A few weeks ago was the youth-led service at my church. I was assigned the task of preaching that morning, so I drew inspiration and a topic from Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis and Sex God, as well as the leading man behind the Nooma video series. (If you’re unfamiliar with Rob Bell I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with him. Read a book or watch a video; he’s brilliant and most of his stuff will leave you going, ‘Whoa. Never thought of it like that.’) I didn’t really type out the sermon word for word; just had a sheet with lots of notes and points I wanted to hit on—which is really unusual for me, but it worked well—but I thought people might be interested in what I said, so here’s the sermon as best I can remember preaching it. Hope you enjoy.
Genesis 32:22-30; Jacob Wrestles with God
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’
But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’
The man asked him, ‘What is your name?’
‘Jacob,’ he answered.
Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.’
Jacob said, ‘Please tell me your name.’
But he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’
John 21:15-22; Jesus Reinstates Peter
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?’
‘Yes, Lord,’ he said,’you know that I love you.’
Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’
Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you truly love me?’
He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’
Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’
The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’
Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep. I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, ‘Follow me!’
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, ‘Lord, who is going to betray you?’) When Peter saw him, he asked, ‘Lord, what about him?’
Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.’
Names. Names are important. They tell people who you are, they let you know who you are, you know which person needs to answer when a name is shouted across a room. Names have stories. My own name has a story. My full name is Mary Lynnea Hunter. Mary is a family name, for my mother and great-grandmother. Lynnea is for a family friend. One of my parents’ good friends is named Lynnea, and she got the name from her grandmother who came from Sweden. Lynnea is actually a derivative of ‘linnaea’ (pronounced the same) which is the name of a small, bluebell-like flower that grows in Sweden. It was named for Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist who helped lay the foundations for binomial nomenclature, the scientific classification system for living things. Hunter is the surname that came to County Tyrone from Scotland sometime during the Plantation of Ulster. (see ‘History Lesson.’) It has a lovely coat of arms and tartan that belongs to the name, along with the motto cursum perficio: ‘I have completed the course.’ So as you can see, my name carries a lot of weight.
Names are identity, and I think that applies even more here in Northern Ireland than anywhere else I’ve been. The other day I was in conversation with some people I work with and they were discussing a person one of them had met. The question was asked, ‘Is he Catholic or Protestant?’ Normal enough question, especially in North Belfast. The answer was what surprised me; ‘I don’t know. I didn’t catch his name.’ Why would his name have anything to do with his religious/political affiliation?
(At this point, when I actually preached this sermon, the whole congregation laughed because they thought the answer of ‘I didn’t catch his name’ was a perfectly reasonable and sufficient response. They also laughed because they understood how odd it would have seemed to me. I’ve learned here that a lot can be told from your name. Names like Liam, Finn, Seamus and Ciaran are almost always associated with being Catholic, while more ‘common’ names like Chris and Andrew are associated with being Protestant. This is one of the reasons that my flatmate Phen chooses to go by ‘Phen.’ It sounds almost identical to ‘Finn’ which would be understood as an almost exclusively Catholic name, and yet he’s ‘Protestant.’ Gives people pause, it’s great.)
So as you can see, names are very important. Or are they? One of the most famous quotes ever about names comes from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet; ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.’ She does have a point there, which then begs the question, ‘What IS in a name?’
If you look in Genesis 27 you’ll find the story of Jacob stealing Esau’s blessing from Isaac. Isaac is old and blind, and he knows he won’t live much longer. So he sends Esau out to hunt so that they might enjoy one last good meal together and so that Isaac may bestow upon Esau his official blessing. Now, if you are familiar with this story you’ll recall that there was one major difference between Jacob and Esau: yes, they were twins, but Esau is described as being a hairy man, while Jacob was ‘smooth of skin.’ So even though Isaac was blind all he had to do would be to hug his sons or shake their hands to figure out which one was which. So Jacob, while Esau is out hunting, along with his deceptive mother Rebekah, decks himself out in animal skins to make it appear to Isaac that he is actually Esau. He goes into his father’s room and Isaac immediately asks, ‘Who’s there?’ ‘It’s me, your son Esau,’ Jacob says. Isaac can sense that something is off because it doesn’t seem likely that Esau would be back from the hunt so quickly and he asks about it. He still doesn’t really believe it’s Esau so he says, ‘Come near so I can touch you.’ Isaac may be old, but he’s clearly not stupid. Since Jacob has dressed himself in skins, Isaac believes he is touching Esau. Still, he is not satisfied so he straight out asks, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ Jacob says he is.
I was raised in a family that believes whole-heartedly in the power of the spoken word. My parents used to tell me that whatever I thought I could or couldn’t do, either way I was right. After all, God spoke the entire known—and unknown—universe into existence. We, as humans, are made in God’s image so it stands to reason that we also have great potential in our spoken words. The brain is a hugely complex piece of masterful machinery and can be ‘programmed’ by the words we speak to it. A positive attitude or a negative attitude are both ways we ‘program’ our brains.
So by this theory—the theory that in the spoken word rests huge amounts of power over ourselves—Jacob not only convinces Isaac that he’s Esau, Jacob also convinces himself that he’s Esau. Jacob, in a very real sense, loses his identity to his older brother. He gives away his own name and with it his sense of self. Once Esau discovers what Jacob has done, he’s furious and vows to kill Jacob. Jacob, having something resembling common sense—if not common decency—runs away fearing for his life.
Skip ahead to the wrestling passage. The blessing theme is repeated here. Jacob has wrestled with this man/angel/God all night, and at the end of it all, when it seems to be a stale-mate, Jacob insists that the man bless him. However, in order for the man to do this, he needs to know one thing: ‘What is your name?’
In his Nooma video ‘Name,’ Rob Bell discusses this very thing, and gives us insight into the importance of this question:
Now, in the ancient Near East, your name was more than just words. Your name was identity. Your name was reflective of your character, your substance, the very fiber that made you you. Your name told who you are. So when this man asks Jacob, ‘What is your name?’ the real question he’s asking him is, ‘Who are you?’ How much of our pain comes from not knowing how to answer that question?
Who are you? Do you know who you are? Do you know what you are? Do you know where you are? What is your identity? When this man asks Jacob, ‘What is your name?’ when he asks, ‘Who are you?’ it’s almost as if he’s asking not for his own benefit, but for Jacob’s. ‘Jacob, do you know who you are? Are you still pretending to be Esau?’ It’s almost as though he asks, ‘Are you ready to be you, yet?’ What does this mean for Jacob?
What does this mean for us? Who do we pretend to be? What kind of labels do we put on ourselves?
Man. Woman. Rich. Poor. Homeless. Middle-class. Veteran. Hippie. Black. White. Asian. GED. PhD. Musician. Poet. Thinker. Feeler. Desk-jockey. Reader. Writer. Victim. Injured. Christian. Atheist. Jewish. Muslim. Agnostic. Depressed. Professional. Entrepreneur. Working-class. Gay. Lesbian. Straight. Addict. Recovering. Footballer. Dancer. Republican. Democrat.
Catholic.
Protestant.
What is our name? Who are we? Where are we? What is our identity? ‘How much of our pain comes from not knowing how to answer that question?’ We have all these labels, some of which we put on ourselves and some of which are put on us by others, but either way we name ourselves. We are constantly comparing labels, seeing how we measure up, and the real problem is that we use anything but God as the benchmark.
Look again at John’s passage. We can all relate to Peter; asking, ‘What about him?’ We constantly ask, ‘What about him?’ What about her? What about them? The inevitable, ‘Why me?’ We constantly doubt what we’re doing, and we often doubt what we’ve been told to do. Peter has instructions directly from the mouth of Christ and his response is no different from what ours too often is: he turns to the guy beside him and asks, ‘What about him?’ And I love Jesus’ response to Peter; ‘What is that to you?’ He’s so blunt in his response, it’s such a ‘duh!’ moment. ‘What is that to you? You must follow me.’
YOU must follow ME. Not him or her or them. ME. Why don’t we want to follow Him? All too often I think it’s because we really do know some of the answers to ‘Who are you?’ and we don’t like at all what we see. We see some of those labels and can hardly stand to read them, and we know that God can see them, too. We’re ashamed. Rob Bell continues on this topic:
You and I have pasts: families we come from, things we’ve done, mistakes we’ve made. And where we’ve been and what we’ve done has shaped us into who we are today. And so we have to embrace our story, our history. You don’t have to be proud of it, but you must claim it because it’s yours. Only when we can own our own history for what it is—the good, the bad, everything in between—can we ever begin to answer the question, ‘What is your name?’ Do you wish you were someone else, or something else? From that family instead of your own? With those abilities instead of the ones you’ve been given? With that body instead of the one that’s yours? What is that to you? She has her path, he has his path, they have their path and you have your path.
Claiming our history. I love the way he puts it, ‘…you don’t have to be proud of it, but you must claim it because it’s yours.’ What we must remember is that claiming something doesn’t necessarily mean laying it all out all the time for everyone to see.
The other day, Chris (my supervisor and the Youth and Community Development Worker at FMPC) and I were having a meeting over coffee in a shop in City Centre. We were discussing this very thing and Chris’ keys were lying on the table. He picked them up and said, ‘These are my keys. I claim them. But that doesn’t mean I have to leave them out on the table. I can put them in my pocket or in my bag, and when I need them I’ll pull them out, use them, and then put them back.’ Our histories are the same way. We must claim them, but we are allowed to put them away until they are needed. Until God calls upon an experience that only we can relate to, a problem that only we can understand, something where He needs us to pull out that specific part of our history so that we can do what He needs us to do. Peter had to claim the fact that he had denied Christ three times at the crucifixion. Jesus himself had called Peter ‘Satan’ earlier in the book. This was a part of Peter’s history, a part of who Peter was, and therefore I’m sure it was part of the reason Christ chose him. We must follow Christ; no one else. If we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, constantly thinking that she is better or he’s more qualified; if we are constantly fooling ourselves into thinking that we are someone else; if we are constantly pretending to be Esau how will we ever hear when God calls us by name?
In closing, there’s a poem that I want to share.
loaded word
So I’ve been thinking about love lately.
What a loaded word.
What does it even mean, anyway?
It immediately conjures images of
Romance…
wine, roses, candlelight dinners for two underneath a velvet sky of diamond-bright stars while a private string quartet serenades you with instrumental versions of the themes of Love Story, Titanic, and When Harry Met Sally.
You begin to quote Romeo and Juliet—because everyone says it’s the greatest love story ever written.
Gag me.
It didn’t work out too well for Romeo or Juliet, remember?
Is that love?
True love?
To be so distraught over the supposed death of your rebound girlfriend
(whose cousin you just killed as revenge for killing your “home boy”)
that you drink poison strong enough for you plus 10?
Or to be so equally distraught over said boyfriend’s death,
that you throw yourself on a dagger?
Seriously?
This is love?
Don’t get me wrong, love Shakespeare—literary genius—but if this is our
“Love Gold Standard”
we’ve got some priorital shifts to make.
We say we love our boyfriend.
We love our girlfriend.
We love our mom and dad.
We love our dog, our cat, our pet gerbil.
We love going to the movies and hanging out with friends.
We love starry skies.
We love long walks on the beach.
We love backyard barbeques on the Fourth of July.
We love diet Coke.
We love getting off work early and getting a raise.
We love TV shows and live performances.
We love competition, winning and being the best.
We love the Super Bowl, March Madness, Broadway, a well-cut script, our favorite pair of jeans, a fat paycheck, mid-rare steaks and well-aged, single malt scotch.
We love ourselves.
And then out of the same mouth we profess that
God Is Love.
God Is Love.
God is the very thing
—embodies the very essence—
of the one thing we claim to know very well, and yet know nothing about.
We say we love football and hamburgers, but we also say
God Is Love.
I doubt the Almighty appreciates being put on the same level as a
Big Mac and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Maybe it’s our word.
English only gives us one word for love:
“L-O-V-E. LOVE”
Greek at least gives us three:
Eros, the romantic one;
Philos; the brotherly one;
and Agape; the holy one.
You’d think we’d have more words for something so important.
Eskimos have over 30 words for “snow” merely because it’s so much a part of their lives.
Thirty words for “snow.”
It’s their life force, and they know it.
They appreciate it.
We’re just clueless.
Shakespeare made up over fourteen hundred words in his collective works merely to make his poetry sound good
and to make the Rhyme and Meter work out.
You think he could have come up with a few measly words for the greatest emotion on earth.
So what is love?
It’s as impersonal and cold as a railroad spike, and yet
as intimate and warm as your own blood.
Where railroad spikes meet blood…
Therein lies the Crux of the matter.
[end]
God IS love. God IS everything. God IS all. God IS. When Moses sees the burning bush he asks God, ‘What is your name?’ God gives the only response He can when a human asks Him His identity: ‘I AM.’
I think this is why He doesn’t answer Jacob right off, either. Jacob asks, ‘What is your name?’ and He replies, ‘Why do you ask?’ It doesn’t really matter. God IS, and God knows who Jacob is. He knows who Peter is. He knows who we are. He knows who He needs us to be.
Do we know who we are?
Are we ready to be ourselves?
