Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 1, 2002
Exodus 3:1-15, Matthew 16:21-28

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever noticed that hip hop artists spend an inordinate amount of time saying their own names? Snoop Doggy Dog had a song, the whole purpose of which was to ask and answer the question of what his name is. Eminem has a song “My name is”. Practically every hip hop artist makes it a point to get their name into the lyrics somewhere.

That’s because in the world of hip hop, one’s name is more than simply an arbitrary designation–it says something about the person who carries it.

NAMES

Are our names like that? I got to thinking about my own name. There’s nothing terribly exciting about it. Not uncommon at all–there are a bunch of Mark Schaefers out there. My first name comes from the Latin “Marcus” which means ‘of Mars’–now before you go making cracks about being from another planet like my sister did when we were kids, it is talking about the Roman war god (from which we get words like ‘martial.’) Loosely rendered, Marcus means ‘warrior.’ My last name is the German word for ‘shepherd’–(I guess some of my ancestors must have been German shepherds). So my name together means ‘warrior shepherd.’ (My father, whose name is Benedict, meaning ‘blessed’, used to get in trouble in with the nuns when he would claim to be the ‘blessed shepherd.’). While ‘warrior shepherd’ might adequately describe King David, does it describe me? Maybe. There is the added element that the Latin word for shepherd is ‘pastor.’ That’s a little more on target.

Our names are often fairly arbitrary. A family name handed down. A name popular in popular culture–a lot of women my sister’s age–my sister included–are named Jennifer on account of the movie Love Story in the early 70s. One wonders how many grandmas named Brittany there are going to be in another 60 years. Our names do not usually carry that much meaning about who we are except accidentally. Only those names that we give to ourselves–like hip hop artists–carry meanings that tell things about us.

THE TEXT

Names are interesting things. Names come up a lot in the scripture lessons for the day. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Jethro. Jesus. Peter.

And there is Moses, who we are told is named by Pharaoh’s daughter. And while the Hebrew text makes Moses’ name into a pun, his name is much more likely the Egyptian word for ‘son.’ So in the act of naming him, Pharaoh’s daughter is claiming him as her own.

But in spite of his having a name, and in spite of his knowing where he came from, when faced with the awesome responsibility that God has given to him he asks, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Who am I?

WHO AM I?

That’s the question we all face isn’t it? A question that name alone does not always answer.

The time after high school–for most of us that’s college–is the time we usually figure that out. For 18 years, you’ve been told who you are. You are named by your parents and your first sense of self is in the context of your family. Who we think we are and how we fit in is most often derived from this context. For many years as a kid I thought I was a Republican, because everyone in my immediate family was. The older you get, the more you begin to differentiate yourself–the more you come to understand yourself as a separate person.

Now of course, high school gets in the way of this, because high school is not about understanding who we are, it’s about understanding where we fit in (or don’t fit in as the case may be). High school is much more about survival.

When we get to college–all the old restrictions, all the old systems that told us who we were and where we fit in are for the most part gone. Our parents are far away. Our home towns are far. The cliques and social groups of high school are gone. For the first time we find ourselves in a place where practically no one knows us or has any expectations of what we are supposed to be like. We find ourselves thrust in a situation where for the first time the question “Who am I?” is an open question. Free to be amended and altered.

Through exposure to new ideas and new things we discover new interests, new likes, and dislikes. We develop our sense of identity in categories that we never realized existed.

When I was in high school I was vaguely aware of a radio station down at the left end of the dial. It was WRPI, the radio station for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. The most eccentric teacher in my high school listened to that station. When I got to my college, I discovered that I really liked our campus radio station. And that I was a fan of a kind of music that I had not even realized existed. It was called “alternative” music. And only college radio stations were playing it.

We go through processes of discovering who we are. By identification with philosophies: I’m a progressive. I’m a neo-conservative. I’m a libertarian. I’m a socialist. By identification with or against the mainstream. By identification with academic discipline: I’m an international studies major. I’m poly-sci. I’m a business major. I’m a Russian major. By identification with a community: I’m a Jew. I’m a Christian.

WHO ARE WE?

I’m a Christian. Unlike the names we are given by our parents, this is a name we pick for ourselves.

For many of us, college is the first time that no one makes us go to church. It’s the first time we are free to decide without parental involvement. In a process in many ways more significant than our own confirmations, we decide to adopt for ourselves the faith we were raised in. For others, we start to explore our faith. Some who never had any gravitate toward the fellowship of a community of faith. Some who have 12 years’ worth of Sunday school pins, never darken the door of the church their entire sojourn in college. For the first time we decide what it means to be a Christian. What it means to call oneself a Christian. To respond to the question “Who am I?” with the answer “I am a Christian.”

It’s tougher than it looks. It’s not enough to know our names–it’s important to remember what they mean. That lesson is made clear in today’s New Testament lesson. In the verses immediately preceding the passage for today, Simon identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and Jesus dubs him ‘the Rock’, upon which rock he will found his new community. In this week’s lesson, mere verses later, when confronted with Jesus’ prediction that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die, Peter says ‘God forbid it, Lord’ and is immediately rebuked by Jesus for not having divine understanding. Worse, he has become a stumbling block–the Rock is now a stone to trip over. Peter had the right name, but the wrong understanding of what it meant.

To be a Christian, is more than to claim the right name. It is to develop and understanding of what it means to be a Christian. One does not only believe in Jesus as the Christ, but one must live accordingly, reorienting one’s life toward the good news that God has acted decisively and ultimately in Jesus. It’s not enough to say that we are those people who confess faith in the notion that reality has forever been altered, we need to act like we mean it.

That’s hard to do. It’s hard enough developing a sense of self, a sense of identity without choosing an identity that requires us to reject the wisdom of the world and to embrace a faith in a reality that is not always evident.

Saying “I’m a Christian” can have a lot more consequences to it than saying “I’m a Republican.” We no sooner take on the name “Christian” than we are forced to go back to the question “Who am I that I should go?”

WHO IS GOD?

When Moses asks God, “Who am I?” it is interesting to note that God does not answer him. At least not directly. God does not tell Moses who he is. Instead, God says, “I will be with you.” Now, if God were a witness I was examining in court, I might be tempted to object to this answer as non-responsive.

But it is not non-responsive. God answers Moses by giving Moses an identity that is bound up with God. Moses is trying to get out of this awesome duty of being liberator of his people by objecting: I’m a nobody. God responds: to the contrary, you are a somebody, a somebody that I will accompany. Moses can no longer understand his identity simply as an individual. When he saw the Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he understood himself as part of the Hebrew people. Now, at the Burning Bush, he understands himself as one in relationship to the God of the Hebrews.

And that elicits the next question. I understand that I am in relationship with the God of my ancestors, but who exactly are you? What is your name? It’s an audacious question! Imagine asking God for his ID! But that’s what Moses does. Okay, if I am to understand myself in relation to you, I had better know who you are. And God gives Moses an answer with one of the greatest statements in the Bible: Ehyeh asher ehyeh, I AM WHO I AM. The Hebrew could also be translated as “I will be what I will be.”

The next time you’re reading your Bibles, and you’re reading in the Old Testament, you may come across the word ‘LORD’ written in small caps. Wherever you see that word, written in that way, it is a convention for indicating where the Hebrew text has the four-letter sacred Name of God: the Tetragrammaton, the Yod-He-Vav-He, the Y-H-W-H, the consonants of the Name of God, so Holy that even to this day no pious Jew will utter it for fear of profaning it. That name, interestingly, appears grammatically to be a verb. The third person masculine singular imperfect form of the verb that means ‘to be.’ In effect, God’s name means “He is.” At Mt. Horeb, God says, “I AM” and Israel responds “He is.”

Moses now understands himself as one who is intimately related to the God who is. Moses is not alone and will not be alone. A more powerful answer to his question he could not have received.

CONCLUSION

The God who is. The God who is present. The God that we encounter when we come to the Lord’s Table to partake of the sacrament of Holy Communion. As we partake of the sacrament, we understand that in a very real way, Christ is with us at the meal. Christ is with us and through him we experience the God who Is. The God who will be.

The college experience is one in which we discover new understandings of our selves. We ask ourselves who we are and what our names are. As part of this process, when we decide to take on the name of “Christian” and confronted by the reality of that confession, we ask further “Who are we that we should go?” And as was Moses, so too are we answered: “I will be with you.” We are not alone as we come to understand who we are. We are part of the church, a community of those in relationship to God, to the God who was, who is, and who will always be.

And so we ask that question: “Who are we?” and God answers “I am with you.” And a more powerful answer to our question we could not have received.