What Jeopardy Really Revealed

A recent episode of Jeopardy, hosted by Mayim Bialik, found all three contestants stumped. Normally, this would not be something picked up by major news outlets. Yet fans of the show were so aghast, including Bialik herself, that it garnered attention.

The question?

“Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ This ‘be thy name.”

The contestants – a networking engineer on a five-game winning streak, a nonprofit fundraiser and a physics grad student – had no clue until Bialik revealed the answer: “Hallowed.”

As the Los Angeles Times noted, the Lord’s Prayer is Christianity’s “most ubiquitous prayer [that] has been recited immeasurable times in churches, at mealtimes, in bedrooms and at sporting events for generations.” Yet their reporting also noted how large numbers of Americans have been gradually moving away from Christianity since the 1990s.

But most of the brouhaha was focused on how they should have known the answer. As one person tweeted, “I’m an atheist and even I knew the answer to that Lord’s prayer question.”

But is the problem a lack of biblical literacy?

Is that why three intelligent contestants on Jeopardy couldn’t come up with the word “hallowed” to fill in the blank of the most famous Christian prayer, set in the most famous teaching of Jesus (the Sermon on the Mount)?

I wonder if the reason they weren’t familiar with “hallowed” is because Christians aren’t either.

“Hallowed” means honored. To give honor to the name of God through prayer means that it is revered. As Andrew Murray noted, it takes the central word of the Old Testament, holy, and joins it with the central word of the New Testament, Father. As Augustine wrote, “[It is] not as if the name of God were not holy already, but that it may be held holy by men... that God may so become known to them, that they shall reckon nothing more holy, and which they are more afraid of offending.” 

To pray in a way that reveres the name of God is to pray that every day our lives will become more holy in devotion to God. As the 3rd-century bishop Cyprian of Carthage wrote, God is not made more holy by our prayer; rather, we pray that his holy name may daily be made holy in us. 

God’s name has to do with God’s reputation. We honor His name to the degree that we enhance His reputation. The word “Christian” means “little Christs.” This is the goal of prayer: To earn the title “Christian” in the most direct sense of its meaning; to so live for Christ that we are linked with His name—not in derision, but in honor.

Unfortunately, this is not the honor that all Christ followers bring. As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once challenged, “Show me that you are redeemed and then I will believe in your redeemer.” We cannot feign to be one person in prayer while demonstrating to be another one off our knees.

Evelyn Underhill suggests turning to the Old Testament story of Araunah the Jebusite, whose name was Ornan in Hebrew, for insight into the deepest dynamic of honor. King David is directed that he must build an altar to God on Araunah’s threshing floor. This was no small matter. Araunah’s threshing floor was the basis for his entire subsistence. 

First, an angel came, then King David himself. David asks for the threshing floor and offers a fair price. Araunah is not content to give what is asked. Overwhelmed with the obvious importance of the request, not to mention the intended purpose of the floor, he refuses all monies and gives it freely. He then offers the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. “I will give all this,” he declares (I Chronicles 21:23, NIV).

Underhill notes that in a single moment, a man had an opportunity to honor God with the totality of his life, with his work, his achievements, his future needs, the very tools of his craft and food for the coming winter. In so doing, the site for generations of pray-ers was not simply declared holy but made holy. She writes:

Thus the site of Solomon’s Temple was sanctified; and a place was prepared for the Holy of Holies, the Ark and the Mercy Seat. Those who stand today in the temple area of Jerusalem, stand on the threshing floor which was offered without condition by [Araunah] the Jebusite. There Isaiah saw the Seraphim; there the child Jesus, near the end of its long history, was presented before God; there He watched the widow give her mite; then He cast out those who dared to mingle man’s profit with God’s praise. An unbroken chain leads from the farmer’s offering to the Cross.

So show some grace to the contestants on Jeopardy. They may not have known about “hallowing” the name of God for a very simple reason:

They’ve never met anyone doing it.

James Emery White 

Sources

“‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Appalled That a Lord’s Prayer Clue Stumped All 3 Contestants,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2023, read online.

Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer.

Augustine, “Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, edited by Philip Schaff.

Cyprian, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament Ia, Matthew 1-13, Edited by Manlio Simonetti.

Nietzsche, as cited by William Barclay, The Lord’s Prayer.

Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism and Abba.

Related:

Jeopardy! Contestants Fail to Answer Question on the Lord's Prayer

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.