Sermon 5 of Meister Eckhart The Lord stretched out his hand and touched my mouth and spoke to me.
When I preach,
I am accustomed to talk about detachment,
Saying that we should become free of ourselves and of all things.
Secondly,
I say that we should be informed back into the simple goodness,
Which is God.
Thirdly,
I say that we should be mindful of the great nobility which God has given the soul in order that we should become wonderfully united with him.
Fourthly,
I speak of the purity of the divine nature,
And of the radiance within it which is ineffable.
God is a word,
An unspoken word.
Augustine says,
The whole of scripture is in vain.
If it is said that God is a word,
Then he is spoken.
But if it is said that God is unspoken,
Then he is ineffable.
But God is something,
Yet who can speak this word?
No one can,
But he who is the word.
God is a word which speaks itself.
Wherever he is,
He speaks this word,
And where he is not,
He does not speak it.
God is both spoken and unspoken.
The father is speaking work,
And the son is working speech.
What is in me goes out of me.
If I think something,
Then my speech reveals it,
And yet it remains within.
In the same way the father speaks the son,
Who remains unspoken,
And remains in him.
I have said this repeatedly.
God's going out is his coming in.
The closer I am to God,
The more he speaks himself in me.
The more we rational creatures go out of ourselves and our works,
The more we enter into ourselves.
This is not the case with physical creatures.
The more they act,
The more they go out of themselves.
All creatures wish to speak God in all their works.
They all speak as well as they can,
But they cannot speak him.
Whether they wish to or not,
Like it or not,
Even though they all want to speak God,
He remains unspoken.
David says,
The Lord is his name.
Lord means the setting up of a supremacy here,
While servant is a form of subjection.
Certain names are proper to God,
And are detached from all other things.
God is his truest name,
Just as human being is our name.
We are always human,
Whether we are foolish or wise.
Seneca says,
That man or woman is wretched who does not transcend their humanity.
Certain names signify properties which are attributed to God,
Such as son or father.
When we think of father,
We think simultaneously of son.
There cannot be a father without a son,
Nor a son without a father.
But both contain within themselves an eternal essence which is beyond time.
Thirdly,
Certain names signify both a looking up to God and a turning towards time.
God has many names in scripture,
But I say that if someone perceives something in God and gives it a name,
Then that is not God.
God is above names and nature.
We read of a good man who turned to God in his prayer and wished to give him a name.
Then a brother said to him,
Be silent,
You are dishonoring God.
There is no name we can devise for God.
But some names are permitted to us,
With which the saints have addressed him,
And which God has so consecrated in their hearts and bathed in a divine light.
And here we should learn first of all how we should approach God.
And here we should first of all learn how to approach God.
We should say,
Lord,
With the same names which you have so consecrated in the hearts of your saints and bathed in your light,
We approach you and praise you.
Secondly,
We should learn that there is no name we can give to God,
So that it might seem that we have praised and honored him enough,
Since God is above names and is ineffable.
The Father speaks the Son with the whole of his power and speaks all things in him.
All creatures are the utterance of God.
If my mouth speaks and declares God,
So too does the being of a stone.
And we understand more by works than by words.
Lower nature cannot comprehend the work which the highest nature performs by its most exalted power.
If it could perform this itself,
Then it would itself be the highest nature.
All creatures wish to echo God in all their works,
But they can reveal him only a little.
Even the way that the highest angels rise up and touch God is as different from what is in God as black is from white.
The totality of what each and every creature has received is also quite different from what is in God,
Even though they all desire to declare the nearest approximation to it that they can.
The prophet says,
God spoke one thing,
But I heard two.
When God speaks in the soul,
And when he and the soul are one,
But as soon as the state of oneness falls away,
Division ensues.
The higher we ascend with our knowledge,
The more we are one with him.
Therefore the Father always speaks the Son in unity and pours forth all creatures in him.
They all clamor to return to that place from which they emerged.
Their whole life and being is a clamoring and a hastening back to him from whom they were born.
The prophet says,
The Lord has stretched forth his hand and refers with these words to the Holy Spirit.
Now he says,
He has touched my mouth and then he has spoken to me.
The mouth of the soul is the soul's highest part,
Which is what is meant here and the soul says,
He has placed his word in my mouth.
This is the kiss of the soul.
When mouth is joined to mouth,
When the Father gives birth to the Son in the soul,
And the soul is spoken to.
Now he says,
Take heed.
Today I have chosen you and have raised you above nations and kingdoms.
In a today God promises to choose us where there is nothing and where nevertheless there is a today in eternity.
And I have raised you above nations,
Which means over the whole world,
Which you must be free of,
And over kingdoms,
Which means that everything which is more than the one is too much.
For you must die to all things and must be informed into the heights where we dwell in the Holy Spirit.
So help us God,
The Holy Spirit.
Amen.
