2-week Bible study on Exodus
3
Week 2- The Holy Name
Carroll First UMC August 30,
2020
Names have power. To know
someone’s name is to know something intimate about them. That was even more
true in the past. At one time if you met someone named Shoemaker you knew
something about them. I am told that the root of Plocher in German has to do with
being big and fat, so you know something about my ancestors.
You can understand, then, why
the name of God is such a big deal. In today’s story, God reveals the divine
name to Moses in a rather dramatic fashion.
Moses’ name means “to pull or
draw out,” which reminds us of the story of the princess pulling his reed
basket from the Nile.
After growing up I the palace, at 40 years of
age, Moses became a fugitive from the law, a murderer, married to a pagan
priest’s daughter. 40 years later, at 80 years of age, Moses was still a hired
hand on his father-in-law’s sheep ranch. He saw a bush that was on fire. But
the fire was not burning up the bush. Mystified, and somewhat mesmerized, Moses
approached the bush.
What happens? God says, “Moses.” It might not surprise you that God knows your
name, but Moses lived before the incarnation, before Jesus said, “you are in me
and I am in the father.” Before Jesus said, “I have not called you slaves… I
have called you friends.” Additionally,
Moses grew up with the religion of Egypt. They had a whole family of Gods like
Ra, Osiris, Isis, and if you like the movie “The Mummy” you recognize Anubis.
These Gods were to be feared and to hear one’s name on the lips of God was at
least surprising, and maybe terrifying.
This also explains why it
makes perfect sense for Moses to ask, “When I go to pharaoh to demand that he
release the slaves, which God should I say sent me?”
But it is none of those
gods. It is the one God, known to his
ancestors as Elohim – which is the plural for “EL” which means God. Elohim is the God who is both one and many,
like the trinity. Adonai is the plural of the word ADON which means lord. So,
God is both the lord and the lord of lords.
But those are titles or adjectives, like pastor, teacher, or doctor The
name Moses heard that day was different … we should hear that name with fear
and trembling … with reverence and awe … for it is the personal name of God …
not a title or an adjective … but the very name of God as given to us by God
Himself! It is so … so … [pause] …
amazing … so revealing … so powerful… so unique that it begins to reveal the
height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of who God is.
The name God revealed to Moses is the
tetragrammaton. I know that is a mouth full. But it is not complicated. Tetra
means what? Four, right? Gramaton simply
means letters. So, a tetragrammaton is a
four-letter word. Not a four-letter word
like the ones polite people don’t say, but a very, very powerful., very
revealing 4 letter name. The name of God consists of four Hebrew letters from
right to left “Yod – He-- Waw—and He” … which we transliterate into English and
reads left to right is “Y-H-W-H.”
That is the tetragrammaton.
And it is so holy that the Hebrews would not say the name but would go to great
lengths to not say the name of God. They used beautiful phrases like “The
Blessed one” and “The Holy one.” Anything to avoid defiling the holy name of
God. When the scribes wrote the tetragrammaton, they took a bath beforehand,
and destroyed the pen afterwards so it could never be used to write common
words again.
Our problem today is that
instead of being so awed that we don’t even pronounce the name of god, we use
god’s name flippantly. It is everywhere once you become sensitized to the
improper use of the word god. It has, in a way become the four-letter word that
only has three letters. The third
commandment literally translated means “You shall not attach the LORD’s name to
emptiness.” Which pretty much describes the frequent exclamation of God today:
they are empty.
The tetragrammaton is so holy and that
powerful that we don’t find it in our Bibles. What we see is the word LORD or
GOD in small capital letters. You will find that 6,800 times in the Old
Testament. Each of those represents a
use of the Tetragrammaton.
Now, notice there are no
vowels in Hebrew. So, the Latin scribes and English translators had to insert
vowels to make it a word. Many Latin scribes inserted the vowels from “Elohim”
a title for God in Genesis. That becomes
the name “Jehovah,” which was the common usage for many years. Then textual and
archeological research of the 19th and 20th Century started leaning toward the
way the Christians wrote it in the second Century which used the vowels from
Adonai, (another title for God in Genesis) which then became the word “Yahweh.”
So, back to our story. Moses
is standing at the burning bush barefoot, hiding his face in respect… that same
felon, pagan marrying, ne’er do well who
at the age of 80 is still his father in law’s hired hand…is commanded by a
burning bush to take on the greatest king of the day, Pharaoh, and the bush
says “I will be with you.” And moses says “right.” He used every excuse in the book and finally
pulled out the big gun. “Which god shall I tell them you are God does not give
him a title like Lord or creator. But
God gifts Moses with the very personal name of the most high. …. with the name
that is above every name! The name of God himself. “capital Yod … capital He …
capital Waw … capital He.” What we know as Yahweh.
What in the world does it
mean? The common consensus today is to translate “Yahweh” as “I AM WHO I AM.”
But that does not capture the whole thing. Since we don’t really know what
vowels to use, if we shift the vowels around or use vowels other than “a” or
“e” you can get names that mean: “I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE” -“I SHALL BE WHAT
I AM” –or – “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE”
You can see how all those names make sense right?
Now there is one more step
here. Stay with me now. “I was never ‘no’
good at all that grammar stuff” but experts tell us that YHWH is not a noun
like God or Adonai or Elohim. YHWH is a verb.
Further it is an action verb that wraps back on itself so that God is
both the source of the action and the result of the action. I know… hang in there I’ll get you
there.
If YHWH is an active verb where God is both
the cause and the result of the action, YHWH does not mean just I am who I am…
which sounds kind of lame. It is more
like, “I am the one who causes what I am to be.
Or I am the one who causes being to be.
I am the one who created creating. Or I am the verb “to god;" I
always was, I am, and I always will be “godding.” “
Think about creation, which
is not static but always changing, dying, birthing, morphing, evolving,
eroding, moving… the soil depends on the plant to keep it healthy, as much as
the plant depends on the soil. The trees need our carbon dioxide as much as we
need their oxygen. Everything is moving, everything is interconnected, creation
is about the business of “creationing.”
Similarly, God is like an infinitely opening
flower, opening and opening more, and opening again, and opening always, and
God has caused and is the living
changing beautiful flower from the beginning and forever.
YHWH is the God who invented
and is the energy behind all Godding;
and is the only and most
Godliest God that ever Godded anywhere, anytime, anyhow, and any way that
anyone has ever Godded.
Follow that? I think my
theology professor would be proud of that sentence… Let me say that one more time
YHWH is the God who invented and is the energy
behind all Godding;
and is the only and most
Godliest God that ever Godded anywhere, anytime, anyhow, and any way that
anyone has ever Godded.
So, what do we do with that? I always aim to
have a so what at the end of the sermon? What is there to say? I certainly don’t expect you to remember that
convoluted sentence. There is only one thing to do… AWE… stand in AWE before
our God who is YHWH. Beyond all time, beyond all space, beyond all knowing,
beyond all understanding… stand in awe that we are able to commune with such a
holy God this morning.
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