The Lord’s Prayer: Invocation and First Petition

Small Catechism Review / Celebration of All Saints’ Day

1 John 3:1-3  +  Matthew 5:1-12

It’s no coincidence that our celebration of All Saints’ Day coincides with our focus on the Small Catechism, specifically the Invocation and 1^st Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. I lined it up this way, because the connections are so beautiful.

Jesus teaches us to address His eternal Father as “our Father” in heaven. To whom is He speaking? Not to all of humanity. The Lord’s Prayer hasn’t been given to everyone. Oh, anyone can read it or hear it. But to pray it, in truth? That only belongs to those who have been given the right to become children of God, to those who have believed in the name of the Father’s only-begotten Son. Jesus taught this prayer to His disciples, to the baptized, to believers. In other words, He taught it to His saints on earth.

What are the saints on earth to believe when Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven”? With these words, God would invite us to believe that He is our true Father, and that we are His true children. That’s what believers in Christ are to believe, that, for Christ’s sake, the eternal Father is now our true Father, and we His true children. We don’t deserve to believe that, or to be called that. It’s pure grace, for the sake of Christ. And it applied also to Old Testament believers, who were taught to call upon the God of Israel as “our Father” through faith in the coming Messiah, sealed with the blood of the Old Testament.

All the saints on earth have learned to call God “our Father.” Not our earthly father, but our Father in heaven. We earthly fathers do the best we can to imitate His love and fatherly care for His children, but we fall so far short it’s barely worth the comparison. Still, Jesus used the comparison and wants us to view His Father as our Father and to know that His Father views us as His dear children, just as dear to Him as Jesus Himself is.

And that relationship doesn’t end when our bodies die. Our earthly fathers die, and while we still acknowledge them and love them as our fathers after they die, our interaction with them is lost. Not so with our heavenly Father. When a child of His dies, the relationship and the interaction continue. In fact, we call Him Father “who is in heaven,” which is precisely where the departed saints dwell, together with the holy angels. They still call Him “our Father” and are still cared for by Him as His dear children, so that the “Our Father” of the Lord’s Prayer unites the saints on earth with the saints in heaven. Though we can’t interact with each other, we still call upon our Father together.

Now, once we believe that we, as believers in Christ, are God’s true children, what is Jesus teaching us to do with these words? He wants us to believe it so that with all boldness and confidence we should ask Him, as dear children ask their dear father. Pray! Ask! Knock on the door! Seek! But only ask if you actually need help. I mean, if you can face this world on your own, by all means, do it! If you can provide for yourself without our Father sustaining you and prospering you and giving you the opportunities you need, then go for it! If you can handle all the hardships, all the oppression, all the persecution, all the overwhelming force of this world’s hatred and injustice, then don’t ask Him for help. But if you’re wise enough to realize that your needs are very great, and if you believe that God is your dear Father and you His dear child, then why wouldn’t you ask, and ask often?

The saints above no longer have earthly needs, and whether or not they have heavenly needs they still need to ask our Father to fulfill, we don’t have any idea. They may well ask Him to help us, His earthly children, though we have no reason to believe they can know the specifics of what’s going on in our lives. Still, we know they did ask Him, they did pray to our Father when they were here, when their souls were still united with their bodies, and we know that our Father heard their prayers. Some of those prayers are recorded in the Psalms, others in Collects and hymns of the Church, and in the Liturgy itself. When we pray as the saints before us prayed, whether with the same words or with the same thoughts, we’re again participating in that great but invisible communion we have with the saints on the other side of this life, who have received the ultimate fulfillment of the last petition, “Deliver us from evil,” by being admitted to heavenly glory. That, too, should spur us on to ask Him, our Father, to pray, following in the footsteps of the saints.

And the very first thing our Lord has taught us to ask for is the content of the First Petition: Hallowed be Thy name. May Your name be hallowed, made holy, sanctified, dear Father in heaven! A perfect petition for a celebration of All Hallows, that is, All Saints, those who have been made perfectly holy, not only in their status before God by faith, but in their existence and in their conduct. They no longer sin. They no longer carry around the sinful flesh with its weaknesses. The Old Man has been put to death once and for all. They have received most of the promised blessings of the beatitudes that we heard this evening, while a few still wait for the coming of Christ. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven, forever and ever. They are being comforted. They are being filled, never to hunger again for righteousness or for anything. They have obtained the fullest measure of God’s mercy. They see God. They are called the sons of God. And their reward in heaven is great. Among them, God’s name is held as perfectly holy at all times.

But what do we mean when we pray, Hallowed by Thy name? We ask in this prayer that God’s name may be made holy among us also.

How is that done? Luther’s explanation is short and to the point. It’s done in two ways: (1) When God’s Word is taught purely and correctly, and (2) when we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it.

So “hallowed be Your name” means, first of all, Heavenly Father, help the Christian parents among us to teach Your Word rightly to their children, that they may know Your name rightly, may know rightly who You are, what You command, what You promise, what You have done for us and what You will do. Help our pastors to preach well, to persevere in the true doctrine of Your Word that their hearers may know Your name rightly. Protect parents and pastors from the lies of the evil one, and grant them a heart of faith and a life that reflects it.

Secondly, “hallowed be Your name” means, “Heavenly Father, help us Christians, who have been baptized into Your holy name, to lead holy lives on earth, so that those who see us and our behavior don’t think poorly of You as we bear Your name in the world.” You know how God’s name is blasphemed in the world. And one of the causes of it is people who bear the name Christian but lead lives that are contrary to God’s Word. “Hallowed be Thy name” is an earnest prayer to God that we don’t fall into open sin, so that our very lives become false teachers about who God is and what it means to believe in Him.

But we can also think of the saints above when we pray the First Petition. We can give thanks to God for all the parents and preachers who have finished their race in faith, who did teach God’s Word purely and correctly, so that we can know it, too. We can give thanks to God that, in spite of their sins, in spite of their weaknesses, in spite of the temptations and the persecutions that they faced, the saints above, those who fell asleep in faith, did sanctify the name of God through their confession of sins, through their confession of faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and through their confession of Christ before the world. We can give thanks to God that they are now among those who sanctify our Father’s name perfectly, together with the holy angels.

Is it strange to think of the dead as we pray the Lord’s Prayer? It shouldn’t be. Because as Jesus has said, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Nor is He the Father of the dead, but of the living. Those who died in faith are actually alive. They’re just calling God “our Father” from a different place, from a place where we can’t go yet but will go eventually, by our Father’s grace and with His help and protection. So tonight, and whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, let us remember with thanksgiving the whole family of our Father, both below and above. Hallowed be His name! Amen.