Exodus 3:13-14
Moses said to God, “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?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
When we last met together two weeks ago, we discussed some of the different ways we humans have chosen to view God, the names we choose, the attributes we assign to God, and just what we mean when we use that word “God.”
We looked at some readings by a Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, and a Dutch Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen, and finally, some by St. Francis of Assisi.
Between that Sunday and today we took a week off to carpool to our sister church in Geyserville to share a service of music with them. But now that we are back home again I want to finish off the conversation we began two weeks ago. In particular I want to look at some of the ways God is named and described in scripture.
[** I probably need to insert a side note here to specify that I am speaking only from our Judeo-Christian heritage and discussing words and concepts used in our traditions.]
Descriptions and names for God abound in the Hebrew scriptures, but they are not terribly helpful for this discussion because in the many stories from the Old Testament God can appear as anything from a loving Creator walking in a garden with God’s creation to a child-slaughtering monster, but there are two Old Testament events I’d like to look into a bit simply because of where they led in the following centuries.
The first comes in Exodus Chapter 3 when the clueless Moses encounters a bush, burning in the middle of nowhere - burning without being consumed – and then a voice called him from within that bush and when Moses asked who was speaking, this is the answer he received: “I AM WHO I AM .... Go, and say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” This is fairly clear, a basic “I AM...” statement – or maybe not.
The Hebrew words of the original text -- Ehyeh asher ehyeh -- were translated into Greek and Latin as I am who I am, or I am who is, present tense statements describing an unchanging, immutable God. And for centuries this image of God has been ‘carved in stone’ and unchangeable and has dominated theological thinking.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, however, a highly respected British theologian and philosopher, argued that the correct translation is I will be what, where, and how I will be – very much a future tense statement and one that says something entirely different about God. Sacks’ writings in the twentieth century helped shift modern theologians’ thinking toward a God who can, and does, change. It’s a matter of translation.
Later in scripture, In Malachi, the last of the Old Testament Prophets, God proclaims in chapter 3, verse 6, “I the Lord do not change,” seeming to agree with the I am who I am writers, but Rabbi Sacks again explains, when Malachi says in the name of God, ‘I the Lord do not change,’ he is not speaking about his essence as pure being, the ‘unmoved mover’, but about his moral commitments. God keeps his promises even when his children break theirs.”
We could go on here for days, quoting scripture, then quoting another which seems to completely contradict the first one -- citing “experts” and then other experts who disagree, and we would be no closer to an answer to our question as to how we name God.
I have one more word to discuss – from the New Testament -- and, in fact, from Jesus himself. Another understanding that we may have been getting wrong all along. Whenever Jesus is talking about God or addressing God directly in prayer, the word he uses, Abba, has been translated for centuries as “Father”, when, in fact, it’s proper translation is something much closer to “Daddy,” as a child addressing a loved and respected parent.
You will still find this being argued with demands that we use “Father” when addressing God because anything else would be disrespectful. And yet Jesus was entirely comfortable using the child’s term in speaking to the parent he loved and by whom he was loved. Some people simply can’t imagine being that comfortable with God. For them, God is a rule-giver – one we must approach with fear and trembling.
My point is simply that we cannot pin God down to one name or one characteristic. God HAS BEEN, God IS, God WILL ALWAYS BE. No boxes, no categories, because God is everything. We use different names at different times when we are discussing specific attributes, but none of them apply unilaterally, in all circumstance – and none is the single one-size-fits-all correct name. We have many names for God -- not just one 'correct' name.
God is that being that loves us – loves us far beyond the restrictions of our vocabularies. Loved us into being. Loves us throughout our living. And will love us on into whatever comes after this life. Loves us when we are obedient; loves us even when we fail. Loves us by whatever name we call them.
God doesn’t need our names, nor our ‘rules’ about how God should be called. God is. God was. God will be what God will be. And God will be that for ALL of us.
Amen.
We looked at some readings by a Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, and a Dutch Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen, and finally, some by St. Francis of Assisi.
Between that Sunday and today we took a week off to carpool to our sister church in Geyserville to share a service of music with them. But now that we are back home again I want to finish off the conversation we began two weeks ago. In particular I want to look at some of the ways God is named and described in scripture.
[** I probably need to insert a side note here to specify that I am speaking only from our Judeo-Christian heritage and discussing words and concepts used in our traditions.]
Descriptions and names for God abound in the Hebrew scriptures, but they are not terribly helpful for this discussion because in the many stories from the Old Testament God can appear as anything from a loving Creator walking in a garden with God’s creation to a child-slaughtering monster, but there are two Old Testament events I’d like to look into a bit simply because of where they led in the following centuries.
The first comes in Exodus Chapter 3 when the clueless Moses encounters a bush, burning in the middle of nowhere - burning without being consumed – and then a voice called him from within that bush and when Moses asked who was speaking, this is the answer he received: “I AM WHO I AM .... Go, and say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” This is fairly clear, a basic “I AM...” statement – or maybe not.
The Hebrew words of the original text -- Ehyeh asher ehyeh -- were translated into Greek and Latin as I am who I am, or I am who is, present tense statements describing an unchanging, immutable God. And for centuries this image of God has been ‘carved in stone’ and unchangeable and has dominated theological thinking.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, however, a highly respected British theologian and philosopher, argued that the correct translation is I will be what, where, and how I will be – very much a future tense statement and one that says something entirely different about God. Sacks’ writings in the twentieth century helped shift modern theologians’ thinking toward a God who can, and does, change. It’s a matter of translation.
Later in scripture, In Malachi, the last of the Old Testament Prophets, God proclaims in chapter 3, verse 6, “I the Lord do not change,” seeming to agree with the I am who I am writers, but Rabbi Sacks again explains, when Malachi says in the name of God, ‘I the Lord do not change,’ he is not speaking about his essence as pure being, the ‘unmoved mover’, but about his moral commitments. God keeps his promises even when his children break theirs.”
We could go on here for days, quoting scripture, then quoting another which seems to completely contradict the first one -- citing “experts” and then other experts who disagree, and we would be no closer to an answer to our question as to how we name God.
I have one more word to discuss – from the New Testament -- and, in fact, from Jesus himself. Another understanding that we may have been getting wrong all along. Whenever Jesus is talking about God or addressing God directly in prayer, the word he uses, Abba, has been translated for centuries as “Father”, when, in fact, it’s proper translation is something much closer to “Daddy,” as a child addressing a loved and respected parent.
You will still find this being argued with demands that we use “Father” when addressing God because anything else would be disrespectful. And yet Jesus was entirely comfortable using the child’s term in speaking to the parent he loved and by whom he was loved. Some people simply can’t imagine being that comfortable with God. For them, God is a rule-giver – one we must approach with fear and trembling.
My point is simply that we cannot pin God down to one name or one characteristic. God HAS BEEN, God IS, God WILL ALWAYS BE. No boxes, no categories, because God is everything. We use different names at different times when we are discussing specific attributes, but none of them apply unilaterally, in all circumstance – and none is the single one-size-fits-all correct name. We have many names for God -- not just one 'correct' name.
God is that being that loves us – loves us far beyond the restrictions of our vocabularies. Loved us into being. Loves us throughout our living. And will love us on into whatever comes after this life. Loves us when we are obedient; loves us even when we fail. Loves us by whatever name we call them.
God doesn’t need our names, nor our ‘rules’ about how God should be called. God is. God was. God will be what God will be. And God will be that for ALL of us.
Amen.
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