"What Shall We Call You?" - Sermon from August 28, 2011

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

August 28, 2011

“What Shall We Call You?”

Psalm 105

Exodus 3:1-15

Romans 12:9-21

Matthew 16:21-28

 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14How many of you have had to introduce yourselves to someone new this week?  It's been a long time now, but I remember how tired I grew of reciting my name, hometown, and major when I was a freshman at Baylor.  By the end of the first week, I was tempted to say I was Robert Redford from Hollywood, California, majoring in the minors!  (Robert Redford was our Brad Pitt in those days, or maybe I should say our Jake Gyllenhaal).  Of course, nobody would have believed me!You know the real answer to that question, “Who are you?” “I don’t know yet."  You college students have come to an exciting and scary moment in your life journey.  You're not through becoming.  But it’s time to decide who you are.  I mean, you can’t erase what you’ve been up to now:  your family, your friendships, your education, your spiritual journey.  But a lot of those were choices made in love by other people for you.  Now it’s time for you to decide.  What is your mission?  What is your destiny?  What shall we call you?And actually, all of us are at the same place.  Your path is made by walking it, and none of us here breathing is finished yet.  We’re all in formation, not just waiting to see what will become of us, but deciding day by day who we are by what we say and do or don’t say and don’t do.    So what shall we call you?  What is your true name?We learned last week Moses’ name meant “one who draws out” in the Egyptian language of the Pharaoh’s daughter who drew him out of the Nile.  But he has another name in our text today:  “Goat-roper.”  or: “Loser.  “Disappointment.”  “Failure.”Let me be clear, while shepherds were on the lowest rung of the social ladder in that day, it was and still is a meaningful occupation.  But Moses had started with a privileged high position.  A Hebrew raised in Pharaoh’s own household.  You know his mother had told him all about his beginnings, how special he was, what he might do for his people.  Moms are like that; that’s what they’re supposed to do.  Dads, too, but Moms and Dads can’t achieve your destiny for you.  Only you can do that.And Moses blew it.  He tried to take the easy way.  He didn’t wait for the right time, build his skills and influence, get some leadership experience hanging with the Pharaoh, develop the influence to help Egypt see their harsh exploitation of the Hebrews wasn’t going to work for anybody in the long run.He saw an Egyptian beating one of his peeps one day and he killed him!  Saw two Hebrews fighting each other the next day, and asked them why they were fighting their own.  Moses assumed they would see him as some kind of hero, but what was he thinking, this spoiled rich kid dressed like an Egyptian prince?  “Who died and made you boss, wonder boy?” they asked him.  “You gonna kill us like you killed that Egyptian?”  (Ex 2:11-15).Moses knew the jig was up.  He walked like an Egyptian out of there, wound up forty years later herding his father-in-law’s sheep at a place the Bible says was "beyond the wilderness." "Beyond the wilderness" - that's lyin' low as you can go.  All his dreams dead, all Mom’s hopes dashed, all his potential wasted, he is “Loser” “Disappointment.” “Failure.”But let me ask you this.  A lot of you in this room have have had successful careers as teachers, lawyers, ministers (well, you’re all ministers of a kind).  How many of you are exactly at the point today where you thought you would be when you started?  Not many!  And how many of you have experienced some hard failures along the way?  Almost everybody!As John Lennon observed, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans!”  But here’s a lesson we learn from Moses and by listening to our own lives along the way:  failure is a part of the journey.  But failing at some things doesn’t mean you're a failure for life!  Most important:  our God has a way of using failure to help us become the success God wants us to be.Turns out herding sheep in the wilderness is a better preparation for leading the Hebrews on Exodus than hanging with the Pharaoh would have been.  But Moses doesn’t see that yet.  He sees: “Loser” “Disappointment.” “Failure.”  And you can add, “Depressed.”  Failure has a way of doing that to you.  And that explains Moses reluctance, even his resistance to God’s call.In the middle of nowhere Moses sees a bush that is burning but not consumed.  How long has it been burning before he notices God's trying to get his attention?  God speaks to him out of the fire:  "Take off your shoes; you’re standing on holy ground!” (Ex 3:5).  If holy ground is wherever God is and God is everywhere, everywhere is holy ground.  Maybe we shouldn’t wear shoes at all!Moses hides his face, as any of us would before God.  But Moses feels a special shame, given his epic FAIL!  Then God announces his intention to send Moses to Pharaoh to let God’s people go.Moses balks.  “I already tried that,” he thinks.  But he says, “Who am I to challenge Pharaoh?”  He knows what he’s up against.  He grew up surrounded by that imperial power.  “I will go with you,” God says. God’s power is greater.Moses asks, “When I go to my people and tell them, whom shall I say sent me?”  It’s a trick question.  Someone has said, “The sweetest sound in any language is your own name.”  But in those days, in that place, people took names seriously.  Names contained identity, destiny, power.  You call someone’s name, their head snaps around, they look at you, you get their attention.  This made the name of a god especially important as a way of getting that god’s attention, making the god do what you wanted.God says, “You tell them the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has sent you.”  Moses knows who this is.  And then God gives him the special name, the personal name, the “name above all names” so Moses and God, Israel and God, the church and God can be on a first name basis.Only - it’s not really a name.  Names are nouns.  We learned that in high school English!  But God’s name is a verb!  Y-H-W-H.  In Hebrew, yodh, he, waw, he.  We think it was pronounced “Yahweh.”  We don’t know because they quit pronouncing it and even quit writing the vowel signs for it to keep anyone from taking the Lord’s name in vain.You don’t use God’s name lightly.  You don’t try to make God follow your agenda.  The name suggests as much.  It means:  “I am.”  More precisely, “I will be what I will be.”  More precisely, “I will do what I will do.”  This speaks not only to God’s ultimate free agency, but also to God’s continued becoming in free relationship with humanity.  God is in formation, too, as all living things must be.Now God goes by many other titles in the Bible:  “Father,” “King,” “Warrior.” A male-dominated, power-seeking patriarchal church has used these almost exclusively, ignoring other non-patriarchal and vulnerable images of God in the Bible, like “Shepherd,” “Mother Hen,” “Mother Bear,” “Lion,” (not so vulnerable these), “Woman-searching-for-a-lost-coin,”  “Fountain of Life,” “Door,” “Still Small Voice,” “Friend.”  What we call God, how we image God with our words is critical because it determines how we image ourselves as God’s people!In other words, when Moses learns God’s personal name, it tells him who he is, too.  That is, it gives Moses the choice to be formed by this free, relational God, who is not static but active, moving, engaging, liberating, leading....  God offers Moses a destiny:  a continual journey shaped by God.  And that is what this God-as-verb offers you when God calls you by name. As Carlyle Marney used to say, Sunday worship is when we gather to remember "who God is; who we are; and who we hope to God we'll become."So, what shall we call you?  Will you take up the name of God, the name God gives you?  Fred Craddock met an old man in Gatlinburg, Tennesee, who told him this story:

“I was born not far from here across the mountains. My mother wasn’t married when I was born so I had a hard time. When I started to school my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn’t a very nice name. I used to go off by myself at recess and during lunchtime because the taunts of my playmates cut so deeply. What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering just who my real father was.

“When I was about 12 years old a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me.  He said, "Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?’

“I felt the old weight come over me. It was like a big black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down!  But as he looked down at me, studying my face, he began to smile a big smile of recognition. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a child of God.’

With that he slapped me across the rump and said, ‘Boy you’ve got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.’”

The old man looked across the table at Fred Craddock and said, “That was the most important single sentence ever said to me.  That's the day I was born!” Then Craddock remembered. On two occasions the people of Tennessee had elected that “illegitimate” son, Ben Hooper, to be their governor.God has no “illegitimate” children.  God gives you a name, God’s own name.  It is a verb, a calling, a destiny.  With that name, you will be what God makes you.  You will do what God does through you.  But God calls and does not coerce, so it’s up to you.  Consider these altar candles your burning bush today.  What shall we call you?  May we pray?O God beyond all naming, you have given us your name.  Help us not to take it in vain, but to live up to your high calling, to live into your loving ways, to bring to your name joy, friendship, healing, and hope.  Then we will know who we are because we are becoming what you created us to be.  We pray in the other special name you have given us to carry, in the name of Christ.  Amen.  

-Rev. Dr. Larry Bethune