Saturday, December 17, 2005

Spiritual Grammar

Here's an entry I did as guest blogger for the NNPCW... Check out Kelsey's writing on www.networknotes.blogspot.com. I'm so proud of my former roommate!

Boker tov, Achiot! Greetings, my sisters!

My name is Amy, I’m in my first year at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Kelsey has asked me to be your guest blogger this fine afternoon. Like you all, I just finished my last final this morning, a grueling Hebrew exam. I tell you, there’s nothing worse for a student than the sensation that your mind has suddenly liquidated and gone pouring out your ears the afternoon before the end of the semester. However, learning Hebrew has been exciting for me; I love being able to read the Bible in its original language (even though it can be a struggle), and doing so has brought a greater depth to my own spirituality.

In fact, a few weeks ago, I was writing a paper for my introductory theology course on the nature of the Trinity. Defining God in five pages is truly a hefty task. I was struggling with our traditional imagery of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which we use to define the different ways we see God working. When we describe God with "person" words, those image we have of God project upon God a concreteness and finiteness that isn’t there. They build false separations between the work of the three parts, and create doubts among ourselves and those we dialogue with about whether or not we worship one God, or three. I was struggling to find a way to express the truth of the Trinity without building up those false divisions that can hinder our own understanding.

I went back and examined the call of Moses in Exodus 3:14. When Moses challenges God to define Godself, in order that Moses can respond to those who challenge the nature of the Divine in Moses’s work, God states "I will be what I will be." The God in the burning bush is a God who is defined by becoming and doing and acting in a variety of ways, rather than in anything tactile and concrete. In this verse, God is a verb rather than a noun.

Now, many of you will check your Bibles and say.... "My version says "I Am Who I Am. Why, here, God seems to be a person, a thing you can touch..." My friends, this is where the wonder and horrors of language of take place. Interpretation has played substantial role about God, and has created some limits. In the Hebrew language, there is no present tense, rather only completed actions and incompleted actions. Completed actions are usually translated as past tense, and incompleted actions as future tense. Grammatically, it is impossible in Hebrew to say "I Am Who I Am" for these very reasons. We began to interpret it that way because when Exodus was translated into Greek for the Septuagint, they translated, and in the same action transformed, the verse to the present tense. The Vulgate, the first major European translation of the Bible, used the Septuagint as its model, and so the language of "I am" has continued throughout our tradition, despite its grammatical impossibility in the original language. Indeed, "I will be what I will be" is a more accurate interpretation of that truth that resonated throughout the desert where Moses was exiled.

When I discovered that God refers to Godself as verb, it was if my entire understanding of what God does had been illuminated. As I delved into this new and sudden revelation, and discussed its implications with my classmates, I realized that this understanding had been on nearly every page of the Old Testament, and I had been unable comprehend it because I was limited by language. Where is it, you ask? Why, it is in the very name of God! As some of you may know, the Hebrews had such respect and reverence for the name of God that they were not allowed to speak it. Therefore, whenever the Holy name is written in Old Testament manuscripts, the scribes replace the vowels for the name of God with the vowels for the different words people substitute for it when speaking about God, such as "Adonai," or "Elohim." The only part that has survived of the divined name are the consonants - YHWH. These consonants manifested the third person singular incompeted form of a verb that we have not defined. Indeed, God’s name essentially says "He will do the God thing." Once again, God is defined as verb, as action, as what God does.

That frees us as well to talk about what God does rather than what God is when we talk about the Trinity. When we refer to God as "Father," we are really saying that God acts like a father rather than actually being a father. And there are three patterns of Gods work that we can see in our lives. However, we need to remember that when we talk about those patterns, they are just that, patterns and actions that God takes. Creating God, Redeeming God, and Sustaining God are all examples of actions take by the one loving and true spirit that we all worship and serve.

Mizpah,

Amy

Sunday, December 11, 2005

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll'd along th' unbroken song
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair, I bow'd my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song,
Of Peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With Peace on earth, good will to men."

By Henry Longfellow


Advent is a time of anticipation. We wait and long for a new birth. We know that hope is on the horizon; that we will soon be transformed in a manner which we cannot currently comprehend. And yet, we are now at our darkest. Without Christmas, December becomes a time of defeat as the bitter cold and the dark remind us of our own pending deaths. Yet it is now that we choose to celebrate with wonder and awe the glorious appearing we experienced once from a humble stranger, and long to see again.
For those of us in the peace community, anxiety and anticipation has been heightened. Two weeks ago, on the first Sunday of Advent, four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were abducted while working in Iraq for that same transformation we await with longing hearts. These four men left their homes in New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and England in order to make real the vision given to us by Jesus Christ of a world of peace and justice.
Yet, their presence was misinterpreted and they were seen as a threat by those who did not understand their real meaning. And so, these four men were taken captive by an Iraqi vigilante group named "Swords of Righteousness." Yesterday was the deadline given by these insurgents; if an agreement was not come to about the release of Iraqi prisoners, the Peacemakers would be executed. News of their fate has not been broadcast; we long to know that these men of true righteousness will be set free by their captors and given the ability to continue their witness to the message of love they have lived out.
The CPT members went to Iraq, knowing the threat to their own lives, in order to live among and minister to the villagers with their presence. They went to bear witness to the brutality and speak out against it. They went to work with all of us, in order to change our structural, social, psychological, emotional, and physical patterns of violence. They went to accompany. Christ also became incarnate in order to accompany us; to liberate us from our own self-destruction and sin; to teach a new and better way to live. As we remember the birth of Christ our Accompanier, we must remember those who are living out his call today. Christ triumphed over the systems that attempted to destroy him without using their own methods; we can only hope that the same success is waiting for those who follow Christ by accompanying the Iraqi people.
Though I am also tempted to hang my head as I await notice about the lives of these followers of Christ, I must remember that this Christmas, like all Christmases, that "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep," despite the bleakness of our situation. Rather, peace on earth can be established through the imitation of Christ, and our hope continues as we wait His and our rebirth this December.