August 21, 2011

What’s in a name? We have heard stories of name changes in Genesis—Yahweh changed Abram’s name to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, and Jacob to Israel. In today’s gospel, Jesus changes Peter’s name from Simon, to Peter—the rock. What’s in a name? How is it tied up with our self-identity?

I changed my name once, well, twice, I suppose. From about the fifth grade on through the end of college, I was known by everyone as DJ. Before then, I was Jon, but it proved too confusing in our small town, where there were two other boys about my age named Jon Grieser. So DJ it was, and remained until I moved to Boston in 1981, when I decided to remake myself. Well, that part of it wasn’t successful, but from then on, I was known as Jonathan. For about the next fifteen years or so, having two names proved useful, because if I encountered someone who called me by name and I couldn’t recognize them, I could at least place them in the right time frame and stage of my life.

Who am I? It’s a question we all ask ourselves from time to time. Sometimes, the answer is clear, often, we may find that the answer is elusive or unknowable. It is a question we may ask when we move to a new place, start classes at a new school, perhaps beginning as freshman in college, or a new job. We may ask it, too, at moments of crisis, when suddenly everything seems to have changed. The death of a spouse or loved one poses the question for us in a new and unsettling way.

Often, we tell a story that explains who we are; it may be a story we tell ourselves, it may also be a story we tell others. We’ve been hearing such a story as we listen to Genesis and now Exodus in this year’s lectionary. For the past months we have heard the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs—of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, and most recently of Joseph. Those stories were part of the large story that Israel told itself, a tapestry that was woven during Israel’s exile in Babylon, from threads that went back much further.

With Exodus, we come to the heart of it. It is a story of oppression and slavery, a story told of aliens living in a foreign land, and of their deliverance. It is a story of their God who promised deliverance, and delivered on that promise. For people living in captivity in Babylon, it was a story that brought hope in a hopeless situation.

Today’s reading from the first two chapters of Exodus marks a transition from the stories of Jacob and Joseph, to the story of the Hebrews as a people. The Book of Exodus relates the foundational story of Judaism—the story of God’s deliverance of the people of God from bondage into a promised land. It also tells the story of the relationship between God, Yahweh, and the people of God, a relationship shaped by the covenant, the agreement or treaty that Yahweh made with the Hebrews at Mt. Sinai, and the law, that God gave to the Hebrews at the same time. That part of the story we will hear in the coming weeks.

We heard today the story of how the Hebrews came to be in slavery in Egypt. As a transitional story, elements in it point backward to the stories of Genesis, and forward to the Exodus itself. For one thing, here again we see the importance of women. Two are named here, the Hebrew midwives, who work hard to save the male infants of the Hebrews and are rewarded by God for doing so. Women work to save Moses as well, first his mother, then the non-Hebrew daughter of Pharaoh. Drowning plays a significant role. Pharaoh commands that the male children of the Hebrews be thrown into the Nile, language that will be used to described Yahweh’s destruction of the Egyptian armies at the Red Sea. And Moses himself is saved by water, being put in a basket made of reeds. Moses is given a name. While the text suggests it has its origins in a Hebrew word, a more likely explanation for the name is that it is Egyptian in origin, meaning “son of.”

In the ancient world, names were a clue to one’s identity. We’ve already seen that in the case of Yahweh renaming Jacob Israel—the one who strives with God. While the authors of the text saw in the name Moses a link to the Hebrew language and tradition, it is probably the case that this little alien boy was given a name that tied him, not to his family but to the ruling class of Egypt. Did he know who he was?

The power of naming is at the heart of today’s Gospel as well, when Jesus gives his disciple Simon a new name Peter—the Rock. There’s wordplay here both in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, and in Greek, the language in which Matthew wrote his gospel. In Aramaic, the word for rock is petra; in Greek it is Cephas, the name by which Paul will call Peter in Galatians. Jesus named Peter, saying something about his character, and perhaps something as well about who he might become as Jesus’ disciple.

Jesus identified Peter only after asking his disciples about himself. Who do people say that I am? The disciples responded with the standard repertory of titles. Then Jesus probed them for their answer to the same question—Who do you say that I am? They had been walking with Jesus for some months now, and we could well imagine that they too had speculated about who exactly Jesus was. But it was only Peter who responded. His words, recorded in all three of the synoptic gospels, identify Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one. Peter’s confession was not the easy deduction of someone who had put two and two together, as they were walking along the roads of Palestine. Jesus told Peter that this confession was revealed to him by God.

Jesus follows this renaming with the famous words, “upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

This text has often been used to make claims about Peter’s importance among the disciples. Because he was the one who made the confession, it is said, he was their leader and Jesus’ favorite. We often contrast his response here to the story of him not being able to walk on water, or his denial of Jesus after Jesus’ arrest. These incidents and others do fill out the picture we have of Peter, but it is important to remember that Jesus attributes this confession, not to Peter’s insight or faith, but to direct revelation from God.

Likewise with Moses. There is a tendency in the Hebrew Bible to depict Moses as a superhero. That’s true even in this story, which resembles other ancient stories of the miraculous birth of rulers. Moses was the deliverer of the Hebrews but he was very human, too. He had his faults and shortcomings. When God called him, he tried to escape the responsibility.

Paul speaks about the transformation that occurs in us through the power of Christ. When we are baptized we are given a name—the priest asks the parents and godparents, “Name this child.” During the baptism, the priest also says, you are marked as Christ’s own forever. We receive our name, our identity, but we are also given a new name and identity. We belong to Christ. That name empowers us. It transforms us. To accept that name and identity also means accepting the gifts that God gives us, the power to do God’s work in the world. Neither Moses, nor Peter, could do it on their own. They did it with God’s help.

We aren’t on our own either. We have God’s help, of course, but we also have the body of Christ which feeds us and strengthens us. Matthew emphasizes this, using language that might turn us off—the gates of hell will not prevail against it. He means only to say that there is nothing more powerful than the body of Christ in this world. As Moses was given the gifts to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, as Peter was given the divine insight that Jesus was the Messiah, so too our baptism, our naming as Christ’s own, gives us the power to be the body of Christ, to transform ourselves, and to offer the gift of Christ to the world.