The Third Sermon in a series on Humilty
offered by Toby Jones at FPC Boyne City 9/25/11
(Based on Genesis 2:19-20 Exodus 3:13-14, & John 20:11-18)
For the last couple weeks, we’ve been on a journey aimed at trying to recapture the lost virtue of humility. Last week I re-introduced the ancient spiritual discipline of silence as one step on our journey. Today I want to take another step toward Christ and Christ-like humility, and it’s a step that is in an unusual direction. It’s a step backwards, WAY back, in fact. And that’s why two of our readings were all the way back in Genesis and Exodus, the first two books in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.
In the Genesis passage, we read the portion of the creation story where Adam and Eve get to name the other creatures. Kind of a cool moment, where God gives the humans naming rights. They got to give names to various plants, animals, and other living things. But there was one thing they were NOT allowed to name. Did anyone catch what THAT was?
That’s where the Exodus passage comes in. Moses has this incredible experience with a burning bush, where, not only does the bush that’s on fire NOT burn up, but that flaming bush talks to Moses. And toward the end of that little epiphany, Moses asks, “Who are you? What should I call you? When I go to Pharaoh and do what you ask, Who do I say sent me? (And you know what Moses is looking for here, right? He wants a name for You-Know-Who.)
What does the Creator of all that is say in response to Moses’ question? How did the Divine One answer? He said, “Yah-weh.” And those of us who know our Hebrew know that Yahweh is NOT a name. Let me say that again – Yahweh is NOT a name. “ It is a phrase, a statement, perhaps even a warning. Yes, a warning. Yahweh means “I am who I am.” I will be who I will be.” In other words, “whatever you do, Moses, DON’T try and name me…I am who I am…I will be who I will be…No name will EVER define, capture, or adequately express who I am.”
Oh, how I wish we had paid attention to this very clear warning straight from the You-Know-Who’s mouth. If we had, I believe we would be a lot more humble than we are today. Let me try to explain. You see, whenever we name something, whenever we come up with a word to label something, we limit whatever it is that we’re naming. Think about it! We came up with the name “Dog” for, well dogs. How many of you have had and loved a dog? And then the dog dies or you have to put him down, as I had to do my 14 year old yellow lab/golden retriever this past week, and you sob uncontrollably and some insensitive friend says, “c’mon Toby. It’s just a dog! It’s not like it’s a person.” And I take offense because my dog IS a lot like a person. In some ways better and more human than many of the humans I know! That word “dog” doesn’t begin to cut it! Or what happens in the political sphere, when we don’t like a certain politician’s views? We say, “He’s a Socialist!” Or “she’s a right wing conservative!” We use these terms, these names to define – NARROWLY define – and in so doing we shrink the person into something much less, much less rich, much less complex, much less authentic than he or she is.
This is why Yahweh didn’t want Moses or anybody else naming him. If you have any friends who are Jews, you may have noticed that when they are writing, they will never write the word G-O-D. Instead they write G-_-D. This wonderful and humble practice goes back to Exodus 3. It’s one of my favorite dimensions of Judaism. Not uttering or writing the name of Yahweh helps remind us that God is completely beyond our language, completely beyond our minds, completely beyond!
Over time, we have shrunken God. And the more we shrink God, the less we appreciate God’s mystery, the more we elevate ourselves. There’s a really interesting moment in our New Testament reading from John, in the Easter narrative, that I think we tend to miss in all our trumpet filled resurrection celebrations. It may seem like a small, insignificant detail in verse 17 of John 20. It’s when Mary sees the risen Jesus for the first time and moves toward him, and Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me, Mary…Do not hold on to me.”
It’s a curious thing for Jesus to say, don’t you think? I mean, who could blame Mary for reaching out to the risen Jesus, wanting to give him a huge hug? Mary’s actions are totally understandable, especially when we remember that Mary was the one who stayed with Jesus through the entire crucifixion process, until he breathed his last. Mary was there when they took the dead Jesus off the cross, and she prepared him for burial. No wonder Mary wanted to touch Jesus at this amazing moment. Perhaps she thought she was seeing was a ghost or some sort of apparition. Or maybe, having once “lost” her master, her teacher, her friend, her messiah, Mary wasn’t about to let Jesus out of her sight and grasp again. But whatever her reasoning, we can’t blame Mary for wanting to touch and hold on to the risen Christ. It’s Jesus’ response to Mary that’s a little hard to sort out. Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me,” “Do not hold on to me.” Why wouldn’t Jesus want to be held on to?
It may help if we think about this passage metaphorically. We humans seem to always want to hold onto Jesus, to gain control of him, to make him “ours” somehow. The Pharisees and scribes wanted to “take hold” of Jesus. They wanted him to comply with their expectations of what a rabbi, a holy man of God should be. They didn’t want a messiah who fraternized with sinners and tax collectors. They couldn’t have that, any more than they could have a messiah who touched lepers and unclean women. “Come back over here, Jesus, where we can hold onto you and keep you in line, conform you to OUR idea of a holy man of God.” But Jesus refused to be held by the Pharisees.
Peter also wanted to hold on to Jesus in a different way. He loved all of Jesus’ miracles – the healings, the feedings. Peter’s problem came when Jesus started to talk about having to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. Peter yelled, “Never, Lord! You shall never be handed over and crucified! Not you!” Peter wanted to hold onto his notion of a messiah, one who was always victorious and mighty, not some weak, silent lamb led to the slaughter. Peter wanted to hold on to a victorious, warrior Jesus, one who would stay on top. But Jesus refused to be held by Peter and Peter’s notion of what a messiah should be.
Or what about in Luke’s account of the resurrection, several of the disciples leave Jerusalem on foot, taking the road to Emmaeus. While on that road a stranger comes along side of them and asks them about what has taken place with Jesus back in Jerusalem. As it turns out this “stranger” is actually the risen Christ, but the disciples don’t recognize him. And do you remember what happens once the disciples realized that the man they were walking and talking with actually was the risen Jesus? He disappears! He vanishes! He refused to be held.
And on Easter morn each year, part of what we’re celebrating is that even death couldn’t hold onto Jesus. Even that stone cold, tight locked, enormous tomb, in the end, could not hold or contain Jesus.
Think of all the people in the Bible who tried, at some point, to grab hold of Jesus, to cling to him, to define him, to make him their own, to pigeon-hole him and limit him and keep him in one place. Satan couldn’t do it in the wilderness; the mother of James and John couldn’t do it when she asked Jesus to see to it that her two sons got to sit on each side of Jesus in paradise; Pilate couldn’t do it when he questioned Jesus about who he was; the Jewish leaders couldn’t hold on to Jesus, even when they had him imprisoned in chains and later nailed to a cross.
People are still trying to contain Jesus today. Faithful men and women are still trying to pin Jesus down, confine God and ways of thinking about God. Do you know that in our own denomination right now there are people fighting about the doctrine of the trinity? There are many folks in our denomination for whom understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit doesn’t work. It’s too limiting, too gender specific. It reduces God instead of magnifies Him. So these folks have wrestled to come up with other words to express God’s multi-faceted nature. And some other folks in our denomination are saying, “You can’t do that! You can’t change the way we’ve always talked about God. God IS Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and if you try to say that in some other way, you’re going to have to leave our denomination.” We’re fighting about words and doctrines that we humans made up in the first place to try and express something that’s beyond words.
Jesus is more liquid than solid. He’s like the water I poured into the children’s hands earlier this morning. Jesus gets us wet, but we can’t contain or hold onto his living water. The living water of Jesus keeps flowing through us, squeezing out of the cracks and crevices of our lives, so that others can taste and feel and see his living water too.
It is this deep truth of our wanting to contain Jesus and Jesus’ refusal to be contained that has led me to be very careful and very suspicious of doctrines and systematized, institutionalized beliefs. We Christians have a long history of trying to hold onto Jesus by constructing doctrines and then casting them in stone as a way of saying, “This is how we will understand and talk about Jesus forever and ever. Amen.” With both his actions and his words, Jesus was always saying, “Do not hold onto me!” Why? Because Jesus doesn’t want to be doctrinalized or institutionalized or put in some theological box. Even our best, most clever doctrines can only give us a tiny glimpse of God. They never have been and they never will be entirely accurate or True. Every doctrine or statement or way of talking about Jesus that we’ve ever come up with is a bit misleading, incomplete, and seen through that foggy mirror Paul spoke of in 1st Corinthians 13.
I’ve wrestled long and hard with Jesus’ refusal to let us hold onto him. I’ve come to understand that Jesus is more like water than anything else – nourishing, cleansing, refreshing, but always flowing, always seeping out between cracks, always on the move. And because of that, because of the liquid, constantly flowing nature of Jesus, our theology has GOT to become more humble. Our words and ways of thinking about and talking about God and Jesus have got to become more humble, because trying to name, define, or explain God is like trying to hold water when it is poured into our hands.
God showed his infinite wisdom when He answered Moses’ “who are you?” question by saying, “I am who I am, and I will be what I will be.” “Yahweh” is so much more than a name. It’s a reminder that the God we worship is not to be quantified, categorized, nor contained in any way. We mustn’t seek to contain God in our human words, in our theological systems, nor even in our finite human minds.
And when Jesus said to Mary, that first Easter morn 2000 years ago, “Don’t hold onto me.” Jesus was saying the same to her that Yahweh said to Moses: “Don’t hold onto me…Whatever you do, don’t hold on to me.”
God is like water, and what He wants more than anything else is people and churches and communities that are willing to have that living water flow through us – not just INto us, but OUT of us as well, to ALL people. Yahweh is a liquid, not a solid, an ever-flowing stream with the hope of flowing in AND out of us, into a parched and thirsty world. Yahweh knew what He was doing when he asked us NOT to name him and NOT to try to hold onto Him. If we can remember and honor his request, perhaps we can find the lost virtue of humility again. Amen.
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