Wednesday, April 6, 2016

What’s in a name?

Our yet-unborn grandson has a name waiting for him, come August; being kept secret for now by his parents.  My “helpful” suggestion of Ebenezer Aloysius was met with wise, if sarcastic, rebuff – “Sure, Dad, you guessed it.” I guess that means that Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego (book of Daniel) are out, too. Some are suggesting that since our other grandsons are named (unintentionally, I think) after British royalty, why not carry on the tradition?

Baby names can be tough to come up with. It is important to get it right. The child has to live with his or her name for the rest of their lives. It is more important that they will grow up liking their name than just for the parents to like it.

In ancient, biblical times names were very important, too. For example, some ancient cultures believed that if you knew the name of a god, you could have power over that god.  This may, in part, explain why our Creator God was very careful to put some fences up around his name. “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name,” (Deuteronomy 5:11). The name God revealed to Moses through the burning bush is full of mystery, power, and even elusiveness, dancing like the fire from which the revelation came, (Exodus 3).

This is a God who is not going to come at our beck and call, to do our wishes. We are not exactly on a first name basis, quite yet. That’s Mister God to you, thank you very much. God is not our best buddy. God enjoys some personal space, now and then, even though God loves us all.

In fact, when God shared his name with Moses, it turned Moses inside out. God’s name changed Moses’ life forever. And it led to God’s intervention for his people, the Hebrews who lived in slavery in Egypt, and set them all on a new mission and journey. Rather than giving Moses power over God because he knew the name of God, God reversed the cultural and religious normalities and, instead, knowing God’s name gave God the power over Moses.

“From the bush comes the utterance of the holy, hidden One. This utterance is completely unexpected by Moses, ungrounded in any of his categories of expectation, a vocation-creating novum [newness] in which Yahweh makes promises that set the world in a new direction. The promises are grand and evocative of Moses’ hope. From now on, Moses will be a hoper, completely convinced of a coming future for his slave community that falls outside the known world of Egyptian exploitation. The promise is a serious, first-person, self- announcing declaration by Yahweh…” (W. Brueggemann, Truth-Telling as Subversive Obedience, p.31).

It’s not so much that we know God’s name; it’s that our God knows your name and my name.  That’s when it gets really, really  interesting…