The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
June 6, 2004

The Name of our Vulnerable God
Psalm 29 

Note: This sermon was illustrated with slides on PowerPoint. Some of those slides are included in this online version.

This week, I played Moses each day in our Kids in the Kingdom Week especially during Bible story time. With a rough robe, bushy grey beard, and sandals, I helped enact the story of one of the heroes of the Old Testament. On Tuesday, as Craig Wells’ voice boomed out somewhat mysteriously from the speakers calling “Moses, Moses,” I answered “Here am I.” Then when ordered to do so by our own stand in for the voice of God, I took off my sandals, for the place where I was standing is Holy ground. 

It’s been a week for breaking down difficult concepts into bight-sized pieces. So even though it is Trinity Sunday—the only Sunday of the church year devoted to a doctrine—I am going to risk disappointing you all and preach on something a bit simpler. I want, instead, to concentrate on just one aspect of the divine by looking at the typesetting in the bulletin. Turn with me to the Old Testament reading for this morning, from Isaiah.  

In the sixth line down, the word Lord is written differently from the others words in that line. Four lines further down, it happens again. Then when you turn the page and look at Psalm 29, it is as if some strange sort of reverse censorship in which a word is highlighted so that you notice it more. 

The word is Lord and it often appears in our worship bulletins in lower case capital letters. This use of lowercase capital letters is not something I made up, the same convention is used in most English Bibles, from the venerable King James to the New Revised Standard, New International Version and the upstart New Living Translation. It’s not that Lord is always in small capitals, just some of the time. 

The reason is at its heart a very Jewish answer. When I took Introduction to Judaism in seminary, the Rabbi who taught the course followed the Jewish practice of writing “G-d” instead of “God.” This idea of not completing the word God has deep roots in the Jewish faith. 

As early as 300 b.c., Jews stopped reading the name of God when it was written in scripture. Instead of saying God’s name, the Jews would say the word Adonai, which means “Lord.” God’s name is too powerful, too important, to just go tossing around in casual conversation, or even in worship, so the Jews thought of the name of God and just said “Adonai” aloud instead.

The name itself goes back to that scene I mentioned from our Vacation Bible School when Moses took off his sandals before the bush that burned but was not consumed by the flames. Moses dared to ask God what he should say if the Hebrews asked the name of the God who sent him. The way to refer to God up to that point had been “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God was known by God’s actions within the lives of the founding fathers of Judaism and their families. 

But when Moses asked, God gave the somewhat criptic reply. In Hebrew the answer was something like YahWeh. In English, the answer can be translated, “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.”  

These are not just meaningless words, as if to say to Moses, “I know and you don’t and I ain’t telling.” I am who I am is a way of saying that God is beyond our fully knowing. God will still be known through God’s actions, but not only through the past actions in the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am who I am. The way I reveal myself to you is no different from who I am.  

In Hebrew, the name of God is written yod heh vav heh. YHVW. It is something like YahVeh, or possibly YahWeh. The present tense of the verb to be. I am who I am. 

One side point worth knowing. By the year 1000, Jews added vowels to the consonant only Old Testament. When they wrote the vowels for the name of God, they did not put down the vowels for the word YahWeh, as that would encourage someone to read the word. Instead, they added the vowels for the word Adonai, as a reminder not to say God’s name.  

By the 1500s, the Hebrew YHVH had found its way to Europe where it was written for the Germans as JHWH as J is pronounced as a Y in German and W as a V. When the vowels for Adonai were, incorrectly, added to the letters JHVH, it created the word Jehovah. This word manufactured by a lack of linguistic knowledge in the Renaissance is sometimes used as the name of God, but it is a quite incorrect rendering of God’s name. 

About now you are thinking that Frank has run off down some rabbit trail and is never going to bring this thing home. You may be right, but I’m turning back around now and if you can hang on to just a bit of this linguistic rambling, I think we’ll find that this all has some profound implications for how we live our lives. 

The reason has to do with the idea of a name in and of itself. In the Ancient Near East, of which Israel was one part, a name held power. In Genesis, God giving Adam the task of naming the animals is a powerful symbol of human dominance over the beasts, which God followed by saying humans are to be stewards, caretakers over God’s creation. The name held meaning. The name of something was seen as containing the essence of the person, place or thing being named.  

When Moses was given a name by which to call God, it was a great gift. God was conveying God’s own essence to Moses. As oblique and mystifying as the answer may have been, it was as close as God could come to containing things divine in a human word. The Jews were given the very name of God and they treated that honor with reverence. We find the name YahWeh written on the Moabite Stone, an archeological find dating to 850 b.c., but by 300 b.c they would no longer say the name of God. And by contemporary times, Jews do not even write God, but G hyphen d. God made God’s very self vulnerable to the Hebrews in giving a divine name. Like anyone who gives a gift of love, God’s gift could have been rejected or not valued. 

If that sounds like a bunch of Jewish stuff unrelated to you and me, remember that every Christian Bible follows the practice of avoiding the name of God. The closest thing to an exception that I know is that the heretical Jehovah’s Witnesses, have the name Jehovah in their translation instead of the lowercase capital Lord. 

In Christian theology, much is made of the name of Jesus. We are told that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. Just at the name alone, not even at the presence of Jesus. Jesus name was, of course, both common and significant. The name Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshua. Yeshua was and remains a common enough name, the same name we anglicize as Joshua. Yeshua was the name of the man who lead the Hebrews into the Promised Land after the death of Moses. Yeshua, it means Yah Saves. Yah as in YahWeh. God saves. Not just any God, but the personal God of the Jews. 

This is where it starts to come together. For one of the earliest Christian affirmations of faith was Jesus is Lord. That would not have been Jesus is Lord in lowercase letters as in yet another person lording over us. It was lowercase capital Lord, meaning Jesus is YahWeh. Jesus is the same as the God who has been making the divine life known to us throughout our history. The story of Jesus life, ministry, death and resurrection is an important part, the critical part, of God’s salvation history. 

Recognizing that Yeshua is Adonai, Jesus is Lord connects Jesus to the gift of the name to Moses. God was vulnerable to humans in giving the name I am who I am. But that was nothing compared to the vulnerability of God in the Incarnation, in becoming human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. God could have become human, lived among us and loved us and we could have said, “Who cares.” Certainly some people did. In fact, on Good Friday, it looked like the whole Roman world, Israel included, was against Jesus. It looked like no one cared. 

God was willing to be so vulnerable that it could have all failed. Yet, we know that Good Friday was not the final answer. And on that first Easter Sunday we could see that God never gave up on the divine love for creation. God could have wiped us all out after Jesus’ death on the cross. Instead, God kept on loving us, God kept on being vulnerable. 

The thing to remember when you see that lower case capital word Lord is that that is the translator showing respect for God being willing to be named. God became vulnerable to us in loving while knowing that we might not love back and those little capital letters are one sign of that love being returned to God. 

God has given you a great gift in making God’s own self known to you. God is who God is and God wants to open you up to the love that was in God before creation, the love that was in God as Jesus’ died on the cross, the love that was in God on Easter Sunday. 

God loves you. God loves you so much that God is a bit vulnerable at times. You may reject that love and go on as if all that God has done and is doing does not matter. Or you can turn to the God who made us, the God who loves us, the God who gave to us from the divine essence. You can turn to this God and return the love that has been given you. For Jesus is Lord. 

Amen.