Holiness

I think it’s necessary to outline to you what my aim is in this series on the Lord’s prayer. Simply, stated, it’s to “re-inspire about the Lord’s prayer by exploding the meanings of its words.” I want us to reclaim it in its glorious simplicity. To reclaim it from the dryness of a repetition of speed, from a repetition of monotony, from being a tradition with no meaning.

Is it possible for us to turn to the Lord’s prayer when we ask the very simple question : how should we pray?

So we need to ask the questions of the prayer, we need to deconstruct it a little to put it back as bigger pieces. We need to interrogate the jargon and the familiar and remake it fresh : ripe with understanding and insight.

I want us to stop and reflect on the power of these words, the enormity of these words and the wonder of these words. I want for us to pray at the end of it, these words that have become formula, I want them to become not just a meaningful murmer, but a lifestyle of the kingdom of Heaven.

This is my dream and vision for this series. And the ‘so what’ component runs through it. It’s riddled with it.

Tonight I’d like to visit how people have felt and wrestled with the two massive topics we addressed last week : Father, Heaven. What have been some of the thoughts there?

We move on from these concepts and into another concept. Originally I was going to look at the two ideas of Holy and Name, but realised that they are both massive topics in their own right. We’ll keep tonight straightforward. We’ll focus on holy in this context and then move into the idea of Name next week.

Let us start with getting into groups and listing all the possibilities of what holy might mean.

I think that one of the limiting ideas here of what holiness might mean is how it pertains to us. We’ll use such phrases as morality, perfection pretty much immediately because these are things that we identify with as we go through life. When we think of a holy person we think of someone who is pure etc.

But what about God? How does this relate to God? Maybe we can at some level come back to the idea that God is pure, but God has to be more than that.

The idea of the wholly other

There is a sense where we often define God by his being different to us and far from us. He is so other, so undefinable that we actually run into terrible difficulty when it comes to applying descriptions to him. Even last week we saw that the term Father reaches a new level of purity and depth when talked about in the context of God. And so many of our human ideas like perfection and love and holiness are tainted by our own limited understanding and experience of them.

And there is also another sense that because we have such a limited understanding of God that when we say he is mighty, we actually end up redefining the word mighty. God is ‘more’. And this is a really interesting concept to try and get our heads around —if that’s what you’re into. God is so wholly other that he actually redefines the words we use to describe him. And it’s important that we acknowledge this when we talk about holiness.

When we say God is holy, we are saying that “God has our idea of holiness but even more so.” So what, you might ask…well, this is the language of praise. This is the language that we use all the time. If you’re getting like me where seeing the word holy on the screen is a little bit meaningless, knowing that there is more to it might actually prompt you into worship.

So we might define holiness as righteousness, or dedicated or consecrated to God as the oxford dictionary says. But this is nonsense when applied to God. How can he be dedicated to himself? Sounds a bit teenage really…

You aren’t going to like where I arrive at here, but it’s the only place I can with my current state of mind. Holiness is more than being set apart. It’s more than just pure stuff. Holiness is actually much more than that. It’s hard to define, but it’s something we know.

So let’s consider perhaps the impact that holiness has on people.

====off piste bits:

The idea of awe-someness of God (Isaiah)

This from Isaiah’s call is striking…

The idea of the Holy community. (1 Peter)

What are we defined by? Is holiness an attitude? How this relates…