I had a personal, Scriptural “ah ha” moment as I was writing this sermon in the last few days. I was going to begin with a reference to my time in seminary – possibly triggered by JD saying last week that he was going to celebrate his May 29 birthday by being in one of his seminary classes that evening – and the sermon’s first sentence was going to be, “Almost 40 years ago, when I was in my first semester in seminary”… and then – ah ha!!
Forty. That magic Scriptural number – forty days and forty nights for Noah and the Ark, forty days of temptation for Jesus in the wilderness, forty years of wandering for the children of Israel; I suddenly realized that if I’d been the children of Israel in my first semester of seminary, passing through the Red Sea and heading out towards the unknown, then here on 4 Easter in 2025, I would just about have reached the Promised Land (which does put a whole new spin on retirement)!
“Forty” is, of course, Scripture’s shorthand for indicating “a very long time” – and any of us who have forty years or more to look back on will, I think, agree with me that “forty years” is a very long time…but in retrospect, it’s a very long time that seems to go by in no more than a moment.
So – almost 40 years ago, when I was in my first semester in seminary, the very first paper I wrote in my Old Testament class was on the story of the Tower of Babel. After all this time, I don’t remember the point of the paper, but I do remember that I had a lot of fun writing it.
The story of the Tower is found at the beginning of the 11th chapter of Genesis, and it marks the end of the portion of the Bible that’s known as the “prehistory.” The prehistory describes the creation of the world and of humankind, as well as God’s first attempts to restore the relationship with us that has been broken in the Garden of Eden. Chapter 10 is a listing of the descendants of Noah and his sons, so this is after the Flood; and then comes chapter 11:
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as [humans] migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the LORD said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”
This story of the Tower is an etiological story, etiology being the study of the causes of things. Etiological stories answer the question “Why?” – the question in this case being “Why do we all speak different languages?”
In addition to “why?” this story shows us that the human pride, presumption, and disobedience that were born in the Garden of Eden have survived the flood and live on, much to God’s distress, because what these settlers in the land of Shinar really want to do is to attack heaven, to defeat God and forcibly “make a name” for themselves; “otherwise,” they say, “we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” And there’s a sense of poignancy here, because that’s exactly what happens.
Because of their arrogance, the settlers arrive in Shinar nameless and they leave nameless, as if they had never been.
Names: being named, having a name, gives us reality. Before Babel, back in the Garden, in the older of the two creation stories, naming is actually the final step in the creative process – a step that features the man being a co-creator with God. Starting at Genesis 2:18, “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman [ishshah], for out of Man [ish] this one was taken.’”
Names give reality; and, in Hebrew thought, they also reflect the essence of the one being named – and that’s why God has the man name all the new creatures: God is waiting for the man to identify his new partner by giving it a name that reflects a bond between them, a bond in their essence; but that bond isn’t there until the man himself, ish, becomes his partner’s essence, ishshah.
When I was a kid, I remember a favorite honorary aunt, Auntie Bess, a friend of my grandmother, talking about how after her mother’s death she had read her mother’s diaries; and how shocked she was to read a particular entry about herself. “After two months,” her mother had written, “our darling daughter still doesn’t have a name.”
Auntie Bess was horrified; she felt like she was almost a non-person after her birth – and I think I remember her making a comment to the effect that “after two months, you’d think they could come up with something a little fancier than Bessie Mabel!”
Our names tell people who we are and where we come from; about our clan, our tribe, our kindred, our homeland, and our first language – now that we’re not all speaking the same one anymore. Names affirm our reality and open the door into our identity.
In a contemporary award-winning musical, what are the first words we hear out of the mouth of the main character? “Alexander Hamilton; my name is Alexander Hamilton and there’s a million thing[s] I haven’t done – but just you wait, just you wait.” Our names proclaim our reality and our identity.
Now, Luke does something very unusual with names in the passage from the Acts of the Apostles that we just heard. Throughout the history of the Old Testament and continuing into Jesus’ time, there were three categories of people who had no social standing and no protectors in the culture of that day. Those three categories were widows, orphans, and homeless foreigners, traditionally referred to as “sojourners in the land.” Today we might refer to them as immigrants, or migrants.
Because they had no resources to fall back on, widows, orphans, and sojourners in the land were particularly vulnerable – but according to the prophets, they were also special in God’s sight; and so throughout Scripture, prophetic calls to righteousness and to righteous living always – always – mandate compassion for these three groups: widows, orphans, and sojourners in the land, as pointed out so powerfully by Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde of Washington, DC not too long ago.
Here in Acts we have Peter raising a widow who has died. That Luke identifies her by name instead of simply calling her “a widow of Lydda” is unusual enough; that he names her twice, in two different languages, Aramaic and Greek, is virtually unheard of – and is a witness to how well loved and valuable she was not only among the believers, who called her Tabitha; but also among the greater Gentile community where she was known as Dorcas.
Ironically, by naming this widow Luke indicates her importance – but at the same time, as he names her he gives us power over her, so to speak; because when we know someone’s name, we have the power to use their name and to command their attention. Hence Peter, empowered by the Spirit and by prayer, is able to say, “Tabitha, get up.”
In the third chapter of Exodus, God calls to Moses out of the burning bush and commissions him to go to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of slavery. “But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
If any of us ever saw the 1977 movie “Oh, God!” with George Burns, you may remember that when George Burns as God commissions the grocery worker Jerry, played by John Denver, to go out into the world and tell people that God exists and God wants everyone to take care of each other, Jerry asks pretty much the same question that Moses does -- “Who shall I say sent me??” – and then he adds, “They’re going to think I’m crazy!”
In response, God says, “Here – show them this,” and he hands Jerry a plain white business card with “GOD” printed on it in big black letters. “Show them this.”
In response to Moses, God – not played by George Burns – says, “I AM WHO I AM.” Eyeh esher eyeh. “[God] said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.’” (Ex. 3:13-15)
This is one of the few times in Scripture when God shares God’s personal name –and it’s worth acknowledging the power that is inherent in the name of God, power that is in addition to the power I already mentioned, the power that Moses now has to command God’s attention. Before too much longer, Moses will receive a set of commandments from God for the covenant community, and the section that refers to the people’s relationship with God finishes with this commandment: “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.” (Ex. 20:7)
The people are not to make oaths using God’s name because God’s name would be profaned if the oaths were broken. They are not to curse others with God’s name, and they are not to try to control God by using God’s name in magic.
As we have later with Jesus’ name, God’s name is only to be used in worship, in prayer, and in the furthering of God’s own purposes.
I came to a personal understanding of this commandment about not misusing God’s name in the middle portion of my ministry when I was the Associate Rector of a parish in Florida. St. Mark’s, Palm Beach Gardens, has a K through 8 school, and that particular summer the middle school was planning to offer a free introductory computer class to senior citizens in the parish and the neighborhood who were interested, but because the number of computers in the school’s media center was limited, advance registration was required.
A parish couple that was mature, but definitely not senior, came to me and asked if they could attend the class. I told them that they had to speak to the school, that I had nothing to do with the registration or with the program – and I thought no more about it until a couple of days later when the teacher leading the class headed towards me with fire in her eyes. Whether this couple had misunderstood me or not, I don’t know. I think I’d been pretty clear; but apparently they’d gone to the school and told the teacher that “I had said” they could take the class.
I did not like my name being used – or misused – in that way, and I can only imagine how God feels about God’s name being common currency, editorial comment, and a word used for emphasis in our conversations today!
So why all this focus on names this morning, and on their importance in our lives? Why were the faithful around the world so anxious to learn what name Cardinal Prevost would take for his papacy?
Well, today, the fourth Sunday in Easter, is traditionally known as Good Shepherd Sunday. On this day, in all three years of our lectionary, we hear Gospel readings from John where Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd, as the one who lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus identifies himself as the one whom the sheep know and follow, the one whose voice they recognize, and, according to today’s collect, the one who “calls us each by name.”
As Anglican priest Herbert O’Driscoll has written, this collect “tells us that when we hear the voice of the good shepherd, what we hear is the most powerful of all sounds in our ears – our own name. All our lives we hear our name as we hear nothing else. We hear it called in every conceivable tone and setting, and for reasons and purposes too numerous to mention. Our name has been spoken by voices we will never forget and by voices we wish we could forget and cannot. Our name has been called lovingly, sternly, harshly, gently, angrily, seductively. We have heard it whispered passionately and shouted in exasperation. To know that our name is on the lips of our Lord is to possess the richest intimacy with him. To know that he speaks our name gives us our ultimate sense of who we truly are.” (Breaking, pp. 81-2)
In tears at the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene encounters angels, as well as a man she assumes is the gardener. They each ask her why she’s weeping and in despair she says two separate times that Jesus’ body has been carried away and she doesn’t know where it is. Her sorrow and her grief are overwhelming; but then, Jesus the good shepherd calls her by name and she recognizes him right away.
“To know that our name is on the lips of our Lord is to possess the richest intimacy with him. To know that he speaks our name gives us our ultimate sense of who we truly are.”
Unlike the people of Babel who wanted to make their own name, Jesus himself gives us our reality. As I said last week, our reality is that we are Easter people, we are people of the Risen Lord. We are known to the Father and to the Son by name, and we are loved – all of us.
We are Easter people. The Good Shepherd has each of our names on his lips, speaks each of our names into our hearts, calling each of us his own; and because we are Easter people, we possess the richest intimacy with Jesus – and no one can ever snatch us out of his hand. Amen.