1 post tagged “names”
The Name. How important is this word in all the Bible. The Name of the Lord, Hashem, Yahweh, sometimes to precious to be spoken aloud. Adam is given the responsibility of naming the animals. Abram is the first in a series of great people of faith to have their name changed. He to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul.
Paul asks the Corinthians who have started to raise him above what he feels should be his level of importance : "Were you baptized into the name of Paul?" No, they were baptized into the Name of Jesus Christ. Believe in the name of Jesus Christ and be saved. "Anything you ask in My Name," says the Lord.
Yesterday, I watched Spike Lee's film "Malcom X" for the third time or so, and it got to the place where someone was preaching to him in jail and the man was talking up a storm about the Black Man's plight and his disenfranchisement by the White Devil. He was Malcom X's first contact with the radical world of Black Nationalist Islam. He asked Malcom, then Little, "What's your name? Who are you?" And Malcom said, "I'm Malcolm Little from here and there, etc." and the man said, "No, you're not! That's the name the slave owners gave your ancestors. That was their name they gave you, not yours. That's the White Man's name. So who are you?" And Malcolm retorted with something like, "I ain't no slave." And the man said again, "Then who are you?" And Malcolm finally spits it out, the truth of the matter, and an appropriate response for a culture untied from its own lands, a transplanted nation: "I don't know."
Then later I saw "The Bourne Ultimatum" in the theater with my sisters and mama. Yet another story about a man who is in search of his true identity, of his brainwashed past, for his real Name. A name is all-powerful, and sometimes its the thing we want so bad because we believe it will help us find identity. Malcolm goes on to call himself X, Bourne finally discovers he is David Webb, but do these connections really bring our heroes answers, or just create more futile questions? X becomes a drone following after a corrupt cult-like figure, Webb will run forever and ever, even more obscure and erased than he was as Jason Bourne. Both leave behind identities that didn't serve them anymore, and take up new ones that don't claim to know anything or even really solve life's puzzles.
X tells the people, "You've been bamboozled." He knows his jig is up. Because, as much as I can see, a person must be finally and exhaustedly disillusioned and even feel themselves abandoned and cut off from the very society they were brought up in before they can confront it or even really care for its betterment.
In the story of the Tower of Babel, the people are united with one language and want to build a tower to celebrate that unity, their claity in communication, the ease of connection that comes from commonality. They said to each other, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4) The idea of course is solidarity and identity, a Name.
A common curse found in the Bible is that the enemy's "name would be cut off." Behind a name is a line, generations, a story and a long history of other names (just see Numbers or the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew or Luke.)
A name can be tarnished by its owners' deeds or exalted by its owner's righteousness. I think God delights in giving new names, in fresh starts, in forgiveness and renewal, in clean slates. He says in Revelations 2:17 "To him who overcomes...I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it." The drastic change that can happen, the renaming of a life it takes for someone to rid themselves of the stain of all the ugliness and bad systems of a former life often feels like death, which is why, I think, Jesus says "You must be born again." (John 3:3). Now, I probably get the same wince of anxiety at that phrase "Born Again" that most people do, and I'll agree with most people that "Born Again Christian" has become like some kind of brand or makr - it's often just a label and an unfortunately soiled one at that. But as a name it is unlike any other. It signifies a process, an activity of one who undergoes it. It also signifies, by assuming Birth, a Death. A Death of former things, of "the old man" as Paul says, a Death of a life entrenched in guilt or loneliness or insincerity. Everyone has something that needs to die, and most people are quietly aware of it, but live in it without wondering what could be beyond it. The Death is about Life, because only in putting and end to certain behaviors and wrong paths that only make worse ends will anyone come back to Life and be, simply put, Born Again. I've see it happen countless times, and I've seen the new Names too. There is identity in the moment of surrender and the Death of the former self, the former ways. Such radical change and hope is possible in the lives of individuals souls living in this world that when it happens that someone dies and is reborn, there is a new Name, a new life set over them. Every newborn needs a name. So it is with people being born again, being buried in the ashes of the old life, being revived with new names for a new destiny of greatest promise.
Romans 6
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
