Leader: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
People: Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit.
Leader: Lover, Redeemer and Sustainer.
People: Womb, Wisdom and Breath.
Leader: Rock, Shepherd and Wind.
People: We name you, Triune God, though your name is
beyond our understanding.
All: We worship you, Holy One, in all your beautiful mystery.
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Psalm 8 & Matthew 28:16-20
My given name is Sharon Alice Benton.
Sharon: because my parents liked the name.
Alice: my mother’s middle name and her mother’s first name.
Benton: my father’s surname.
Sharon Alice Benton.
Think about your name—birth or married or nickname.
Names are part of the way that others identify us; relate to us; know us.
Names have always been important to me—I try very hard to remember if the many Lynn’s and Anne’s in my life have an E on the end or whether your name is pronounced Támara or Tamára.
Being named by another can sometimes make us feel like we are known.
Other times we understand, as Shakespeare’s Juliet cries to her Montague lover,
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
And yet names help us identify the who or what—at least initially.
Juliet might never have known how badly her family would react to her relationship with Romeo had she not recognized his family name. Names help us identify.
When the God of the Israelites calls Moses to action from within the burning bush—calls him to free the people from Pharaoh—Moses first and foremost wants to know,
“If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’
and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13).
I think I’d want to know, too.
Who are you?
This is a question that has engaged our imaginations throughout history, and so today I offer just some thoughts on God’s name for you to ruminate on this week.
In a new book of daily meditations called Fragments of Your Ancient Name, Joyce Rupp writes,
“The countless titles given to divinity from earliest times down to the present era reflect humanity’s attempt to communicate with this veiled presence….[reflect our] desire to relate to divinity.”[i]
We name so we may connect, so we may be in relationship.
If I really want to connect with you, I’m not going to say, “Hey you!”
That probably won’t get me very far.
Rather, I’m going to use your name: “Hey NAME!”
Yet it becomes somewhat more complicated when we name God—
not because it has to be complicated with God, but because we’re complicated creatures.
Today many churches are celebrating Trinity Sunday—
that complicated, confusing, mysterious doctrine of 3-in-1 and 1-made-3;
that theological naming of God as Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.
Our God is so broad, so beyond-our-conception-and-still-so-a-part-of-our-experiences that we must have the minimum of 3 names, 3 aspects of the Divine to which we can relate.
We want to name God when we pray—Our Father, Holy One, Jesus Christ, Spirit of Life.
Want to share our experiences of God’s presence with others—
and how do we do that but with our fumbling descriptions and language?
As I said earlier, naming can help us identify the who or what—at least to begin.
It’s when we pass that barrier of initial encounter that we can become more intimate, more knowing of what is beyond the name, beyond naming—the relationship; the deep love.
Jamie and I have a cat that we named Teiresias: a big name for this poor creature to live into.
Over the years we’ve come to know him by other, more dear, names:
Teiresias became Tei became Tiger became (sometimes) Dopey Kitty.
Intimacy created loving terms; devoted titles, like the ones we may come up with for our spouses or children or close friends.
And this is what we’ve done over millennia with our beloved Creator.
Our relationships with God have given us
Parent, Friend, Rock, Fortress, Comforter, Redeemer, Wisdom, Love and on and on.
The Unnamable Mystery has called to us, and we want to call out in return.
Which takes me back to Moses…
Once he’d asked his perhaps impertinent question of the deity hidden in a burning bush, God responded:
“I Am Who I Am.”
All in capital letters God says,
“I Am Who I Am.”
And God continued,
“Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’
God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites,
“The Lord, the God of your ancestors,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
has sent me to you”’:
this is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations” (Exodus 3:14-15).
I have always been intrigued by God’s name and title as presented in these passages—
perhaps because names have always been important to me. Who is this God?
“I Am Who I Am.”
You may remember that in the Hebrew writing of the Bible there were no vowels present.
So when it is written that God reveals this name in Exodus, there are no vowels present—simply the Hebrew consonants:
yud-hay-vav-hay,
or Y-H-W-H.
We have since added vowels in order to make the name pronounceable, and what we’ve created—
again, so we might actually name God—is Yahweh.
The New Revised Standard Version has translated the meaning of God’s name to be “I Am Who I Am.”
But there are other renderings of these 4 vowel-less letters,
all of which help us name-and-yet-never-fully-name God:
I Am Who I Am;
I Will Be What I Will Be;
perhaps Being-Becoming;
or simply Beingness, Existence:
I Am.
God is. Although translated in multiple ways, this is the only true name—not a title or metaphor or symbol—the only name we ever get for God: Yahweh.
And yet the Hebrew people never use this name. Rather, they use the title HaShem: The Name.
Why not use Yahweh, when that’s what they intend?
Especially when using another’s name can connect us to that other, build relationship?
The reason given is just several chapters after God has revealed the name I Am—
one of the newly-given 10 Commandments makes clear:
“You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God,
for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name” (Exodus 20:7).
Or, as we may be more familiar with:
“Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
God’s name is to be revered—honored as holy.
And so the ancients said HaShem, The Name.
And we have received
Hallowed be thy name
Hallowed be HaShem
Hallowed be yud-hay-vav-hay
Jesus’ wonderful prayer that he taught the disciples!
A prayer we say every week—“hallowed be thy name.”
And when we pray other times, we often close, “in your name, we pray.”
Isn’t this stuff exciting!?? It’s one of the reasons I love studying the Bible—
the connections that come when we look to understand the who and what and mystery and wonder of God
and the many ways given for us to know God.
Just one more thing I need to share on this—which you may already know but which is wonderful to keep in mind when you’re reading or listening to the Bible—
something you can see in the verse that I just quoted, “don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,”
or in today’s Psalm, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Whenever you read the title Lord in our Old Testament scriptures—
most often in capital letters or small caps—that is an indication that God’s name,
The Name, is meant to be there…but it has been replaced with
Lord (in English) or Adonai (in Hebrew).
Out of reverence for God’s name (Y-H-W-H or I Am) people did not write or speak it.
Even today, many Jews will not write out the vowels or speak God’s name.
But we do. We honor this God and seek to be in relationship with this God by naming:
Yahweh, HaShem, Lord, Adonai—Hallowed Be Thy Name!
Creator, Christ, Holy Spirit—Hallowed Be Thy Name!
What name is holy to you?
What name is The Holy One, to you?
How do you relate to him from one moment to the next?
How to speak with her in your most intimate moments?
The desire to connect, to know, to be in relationship with the Divine has been a longing forever, and people have found innumerable ways to name this Unnamable Mystery.
I close my meditation this morning with 2 tidbits.
In the first of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton,” the poet tries to name the frustration of naming;
that language is never enough to capture “the stillness”—the Truth beyond all truth. He writes:
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness….
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision….[ii]
And my second tidbit comes again from T.S. Eliot, but on the lighter side, recalling my own naming of the Dopey Kitty, Teiresias. In Eliot’s delightful “The Naming of Cats” we learn that all felines have “THREE DIFFERENT NAMES”—the day-to-day name and the dignified name are the first two:
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.[iii]
This week, whether in “rapt contemplation” or brief meditation,
may you be in relationship with the Mystery we call God—
by whatever name connects you.
Amen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment