"Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name..." Last week we began to look at these familiar words in an attempt to renew and deepen our understanding of what it is we're really saying to God when we pray the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer. It's easy to say the words without even thinking about what it is that we're praying, but our prayer has so much more meaning and power when we pray with full awareness of the commitment and the faith that these words contain.

As I mentioned last week, the words "Hallowed be thy name" provide a context in which we are to hear the rest of the prayer. Hallowed or may your holy name be honored... these words speak of a love for God which is rich and full, a sense of awe and wonder which says that we are never the same after we have talked with God, for God is holy, and as we open our lives to God's presence and God's love, our lives become holy and sacred as well.

"Hallowed be thy name" is another way of saying "thy kingdom come". For when we live in ways that honor God's holy name, then we also are living with an expectation and a hope that God's Kingdom will come - both in our lives and in the whole of God's creation.

When we pray "Thy Kingdom Come" we are praying that God's Kingdom, that God's reign might indeed take over the whole of our world and our lives, that no longer might people be in doubt as to who it is they are serving, but that all of us might know deep within us that we belong to God.

The Lord's prayer is not just lofty words that say thy kingdom come in global terms that are so big that they don't really seem to effect you and I. It's not a prayer whose focus is out there somewhere, that says thy kingdom come Lord, while we sit here basically untouched and unchanged by the experience. Rather, in the Lord's Prayer our focus begins in here (point to your heart) - thy kingdom come in here, in my heart, that in this small beginning it might spread from me to you, to you, to you, and on throughout the world. Thy Kingdom come, Lord, that I might be a bearer of your love into a world that desperately needs to experience the wonder and power of that love.

Now the New Testament did not identify the church and it's leaders with the Kingdom of God in the same way that we're sometimes tempted to do. By that I mean that the temptation is to think of ourselves as the good guys, as the only ones who are truly faithful and loving, that God is on our side, and that if only everyone else was like us, everything would be fine.

We only need to read a newspaper or watch the news on TV to very quickly become aware that there are many problems in our society, and by that I don't mean just in the USA as a whole, but many problems here in the Buffalo area, many problems right here in Hamburg.

We are pretty good, decent, honorable people, but we are far from perfect. And just because we are part of the church, it does not mean that we are one and the same with God's Kingdom. Rather, the church, and our nation - as well as the rest of the world, are like the parable of the weeds. We are a wheatfield in which there is a good deal of wheat growing, but in which there are also a lot of weeds that have sprung up.

Now I have a special appreciation for the direction of the master in this parable, because I know that when I go into the garden and start pulling up weeds, it's extremely likely that the some of the good plants, some of the ones that I really would have liked to save, are going to come out with the weeds - and if not the whole plants, at least some of their leaves and perhaps even flowers. It's tough to separate them out.

At the same time my garden never grows without producing a good crop of weeds. I don't try to encourage them - in fact I try to discourage them, but they still seem to spring up, unasked for and unwanted, but they happen. Sort of like the way our lives seem much of the time. We try to be good, faithful people but somehow weeds keep springing up in our gardens. Our efforts to pull out the weeds have very mixed results, for it is God and God alone who knows how to separate them.

"Thy will be done..." It's easy to say the words, but hard to really mean them. We'd like to think that God wants exactly the same things as we do, but my friends, that's not always the case. It may not even be often the case. To pray these words and to really mean them says that we are willing to set aside what we want in favor of what God wants for us, to set aside our concern for our own agenda and goals, and to place ourselves in God's hands, asking ourselves, what is it that God wants for me? What is it that God wants for our church, our community, our country at this point in history? That's not easy to do.

It means trusting in God, instead of trusting in what we want. It means trusting not that God will make things turn out the way that we want or expect or even think they should, but rather trusting that we will find opportunities to serve God in the midst of whatever we face. When we do - amazing things happen. It's like the parable of the mustard seed where a giant plant miraculously grows from a tiny seed. When we plant seeds by trusting in God, small, seemingly insignificant things can have great and wonderful results. Just as Jesus reminds us that the yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise, those wonderful results make the whole world a little better place. It all starts with us and our willingness, our readiness to mean it when we say, "thy will be done".

When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was crucified, He knew what He was facing. It was certainly not an easy time. The temptation must have been there to look for another way, an easier, a more pleasant path. But Jesus knew what sometimes we fear to find out - that serving God does not always mean taking the easiest, the most desirable path. It does not always mean that life goes smoothly and that things work out the way that we want. What it does mean, is being committed to serving God in whatever we face. It means that we too, like Jesus, must pray, not mine, but thy will be done.

The first danger that we face is one that we have already talked about - that of assuming that God wants exactly the same things that we do, instead of openly and honestly asking God what it is that God wants from us and for us, and then praying as Jesus did - not mine, but thy will be done. A second danger is that we blame everything on God. All of the weeds that grow up in the field, all of the things that don't work out the way that we want, all of the tragedies and problems of the world are blamed on God. Rather than seeing them as signs that God's Kingdom has not yet come, we point to God and say "how could you let that happen?" Yet the responsibility comes right back around. If it is not yet God's Kingdom, then whose is it? It must be ours. Then the responsibility must be ours as well. Our job is not yet done. All of the tragedies and problems that we face are reminders of the chaotic nature of a world into which God's Kingdom has not yet fully come. We need to work even harder at opening our lives and our world to the presence of God's Spirit and to the seeking of God's will, so that the power of the Kingdom might grow in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

"Thy will be done" is not easy to pray if we really mean it. It really does mean setting aside our own wishes and asking what God wants, it means working for God's Kingdom rather than for ourselves, it means truly giving honor to God's name, as we love and worship the God who gave us life.

Given what we face both within ourselves and in the world around us, now more than ever we need to pray these words, so let us do so together again now: "Our Father, who art in heaven, ...

Amen.