Shaped by the Name

Proper 17 A 2011
Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28


He was just another homeless guy, the latest to be hanging around the church.

When we rang the bell for Wednesday Noon Mass, he would show up, the only neighbor to be called in. He would sit in the nave and simply listen to the service.

This day, after Mass, he wandered into the church hall. I found him standing there. I said, “Sorry dude, the preschool is in session, you can’t be here now.”

He looked at me. “My name’s not ‘dude’.”

He was right. His name was not “dude.” He had a name. Knowing it and using it meant respect, meant seeing him as a person, meant I was invited and obligated to acknowledge his history and his life and his unique being on this planet. Telling someone your name, especially in this suspicious age where we even fear identity theft, is an act of trust. Your name and your heart are one.

In the strange world of the Bible, that’s how names work, and more.

A God who has been silent for generations suddenly breaks into the life of a fugitive. Moses has run from Egypt after committing murder. He had found a home and some security and peace, marrying a Bedouin woman and joining his wife’s family. But God busts into Moses’ little slice of heaven. In one moment, in the space of this single meeting, God reveals the divine heart and the divine Name.

The divine heart burns with determination to liberate the Hebrew people from slavery. The divine Name is the promise and the seal that God wishes nothing but liberation for the people. God trusts the divine Name to Moses, in an act of trust and vulnerability. “I AM”—the name resounds with majesty and awe down to this moment when we speak it here. When God gave the divine Name to Moses and through Moses to Israel, God was entrusting his heart to them and to us. From this moment on, to speak the divine Name meant that Moses and the people had access to the heart of God. Speaking the Name made real and active the promise of God to liberate them from bondage. Speaking the Name sealed them with the sacred Name, stamped it on their own hearts and souls. Speaking the name bonded them to God, and began the work of changing them into a people shaped by the heart of God.

The Psalm says, “Glory in his holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.” Try tracking the moments when the Bible mentions the Name of God. When we do this, the power and meaning of the Bible begins to open in a new way.

We are people of the Name of God. As Christians we are the heirs of this rich tradition of Moses and of Israel. We believe that the heart of God has been revealed to us, the God of liberation has made himself known to us, in the name of Jesus Christ.

This summer I read a recently-written book on the “Jesus Prayer.”(1) The Jesus Prayer is a rich spiritual practice highly developed in the Eastern Orthodox world. In its essence the practice consists of the repetition of the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” or some version of these words. The Prayer, centering on the sacred Name of Jesus, is meant to work itself into one’s daily life so that, with time, one repeats the Prayer in tune with one’s breath or even one’s heartbeat. It is a highly developed path of Christian prayer that I cannot do any justice to in a single mention in a sermon, but the practice of the Jesus Prayer relies on the power of the name of Jesus, the divine Name by which God has revealed and entrusted the divine Heart to us. If we truly and sincerely make “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” a prayer that we breathe in and out, that we inhabit daily, then we accept into our lives the very presence of the living God and all the promises of God.

And be warned—this presence will not only give joy and comfort and peace. The divine Presence will change us into people shaped by the very heart of God.

Saint Paul trusts says in simple words what it looks like to be people shaped by the heart of God: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers…” There is a lifestyle being named here, a transformed life shaped to the contours of the divine heart. Jesus in the Gospel is even more blunt: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

A contemporary writer said that Christianity is not a path of self-fulfillment, but rather a path of self-transcendence. (2) Many folk come seeking a church because they are wounded in some area of their souls or their history or even their bodies. It is good that we come before the healing God with our wounds and needs. When we do, we find depths of healing and compassion beyond our wildest dreams. But that is not all. We find ourselves invited, seduced really, into the very heart of God, by the free gift of the Name of God, the Name of Jesus Christ. And when we walk freely into the heart of God, we are changed, we are transformed into people shaped by the heart of God, shaped by who and what God loves and about which God is passionate.

As I speak Saints Peter and Paul is struggling to discern what God wants us to do in terms of outreach to the poor. Our weekly hospitality, Brigid’s Table, is at a crossroads—volunteers and money both have run thin. The easy thing would be to say simply that times have changed, our lives are demanding, and we simply cannot do this anymore—it’s all we can do to get ourselves to Sunday Mass a couple of times a month.

Times have changed and our lives are demanding. I am not sure what in fact we are called to do. But I do know that if we call ourselves a church that loves the name of Jesus, then we need to ask ourselves how are we called and empowered to be a people shaped by the heart of God. Since here we identify strongly with the Anglo-Catholic stream of Episcopal tradition, here’s an Anglo-Catholic voice from the early 20th Century:

“You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have…your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges…and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet" (3)

These words speak of what it means to be a people who love the holy Name of Jesus. These words speak of one essential dimension of what it means to be shaped by the very Name and heart of God.


1. Frederica Matthews-Green The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer That Tunes The Heart To God

2. cf Michael Casey OCSO in Strangers To The City

3. Concluding address by Bishop Frank Weston, Anglo-Catholic Congress 1923