Do you Yahoo?

Being a young person in Charleston, South Carolina, in the sixties, it was not unusual on Sunday to be in church. Of course, everybody I went to school with pretty much did too. It became a part of our education both during the week and on Sundays.  

After graduating high school, I started college at the Baptist College of Charleston which is now called Charleston Southern University. In the first years that it was open, it was quite a different education because all of us were required to have certain religion classes as part of our curriculum. The small enrollment also led to classes we all attended simultaneously. It was a new school and that was the way they did it. As a result, there were things that stuck in my memory from the education gained there.  

Skip ahead several years to a Sunday sitting in the Baptist church of our choice (I say that so that you understand exactly how this might have happened). In our sister churches of the more traditional type, you had a very specific liturgy. It was read, and quoted, and responded to in very specific order depending on the season. In the Baptist church we had a lot of traditions, but the sermon on Sunday was one developed by the pastor. The topic of the sermon was usually a result of his daily experiences or divine inspiration. 

On this particular Sunday we were sitting in church listening to the sermon when I began to pick up on the theme of the message. It took me back to certain of my religion classes at the Baptist college. We had Dr. Carpenter as our primary religion teacher. He taught both the Old Testament and New Testament and a good many classes in between. He was very specific and well educated as relates to the translations of the Bible. 

As he took us particularly through the Old Testament and the relationship between God and the people of God, he taught how in those days, not so long ago, that the name of God was so sacred that it was forbidden to be spoken in public. Not only that, it was to a young Baptist student in an Old Testament class kind of hard to say because of the way that it was spelled. The name of God from the Old Testament was Yhwh. That was spoken as Yahweh and pronounced yah – way. Simple enough. I had never heard it before in all of my Sunday school classes and all the sermons that I had heard up to that point.  

But I digress. 

Back to the particular Sunday in question. We had gotten through the general business of the service and had come to the sermon. The pastor began to reach the heart of his tome when he alluded to the personal relationship between the sinner and his God. I immediately went back in my mind to Dr. Carpenter delivering the lessons that spoke of the same topic. Having no idea which way the pastor was going I was looking around in the sanctuary at the faces of people listening to the message. 

I saw people in one form of alertness or another; some inspecting the backs of their eyelids while others were completely involved and young people passing notes back and forth and others enjoying a quick look at somebody across the room. Yet, others were trying to figure out what they were going to do after they got out of church. All those sorts of things were part of what I observed. I was in the choir and our choir was seated in the front of the sanctuary facing the congregation. We had a firsthand view of the pastor and could not only clearly hear everything he had to say, but we could see the intensity with which it was being said. You got all of the inflection in voice and the gesturing that went with the passion that he was using to deliver this sermon. 

So, we're all listening and out of the quiet, I heard something that I really wasn't quite sure I heard. It piqued my interest and I turned and I looked around and saw that I was not the only one looking around to see if someone else had heard what we thought we had heard. And if they heard what I thought I heard what did they think about what they thought they had heard, or about what we both heard. 

It became obvious very quickly that the pastor had the undivided attention of all the attendees. The intensity of his speech was matched with the intensity of each person’s focus. In the front of the choir loft was the daughter of our minister of music. She faced her dad sitting on the front pew as was the custom so that he'd be ready to direct music at the appropriate time. Before we could discern what had been said, the pastor had reached another point of fever pitch and exclaimed again the words for which his sermon would be forever remembered. 

“The unspoken name of God almighty, the name known only to the holy men of the synagogue was YAHOO!” 

With as much resolve as each of us could muster, we stifled the immediate impulse to laugh. That’s not to say that snickering couldn’t be heard. It was a very strong undercurrent. Before we knew it, the pastor repeated the statement. At this point, laughter began which ended the sermon. 

It was all our Minister of Music could do to salvage the moment by coming to the pulpit and directing everyone to pick up their hymnal and turn to the final hymn for the service. His daughter barely managed to sing the verses for laughing between the words like many of the rest. 

Many of us lingered then to talk about the sermon and the service and even now it is part of conversations between lifelong friends. 

I’m sure some apologized to the pastor for their behavior, but it is remembered today with great fondness and chuckles. I am also convinced that many more faithful will always “cheerfully" remember the lesson from that Sunday’s sermon. 

Forever will we remember the name of... Yahoo? 

~ Jeannie Joyner