Adoration with Tim Mackie | Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools Podcast

Alright, Tim Mackey from the Bible Project, thank you so much for joining me, yeah, um, or just Tim, since I prefer, oh, here we go, so Tim, I'm really excited to chat with you. You have obviously had a generous hand in this book,

praying

like

monks

living

like

fools

, you were the first editor of this book with me, you wrote the advance, you helped me launch the book, you have been very generous at all times, and I am here to choose a phrase. of the Lord's Prayer and just milk it for all it's worth, so I want to talk to you about the kind of prayer called worship, which is embodied in all kinds of ways.

I think in a modern evangelical context it is expressed primarily through songs. or praise um and we see that throughout Hebrew history many of the Psalms are Psalms of worship, you know the Psalms of ascent that were sung on the way to the temple or when people ascended to the temple, but then worship was also pray not through singing but just through speaking, through writing, in many ways, but I think it can be a difficult type of prayer for people, accessed individually and done in a community context , it's pretty common, but I think a lot of people, when they access it individually, it feels forced or strange or maybe even manipulative, I guess this is like the prayer critique sandwich where I tell God something really good about himself. myself and then I'm going to ask him something and then I might sneak in something good again and so I want to try to get into the revolution of what Jesus was doing when he taught his disciples to pray, so they said teach us to pray and he started with our Father in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name, these are the first words from the lips of Jesus on the model of him. prayer for us to imitate and I would love if we could separate that word at once, so let's start with father in the context that Jesus was using the term father as a title for God, how revolutionary was that. What if that had been familiar and what if it had been unknown? How would it have impacted those original listeners? Yeah, it's interesting, um, in the Hebrew Bible or what Christians call the Old Testament, um, to describe God as a father, he's not absent like he's there. in the Hebrew Bible it is not the predominant metaphor or image uh to talk about God's relationship with his people um there is a Lord or Master savior Redeemer um creator and father it is occasional um in the Psalms and then the prophets um and so on in Judaism of the second temple that is The time period and culture of Judaism in which Jesus grew up again was not uncommon, but the teachings of Jesus and this stand out if you compare it to other Jewish literature, his teachings stand out clearly since that is the predominant way he referred to the god of Israel as my father, the father or our father, so it's interesting, I guess it would be the equivalent: you're taking something that's in your cultural heritage and he's just turning the volume up to 11.

So to speak, it marks the teachings of Jesus in a way that distinguishes them, so it is revolutionary. I guess in some ways you could say that it could be what is clear is that Jesus in his teachings and his prayers had a profound influence. sense of intimacy with the God that he called father and um, there are many expressions of intimacy between God's people and God in the Hebrew Bible, so it seems that Jesus really held on to that and that the title of father really comes from your own experience. of the presence of the father and in that sense it is really significant and it is an exclusively Christian way of talking about God, not that it is absent in Judaism, but it is not the main way they do it, yes, it is interesting, something that What interests me about it is that, um, I sense that the priests of Jesus' time would have related to God primarily through reverence and perhaps occasionally through intimacy and I don't know if that's true, but the rituals of the temple seem to lean heavily towards a more reverent approach at least in comparison. to the rituals of the church that I am a part of today or to the way that the common forms of worship that I know today do, and I think I have always seen Yahweh as a very reverent title towards God, perhaps because of the origins of where it came from, you know, with Moses and that is certainly a reverent moment, um and Jesus seems to turn that on its head where intimacy is the main thing and then there is also certainly reverence that we see moments of incredible reverence in the life of Jesus, Does that fit with your reading of Scripture is fine, but in some important way it's not quite right, so I think it might just be our own kind of shared upbringing, Protestant tradition that tends to consider more liturgical practices or rituals of worship and intimacy with God. like it's just weird, it's not part of how I was familiar with it, um, but it's not always true that people within those kinds of traditions experience it, it's really austere and, for me, actually the easiest place to pointing out is like King David, where I mean, he's the one who brought the Ark of the Covenant to establish the sanctuary and the priesthood in Jerusalem, who declared the new capital and you read any of his prayers and there's something really intimate about it.

Yes, I think so, and he brought it with joy, not with reverence, yes, with dancing. Yes, that's exactly right. Yes, which made his wife uncomfortable. Yes. So it's good to name that as liturgy or ritual or more formal structures to connect. people towards God does not necessarily create distance and we both know that in non-liturgical Traditions you can be present for worship but actually be in your mind a million miles away, but it seems that Jesus really believed that what was happening in the temple is something that was meant for all of creation and it was something that was meant especially for the poor and especially for people who, due to the laws of impurity of the Levitical ritual, would not even be allowed to enter the courts of the temple or pass the first door and it is It is interesting that Jesus is mainly taking his Teaching Ministry to the communities of the kingdom of God that he is forming around this prayer and he is taking them to Galilee among the communities of the sick, the poor and the marginalized, and to me that tells me A lot of the story about the heartbeat of Jesus is that he wanted what happened in the temple to be something that was available to everyone, regardless of whether they qualified to go to the temple or not, yeah , and our father's prayer really is at the center of that yes, so our Father in heaven Sanctified, so there is a Greek word in the gospels that translates as sanctified, the English word that is not yet an English word .

Have I actually heard anyone use these guys except on Halloween? Yeah, so can you break down? the meaning of that word to us, but maybe even getting right to the root of the language, what does this word mean? Yes, it has the word saint in its root, it is fine in English, back to Latin, but it is the simplest translation into our language. would be for your name to be recognized as holy um so in the Hebrew Bible Holiness is a word and it is a concept um that is connected to the one true creator, the unique and unique identity of God as the Beautiful Mind and heart that can with very words and a thought generate a universe, he is quite an outstanding person, there are not many people who can do such a thing, so holiness was a way to describe the unique status in identity of a God who can do that, um. and so God is the Holy One of Israel, it's one of the main titles that the prophets used for God the Holy, um, so it's the holy and unique status of God as Creator, but also God invited the family to participate in that uniqueness calling them to their purposes. to be a vehicle of his Blessing to the Nations and that is the drama of the Hebrew Bible that is the family of Abraham and really the prayer of Jesus is crucial to understand why Jesus would encourage us to desire that the name of God be recognized or treaty. like holy um and we didn't actually go there, but in the Lord's Prayer it has two halves, each part and each half has three correct requests and the first three requests of the first half are all oriented towards our father and they are parallel, it's a form of um poetic parallelism from the Hebrew Old Testament, okay, so the three requests mutually illuminate each other that your name be recognized as holy, that your kingdom come and that your will be done as it is disguised here as well. on earth and so those three petitions are intimately connected to each other and what we are supposed to live in is a time or a place where the name of God is not recognized as holy and you know saying that is one thing, but for a A Jewish man, um, to say that he lives in territory occupied by the Romans in his ancestral land, there is a story underneath those three lines that God had called the nation of Israel to be a kingdom of priests and a people to whom would bless with such supernatural abundance and life that the nations would look and want to have in the life of Eden, um, what happened, you know, and this is the drama of the heat.

The revival is that God's own people lost that gift through idolatry and all kinds of injustice and abandonment of the poor, etc. God handed Israel over and over again to the imperial lords first it was Assyria then Babylon then Persia then Syria and now Ron and that is why Jesus' request to begin with this dream that obtained the name of the god of Israel the creator of everything would be recognized as holy is a request for God to act to bring his kingdom of justice and peace once again here on earth as it is in heaven and it seems that Jesus believed and acted as if that were his calling. and that this is what he was going to achieve, which it really is.

Maybe I'm talking too much, but this is so fascinating that Jesus was revealed in this prayer. It's this mentality of what he was doing by taking the intimacy of the connection. to the Creator God outside the temple um boundaries and taking them into these communities of the sick and poor to create communities of justice of right relationships reconciling people to each other across boundaries and then teaching them to pray that your name be recognized as holy In other words , you are actually doing the right thing while teaching people to pray this prayer because what is a good question?

What would make someone in your neighborhood or Maya because we live in the same neighborhood recognize it? God's name is holy, yes, what would it take for our city to like to have this wave of recognition that God's name revealed through Jesus is Holy, what kind of things would do that? And I think that would be the kind of thing. that Jesus was doing the right thing, it would be reconciliation across fault lines, communities of people that didn't make sense according to the ethics of this world only if another ethics had come to live in this world, you know, that was being embodied in the interpersonal relational space with each other. each other, that is exactly so, so going back to the worship thing, at first it is really remarkable that embedded in the first half of the Lord's Prayer, that your name is recognized as holy, which assumes that I believe that the character, the purpose and the heart of God because our world is truly Holy and worth worshiping, but at the same time Jesus was teaching people to pray this prayer as the heartbeat of the communities we are actually being born into with the vision of restore the Holiness of God's reputation, uh, in his land and in his time that's how I am and what's an analogy, you know, you're giving someone a prayer or a mantra almost to build in their consciousness so that they really start to become in an embodiment of the answer to what you are waiting for. because yes, it is like a type of prayer that potentially shapes people to respond to prayer.

Yes, would it be correct to say on an individual level that those three phrases you are naming build on each other or connect to each other? holy makes me a vessel through which his kingdom can come, that is his will, come to Bear, yes, on earth, yes, that's right, yes, yes, that's exactly right, so you know, always I've thought about this phrase, um, I eat more for myself than for God and that seems to be the way you're describing it like God isn't in heaven like ah I wish people would kill me since I'm holier, Come on Tyler, praise me, you know I do, but when I praise God I have become more in touch with him, the reality of his character than the reality of my circumstances, which I have noticed, despite my best efforts, never seemed to align consistently. with my will.

You know, I just can't fight to align my circumstances with my will for any length of time. amount of time and yet when I pray, it's almost like that phrase reminds me of the phrase that the psalmist prays Awaken my soul, it's like he's saying that Tyler aligns himself with who God is before he prays another word because when you you align with who God is this amazing thing that can happen, the things you would pray for would change or the way you would have prayed for the things you are going to pray for, yeah, changes, yeah, that's right, because you kind of remember. with whoyou're talking yeah that's a radically profound way to start your sentence yeah that's a good way uh just the idea of ​​what you're saying there um and it sure has to be part of why that's the opening line um when we lead in a place of prayer from the assumption that the drama of my story is like the center, uh, at my point of orientation towards the East, then you know that your prayers are going to go a certain way, but when you decenter the drama and any crises oConfusions that I might be having and it's not that you're not diminishing them and that's what the second half of the prayer is about, being very honest about the circumstances of my own life, but the fact that the prayer doesn't start there surely It is significant. that there is someone else's story and that drama is really the center of the universe and it is the drama of creation that awakens to the Holiness and the beauty and the love of the character and the purpose and the name of God and if that is the drama in the center, just reconfigure yourself, you just said the last thing I wanted to ask you about, so there is one last concept here that is obviously big in the Hebrew imagination, foreign to the modern Western imagination at least and that is the concept of name, TRUE?

So, yes, yes, we are told to pray. Hallowed be thy name. We are told to pray in the name of Jesus. So what does that concept mean? What is happening with the defense of a name? And can you import us into that world? See it through the imagination of Jesus, yes it's a little difficult, it's a little difficult even for me as I have two young children and my wife and I came up with their names just by choosing lists from a baby , you know, a book of baby names. you know, and all those kinds of sounds sound great, yeah, Colin, um, yeah, so imagine a cultural tradition and this is true in the Hebrew Bible, where the names almost all the names are symbolic and meaningful, full of meaning. connected to their character, their destiny, their life story or um, the calling that God has placed on their lives, whether that person knows it or not, all of these characters Abraham and Sarah, you know, Sarah's name means Queen, for example, um and uh, Abram father exalted and then Abraham changes to father of a multitude, so Imagine in a culture where for hundreds of generations a person's name is like an embodiment of their character, their purpose, his history, um, and that's why the personal name of the Covenant of the god of Israel, Yahweh, um, is full of symbolic meaning, right, um, because it's the word he is he is Jesus goes around changing the names of the people, yes, that is correct for the new Destiny or Identity or vocation, it is calling them, that is exactly correct, yes, where it changes kefas um where it changes to Peter um and or Simon to Peter or kfos Rock. so, um, so, if you grew up in that environment, um, the way that the name of Yahweh our God is worshiped throughout generation and generation builds this enormous reservoir of meaning and, so, what does it mean what kind of Acts shows character? in the name of Yahweh like in the Old Testament and this would have been as you know 101 for Jesus, so the name of Yahweh is revealed to Moses in the burning bush as the Deliverer of the slaves of Egypt and that is like the most fundamental association. with the name of God in the Hebrew Bible as the one who identifies with um the poor migrant community that is being marginalized and enslaved and Yahweh associates his name with them in such a way that when Moses goes to Pharaoh Pharaoh's response is I do not recognize Yahweh , therefore I won.

Don't let people go like they don't know that name, yeah, and that's why I don't sanctify that name, therefore, the kingdom of him won't come here, yeah, that's exactly true, so it's interesting. I just found out about this recently that, um, there is, uh, there is. this phrase that appears in the Exodus narrative um that God is going to bring the 10 signs or the ten plagues so that Egypt or Pharaoh will know that I am Yahweh or they will know that my name is Yahweh that line appears seven times, which is enormously Symbolic number, uh, correct for completeness and completeness, appears seven times in the story of the Exodus, um, as if it were the full revelation of the name of Yahweh, which is to create, which is to overthrow the powerful oppressor from his throne and as Hannah says in her prayer and First Samuel took the poor and oppressed and put them in a seed with nobles and princes and that is the name of Yahweh, that is the main story attached to the reputation of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible and that is the reputation that was compromised when Israel failed to comply with the Loyal Covenant. to their God and become, like Babylon and Assyria, another rich and powerful nation, neglecting the poor and the name of Yahweh is what Jesus is

praying

to be restored among the nations, but he does not, he rephrased that name as We talked to our father um. and the mission in the communities that he was starting and beginning was how he believed that Yahweh's name was going to be restored as holy, so it's hard for us to think about what it really meant to Jesus that his father's name was restored , but I You know, we can think of maybe friends whose name or reputation has been tarnished legitimately or illegitimately and what it would mean for someone's name or reputation to be restored so that when you hear it you don't think, oh right, oh that person. oh, that was terrible what happened to them, but you think you know when you have a good friend that you love the dignity that they give you back, you say oh so and so, just by hearing the name a whole story appears that is beautiful and good and from that what prayer is about and they are so great at thinking about it, yes, yes, yes, and so for the average person who is trying to pray like Jesus taught them to pray, it seems like prayer begins with knowing who God is. which then informs everything that follows because it informs who I am, that informs who you are to me, because if God is who he has revealed himself to be in Jesus, then it redefines not only the words I'm about to pray but, hopefully , the prayer that Keep Living After Saying Amen, True, redefines the way I think about myself and what defines me that day.

It means that the last question I sometimes ask myself is what constitutes a day well spent for me. Is it the number of items checked off on my to-do list? Does that day flow according to my schedule? Is it fun or adventure that day or something or Hallowed be your name reconstitutes what is worth

living

today? Yes, yes, the activities. Do I participate in some way in this drama of the restoration of our father's reputation among the Nations, yes, did I participate in any way in some peace of God's love, justice and mercy touching the Earth?

That's what you're saying, yeah, praying, praying the prayer, it really invites you to see yourself as part of a drama, yeah, like we're talking about inhabiting a story, yeah, that's right, yeah, um, and I think that's exactly how prayer should shape us, which is really, I think how The second half then develops from what is a request for provision for God to provide for my needs. It is a request for forgiveness. Forgive us as we have been forgiven and then it is a request for trust that no matter what evidence is presented. For me today I can trust my father to deliver me from the evil one, but the whole drama of our daily life fits within this larger narrative context in the first part of the prayer, it is as if Jesus knew how to create a really good prayer.

True, it's almost like Jesus. It's really because, but it's also very short compared to many other Jewish prayers of the day because there are similarities between the Lord's Prayer and other prayers of the time, but the fact that it's so short, but there's just a universe to the prayer, is it? right?, and that's surely part of why we still say it today, which is a beautiful part of his Legacy, so if you're watching or listening, this is how Jesus teaches us to pray, he says before. He utters a petition before confessing a sin before praying for another's need before asking for deliverance or protection of any kind before anything make sure you remember who you are praying to and the story you are telling them.

He comes to live within you again because as you do, your prayers will be redefined and your life will be redefined.