Easter 4B, April 29, 2012

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Some of you know that every Monday night, ten months of every year, for the last fourteen years, I have volunteered at Suffolk County House of Correction in a program called “Art & Spirituality.” I like to say that we have completed fourteen years of what was meant to be a one-year project. The program provides the time to make greeting cards to give to people we love and are thinking about. The unconvicted and undetained sit together with the convicted and the detained at small tables spread with paper and envelopes, crayons, markers, pencils and pens, glue and scissors. (Yes, even scissors!) The “art” is primitive and the “spirituality” is subtle. It is the most spare, the most basic kind of Gospel ministry – a practice of showing up and being together in spite of the concrete and razor wire, and the myriad other barriers and traps that conspire to keep us apart.

For the volunteers, our ministry begins when we step on to Bradston Street in South Bay, and folks in and around the prison see that we are there once again, so it must be Monday evening. In the early years we were routinely harassed and dismissed by the guards. But we were undeterred. We just kept showing up, whether or not we were permitted to go inside the prison. In recent years, that has changed. We’ve worn them down, I guess. Now, many of the guards smile and wave at our group of crafty volunteers. I suspect that some of the guards even look forward to seeing us, although most of them are far too tough to ever admit it.

The reason I say that the spirituality is subtle is that, although it seems obvious enough to me, when other volunteers and I talk about this program in churches to raise money for art supplies and interest in volunteering, we often get questions like, “what’s the spirituality part?” We respond: “We show up. We gather in a circle and say our names. We recite a poem together about the large gaps between what we want and what we get. We make art. We clean up our messes. We gather again in a circle and name the people for whom we’ve made cards. We say a goodnight prayer.” “Oh,” they say, “you say a prayer. That’s the spirituality part?” I sigh and respond. “It’s all the spirituality part.”

The relentless showing up is the spirituality part. The gathering in a circle is the spirituality part. You can tell because as soon as the circle forms, people wordlessly extend their open hands to each other in a gesture of connection. The coloring and cutting and pasting is the spirituality part. The cleaning up is the spirituality part. Many of the participants tell us that it’s the best hour and a half of their whole week (that’s true for the incarcerated and the unincarcerated). The naming is the spirituality part – saying our own names out loud, and saying the names of people we love out loud. That’s the spirituality part.

You know, naming is one of the most ancient spiritual practices in the Bible. The creation story is all about the spiritual power of naming. The Author of Life names creation into being. The earthling (Adam) names the flora and fauna. At prison, when I encourage people to say their own names and the names of those they love, the power of it is evident in their nervous laughter and in their tears.

There is one name in scripture which cannot be pronounced: the four-letter Hebrew word for the name of the Holy One. When it appears, it is often indicated in speech (or in English translation) with the substitutionary word Lord (in all caps), or in Hebrew, Adonai. But my preferred substitution is simply Ha-Shem (Hebrew for “The Name”). It’s a reminder to me that the four letter word points to what cannot be spoken, only lived. Regrettably, the four letters are referred to with the Greek word tetragrammaton, which is a cool word, but it sounds quite mechanical and robotic to my ears. It’s regrettable because the rabbis say that the letters yud-heh-vav-heh form the sound of breathing in and out. This four-letter word, which forms the sound of breathing in and out, appears more than 6800 times in the Hebrew Bible. It’s stunning in its repetition. Perhaps that is what is meant when the Bible is described as inspired. The Bible is chock full of the sound of breathing in and out. I wonder how our understanding of the scripture that we call the “Old Testament” or the Hebrew Bible would open up if, instead of saying “Lord” when the four letter name of the Holy One appears, we simply paused to breath in and out. Imagine how our relationship with the Author of Life would be transformed by breathing more deeply.

The name of the Divine points to something which is infinitely more than any pronounceable name could ever indicate. Its etymology is probably from the verb “to be” or “to become.” It’s linguistically connected to the revelation of the Divine to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). Many of us know that revelation text as “I AM WHO I AM.” It can also be translated “I will be there; as Who I am will I be there with you.”[1] To my ears, that translation is much more relational, and therefore, much more true. “I will be there; as Who I am will I be there with you.” The tetragrammaton’s distilled meaning is pure being – pure becoming – pure “being there.” Its truest sound is breathing. Rabbi Larry Kushner writes, “Here is a Name (and a God) who is neither completed nor finished. This God is literally not yet.”[2]

The thing is, each of us has a name that stands as an indicator of who are are, but it not the same as who we are. You know – I have a name: Pam or Pamela or even Pamela Louise Werntz, and it is my name. I’ve been called other things (good and bad) which were not my name, but Pamela Louise Werntz is my true name. And at the same time, even my true name is not the same as me. My name is not the same as Who I Am. You have a name which is not the same as you. Because we are made in the image of the Holy One, each one of us has in us a four letter name which cannot be pronounced; it can only be lived.

In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, commentator Michele Murray notes that in rabbinic tradition, laying down one’s life was a form of Kiddush Ha-Shem – of sanctification of the Name. Laying down one’s life meant a willingness to choose death, as a martyr, if living would be profaning the Holy Name.[3] That is a way to understand what it is that Jesus was doing in laying down his life for the sheep. I imagine his followers and friends telling others about his willingness to lay down his life for the sheep as the Good Shepherd, laying down his life for the students as the Good Teacher; laying down his life for the imprisoned as the Good Guard. I’m guessing that you’ve known this kind of shepherd or teacher or guard: the loving One who has both the highest expectations and the highest regard for the growth potential and dignity of those in her or his care.

And, it seems to me that everyone’s life gets laid down sooner or later, incrementally along the way, and finally in our last breath. The question is, what do you want your life to stand for as it gets laid down? What do we want our lives to stand for? That’s what we get to choose. And if we’re lucky, we get to choose to lay down our lives over and over in order to refrain from profaning the Holy Name – the name in each one of us which is too sacred to pronounce, which is connected to: “I will be there; as Who I am will I be there with you.” The sound of being there. The sound of breathing. It seems to me that in the rest of life, as in the Monday night prison ministry program, the “art” is primitive and the “spirituality” is subtle.

My former rector, Bill Dols, tells of the Rev. Dr. “Kate Braestrup, [who] is a chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. She writes in her book, Here If You need Me, of a time her brother asked her if she really believed in God. She wrote him: ‘It doesn’t matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: when your child’s footprints end at the river’s edge, when the one you love has gone into the woods with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with bad news in her mouth…your life will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction with breathtaking speed, and if you are really wise – and it’s surprising and wondrous how many people have this wisdom in them – you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms to you. If you are wise, whoever you are, you will let go, fall [lay down your life] against that love, and be held.’ [According to the Gospel of John,] Jesus believed that such wisdom as that is inside each and every one of you and in me.”[4] May it be so.

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