Now I know that there are a few people who are here this morning who are biblical scholars. At least they studied at a theological college or a seminary and have discovered all sorts of intriguing things related to the Bible, liturgy, church history, pastoral care, preaching and a few other things.
But I am also aware that when a bunch of clergy or even biblical scholars or some might say church geeks get together they can get talking about some things that are so obscure that other folks in the room might have no idea what they are even talking about. Or worse they might not care one bit about what the few might want to debate and discuss for hours on end. Now I don’t want to categorize all of you here but I will let you decide whether you are in the biblical scholar debate club or the I am not quite so worried about tiny, minute details in some obscure biblical passage club. It’s a long name but you know who you are.
Assuming that most are in the latter, I am going to step out on a limb here and describe something quite beautiful if a little obscure in the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible) passage this morning. Now remembering that many of you might be in that long named club, I will not assume too much knowledge here. So the reading was from the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, if you did not know that. We heard a passage from the twelfth chapter of Genesis this morning.
Now God and Abram, he was not called Abraham at this point, that comes later… now God and Abram are having a conversation, and it is a rather one-sided conversation. God says to Abram: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” Seemed like a pretty good deal to Abram and so he set off. And God also lived up to God’s end of the bargain, for Abram was blessed and revealed this in so many ways in his life. He knew God’s blessing in his life and he also knew that he could bless others by his own actions. The same is true for us… but I am getting ahead of myself.
A little later in the book of Genesis, chapter 17 to be exact, God has another conversation with Abram and re-iterates this agreement, this covenant, asking Abram to walk before God and God would walk with him. And as a sign of this Abram’s name would be changed from Abram to, you guessed it, Abraham. Now usually the name Abram is simply translated from being exalted ancestor, to Abraham, meaning ancestor of a multitude. While that is nice, it really doesn’t say that much. From being a recognized and respected person, he became known as one who had many relatives. Impressive but not a lot to write home about.
But in the Hebrew the name Abram is made up of four Hebrew letters. The name Abraham is made up of five Hebrew letters, the same ones as Abram but simply one more letter added. The letter added is the letter “hei.” The letter hei is recognized as one of the letters of God’s name, a name that in Jewish tradition is never spoken out loud, it is too holy to utter, our mouths do not do it justice, our words do not do it justice, our minds cannot contain the fullness and completeness of God and so God’s name should not be spoken. But God inserted a part of God’s name into Abram’s name making him Abraham. God
embedded a piece of the divine presence into Abraham and all of his descendants. God also changed Abraham’s wife’s name, Sarai to Sarah to reflect her connection to this divine relationship, this divine connection, this divine link to their children and all descendants. God inserted God’s name, God’s presence, holiness, Spirit, the divine into all people. Into all people… including us, even us gathered here. The divine name dwells in us. The Hebrew letter hei is imbedded into our soul.
Jesus was walking along, the gospel reading tells us in such a bland introduction to a holy encounter. Jesus is walking along just as on any other day, I suppose, and he meets Matthew the tax collector. An outcast, a heathen, a thief, a traitor, a lover of money, a rejector of the people of faith. He meets Matthew and simply says follow me and thieving Matthew packs up all his loose change and the bigger bills and heads off with this wandering rabbi. I have often wondered why he would have done this. Matthew had everything he could possibly need: money, power, control, people feared him, he held a position in certain society. Things were good, even if many folks despised him. But he hears a simple invitation to follow and I wonder what happened to him for he packed his bags and set off, giving up all that for which he had worked his entire life. I wonder why. Would you have done that?
I wonder now if that holy letter of God, that holy name of God, that holy presence of God, deeply embedded in him, in his soul, in his DNA, in his truest self. I wonder if that holy letter suddenly was noticed by him on that day and he could no longer suppress it. He needed to know more about God’s connection with his life, not only as a letter in his name but as a source of all meaning and purpose and calling.
In the same passage a leader of the synagogue pleads for Jesus to come and lay a hand on his daughter who has just died. On the way to the home a woman touches the fringe of his cloak. What did these people see in Jesus, that in their most desperate time of need they came to him to seek help? Again, was it the recognition of the holy in and amidst all of the chaos of life? Jesus revealed the love of God into all that was trying to shatter their hope in this world. He pointed out the holy, the divine, the grace and peace of God, the holy walking with them, the connection of God to their living and their lives, the holy name embedded in them. And I wonder if the same is true for us.
This morning David, Chris, Christopher, Milliom and Amelia are being confirmed. And maybe they are doing this simply for tradition and due process… but I wonder if they too are discovering the divine name in their own name, the divine hope in their own thinking, the divine blessing in all of the complications of this life. The world is in a strange place at the moment… I wonder if this action is about seeking true purpose and response to holiness that gets pushed down far too often. I wonder if they are seeking what all of us are seeking, a connection to what is at the heart of life, the heartbeat of God. For it is in our name and our relationship with the one who has called us from before we were born.
And in confirmation this is what we are confirming. The rest of us are not here to simply observe this, but recognize that we too encounter this holy presence, this holy name, this holy part of us each and every day.
When we receive the bread and wine of the eucharist this is what we are receiving. When we receive a blessing, this is what we are receiving, the same thing Abram received when he changed his name to Abraham, the same as Sarai changing her name to Sarah… that indeed life is about a holy encounter with God who calls us by name, a holy name with
the holiness embedded into it, and ours to discover as we walk in this world. Biblical scholar or not.