“Because you didn’t trust me so as to make me sacred before Israel’s eyes…” God says to Moses and Aaron in Numbers 20:12, “you will not bring this assembly into the land that I am giving them.”
God being “made sacred before Israel’s eyes” is connected to Moses trusting God, which would have been demonstrated in his speaking to the rock instead of hitting the rock in the passage just before this. Moses trusting God would have caused God to be seen by the Israelites as sacred, holy. Not that God would have become holy in an ontological way, but that God would be perceived as God us: holy.
“Hallowed by thy name” in the prayer Jesus taught us to pray is the same kind of thing. It’s not a declaration that God’s name is holy, nor is it a petition that God would become something God is not. Rather, it’s a prayer that God’s name (i.e. God’s reputation in the world) would be seen to be holy. To “hallow” God’s name is to consider it to be holy, so in this petition we are asking for God to dispel the lies we believe about God, so we and the whole world can see God as God is, and thus worship God in spirit and in truth.
Part of how this happens is through our embodied trust in God. When we trust God enough to take God at God’s word. Growing in faith, learning to entrust our lives to God, is what allows us and the world to see God for who God is. That’s what it means to pray “Hallowed by thy name.”
