What's in a Name?

No doubt because I've been re-reading Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality, I was struck by all the mentions of God's name in today's psalms. Not only were there repeated occurrences of LORD, the NRSV translation's reverential way of rendering the divine name so that it isn't actually said, but there were repeated calls to bless God's name and to praise God's name. There's a lot of fascination with names when it comes to God.

Jesus picks this up in the prayer he teaches his disciples. Not only does he speak of God as Father, but he also says "hallowed by your name" Modern Christians have perhaps over-embraced the term father while, at the same time, losing much sense of reverence or  hallowing of the sacred, divine name.

I don't fall into that group that may have over-embraced "Father" as a way of naming God. I've likely never begun a prayer with "Father God..."I have a different faith problem with it comes to God and names. I've tended to focus on God's otherness and transcendence to the point that God becomes so distant as to be unknowable. If some Christians seem to get so familiar that they invoke God like a personal genie, God can become for me more conceptual than real.

I don't know that the psalmists were worried about that sort of problem when they got so focused on God's name, but still I think they are on to something important. When you know a person's name, you can call them by name, and my faith insists that God has a name that has been shared with us. It's a bit of a slippery name, one closely related to the verb "to be" and to the story of Moses and the burning bush where God, at one point, gives the divine name as "I am who I am," or perhaps "I will be who I will be." It's a name that the tradition is very hesitant to speak aloud, but the name is known nonetheless, and there is something remarkable about that.

Does your god have a name? Too often, I fear, my God remains nameless and therefore unapproachable and distant to a remarkable degree. I'm acutely aware of the problem of making God overly familiar, a personal buddy who likes all the things I like and hates all the things I hate. But my solution to that problem creates a different one: a God who is too remote even to encounter.

O God, Holy One, YHWH, I AM, let me know you by name, even if no single name will quite do. Then with the psalmist, "I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever."

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