremony, replacing them with cynicism and a flat, deadly kind of ordinariness.

Even in the western church, we've so often stripped away beauty and excellence as a form of worship, replacing sacred and complex with simple and accessible ditties that we think will have more and more meaning by the fifth time through. We've stripped so many of our sacred spaces into virtual warehouses, declaring that God is worthy of less imaginative artistry, all the while buying big screen televisions and designer amenities for our own homes. The TV's and amenities offend me less than their preeminence. I only wish we were so extravagant with God, and with the least of those whom God loves.

Yes, there's a beauty and simplicity to the gospel that can be cluttered with icons and statues and images and extravagancies and even cluttered with high talk and wordiness. But there is a cost to stripping away all of the means and modes of teasing and exhorting the senses into a fuller, more consuming kind of reverence.