What's in a Name

The bible text that goes with this sermon is available at: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=500357887

“YHWH" by Scott Erickson

What’s in a name? It’s the question Shakespeare’s Juliet poses from her balcony as the young Romeo persistently reaches for some kind of handle on their budding relationship. It’s the scene in so many romance stories from Cinderella to Zombieland, where learning the name of a would-be lover feels like its own kind of quest. It’s the “hey, what’s YOUR name?” from a stranger at the bar. Or maybe nowadays, it’s “hey, what’s your Instagram?” 

It’s also a dad at the morning school drop-off noticing a small child standing still on his own and looking lost in the schoolyard, bending down to look him in the eyes and say, “hey, your name is Johnathon, right? And you’re in Ms.C’s class with Dylan, right? Do you need some help getting to kindergarten? Ok, let’s go together.”

Often there’s this prolonged drama that resists giving up this information that feels like it gives away just a bit more than that. There’s this space that lingers between being known and unknown. Or perhaps, between being known in a particular kind of way to being known in a new way.

Names matter. It’s why the call to “say their names”, to remember and speak the names of those violently taken, is subversively powerful. It’s a simple and revolutionary act to refuse to be forgotten and silent.

Last week we talked a bit about how Jacob’s name, meaning someone who strives at the heel, is both a name that says something about who he’s been and who is becoming. When he wrestles with divine shadows his name is changed to Israel, meaning someone who strives with God - a name that is in some ways new, but also a continuation, or a revelation, of what has always been true of him throughout. Several generations have passed since the life of Israel, and his thirteen children including Joseph who survived cruelty to rise to power in Egypt. Several more have come and gone since the people of God had trust and influence in the places of power and in fact, have now become oppressed and enslaved out of fear for how such a numerous and connected people threaten systems of institutional control and exploitation. The book of Exodus, a name which means “the way out”, begins by saying that a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph. And so we come to a time, when names of meaning seem to have been lost to time and place, or perhaps separated from their story and their lives.

So what IS in a name? Why does it matter? Because obviously it matters to Moses who keeps pressing toward God to know….who are you, like really? What kind of God shows up like this and says these things? And if this is gonna involve me taking risks, I want to know a bit more about who is going to be beside me for what may come, I want to know if this person is trustworthy.

Names hold the power of specificity rather than something generic. It’s what allows us to call out to a friend by name through a crowd so we can be together. “Hey Julie, we’re over here” has a stronger pull and greater dignity than “hey lady, lady, we need more chips at our table.” Name has the ability to move people in different ways.

Sometimes that power of name is mingled with an understanding of authority. Having the name of someone or something provides some measure of control or access not only to them, but the access or status they hold. It’s why people name-drop - so that you know that they know someone important and somehow that also makes them important. How people use that name can be a powerful tool for change and justice, it’s what Moses is banking on when addressing the people and the Pharaoh. But it can also have abusive “I know the manager here” vibes. I’m sure you’ve experienced someone using God’s name in this vain way. Sometimes it seems like those who are most eager to use God’s name are the least connected to what it means. So before you put God’s name in your mouth, make sure it’s also in your heart. 

Maybe that authoritative use of name is part of what Moses has in mind, but something else is at the heart of what God is trying to say. All of those other understandings and uses of name only have power...because they ride on the implication of relationship. From the beginning, as God invites humanity to share in the naming of creation, name is established as a gift that comes from shared connection. 

During their meeting on the mountaintop, before and through the sharing of the divine name, God is reinforcing the nature of their relationship and reveals that relationship is who God is. It’s how God is known, called, and experienced. God wants us to know that who She is, is connective, woven in and through the world throughout time and place and people.

God says to Moses in Hebrew, “ehyeh asher ehyeh” 

It means “I AM WHO I AM,” but also “I am who I will be, who I am becoming and who I have always been.” 

God says further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God says to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:This is my name for ever,and this my title for all generations.” (Exodus 3:14–15 NRSV)

In order to not only say but show who God is, God says, “I am the God who has walked alongside you and your people from the beginning, time and time again, who is still with you now, whose divine self is unfolding before your eyes, who goes with you into this uncertain future, and who will be here long after.” God chooses to be identified in and through relationship that extends before, beside, and beyond. Our God is a connective God. 

And it’s a good thing too, because often the promises and presence of God can feel disorienting to say the least. This call to be a part of liberation always means that you are leaving something else and it is often a lonely and isolating endeavor. Against all the powers that go against these holy promises, the powers that oppress and harm and cause us to despair, it often feels as though we are standing completely alone...and honestly, sometimes we are.  I can sympathize with a Moses who says,‘O my Lord, please send someone else.’

Perhaps this is why God gives us a divine name as close as our very breath. At the heart of this back and forth, God says to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” (3:15) Anytime you see The LORD in all capital letters in the Old testament, it signifies the use of the intimate name of God, which is to be treated with such reverence that it isn’t even translated so as not to be misused. Some Jewish teachers do, however, invite us to notice that the letters that make up this name, the name of God, YHVH, seems to be the sound of our own breathing. Out and in. Yod Hey; Vav Hey.

Perhaps God’s name and God’s very self is known in the quick shallow breaths that emerge even from silent weeping, in rasping heaving chests that yearn for air, in the deep sighs that catch us as we seek to reset ourselves. Perhaps God’s name and God’s very self is known in the swell of deep belly laughs bursting with the full force of the divine from our gut, in the air that rushes through our throats to sing even before a note is heard, in the resonant chambers of our mouths as they amplify shouts of justice. God sees and hears our suffering and our joy, even when it lacks the shape or words and exists only in our breath, because that’s where God is dwelling too. 

It’s so like God to put something so holy within something so common, to marry the extraordinary to the ordinary. To take a scraggly wild shrub and dry desert floor and call it holy ground. To speak to and through someone like Moses, who only barely survived infancy because his mother and midwives and sister and royal adoptive mother defied others in authority to preserve him from a genocidal death. Moses, who is unpolished, ineloquent, and unsure. Moses, who is morally messy in his murder of cruel slavemasters. Moses, who is only here on this mountain now because he has run away from it all. 

It is so like God to hold together these disparate and sometimes mundane moments of his life in such a way that transforms them into someone who has just the right experience and relationships to be a means of holy liberation for himself and for a whole people. To catch our attention through the earthy crackle of fire so that we might notice the reflection of flame in ourselves.To be who God has always been, and is now, and will continue to be beyond our imaginations.

I wonder what God is calling you to recognize as holy. 

I wonder what cries of suffering you are particularly attuned to notice.

I wonder what God has surrounded you with for this moment.