Sunday, November 25, 2018
The Groaning Humility of A Hallowed God
Back in mid-September, I went to NYC for a prayer school with Brian Zahnd. Soon thereafter, a bunch of beautiful things started happening. One of them was that I started to see a bunch of connections in and between things that I hadn't seen or noticed before. It was as though my imagination was enlarged by the presence of God in prayer. One morning last weekend, God taught me about prayer - while in prayer. I record that lesson here....
An Eastern Orthodox Monk praying The Jesus Prayer
I pray "The Lord's Prayer" quite often. You would think that would mean I understand it. Not so much, necessarily, haha. Just three lines in, and I'm usually confused. "Hallowed by thy name." I've never gotten that. Why would I "hallow" the name of God? Who am I to declar God's name holy? I'm just Jason. Just some dude. I'm a human. God doensn't need me to tell Him He's Holy, lol. I've read books on The Lord's Prayer, but I don't remember anyone ever really sorting this out for me.
I understand that these words are a way for huamns to put diction to the proper ordering of their world. To put things in thir proper place. To "sub-ordinate" ourselves (not to mention other things, like boobs and boats and money and markets) before God. That, I understand. In other words, I have understood for some time that those words are more about our need to, as a matter of practice and habitus, speak them before God than they are about the need for God to hear them.
But I was still always left with this itching confusion. It still struck me as a kind of declaration. I'm still speaking something forth in the world. And, in that sense my "hallowing" of the name of God seemed insignificant. Like I said, I'm just me.
This morning, I was saying the "Prayer of Thanksgiving." It starts: "Almight God, Father of all Mercies, / We your unworthy servants give you humble thanks.." BOOM. I had to stop. Right there in my tracks.
God gave me to see that WE, as mere created human beings, "hallow" the name of God in the prayer that He Himself taught us to pray precisely because declaring God as "hallowed" IS a prayer of humility. I was given to see that my "hallowing" God is not my puffing myself up to see the glorious status of God at the top of a cosmic ladder. No. Instead, my "hallowing" of God IS and REQUIRES my humbling of myself before the God who is to be venerated, loved, thanked, and embraced in said humility. This might sound redundant, but this means I suddenly saw that "hallowing" God doesn't mean reaching, pointing, or climbing up towards him.
Here, what I had understood previously about the ordering of our world comes together with what had previously been a confusion. I was given to see not only that my confusion was because of an urge to puff myself up in the first place but that I was blind to said urge. God, in his gentle humility broke through both my blindness and my pride with one powerful breath of true life.
And, it was the very humility of Christ, in his grace and mercy, forgiveness and acquittal upon the cross by which I was given the gift of sight of my own urge to attempt to reach and "grasp" in an upward direction for the "hallowed" "glory" of God - a "glory" that He had already made known by and in the image of humanity reconciled and made whole in humble, suffering, others-centered love.
So, when I prayed, "Almight God, Father of all Mercies, / We your unworthy servants give you humble thanks..", I was stopped so powerfully, abruptly, and gracefully in my tracks, because, in a kairos moment of divine Grace, I was given to see NOT ONLY that I had been looking in the wrong direction. I saw not only that I had been trying to kiss the sky by grasping for the sun instead of kneeling. At the very same moment of "all things coming together," what really struck me was that MY humility is ALSO God's! I give humble thanks to a humble God. To a God whose glorious throne is a wooden, blood-drenched one of sacrificial and humiliating death - so that I may have the blood of life. My humbling is God's before it is ever mine in the first place. God and me "coming together" in humility during prayer this morning is a sign here of "all things coming together," a sign of the Kairos moment of God's appearing in the humble flesh of Jesus of Nazareth.
So, what I was given to see was that the Jesus Prayer basically amounts to the same thing as the third line of The Lord's Prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" accomplishes the same thing as "Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name." And this is because, in the glory of Christ's sufferings, we have seen the glory of a humble Father. And, in the act of God's humbling, he identifies with and binds himself to me (as a member of his body, his people, the church), the guy who confusedly wanted to puff himself up and didn't know it.
See, what was happening as I prayed The Lord's Prayer without understanding it - and I had no idea this was happening - was that God, both in his life in Christ and by the work of the Holy Spirit (in conjunction with The Jesus Prayer) was "groaning" with me towards the redemption of all of creation. My confusion was like labor pains, and God's humility was my freedom:
From Romans 8:
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
An Eastern Orthodox Monk praying The Jesus Prayer
I pray "The Lord's Prayer" quite often. You would think that would mean I understand it. Not so much, necessarily, haha. Just three lines in, and I'm usually confused. "Hallowed by thy name." I've never gotten that. Why would I "hallow" the name of God? Who am I to declar God's name holy? I'm just Jason. Just some dude. I'm a human. God doensn't need me to tell Him He's Holy, lol. I've read books on The Lord's Prayer, but I don't remember anyone ever really sorting this out for me.
I understand that these words are a way for huamns to put diction to the proper ordering of their world. To put things in thir proper place. To "sub-ordinate" ourselves (not to mention other things, like boobs and boats and money and markets) before God. That, I understand. In other words, I have understood for some time that those words are more about our need to, as a matter of practice and habitus, speak them before God than they are about the need for God to hear them.
But I was still always left with this itching confusion. It still struck me as a kind of declaration. I'm still speaking something forth in the world. And, in that sense my "hallowing" of the name of God seemed insignificant. Like I said, I'm just me.
This morning, I was saying the "Prayer of Thanksgiving." It starts: "Almight God, Father of all Mercies, / We your unworthy servants give you humble thanks.." BOOM. I had to stop. Right there in my tracks.
God gave me to see that WE, as mere created human beings, "hallow" the name of God in the prayer that He Himself taught us to pray precisely because declaring God as "hallowed" IS a prayer of humility. I was given to see that my "hallowing" God is not my puffing myself up to see the glorious status of God at the top of a cosmic ladder. No. Instead, my "hallowing" of God IS and REQUIRES my humbling of myself before the God who is to be venerated, loved, thanked, and embraced in said humility. This might sound redundant, but this means I suddenly saw that "hallowing" God doesn't mean reaching, pointing, or climbing up towards him.
Here, what I had understood previously about the ordering of our world comes together with what had previously been a confusion. I was given to see not only that my confusion was because of an urge to puff myself up in the first place but that I was blind to said urge. God, in his gentle humility broke through both my blindness and my pride with one powerful breath of true life.
And, it was the very humility of Christ, in his grace and mercy, forgiveness and acquittal upon the cross by which I was given the gift of sight of my own urge to attempt to reach and "grasp" in an upward direction for the "hallowed" "glory" of God - a "glory" that He had already made known by and in the image of humanity reconciled and made whole in humble, suffering, others-centered love.
So, when I prayed, "Almight God, Father of all Mercies, / We your unworthy servants give you humble thanks..", I was stopped so powerfully, abruptly, and gracefully in my tracks, because, in a kairos moment of divine Grace, I was given to see NOT ONLY that I had been looking in the wrong direction. I saw not only that I had been trying to kiss the sky by grasping for the sun instead of kneeling. At the very same moment of "all things coming together," what really struck me was that MY humility is ALSO God's! I give humble thanks to a humble God. To a God whose glorious throne is a wooden, blood-drenched one of sacrificial and humiliating death - so that I may have the blood of life. My humbling is God's before it is ever mine in the first place. God and me "coming together" in humility during prayer this morning is a sign here of "all things coming together," a sign of the Kairos moment of God's appearing in the humble flesh of Jesus of Nazareth.
So, what I was given to see was that the Jesus Prayer basically amounts to the same thing as the third line of The Lord's Prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" accomplishes the same thing as "Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name." And this is because, in the glory of Christ's sufferings, we have seen the glory of a humble Father. And, in the act of God's humbling, he identifies with and binds himself to me (as a member of his body, his people, the church), the guy who confusedly wanted to puff himself up and didn't know it.
See, what was happening as I prayed The Lord's Prayer without understanding it - and I had no idea this was happening - was that God, both in his life in Christ and by the work of the Holy Spirit (in conjunction with The Jesus Prayer) was "groaning" with me towards the redemption of all of creation. My confusion was like labor pains, and God's humility was my freedom:
From Romans 8:
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
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