February 21, 2010
Sermon by Pastor Jeffrey Bell
Providence Presbyterian Church

"What's In A Name"
Deuteronomy 26: 1 - 11

What's in a name? Does a name matter? Does it really matter if you're named Sean Calvin or Sarah Marie? Hard to say.

Gerald Ford was sixteen years old when a strange man sat down next to him at a soda fountain, introduced himself as his father, and told Ford that his name was really Leslie King, Jr.  I’m glad he stuck with Ford.  It sounds more American and I’m not sure we would have elected a President King.  That sound so British!

Christian writer C. S. Lewis was born Clive Staples Lewis, but when he was four years old he walked into the family room, thumped his chest with his thumb, and said, "He is Jacksie!"  And for the rest of his life his friends called him Jack, which seemed to suit the man much better.

Names can say things about our ancestry. In some places, like Sweden or Norway , if you are a Johnson that means that your father was named John.  In Russia a person’s middle name includes the father's first name, so Ivanovich and Ivanovna mean that you are the son of a man named Ivan.

In today's lesson, Moses gives the people a name, an identity, and a name to call upon as they prepared to journey to the promised land.   He could have reminded them that while they were slaves they had called to God who answered them, redeemed them, and freed them.

Moses could have reminded them of all their whining, their distrust, and their determination to return to slavery rather than trust in the God who freed them.  Moses could have reminded them of their lack of faith that God would feed them and how, in spite of this, God gave them water and manna and sustained them.

Moses could have called them "idol builders" after what they had done while he was in the presence of the Lord receiving the Ten Commandments.

Instead, Moses invited them to continue in a close relationship with God, to give an offering of their first fruits in thankfulness after they had entered into their land, and to say simply, "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor."

He invited them to remember the wandering of Abraham and Sarah, their eventual faithfulness, and the fact that they, too, were wanderers who might wander again.

They were told to remember their days as wanderers in order to prevent them from taking too much credit for what they had done and accomplished, and in humility to give glory to God.

As Abraham was a wanderer, so we too must be ready to wander, when God calls us and sends us forth to preach the gospel.

It's a different way of looking at things. Some of us are mobile, but others are tied to a patch of earth and have been that way for generations. But, our father was a wandering Aramean. And because we are wanderers, the descendants of wanderers, we must never forget to give thanks, in gratitude, for what we have and what we’ve been given.

Throughout this passage Moses uses the name of God. Usually translated Lord and presented in all capitals in our Bible translations, this name on the one hand tells us nothing about God except that God exists. It’s a form of the verb “to be”, and partly tells us that God is unknowable, and partly to tell us that God is very knowable — through the relationship God has with the people.

This God says to Moses in Exodus, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exodus 3:6). That tells us nothing about what God looks like or sounds like, and the Hebrew Scriptures have no intention of telling us anything of the sort.

But that same verse tells how God acts — by calling to mind our ancestors.  The name “I Am”  suggests that the way we know God is to remember what God has done with his people throughout the generations. It's what God does that matters.

As we enter the season of Lent, we, too, are reminded of our spiritual ancestry, of the God who has a track record with us, and what that record means. Just as Abraham was a wandering Aramean, so, too, the Son of Man reflected that, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20).

The Apostle Paul often shared his resume as a way to set the stage for what he preached.  He was "... a member of the people of Israel , of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless" (Philippians 3:5-6).

Paul's resume is fairly impressive, outlining his relationships, his family, and his faith.  But Paul puts it all in perspective when he states that there is one crucial relationship that is key, that illuminates and preserves everything else. "Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ" (Philippians 3:7).

What he’s saying is that it’s our relationship to God, the way we carry the name of Jesus, that matters more than our ancestry, our family name, our genealogies, our nationalities, our ethnicity.

What's in a name?  Everything.  Our name is Christian, and we are known for our care of the poor, we are known by our giving, we are known by our relationship, always with Christ at the center. It’s what makes all things possible and gives them meaning.

Lent is a season of giving up, but it’s far more important to simply give, and to resist the temptation to give in. Give to the work of the church. Give to the lives of others. Give up in order to give more.  Refuse to give in to the culture of wealth, power, envy, and greed.

You bear the name of your ancestor — Abraham, Issac, Sarah, Paul, Timothy, John, Miriam, Martha, Mary, Jesus, and the God who is who embodies promise of what is to come. These names make life worth living, and the lives of other worth saving.