What's your name?

August 3, 2014

Genesis 32:22-31

Pentecost 8

“Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me”

“I’m rubber, you’re glue. Your words bounce off of me and stick to you”

Two of the worst sayings that we are taught as children because they are not true.  Words hurt.  They sting.  They inflict internal wounds that cannot be seen in the day light like the black eye you might wind up with in a fist fight.  The healing time from wounds inflicted by words often takes longer than the black eye, too.  It’s often the names that inflict the most pain.  Bully.  Geek.  Loser.  Four eyes. Brace face.  Tattle tale.  Ugly.  Fat.  Cheat.  If someone gets called a name often enough, they begin to believe that they people calling them by that name are right.  So there are organizations out there that are working to reverse the trend so that if surround people with positive names that describe them, beautiful, smart, funny, etc., folks will believe this about themselves and begin to have a better outlook on who they are.  Because the names that we use to refer to one another are important, they do give us a sense of who we are and what we are about.

In the bible, names carry a great significance.  They still do today, but not in the way they did in ancient times. Today we often pick out babies names before they are born.  We want names that flow, that fit well with a middle and a last name.  Sometimes, out of tradition, we give family names.  We talk about how a name fits a person. Often, though, we forget about the meaning behind names.  This is what differentiates our culture from the Near East cultures of biblical times.

In ancient times, your name described who you were and, often, who you were destined to become.  Adam was the dirt man.  Abraham was the father of many nations.  Esau was the red one.  Eve was the one from whom life was born.  Jacob, we have learned, was the deceiver, along with his mother, Rebecca, whose name means “the snare.”

It is our dear friend, the deceiver, that we find in a moment of stress.  He has fled from his father in law, Laban, taking with him Rachel and Leah and their maids, most of Laban’s flocks and much of Laban’s fortune.  Laban had overtaken the caravan that Jacob fled with, but they wound up coming to a peaceful agreement and Laban agreed to leave them alone.  Now, however, Jacob learns that the brother whom cheated out of a birthright and stole a blessing, and from whom Jacob fled in order to save his life, has assembled 400 men and is planning to meet Jacob at the other side of the River Jabbock.  For a man whose last interaction with his brother involved a death threat, this cannot be good. 

In panic, Jacob divides all that he has in two.  If one half doesn’t make it, he believes the other half will.  He then attempts to appease his brother and sends him a gift of 200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 milch camels and their colts, 40 cows, 10 bulls 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys.  A lovely menagerie of animals if there ever was one. Across the river Jabbock the gift goes, along with Jacob’s entire family where they will be safe until morning when Jacob will join them again.  

The actions that Jacob took to secure what he had and to attempt to make peace with Esau, however, was not enough to keep Jacob from pacing and worrying about what his first interaction with his brother would be like the next day.  He tosses and turns, playing all of the possible scenarios in his head.  The good ones, the bad ones, the ugly ones.  That is when the attack happens.   

The wrestling match between Jacob and his attacker is epic, lasting all night and into day break…until Jacob’s opponent realizes that Jacob is going to win, so his puts Jacob’s hip out of socket, but that doesn’t keep Jacob from continuing to struggle. 

“Let me go” demands the opponent. 

“Bless me first,” demands Jacob, recognizing that his opponent isn’t an ordinary attacker.  Jacob’s request is answered with an unusual response.  It’s not the blessing that Jacob asks for, it is not a denial of the request, but simply “tell me your name.” 

If Jacob is going to exit this wrestling match, he must share his name with his opponent.  So he does, and with the sharing of Jacob’s name, Jacob also shares his confession.  The one who has survived for so long by cheating, deceiving, usurping, and taking what wasn’t his, and therefore living up to his name, confesses all the wrongs he has done to the man who wrestled with him all through the night and into daybreak all in one word…his own name. There is nothing left to hide now.  All the cheating and the lying and the deception are all laid on the table for all to see.  He has been exposed for who he is.

We wait for the attacker to dish out to Jacob what he deserves.  For vengeance.  For punishment.  That’s not what happens, though. 

Instead of dealing out to Jacob what he had coming to him, the man gives him a new name.  Israel.  The one who wrestles with God and with humans and prevails. 

That day the man who paced and worried and wrestled all night long walked away a different man.  He was no longer the deceiver. No longer the cheat.  No longer the one who took what wasn’t his.  With the new name came a new character, a new purpose.  To be the one who would father the twelve tribes of Israel.  To be the one through whom the promise to Abraham was passed down.  To be the one who would reconcile with the brother he so badly wronged on the other side of the river.  Jacob may have walked away from the wrestling match with a limp, but he still walked away victorious, for he had seen God face to face and yet his life was preserved. 

We all have our given names, our nicknames, the “I wish he would never bring that one up again” names, that our family and friends us to identify us.  However, then there are the names that have seemed to define who we are.  Some of those names build us up and others break us down. Parent, spouse, lawyer, runner, writer, softball player, doctor.  Divorced, infertile, exhausted, depressed, broke, broken. Coward, liar, unfaithful.  Lonely. 

God has a different name for us, however.  A name that we were given in baptism.  A name that, once we have been baptized, cannot be taken away from us.  Christ.

In baptism, we put on Christ and we become a part of Christ and so, while we don’t use the word Christening that often, it’s actually a good word to describe what is happening.  We are joined to Christ in the waters of baptism.  We are given a new name and a new destiny, to live lives as children of God, heirs with Christ in all of the blessings that God has to bestow.  We have become little Christs! And though sin and the powers of evil in this world would have us think that we are not worthy to be put into the same category as Christ, God deems us worthy, simply because he loves us and wants us to thrive and have life.  

So as you go out into the world today, remember, you are a little Christ.  You are a child of God, called and claimed and sent into the world to spread the message of God’s love and God’s justice to the world. And you are not doing this alone, for you are surrounded by little Christs.  In the grocery store, at the farmers market, at the Ronald McDonald house and the God’s Works meals.  There are little Christs everywhere.  And we work together as people renewed by water and the Spirit to be Christ for the world.  Let’s get to work.