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"Emmanuel: Glimpses of God Incarnate," November 30
Tuesday, November 30
Revelation 1:8
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“Alpha and Omega”
THE ANCIENTS THOUGHT THE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET HAD MYSTICAL POWER. I think they were right.
I remember learning to write letters on that paper with two solid blue lines about an inch apart and a dashed blue line halfway between them, running parallel across the page like an empty street. It reminded me of watching the dashes of the lane lines slip past the rear window while my dad drove the car. When the dashes moved, I knew we were going somewhere. Maybe that’s why, early on, I associated reading and writing with dynamism, with going somewhere.
Jewish mystics who wrote Sefer Yetzirah (“The Book of Foundations,” 2nd c. CE) thought the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were dynamic. They thought of them as emanations from the Infinite and agents of creation. Through the agency of the three “mothers”—alef, mem, and shin—air, water, and fire come into being. The seven “doubles”—the begadkephat letters and resh, if you remember your Hebrew grammar—create the seven days, the seven (then) known planets, and the openings of the human body. The remaining twelve “simples” give rise to the months of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Everything in creation is rooted in the mystical power of the letters, which are themselves rooted in the mystical being of the Infinite One.
It’s easy to think “I am the Alpha and the Omega” means that God brackets the world, standing before “in the beginning” of Genesis and after the “Amen” of Revelation. True, but is there more? What if choosing the first and last letters of the mystical alphabet is a way of claiming the mystery and dynamism of God in all creation, not just its beginning and end? What if Alpha is really the start of a journey from creation through alienation to redemption toward the Omega of consummation? We symbolize the start of that journey every Advent when we begin the Christian calendar anew. But in truth, have we not been on this journey since we and the journey and the world all began in the first sacred alef in the mind of God?
– Rev. Dr. Paul Hooker Associate Dean for Ministerial Formation and Advanced Studies
