My Name Shall Be There
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
August 24, 2003
1 Kings 8:22-30, John 6:56-69
I. INTRODUCTION
The other day some of us were in my office having a conversation. Okay, it wasn’t so much of a conversation as it was a couple of people listening to me rant about something. That happens a lot.
I was griping about something that happened in Albany, New York, not far from where I grew up. Albany is a state capital, and like most state capitals, there is little else to do but the business of government. Oh sure, there’s the state university, and the college students, of whom I was one, always managed to find ways to entertain themselves, but it wasn’t always known as a really happening place. I mean there were theaters and restaurants and things like that, but there weren’t a lot of reasons for people to come to Albany.
In the late 80s they built a downtown arena—Frank Sinatra was the opening act. In one night, downtown Albany went from a town where the sidewalks rolled up right after the state workers went home, to a city with an after-hours night life. People would come out of events in the arena and go into the clubs and restaurants downtown. But one of the coolest things about this arena was its name: The Knickerbocker Arena. Knickerbocker is an old name connected with New Yorkers. New Yorkers have been called Knickerbockers since the 19th century after Washington Irving (of Sleepy Hollow fame) wrote Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York. A storied and legendary name. And it made for a convenient shortcut: everyone talked about the next show that was going to play at the Knick.
So a couple of years ago, I was driving home when I was greeted by a sign just outside the Albany exit: ‘Pepsi Arena, this exit’ it said. My heart sank. Another great name with historic value gone. Just like Comiskey Park, or Jack Kent Cooke stadium, or Candlestick Park or dozens of other places. Corporate greed changes the names of the places we’ve known.
But so what, right? Corporate greed is nothing new. Ever since the half-time report became the Domino’s™ half-time report, we’ve been aware that big business would attach their name to anything if they thought they could make a buck. But the fact of the matter is, we get upset by this because names matter to us. Names matter. We’re taught as children to say that “sticks and stones my break my bones but names will never hurt me.” But that’s not exactly true, is it? Names matter to us.
II. THE TEXT
I got thinking about names after reading through our Old Testament lesson for today. Today’s lesson takes place during the reign of King Solomon. His father, King David, had conquered Jerusalem in about the year 1000 BC and made it his capital. He had given Israel a period of peace and security it had never had before. But the one thing he had not been able to do was build a Temple for the Ark of the Covenant to reside in. That task fell to his son, Solomon. Solomon dedicates the Temple with these words:
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O LORD my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. (1 Kings 8:27-9)
“…the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there.’”
What does that mean—God’s name shall be there?
III. NAMES
Names are funny things.
A. Place names
Place names are often either obvious or mysterious. Named after the person who ‘discovered’ the place (i.e., the Hudson River) or after an individual we cannot identify (“Martha’s Vineyard”). [1] Just as often as not, these place names wind up being subject to the whimsy of the person doing the naming. We certainly see that a lot with these new housing developments and residential communities that are built up, where all the street names are taken from literature, or after trees which may or may not be located anywhere nearby.
Sports teams take their mascot nicknames from birds (Ravens, Cardinals, Orioles, Blue Jays, Falcons, Hawks), from some event or personage of historical significance to the city (49ers, Steelers, Patriots, 76ers), sometimes according to the color of socks the teams played in, and sometimes the connection is not as clear: true Yankees are from New England, not New York, and though the Ohio is deep and wide, I doubt any pirates ever sailed as far as Pittsburgh.
B. Our names
Our personal names are often no less of a mystery. Most of us had no say in what our name is. And even though undoubtedly our parents looked up our names in baby books, it’s hard to give a name to someone you’ve never met before. How does one name a child who has yet to do anything?
And so our names become somewhat arbitrary. Perhaps a particular ‘Richard’ will exhibit ‘brave power’ or a Paul will be short, but those things are largely by coincidental.
C. Christened
And yet for all that, our names are significant to us. So much so that when a person is baptized into the Christian faith, that person is able to take on a name. Because our baptisms are frequently of children, the parents will provide the name that they have already chosen for the child. But adults who are baptized have the option of taking on a Christian name, a name by which they were baptized. You don’t see this as much anymore. The only place we see this kind of thing is when a new pope is elected, he will take on a new name. (I already have my papal name picked out—it’s too bad they don’t usually elect Methodists to that post).
But for most of us, most of the time, the name we are given is largely arbitrary. It’s just something we use so that we can tell each other apart. To distinguish one person from another. If there is any significance to our names, it is often only because we attribute significance to them. They mean something to us because they are our names. Whatever else they might mean, they mean us.
D. The Ineffable Name
But God’s name is not like that. God’s name is vested with a lot of meaning. We often miss it because in most of our English Bibles, when God’s name occurs, we write instead LORD in small caps. And so we are not used to thinking of God having a name, because quite frankly, in English he doesn’t get to have one.
But in the Hebrew, the name is powerful and evocative, as it is mysterious. Four letters, Y H W H. A name so sacred that to this day, Jews refrain from speaking it for fear of unintentionally profaning it. But a name with meaning.
Scholars have long noted the connection between the letters of God’s name and the statement God makes to Moses in Exodus “I am who I am.” God’s name, therefore, means “He is.”
It is not simply a name like ours, a way to tell one individual apart from others. It is a name that bespeaks God’s essential nature: being. Presence. God is a God who is. Who exists. Who is present. This is the name God is talking about when he says, “My name shall be there.” The name of the God who is. In that way, God’s name is synonymous with God’s very being.
IV. TO PUT A NAME ON
When we put our names on something, that usually means that we have claimed it as our property. The way your mom might have sewn little name tags into the backs of all the articles of clothing you had when you were a little kid. So that someone else didn’t accidentally take home your coat out of the cubby hole.
And you probably have experienced this: there’s no assigned seating, but every day you sit in the same seat. Then one day someone else is sitting in your chair. You say, ‘Hey, that’s my chair.’ What do they say? “I don’t see your name on it.” We put our names on things that we claim as our own.
V. MY NAME SHALL BE THERE
And so it is with God. God puts his name, a name that reminds us of his constant presence, of his steadfast love, God puts that name on the things he claims. When God says, “My name shall be there” he is saying not only will his presence be in the Temple, but that he is claiming it as his own.
A. The House
But it’s at this point that we may ask along with Solomon: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!”
There’s something we sometimes miss, though. God had said, my name shall be there. And so we are inclined to think that he was talking about the Temple, and he was. But we lose sight of the fact that when Solomon is making his speech of dedication, he was doing it before the ‘whole assembly of Israel.’ God wasn’t present in the Temple because of the stone and cedar. We often think like that, though. Once on The Simpsons Homer became a missionary and when the church was built he said “I may not know much about God, but I have to say we built a pretty nice cage for him.” There’s a lot of people who think of church that way.
B. In the Community
But God was present in the Temple because of the people. God’s name would be there because of the community. God is present in community.
God is applying his name to the community: the God who is, is present in the people of God. He is telling us, it is not in the brick and mortar, not in the altar, not in the building, but in us.
Christian faith is incarnational. We profess that the Son of God was made flesh among us, in our likeness. To live our life, to suffer our death, and through it, to give us the promise of life eternal. We who are Christians, then, have to answer Solomon’s question “Will God indeed dwell on earth?” with a resounding ‘Yes!’ God has dwelled on earth, and continues to dwell on earth in the Body of Christ, his church. Jesus told us “Where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of you.” We are the dwelling place of God. We are the Temple where God has placed his name.
VI. CONCLUSION
This is the beginning of another school year. For those of you who are freshmen, you are beginning your college experience this week. Over the next four years, you’re going take on and be given a lot of names: liberal, conservative, progressive, anarchist, gay, straight, bi, Greek, independent, international studies major, business major, language minor, etc., etc. There are going to be times when you change the name you go by. There are going to be times when others will change it for you.
And there are going to be those times when you want to remember what it means to take on one name in particular: Christian. When you want to remind yourself about the God who placed his name on you before you could even speak your own. When you want to learn again about the God who is, and who calls us to be. In times like that, we come here, to this place, to this community of faith, to this assembly of seekers and fellow travelers. To the place, the people, God has claimed as his own. We come here, to the place of which God said, “My name shall be there.”.
[1] Bill Bryson, Made in America, 1994.
