all unclean? Behold, that is our life, when faced with the great “but” of the Bible. In the face of that “but” all the life of mankind is clean and, yet, nothing is clean. All yes and all no. Whoever is satisfied in this pride and doubt in this twilight and fog, does not hear this “but.” Whoever cannot endure this twilight hears and notices and understands. He places himself in the unambiguous light which falls upon our lives from on high.
But the Lord weigheth the spirits. Are our ways clean or unclean, are we right or wrong in our living, thinking and speaking, if the Lord weighs the spirits? We must say, No, we are not right. Who can be right in God’s judgment? Who can remain calm and self-reliant when he is placed in the scales of God? Who is there that cares to stand before Him? No, in His presence we can but become terrified, become humble; in His sight all this strife about what is clean in our own eyes comes to an end, before Him everything that would stand and remain firm is shattered and dissolved. But we must say Yes, too, for who does not have the right, who could not secure the right through the grace of God? Who could not be secure, calm and hopeful if he is in the scale of God? Who cannot stand in the power of forgiveness? Are we not His own, known of Him, moved by Him? Does not the death-line, which is the life-line, pass through the midst of our life? Why should not our ways be clean before Him?
No and Yes can be said of us, No and Yes is the truth of our lives. In God there is no opposition to us. In God we persevere, for in Him is stimulus, life, hope. There is nothing but Yes and No in God, only because of the Yes. Those people who have heard the “but” no longer are disturbed about the No and the Yes; they pilgrim, they toil, they pray from one to the other; they have, even as prisoners, something of the freedom of the coming world within themselves. Fearful and certain in spirit they are even now God’s witnesses and preparers of the way. Do not let anyone say, “I cannot hear.” Jesus has spoken, even to our life: I am the resurrection and the life!
The name of Jehovah is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe.—Proverbs 18:10.
I am not sure that we have often prayed, with understanding and sincerity, the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be thy name!” We presume to understand what is meant by the “kingdom” and the “will” of God, in the second and third petitions. We feel that these and the petitions that follow them directly concern us. But what is meant by the name of God? On this point we are not in the clear. To be honest, does not the term sound strange and distant to us? Have we not secretly asked ourselves what really is the vital and weighty thing in the word ‘name’? We found no answer, in spite of the excellent definition of the term in the Lutheran and Heidelberg Catechisms. This is a fact worthy of consideration. For the petition, “hallowed be thy name,” was the first that Jesus put into the mouth of his disciples; and it is the gate of entrance to all the others. If we do not enter by this gate we shall be perplexed and confused when we offer the other petitions, however well we may think we understand them. This is not merely a so-called “religious” question. For as one prays so one lives and walks and behaves.
He who prays our Lord’s Prayer aright will be heard; in difficult and adverse circumstances his way will become clearer, more steady, more perfect, as perfect as the way of a man can be. Indeed we do not see many men walking so perfect a way. Even we ourselves are not men of this sort. Perchance the real trouble in our difficult times is that we are so dull of hearing and that in our lives so little of the perfect way is manifest. On this account we are restless and like the disciples we are driven to ask Jesus: “Lord, teach us to pray!”—to pray so that we shall be heard. Both they and we have been taught how to pray; therefore we are not to learn something new, but to apply and practice what we have been taught. To speak honestly, we stumble, as it were, into the Lord’s Prayer, when we offer the petition, “hallowed be thy name!” and when we think we are advancing into the other petitions, which we presume to understand better than the first, we are actually standing still. Our failure to listen attentively, our uncertain and disorderly conduct, the want of answers to our prayers, is evidence of this fact; and, if we are not to sink like Peter into the waves of the sea, we must begin anew with the cry, “Lord, help us!” yea, with the simplest and profoundest thing—with the beginning, with the name of the Lord.
But what is meant by the name of the Lord? The answer of the text is not learned, not pious, not ingenious; but short and complete as the answers of the Bible usually are: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower.” We are quite right when we feel that here we have to do with something alien, that we are standing on the outside, as it were, against an astounding other which is not in any way a part of ourselves.
The name of the Lord does not come from the heart, the head, or the conscience. One cannot experience Him, that is, take Him into one’s life so that He becomes a part of oneself. The name of the Lord is and remains far rather a contradiction that is raised against us, a hostile bridge-head in the midst of our land. Jesus teaches us to pray: “Our Father who art in heaven!” With these words the deepest things, the only thing necessary, all is said, that we can say to God and that has the promise of being heard. Upon these four words: “Our Father in heaven,” one’s life can be based, by them one can live and die—providing we say these words after Jesus as He has said them for us. Because this truth is not self-evident, Jesus spoke more than these four words.
The first and the most direct is a call to halt! halt, for you have taken the name of God upon your lips. Do you know what ye have done? Perhaps the noblest thing that a man can do, perhaps the meanest; perhaps the saving act of humility and knowledge, perhaps the act of immeasurable conceit and haughtiness. What have we to do with God? Praying is not a work like other works. “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground!” The name of the Lord is to be hallowed. Otherwise prayer is not prayer. Pray that you may pray aright, that you will actually pray to God. Then perchance you will learn further how to pray; and, while you pray, ye are heard already because you have prayed to God.
One cannot walk so easily on a straight and even path, into the presence of the Father in heaven, not even through Christ—above all, not through Him! Only when one has become severely and unequivocally serious with the hallowing of the name of God, then in Him, that is in Christ can he come to the Father. The name of God is the name of God. It is repellent, stern, yes, terrifying. That is the “strong tower” of our text. Later we are told one can flee to it and be exalted by it. But first one must have discerned how like a tower, like a rock, how threatening He rises ahead of him. He who has never fled before Him, cannot flee unto Him. And he who there has not been humbled, cannot there be exalted. But, once again, what is meant by “the name of the Lord”? The name of a thing or a man is the symbol by which we are taught that this is this, he is he; the limits by which we distinguish persons or things, that are equal or similar, from one another. So it is with the name of God. It is the mark of God’s separateness and otherness over against everything that is not God. He who speaks the name of God makes use of this mark.
But there is another trait peculiar to the name of God. In the beginning of the Bible (and what we read there is full of meaning) we are told that man, by God’s command and yet by his own free and rational judgment, gave names “to all cattle and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field;” and finally he named the woman, the creature of his own kind. That reminds us that the names we give, the limits and distinctions we draw (between the creatures themselves and between men and other creatures) are valid or invalid according to the accuracy or the error of our insight. They are not worthless but meaningful and useful; we must not be astonished, however, because these limits are so easily defaced and changed, and, in the last resort, so questionable and frail that the names we give and those we hear are not holy but in the end—here the poet is right—are mere sound and breath. But one is wrong when one says this of the name of God. For man did not, and does not, give God His name. The distinctive thing that separates God from every other, also from us men, man is not able to measure; nor can he see the mark that indicates the distinctive thing in God, that divides God’s land from