It wasn’t long after the planes hit the twin towers that Americans everywhere and those who supported them turned to something for strength.  Some turned to fear, others to vengeance. Many turned to their religion, but nearly all turned to the flag.  In those dark hours, and at other times of uncertainty in history the flag has been a rallying point for national morale. It’s a powerful symbol, but why?

If we trace civilization back to some of its earliest roots, we arrive at the Predynastic period in Ancient Egypt, around 3100-3000 BCE.  This was when the Egyptian language was first recorded in hieroglyphs. These hieroglyphic words, translate as: “Hiero”=God, “Glyph”= word (God’s Word)  and they birthed a culture that would come to shape nearly all the religious, cultural and business expressions we encounter today.

When they wrote the hieroglyph for God they depicted a staff or banner, wrapped in or waving cloth, there are three common versions of the same word, one of which will be instantly recognizable to golf players. Some scholars have connected the cloth wrapping with the work of the embalmer and the Tanis papyrus translates this hieroglyph to mean “he is buried.”2 In some obscure way, the wrappings around the staff or fluttering from it referenced grave clothes and depending on which hieroglyph you choose, it reminds us of a mummy. All good, but how does this translate to “God”?

Well, The Bible also refers to God as a flag, a banner, Exodus 17:15. In this passage, Israel was being mercilessly attacked by the Amalekites, so Moses mobilized the troops under the leadership of Joshua and then walked to the top of the nearest hill and held his staff up above him.  As long as he was able to keep the staff lifted up, Joshua prevailed, when it drooped, the enemy grew stronger. Eventually Aaron and Hur came to help by holding up Moses’ hands until sunset.  As a result Joshua overwhelmed the armies of Amalek and won the day. Moses marked the occasion by building an altar and called it YHWH Nissi which meant “the Lord is my banner”.

The banner was like a symbolic mummy and as such represented the invisible God, or as we say today, “Our Father who art in heaven”.  The fathers were dead, but the lived symbolically in the flag.  When Moses flew the flag he was invoking the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the one who called them, the sovereign God.  He was speaking their name and under that banner they were one people, past, present and future.

Imagine an ancient battle where the terrified troops gather beneath their flag. It hangs flaccidly in the stillness and the disconsolate army grows restless with fear and self doubt, but then a small gust stirs the flag and it begins to move.  As the wind animates it, something rises within them, a new power, a new confidence.  They’re here! Their people! Flying in from the heavens, their forefathers, their loved ones are taking up residence in the flag and causing it to fly in the breeze.  They have come to give their strength, this great cloud of witnesses, to cheer and encourage. It's a popular movie theme. A child is playing basketball for her school team, but they are loosing, why? because she, who is usually the ace is depressed, since her mom and dad have not shown up to watch.  But then some movement high up in the bleachers catches her eye. Its them! They made it! That was all she needed to fire up her game.  Next thing you know she’s outwitting the defense, and winning the day.

This plays out for us today on many levels. The flag was not just a symbol, it was a name. God. You may not be breaking out the flags today, but we can all use that name. Say it, shout it, shake it until the wind comes to fill it.  Call upon Him in the day of trouble, he will not leave you or forsake you. All His power, all His people are here for you. They may be invisible, they may already be in heaven, but they live in that name and that name is God’s gift to you and you should use it, because you are not alone, neither are you weak, or forgotten or defeated, because the Name is with you.

When the flags came out after 9/11, we were calling on our ancestors, distraught, heartbroken, weak, we needed their healing presence.  We needed more than we had and the flag supplied it. The bandages fluttering in the wind healed and restored. The Name was with us, God was manifest. Now, on Memorial Day as we remember those who have gone before, take a look at the flag, because they are there, cheering us on, all of them and because of them and because of the Name you can keep going, you can bring it home.


1 & 2. Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt. Cornell 1981 (34-35).

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:” Exodus 20:4.

The second commandment, seems on the surface to be bad news for artists, it sounds like "Don't paint any pictures", "No sculpture allowed."

Many years ago when I was on a painting expedition in the Himalayan Foothills of Pakistan, I asked the daughter of the family I was staying with if she would mind asking the Wizened old gardener who worked for them to sit for his portrait.  He refused at first, saying that God would be angry with him if someone were to depict his likeness.  She responded by offering to accept any negative consequences from above on his behalf in the event that all heaven should break loose in anger against him for having his picture painted.

This offer was accepted and the gardener duly sat for his portrait. Happy in the knowledge that if there was any trouble, someone else was going to be getting it, not him. His caution against being painted was due to his understanding and response to the second commandment which is not just in the Bible it’s in the top ten of the Bible’s most important statements - right?  Yes, it is, and it's not just in the top ten, it's in the top two! it comes in very near the top of the charts.  It’s huge!  But why?

Well, let’s go back to the story in Exodus 20, Moses has led the people out of Egypt and is laying the foundation for a new nation.  Its like they have had their war of independence, but now have to put together their constitution and start nation building.  The first order of the day was to disassociate themselves from Egypt. Egypt was a particularly artistic place, there were pictures everywhere.   The problem was that images had a tendency of telling the stories of life and eternity too literally.  In other words the pictures were telling the stories too well and little was being left to the imagination. People were being led astray from the meaning of the symbols to the symbols themselves, they were no longer “getting it”. It wasn’t working anymore.

So the Ten commandments outlawed pictures, enshrining the heroes and patriarchs in stories and words alone.  It was an innovation.  This dramatically more abstract system, encouraged imagination and greater intellectual creativity, because the stories were no longer illustrated. You had to supply your own mental images.  It was brilliant and it worked - for a time.

By the time Jesus came on the scene, the cycle was repeating itself, only this time, the beautiful words were being hacked and re hacked into rigid formulas that were imposed and enforced without imagination.  Meaning had once again been sacrificed in favor of literal dogma.

Christ moved things even further ahead. Pictures had failed, words had failed, now there was a new story, a living one. This was a revelation, it was refreshing, it made sense and it worked - for a time.

Despite the new clarity that Christ brought, the struggle for meaning continued over centuries. By the Middle Ages, with a mostly illiterate population, the church was again using images to tell it's story, keeping the words away from the common people and in a language they could neither read or understand. The official Church ruled supreme and was able to dictate to the populace at will with little to no resistance.

But as new translations  of the Bible began to become available, people started forming their own interpretations again, their own mental pictures. These new images seemed freer, bigger, more hopeful than those trapped in statues and stained glass. Thus the Protestant movement was birthed and with it once again, a turning away from, proscribed, literal tenets towards more abstract, creative thinking.

Despite the advances of the Reformers, and several theological and cultural cycles since, a new kind of graven image has again become enshrined in our culture:  The story itself.

The debate today for a historical or scientifically verifiable narrative has at times clouded the purpose and meaning of the sacred text.  Our tendency to resort to the comfort of dogma at the expense of imagination and meaning, perhaps reveals the motive behind the second commandment. Showing us that Moses understood the danger of our desire to live on spiritual auto pilot instead of in relationship, with all it's attendant wild, unpredictable beauty. Auto Pilot?  Yes, that's the idol we choose, predictable, known, safe, limiting, dumb, fixed, dead.

Perhaps if Moses was writing today he could have re-worded things a little, something a bit like this: "If I'd wanted you to know everything I would have shown it all to you up front, so don't limit me to what you know.  I'm bigger, and so are you.  Instead, let me set the pace, let's live together in the tension of unknowing, where trust surprises and delights. Let's run together in the adventure of living and there find life's true image, a portrait that cannot be rendered either in stone or in art or words, but only in life itself."

Not everyone gets it of course, but I know someone who did, and because of her, an old Pakistani gardener sat on the back porch of a house in the foothills one sunny afternoon in the spring and had his portrait painted. Blissfully unaware of the irony playing out around him, in that she who broke the law sinned not, while he who kept it sinned.  Thankfully she covered his sin with her grace, so all ended well. As it can for us too if we, like her, lean towards life and the beauty that cannot be rendered, even by art.