Pastor remembered to buzz me to let me know he was on his way, which is a very good thing given that I was still sleeping. Later he told me that he slept in too, something he has not done in a very long time. He slept until 7:30! I...well...he called at 1:02 PM.
We finished the first petition today, but to be fair, we probably would not have had I not started ignoring the clock after having done so well at watching it. Hallowed be Thy name. You know, this petition is so very much more than what you might think it is...
As I have written before, Luther unravels the Ten Commandments to such a degree as to show their depth and breath, to show that there is no possible way for us to keep the Law. He also reveals their spirit. The Second Commandment, Thy shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, is not merely about cursing or making false vows by His name, as so often taught. Yes, we are not to misuse His name. To do so is to lie and deceive others and is a great sin. But it is also about using His name properly. It is about calling upon His name in every situation, about praise, prayer, and thanksgiving. It is allowing His name to be glorified, to be proclaimed, bringing it into the service of Truth and using it in a blessed way (LC, Part I, 64). So when Christ taught us to pray Hallowed be Thy name, He was teaching us to ask God to "help us in in every way so that Your name may be holy." (LC, Part III, 36).
As he is wont to do, Pastor dropped a mini-lesson into the reading on what it means to profane the name of God. So often, we as readers gloss over words that we do not truly know the meaning of because we can glean sufficient meaning from the context. He stopped and asked if I knew what that word meant. I did not. Profane means to make lowly, common.
Luther teaches we profane God's name in two ways: 1) when people preach, teach, and proclaim in God's name what is false and misleading (he has a great simile here: God's name being used as an attractive ornament to capture people's attention and reel them in) and 2) an openly wicked and sinful life by those who are Christians. I have no worries on the first part, but I struggle mightily about the second, things that happened to me in my childhood when I had God's name on me, things I wonder if I could have fought off harder, could have managed to escape somehow. Then, in 44, Luther uses the imagery of fathers and their children and the issue of shame....
Luther concludes..."to hallow means the same as to praise, magnify, and honor both in word and deed." (46) Does that sound different than what you thought? Did you understand this is what you are asking God to help you with when you pray the Lord's Prayer?
Christ knows our sin; He knows our failings before the Law, before our fellow man, before Him. He knows this and so wisely and lovingly instructed us to ask for help so that by His power, by His washing of water and the Word, we can hallow God's name.
What I need to learn is that shame is part of what is nailed to the cross. Yes, I am still smiling over the magnificent gift of the Holy Spirit shifting verses 34-35 of Matthew 18 from my terror to my comfort. I do not, absolutely do not, choose to live by the Law. I know that even with my mightiest, purest effort, I keep not one speck for even a single moment. When I am crushed by the law as I am wont to become, I finally, finally, finally understand what it means to stand beneath the shadow of the cross.
Today, Pastor called this the great exchange. We give Christ all our sin and filth and wrath and terror and death and all the consequences thereof and He gives us mercy and grace and peace and life eternal and all the riches thereof. The world will never, ever understand that. Such is a bargain is not one the world would ever make.
I really liked Pastor's comment that the opposite of sin is not not to sin. That is impossible. We are sinful creatures. Even if we were able to battle our actions, thoughts, and words, we are still marked by sin in our very being. So, the opposite of sin is actually repentance, which leads to forgiveness. And Word of God is forgiveness. In forgiveness His name is made hallow.
When I mentioned the readings from the Treasury of Daily Prayer for today, Pastor gave me another lesson: the meaning of pity.
At the tale end of the reading from Matthew, we encounter the story of Jesus healing two blind men. They cried out, Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David! and the crowd hushed them. But they cried out again, Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David! Christ stopped them and asked what they wanted. Of course, it was their sight, to see once more. "And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him." (Matthew 20:34)
Pastor told me that the word pity, often translated compassion, in the Greek means something like being punched in the stomach. Christ looked at those men, felt as if he had been punched in the stomach at their condition, knowing the lives they had that were so different from what He desires for us, a life free from sin and its destruction, and reached out to heal them. Punched in the stomach. That is the depth of His compassion for us, His love for us. That is what held Him to the cross while he was being tortured on our behalf.
Lord, have mercy upon me. I am the blind man begging for sight. I long to know, to understand Truth, to have the scales of the lies of my past fall from my eyes beneath the tender, compassionate touch of Christ.
After Pastor left, I fell asleep again for about five hours. I fell asleep listening to his hymns and the now two Psalms recordings. When I awoke, the hymn that was playing was "To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray." I awoke to the words, Lord, have mercy.
When Pastor comes, I have taken to reading aloud to him, to feed him in my own clumsy way, so that he has, in a very small measure, some of the gift he is sharing with me. Today, I gave him a choice: Luther or a homily from one of his brother pastors. He chose Luther, which made me smile. I knew he would. The homily I gave to him in an envelope with a double-dog-dare: before the week is out, ask someone to read it to him. Will he? Hmm...I do not know. He should, though. Surely by now you know how highly I prize being read to of the riches of the Living Word!
The Luther I gave to him today was from his commentary on Galatians, chapter 1. I leave you with his teaching for I shall never gloss over the greeting grace and peace to you again. Truly, truly, every word in the bible is so very precious:
Verse 3. Grace be to you, and peace, from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The terms of grace and peace are common terms with Paul and are now pretty well understood. But since we are explaining this epistle, you will not mind if we repeat what we have so often explained elsewhere. The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all our heart.
The greeting of the Apostle is refreshing. Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever. Only Christians possess this victorious knowledge given from above. These two terms, grace and peace, constitute Christianity. Grace involves the remission of sins, peace, and a happy conscience. Sin is not canceled by lawful living, for no person is able to live up to the Law. The Law reveals guilt, fills the conscience with terror, and drives men to despair. Much less is sin taken away by man-invented endeavors. The fact is, the more a person seeks credit for himself by his own efforts, the deeper he goes into debt. Nothing can take away sin except the grace of God. In actual living, however, it is not so easy to persuade oneself that by grace alone, in opposition to every other means, we obtain the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God.
The world brands this a pernicious doctrine. The world advances free will, the rational and natural approach of good works, as the means of obtaining the forgiveness of sin. But it is impossible to gain peace of conscience by the methods and means of the world. Experience proves this. Various holy orders have been launched for the purpose of securing peace of conscience through religious exercises, but they proved failures because such devices only increase doubt and despair. We find no rest for our weary bones unless we cling to the word of grace.
The Apostle does not wish the Galatians grace and peace from the emperor, or from kings, or from governors, but from God the Father. He wishes them heavenly peace, the kind of which Jesus spoke when He said, "Peace I leave unto you: my peace I give unto you." Worldly peace provides quiet enjoyment of life and possessions. But in affliction, particularly in the hour of death, the grace and peace of the world will not deliver us. However, the grace and peace of God will. They make a person strong and courageous to bear and to overcome all difficulties, even death itself, because we have the victory of Christ's death and the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins.
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