The Tetragrammaton Is Not a New Video Game

12 Pentecost, Cycle A  Proper 17, August31, 2014

Exodus 3:1-15  Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c

Romans 12:9-21  Matthew 16:21-28

Lectionary Link

Priya: Are you familiar with the Tetragrammaton?

Chike: No, is that the latest video game?  Should I buy a copy today?

Priya: No, it is not a video game.  It is the unpronounceable name of God Almighty?

Arinze: But you just said God Almighty.  So you pronounced the name of God.

Priya: Well, yes I did but God Almighty are English words for God, but the ancient Hebrews did not pronounce a particular written form of the name of God.

Chike: Is that like the rock star Prince, who decided not to have a name any longer and so he became just a symbol?

Arinze: Well, people still had to talk about him; a symbol is only written and so people began to say "The artist formerly known as Prince."

Priya: Well, God's name came to be written in the Hebrew language.    And it is written with four Hebrew consonants.  Tetragrammaton means "four letters" which in English would be YHWH.  And if you added vowel sounds to the consonants, you might say, "Yahweh."  But of course, when we say Yahweh, we offend devout Jews because we are presuming to speak the holy and special name of God which cannot be pronounced.

Chike: But don't we still use the word Jehovah to refer to God in the English language?

Arinze: When they started to try to say Hebrew words and names in English they used to replace the Y sound with the hard J sound.  So, the old Jehovah is the new Yahweh.

Priya: So Yahweh is the pronounced name of the Holy God formerly pronounced as Jehovah.

Chike: How did it come that God's name should not be pronounced?

Arinze:  The story of the calling of Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt began with a fire which all firefighters would like?

Priya:  Why?

Arinze: Because it gave the special effects of a bush being on fire, but the bush did not burn and the fire did not spread.

Chike: Well, that some special effects!  Why do you think God appeared to Moses in such a spectacular way?

Priya: I think it was because God needed to get Moses attention.  Moses had run away from his people in Egypt.  He had gone to the land of Midian and got married and settled down.  He wanted to forget about his failure in his first attempt to lead his people.  But God would not let him forget about his responsibility to lead his people to freedom.

Arinze: Well, Moses was only human.  Sometimes it is very hard to deal with failure.

Chike: Sometimes when we fail, we just want to give up.  We just want to run away.  I think Moses gave up when he had a failure.  He doubted himself.  He did not believe that he had the ability to be the leader of the people of Israel.

Priya: I think that this story about Moses is important for us because we can get very disappointed when we experience failure.  Failure hurts even more when it involves the rejection by the people we are trying to help.

Arinze:  Yes, it was a real blow to the pride of Moses.  He wanted to help lead his people to freedom and in his first effort, he angered both the Egyptians and also his fellow Israelites.

Chike:  Moses was thinking, "What's a use?    I'll just run far away and start a new life somewhere else."  And that's what Moses did.

Priya:  This story tells us someone wonderful about God.

Arinze: What's that?

Priya: It tells us that God does not give up on anyone.  It tells us that we look at failure differently than God does.

Chike: How does God look at failure?

Priya: I think that God looks at failure as simply training and practice to live our lives better.

Arinze: Priya, do you think that you would believe God if you saw a burning bush and heard a voice from God speak to you.

Priya: Well, I don't always hear or listen when my brothers or parents are speaking to me, but I think if I saw these special effects, I would believe.

Chike: Even when Moses saw the burning bush and heard the voice, he asked God to tell him the Divine Name.

Arinze: And God said, "I am that I am or I shall be that I shall be."  The special Holy Name of God may be a form of the verb "to be." And so when God told Moses that the divine name was "I am that I am," it could be that Yahweh is a form of the verb "to be."

Priya: Since God is the greatest and best Being, it means that God always was, is now, and will always be in the future.  So the name of God could mean that God is more everlasting than anyone or anything else.

Chike: God is always going to be around.  Perhaps God was trying to tell Moses to keep trying because even our failure cannot make God go away or stop being God.

Priya: Well, I am glad that God doesn't have to speak through burning bushes and thundering voices.

Arinze: Why not?

Priya:  It seems a little scary and not very personal.

Chike: That is why Jesus Christ is important.

Arinze:  How so?

Chike: Jesus Christ is God in a human person.  Since God came to us in the form of a human person, we can know and feel treated by God in very personal ways.

Priya: Jesus was a teacher for his friends and students.  He needed to remind them about the true nature of the messiah.  He told that education and learning is like dying to an old state of ignorance so that one could learn new things.

Arinze: Taking up one's cross and following Jesus became an important phrase in the early church.  It did not mean that people wanted to be crucified like Jesus.  It meant that they were die to the things which are bad and be born to the things which are good.

Chike: Well I glad that we have learned some lessons today.

Priya: What have we learned?

Arinze: We learned that God does not give up on us when we think that we have failed.

Chike: Yes, failure is simply a teaching method to get better.

Priya:  And if God does not give up on us, we should not give up on ourselves and each other.

Arinze: We also learned that God does many things to get our attention, even dreams and visions and voices.

Chike:  But God has spoken to us best by sending Jesus Christ to this world.

Priya: And Jesus remains with us through the words of the Bible and through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Arinze: The words of Jesus remind us that we never graduate from the school of life where God is always trying to teach us new lessons.  We die to old ignorance to take on new knowledge.  This is the educational process of life.

Chike: Moses learned it.

Priya: The disciples of Jesus finally learned the lessons of God in their lives.

Arinze: Let us remember that God is always trying to get our attention so that we might learn to become better people.

Chike:  Amen to that.

Priya:  And can everyone say "Amen?"

Amen.