Speak From Your Guttural
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Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 33:1-12
A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch at Trinity Cathedral on the second Sunday After Pentecost 2023.
According to Talmud, the psalmist is not telling us that God created the heavens with a word, but rather, that God created the heavens with the part of speech that comes before a word, “the breath of the mouth.” You see, the word, heaven in Hebrew begins with the guttural letter “Heh,” in the word hashamayim. Heaven was created with God’s “heh”.
The imperceptible sound that created the heavens and soul is the Spirit that Genesis tells us hovered over the waters of chaos before God said, “let there be!” and created the world. This Spirit, this breath of God would then make its way into the dirt lungs of Adam and Eve and eventually, you and me.
What if you thought of pausing your speech as an echo of the moment heaven was created. What might fill the void if we leave it blank for a while? The psalmist tells us that it’s the loving-kindness of God that fills the whole earth, an earth born from a long pause, a white space, the “heh” of God’s breath that still longs to speak heavens into existence within our souls today.