In the Name of Love

God is Love. That's it.

Proper 17a 2014 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Let love be genuine… hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Have you ever faced a task beyond your ability? Have you ever been given a job that made you feel totally inadequate, one you couldn’t get out of no matter how hard you tried? Well, if you have — welcome to the Moses Club. Our Old Testament reading this morning gives us the beginning of the call and ministry of Moses — and you can see him wriggling with those same feelings of inadequacy that we do, feelings that would follow him throughout his long career as shepherd to the wearisome flock of Israel.

But what this scripture also shows us is that God has an answer for those feelings of inadequacy, those moments — or years! — of weakness and incapacity like Moses; those times of getting it just completely wrong like Peter in our Gospel today: the realization that you can’t do it alone, but you also don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes all you have to do is get out of the way and let God be God!

Now, most of us are well aware of how almost nothing we do is truly done by ourselves alone: that we all depend upon each other for virtually every aspect of our lives. As the old saying goes, If you see a turtle on the top of a fence-post, you know he didn’t get there by himself!

It is in part the joy of Christian community, as Saint Paul encourages the Romans: its members support each other with genuine love, with mutual affection, with zeal and ardent spirit serving God in each other, outdoing each other in showing honor to each other. But a big part of the good news is that it isn’t just each other we depend on — ultimately all of us and each of us depend on God, who helps and supports all of us. He does it by his presence with us, his teaching to guide us, his patience to give us time to complete the work, and the nourishment to bear the fruit God desires. And all of this is because of the love of God.

“Let love be genuine,” Saint Paul said to the Romans. We catch a glimpse of the most genuine love there is in today’s reading from the book of Exodus, when Moses encounters God in that bush that burns but is not consumed: the love of God that is an eternal flame that does not consume the inexhaustible being of God.

Love is eternal because it is reborn in every instant. Love — God’s love — is always now. This is especially true when you compare love to the other two theological virtues, as they are called, faith and hope. remember what St Paul said? “...these three, faith hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.” Faith looks to the past, and gives thanks for all that God has done. Hope looks to the future and trusts that God will provide. But love lives in the present, if it lives at all.

After all, it is no good telling someone you loved them once, or that you’ll love them some day — who wants to hear that? And even hearing someone say, “I have always loved you” or “I will always love you” wouldn’t mean anything unless the one saying it loves you now. Love, true love, is eternal because it is alive in every moment. Love is a fire that burns, but does not consume.

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Moses confronted that love that day he was keeping his father-in-law’s sheep, living as a stranger in a strange land. The God of love chose to reveal himself to Moses for one reason: he had heard the cry of his people in Egypt, and would deliver them, because he loved them, because they were his. The eternal love of God became, in that particular time and place, (as it always does in every time and place) the present love of God in action. The God of faith that was past, the faith of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, their faith in God; the God of the hope for the future, that God would visit his people and take them and deliver them out of Egypt; the eternal and everlasting love of God would be revealed on that mountain — as God reveals himself as the God who is love, burning but not consuming: the one who was, and who is, and who is to come — is always Love. As Saint John would affirm many centuries later, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Some theologians have focused on this story of the burning bush, and the Name that God tells Moses to call him by, as a way of emphasizing God as pure Being, He Who Is, or “Being itself.” I would like to suggest that Saint John’s description is more apt — rather than get involved in the debate about the nature of being, simply declare that God is love. And that when we love we are most like God.

When Moses complains to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” God responds, “I will be with you.” In other words, God is assuring Moses that he isn’t going this alone. God will be with him. And as a sign of his presence, God — after a little bit of needling from Moses — tells Moses his name, which is I AM , or in Hebrew Ehyeh.

Now Hebrew, unlike English, doesn’t have tenses, at least not in the way English does. (I hope you’ll pardon this Hebrew grammar lesson, because it is important if we are to understand God’s Name; because it doesn’t translate very easily into English, and I can hardly think of anything more important, given this reading!) Instead of past, present and future, Hebrew verbs have only two forms called perfect and imperfect: the perfect describes an action that is completed and finished. It’s the “been there and done that” of language. The imperfect, on the other hand, describes an action either that was repeated or continuous in the past, or something that is happening now that hasn’t yet finished, or that is going to happen in the future. It might seem odd to think of God referring to himself using the imperfect. After all, we always think of God as perfect! But the difference in language is that perfect is dead — it’s the past, it’s done; it’s finished. What God is saying to Moses is that he is without end — there is always more to God. We can plumb the depths and think we’ve understood God, but we’ve only touched the surface, the outer edges of God’s being. God is without end; never finished.

This imperfect form of the language is what God uses when he says I AM WHO I AM: in Hebrew, Ehyeh asher ehyeh. This not only means “I am who I am,” but, “I have always been what I have always been,” and “I will be what I will be” or “I am now what I have always been and will be.” All of this is summed up in this name: and what a wonderful way to know the name of the eternal that has always been, is now, and ever shall be.

This is God’s Name, and it assures us of the kind of presence we can rely on in our weakness or our inadequacy. Not just someone who “is there for you” but someone who has always been there for you and always will be there — for you, and with you now: whose very name means Eternal Being Present. Truly, our help is in the Name of the Lord: the eternally present helper.

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My brother in Christ Thomas Bushnell made a fine observation about this not too long ago, in relation to what I said about those three virtues of faith, hope, and love. He pointed out that while we are called to have all three — faith, hope and love — there is a reason for love being the greatest, and being an attribute of God’s own Being. We have faith, but God does not need to have faith — God is the object of our faith. We have hope, but God doesn’t need hope; God knows what is to come better than we do! Faith and hope belong to us relate us to God, because we have faith in God and hope for God’s plans for us; but love is the means by which we reflect God’s own being, as mirrors or likenesses of God, made in God’s image; and this responding love joins us to God; for God not only has love, the love we have for God, the genuine love that we have for each other and for God, joins us to God. For God not only has love, but as Saint John says, God is Love; and whoever loves abides in God, and God abides in them.

After all, as St Paul assures us in his Letter to the Corinthians, in that famous passage so often heard at both weddings and funerals (and what better places are there to be reminded of the power of God who is love!): Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love believes all things; it has faith. Love hopes all things — it includes both faith and hope — but love endures because it is embodied in the eternal nature of God, and it is through love that we are joined to one another and to God. That love of God is eternal — it burns forever, and never consumes the source of its flame.

When you feel week, when you feel inadequate, when you feel you’ve been given a task you can’t possibly even begin to undertake, trust in that love, my friends in Christ; the love that God shows to you and through each of you to each other. It will raise you up from being a member of the Moses Club to being an eternal life-long member of the communion of God: in whose name we pray, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.+

Old and New

Good night to 2012... hello to 2013: all with God.

New Year’s Eve • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

There are many ways in which I could greet you this evening. I could, for example, begin with the obvious, “Happy new year,” even though the actual beginning of the new year, the start of New Year’s day at midnight, is still just about a half an hour or so away. Perhaps it would be better if I used the term familiar in the West Indies, and said, “Happy old year’s night.” For we are still in the old year — as I said, still half-an-hour to go.

However, this being a church and all, I could also observe the official feast day and wish you a happy Eve of the Feast of the Holy Name — or to use the term from the old calendar, the Eve of the Feast of the Circumcision; since on the eighth day after his birth every male child of the Jewish people was circumcised and given his name, including Jesus. And even though I’m not very good at math, I can tell it’s been eight days since the 25th of December.

I could also, of course, continue by saying simply, “Merry Christmas,” since Christmas is not just a day but a season 12 days long — why, there is even a song about it; though given the fact that as I said I’m not very good at arithmetic I tend to get lost amongst all those maids a-milking, and Lords a-leaping, even if I can keep track of those five golden rings and the other things you can count on one hand.

But what I’d like to think about in this meditation on this evening, this end of the year, harks back to those first terms I mentioned, Old Year’s Night and New Year’s Day. For this is a night of the old and the new. It is a time for looking back as well as a time for looking forward. Although you don’t see them as often as you used to, there was a long tradition — and I’m sure many of you remember it — of portraying the old year as a wizened old man with a long white beard carrying a scythe — kind of an Old Father Time figure — and portraying the new year as a baby with a banner strategically wrapped around him proclaiming his number — in this case 2013.

So let’s contemplate that old guy for a minute or two — certainly a year such as we have lived through is worth a minute or two of contemplation. What a year this has been! The old man with a scythe has been through a lot — and he’s just about as described by the morose author of Ecclesiastes, who described old age in household terms: the guards of the house trembling, the strong men bent, and the women who grind have ceased working because they are few — and in case you’re haven’t got the imagery, that’s the arms, and the legs and the teeth — and it won’t be long before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken, and the wheel is broken, and the dust returns to the earth as it was.

Bad enough, I suppose, as a portrayal of old age, but I think if we were to portray this past year as an old man, he wouldn’t just be old and bent over and leaning on his scythe; he would likely have broken a couple of limbs, have a concussion — and even more tragically several gunshot wounds.

It almost seems like these last two months have been trying to make up for lost time in terms of disaster and tragedy. That horrific storm, one of the worst ever to hit this region, was followed by a human storm, a rain of bullets striking down over two dozen innocent people, most of them children — a horror as senseless and seemingly as arbitrary as the unleashed forces of nature that brought about that horrible combination of a hurricane and a nor’easter.

However you look at it, this has been one hell of a year. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will be happy to turn over the page on the calendar and say, “Enough.” I want to be encouraged — and I want to encourage you — as I look forward to a new year. And there is cause for encouragement — even after such tragedies, hope is still a reality; even the ironic hope of saying, “Well, it couldn’t get any worse!” But there is hope indeed, real hope, such hope is only really makes sense when things are going bad. For there is that baby.

And I don’t mean the baby dressed with a banner marked 2013. I mean the baby born eight days ago — in the church’s eternal reckoning by its cycling calendar. That baby is new — and he makes all things new. He is the beginning and the end, he is the Alpha and the Omega, or as we would say, he is A to Z. Even though a child, he compasses it all, for he was before it all, and came to us in these latter days as a light shining into our darkness, coming into our darkness from the realm of light in which there is no shadow or darkness at all, for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb. That Lamb, the Lamb of God — is Christ — he has come to us to bring us his own light, by which we all have the opportunity to walk.

Some no doubt will refuse to walk by that light in the coming year just as some refused to walk by that light in the year that is drawing to a close. People cannot be made to see when they refuse to see; and as the old saying goes, “There is none so blind as them that won’t see.” Many people will care for and nurture their unbelieving hearts as they turn away from the living God, hardened by the deceitfulness of sin that they think makes their life easier but in the end makes it harder in every sense of the word.

But they have an opportunity, just as we have the opportunity — as they do if they would only choose it — to open our eyes to his light and our ears to his voice, not to harden our hearts as in the day of rebellion, but to soften them — with our tears if need be, but soften them nonetheless and by any means necessary — and so become partners with Christ, cooperating with him in the gracious work of salvation, beginning with ourselves. This is work with which we are charged as God’s agents here on earth — his colleagues, his coworkers. We are called and commissioned to help spread the word, to spread the light, to shed the light, to let people know that however hard the past year has been, there is hope for those who believe.

We are, in short, ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. And we entreat all who hear on behalf of Christ to be reconciled with God. He came to us at our darkest hour — and surely this past year has been dark enough to qualify — as he always comes in the darkness before the dawn. He came into this sinful world so that we might become his righteousness. It is in his strength that we work, together with him, urging ourselves as well as others — for surely we all need encouragement when the going gets tough — but urging ourselves and others to accept the gracious gift of God that is presented to us each and every time we ask. The grace of God is the gift that keeps on giving — an inexhaustible fountain where the golden bowl is never broken, the pitcher is never cracked and the dust itself is breathed upon and given new life.

And when does this happen? Not just at the turning of the year, my friends. Not just at some zero hour fixed by the earthly calendar, whether of the sacred or secular. No, my friends, grace comes in every instant from God for whom it is always Now. When is the day of salvation? Not just on Christmas — even all 12 days of it — but every day is the day of salvation; every time is the acceptable time. Brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, this is the acceptable time —
— the time to accept the grace of God that is given anew in every single instant.

We need these reminders — as God comes to us in these moments of prayer at the end of a terrible year; when God comes to be with us, to wipe the tears from our eyes and to whisper his promise that death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more; for these past things are over and done with.

Will there be more sorrows to come in the new year? Yes, I’m sorry to say there will. As long as we are in this mortal life we face the reality of mortal pain. We will grow older, fall ill, and come to an end of this mortal life one day or another.

But we will not be alone. In all these sorrows, as well as in all our joys, one will be with us holding us by the hand so long as our hands are open to receive his touch. Even out of the depths of sorrow the Psalmist cried out, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope — my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”

Beloved, morning is coming. And what is more, the Lord is already here — he has never left us. For though we celebrate in our human way these annual cycles as if God came and went — God the constant, the ever-present Savior, does not come or go — God has never abandoned us and never will. There is no place in time or space, in height or depth, in old or new, where God is not. His light is there if we open our eyes, his voice is speaking if we shush and still our souls, making them as quiet as a child upon its mother’s breast, and listen. And then all we need do is reach out and take his hand.+

Unspeakable Name

God has done us the singular honor of asking us to call him by Name... a sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus

SJF • Holy Name 2012 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: speak to Aaron and his sons saying, Thus shall you bless the Israelites... So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.

One of the most striking features of the Jewish faith is that although the name of God is written throughout the Hebrew Scriptures — what we Christians call the Old Testament — no one is supposed to say that name aloud. In fact no one is supposed to say that name at all — except the high priest on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and even then only secretly and softly and quietly when he goes into the Holy of Holies at the heart of the Temple. And since the Temple was destroyed in the first century by the Romans, the name goes unspoken.

So holy is this name, spelled in four letters, Yod, He, Vav, He — or as we would say, Y H W H — that instead of pronouncing it aloud, every time it appears in the text of the Scripture, the pious Jewish person follows the instructions printed out in the margin of the page, where it says, “Read Adonai” — and instead of saying the unspeakable Name as written will say “Adonai,” which means “the Lord.”

You have no doubt noticed and perhaps wondered about the fact that in English Bibles and prayerbooks you will often find the word “LORD” printed in all capital letters, or sometimes “GOD” printed the same way — and this indicates that the Hebrew original at that point in the Hebrew text has the four letters of the unspeakable name.

So holy is this name, that even the paper it is written or printed on becomes holy — which is why the hand-written Torah scrolls, and even mass-produced printed Hebrew Bibles, are never just thrown away. When they become too damaged or worn for further use they are reverently placed into a kind of cemetery for Bibles. And if there is need to write down a Hebrew text, say of a Psalm for a summer camp worship service, something temporary: if there is a chance that the paper might simply be thrown away rather than being preserved, instead of writing the full four letters of the unspeakable name they will sometimes write instead two Yods, what we would call two Y’s, which doesn’t mean anything in Hebrew and which to us looks like a large quotation mark. The Name is so holy that whenever that double-Y appears, instead of saying it the person will say — not the Name itself, but that substitute, “Adonai.”

Some Orthodox Jews will not even write down the English word “God” for the same reason, but instead will write G-hyphen-d, or G_underscore_d, so scrupulous are they to avoid even coming close to taking God’s name in vain. And in conversation or even in a classroom teaching about God many observant Orthodox Jews will not even use “Adonai,” — the Lord — as a substitute, as it has taken on some of the holiness that belongs to the unspeakable Name itself; rather they will refer to “Ha Shem” — which simply means “the Name.” So, for instance, if you ask such an Orthodox couple if they are traveling to Jerusalem next year, they might say, “If Ha Shem wills it.” “If ‘The Name’ wills it.”

Of course the people of Israel had other ways to communicate the unspeakable Name, in addition to using such written or spoken substitutes. We see one of them in the reading from the Book of Numbers this morning, where the priests of the family of Aaron are given the authority to bless the people with the unspeakable Name by ritual means. They would hold up their hands like this — which looks a like two copies of the Hebrew letter Shin, the first letter of Shaddai (meaning Almighty) and Shekinah (meaning presence of God). The priests, while holding their hands like this, would pronounce a four part blessing of protection, light, grace and peace, as the people reverently bowed their heads — not even looking at the priests’ hands as they were raised above them.

This blessing is still given in synagogues to this day, and you may know that actor Leonard Nimoy borrowed this sacred hand-gesture when he played Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, recalling it from a childhood peek at the blessing as it was bestowed in his parent’s congregation in the synagogue. Thus the high and holy blessing to live long and prosper has become prosaic — or even Vulcan.

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Which ironically brings us back to earth. It is probably a bit hard for us to relate to all of this awe and holiness surrounding God’s name since we use God’s name all the time, either taken in vain, or even in causal conversation, is so common we scarcely notice it. We will casually say, “God bless you” to a sneezing stranger, who for all we know could be a Buddhist or an atheist. Perhaps we may not even know that the word “Goodbye” is just a short form of “God be with ye.” So we modern Christians speak this Name of ‘God’ all the time.

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And perhaps after all it is right that we should. One of the primary differences between Judaism and Christianity is precisely the belief that God has come to us to be with us as one of us — that God who created the universe became a human child — born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children, to become heirs in Christ. He grew to manhood and then suffered and died for our sake and for our salvation. God moved from being our Creator to being our Brother. And because Jesus is our brother we can join him in calling out to God as our Abba, our Father in heaven, as the Spirit inspires us and as Jesus taught us to do. Who would not call their own loving Father by name? And who has more right to do so than a child of that same Father — even if adopted?

In coming to us as one of us, the Son of God took on a new name, Jesus — the name which is above all other names, at which every knee should bend upon the earth and under the earth, and by which every tongue should confess that he is Lord — Adonai.

It is a holy name, a sacred name, and we should not profane it or speak it vainly. Jesus our brother is also our Lord and our God, as Doubting Thomas would eventually confess. It is through Jesus we earn the high and holy right to call God ‘Father,’ a privilege not to be taken lightly.

Even our earthly customs of the names we call each other often show more respect than some people do for God. But when a justly famed or important person, one you are accustomed to calling Mister this or Doctor that, or even by a formal “Sir” or “Ma’am” instead of speaking their name aloud — when a person like that invites you to call them by their name, we may be at first a little shy to do so. When an archbishop says to you, “Call me Rowan,” or a president says, “Please call me Barak,” you are invited to do something few would presume to do on their own initiative.

In the Incarnation, God has done just this. He has said to us, “Call me Father,” “Call me Brother.” The one whose name remained unspoken and too sacred to pronounce, only flashed in hand-signals or whispered in the Temple’s Most Holy Place, at the last and in the fullness of time, has come to us and said, “Call me Jesus.” And it is in that name we pray.+