God's Name

I grew up with a wonderful great-aunt, who was called Ezal. Ezal wasn’t her actual name, it was the best my uncle could manage as a small boy, and the new name stuck. Everyone called her Ezal: my parents, me, her sister, my cousins - even the vicar. When I visited her in hospital as she was dying, with the name “Ezal” written on the board above her bed, she confided in me that she wished that someone would call her by her proper name before she died. Her name was Ethel Wash.
When God was preparing to rescue the Israelite people from Egypt, he announced a name for himself, a name by which he wished all generations to address him, for all time. It’s a fairly clear instruction. Some years later, in his 10 key instructions to the newly rescued Israelites, instruction number three was: “Don’t mistreat my name”. God’s name was important; he didn’t want his people to lose it’s value.
Tragically, God’s carefully chosen name has indeed been mistreated, and for many generations - ourselves included. We mistreat it by completely failing to use it.
When Moses asked God his name, God replied, “I am what I am. That is my name. Say to the Israelites, ‘I am’ has sent you.” Because the meaning is the key part of a Jewish name rather than the word itself, if God called himself “I am”, the people were to call him, “He is”. And that is the name that is used throughout the Old Testament - 6823 times in all. When David sung his famous 23rd Psalm, he sang, “He is, is my shepherd…”
However, after calling God by name for a thousand years, the Jewish people stopped using it, and started calling God other things instead. By the time Jesus was alive, they had the name in writing, but they never spoke it, so no-one knew how it was pronounced. Then, when the Old Testament was translated into other languages, the name was lost altogether.
In the English language tradition, we have replaced God’s name, 'He Is’, with a totally different phrase - the LORD. It's a mistake we inherited from the Romans. Some churches have reverted to the four letters of the name in Hebrew - YHWH, which no-one knows how to translate. Some have adopted the anglicised version - Jehovah. But none of these are God’s name. God’s name exists in careful translation, and it means: “He Is”.
It is our loss. We have lost the key emphasis that God himself chose to give us, that he is not above us, or greater than us, but that he simply IS, for all time and for all people. Whoever we are, wherever we are, God is right there with us.

God's New Brand - Sunday 17th December 2017

Names are always important. Whether it’s parents choosing a name for their child or the launch of a new business, a name says something. The internet age has brought us a new generation of sassy and witty company names, designed to express the ethos of the brand, to be easily remembered and to appear at the top of the search engine lists. Back in New Testament times, names were no less important.
In ancient Jewish culture many people were given names that were a complete sentence in themselves, in much the same way that some on-line businesses do today.
In English, the name ‘Jesus’ doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a word. But if you scroll back through the Latin (Iesus) and the Greek (Iesous), you get to the name that Mary and Joseph actually called their son: Yeshuah. They didn’t choose the name themselves; it was picked by God, who gave specific instructions through Archangel Gabriel. “You shall call him Yeshuah”.
To an English speaker, the name Yeshuah has no more meaning than the name Jesus, but Mary and Joseph weren’t English speakers. To them the archangel’s instruction was, “You shall call him ‘God Rescues’". Just like many companies today, God chose a name that went straight to the point.
Imagine the scene: on a hot, sunny day in ancient Nazareth - countless times - Mary must have stepped out of her kitchen and shouted for all the village to hear, “God Rescues, your supper’s ready!” Years later - also countless times - Mary’s son would have done the ancient equivalent of offering an introductory handshake while saying, “I’m God Rescues.”
God’s choice of name doesn't specify what he rescues us from. Like much of Jesus’ teaching, that is left open ended. It is enough for his name to assure us that God is on our side, and cares for us, and doesn’t want to leave us in the mess or a muddle of our lives.
God chose a powerful brand name. It's rather a shame that we have lost its impact through the meandering journey between languages.

Call me 'I Am' - Sunday 2nd April 2017

Names are important. Different people address us differently, depending on their relationship to us. We are familiar with the uncomfortable feeling it leaves when someone addresses us inappropriately. 

In English Bibles, throughout the Old Testament, God is referred to as ‘The LORD’. In the New Testament, the same title is attached to Jesus. But ‘Lord’ is not a title that either God or Jesus encouraged or accepted. The title ‘Lord’ is an impostor, brought into our Bible by careless translation. The people who wrote the Bible were expressing something quite different. 

At the burning bush, Moses asked God his name, and God replied, ‘I am who I am.’ Then God said, ‘Say to the Israelites, “I Am has sent me to you.”’ And in the next verse God adds, 'This is my name for ever, and this my title for all generations.’ In accordance with that instruction, throughout the Hebrew scriptures, God is referred to as ‘Yahweh’ (I Am). But in almost every English translation, by the very next sentence, God’s chosen name, ‘I Am’, is replaced with ‘The LORD’. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s name has been expunged by the translators and replaced with a term from the medieval feudal system, and most English speaking Christians are not even aware of this. 

The same blight affects our New Testaments. The Greek word ‘Kurios’ which was used to address Jesus, is a general term of respectful address for any man - just as English uses ‘Mister’ before a name, or ‘Sir’ in place of it. The same word is still used in Greece today, exactly as we use 'Mister' and ‘Sir’ in English. However in all English translations, instead of translating the word ‘Kurios’ to ‘Mister’ or ’Sir' it is replaced by the title, ‘Lord'. 

Over centuries of Christian tradition, and through decades of our own personal experience, repeatedly addressing God and Jesus as ‘Lord’ has had a profound effect on our faith and our culture. Lordship is about superiority, ownership and control. So when we address God as ‘Lord’ we express ourselves as being inferior, owned and controlled. But this is not how God wishes to relate to us. God’s name, I Am, simply expresses his presence among us as our companion and our guide. And in Jesus God chose to live among us as our brother and our friend. 

Why do we find this so hard to accept? Mostly, I believe, it is simply an engrained habit. People defend the practice by saying that the title, ‘Lord’, expresses our respect for God and Jesus. However, surely it would be more respectful to use the term of address that God himself requested. And God said, ‘Call me I Am'