Names are important. Choosing a name for a new baby can occupy a couple right up until birth - sometimes even beyond. My godchildren’s father Chad drove my friend Caryl crazy right up to delivery insisting that any son of his would be named Beowulf. I think he was just pulling her chain but Chad insists he was serious. He admits he was kidding about Beelzebub, but Beowulf was a great hero of Anglo-Saxon literature and folklore, after all, a slayer of monsters, and Chad was an English lit major. Just because nobody but other English lit majors would recognize it didn’t matter. But Caryl insisted that the other kids would make fun of someone named Beowulf, and they wound up compromising on family names.
Fashions in names come and go. Girls’ names change faster than boys. Michael has been in the top 10 for decades, but Christopher and Joshua have slid, while Noah and Liam have moved up. Emma and Sophia are in this decade, Ashley and Samantha are out. And Donald and Margaret haven’t been in the top 10 since the 40's. How do people choose names? Why do people choose the names they do? Do names mean anything, or point to anything beyond the parents’ personal taste? What was it that Frank Zappa named his kids, Dweezil and Moonbeam? At least names tell you whether or not parents value tradition, or what they hope for their children.
Boys still carry their father’s names far more often than girls their mother’s, which also says something.
What does your name mean? Have you ever asked your parents why they chose it? What does it mean to you? Is your name in history, or Shakespeare, or the Bible? What language does it come from? Does it translate into something in English? Does your name affect your personality? My godson Philip used to be crazy about horses; I often wondered if it was because he knew that Philip is Greek for “lover of horses.” Now that he’s grown, he’s moved on… Do you suppose Chastity Bono might have been affected by her name?
And last names. Does yours mean “son of John” or “lives at the river crossing” or “candle-maker” or “red-head”? Our last names mostly tell us where we came from, but don’t say much about who we are now. At least in this country. In Iceland, people are listed in the telephone directory by their first names, because the last names are all “son or daughter of so-and-so”.
Names are important. Names root us in community and connect us with history and with one another. Most of us can remember meeting someone who recognized your last name and sat down and quizzed you on which branch of the family you came from and did you know…? or are you related to so-and-so? A name is more than just a sound. Names-even in this disconnected society-tell others more about us than we often realize.
And if you introduced yourself as a Rockefeller or a Roosevelt people would immediately have some expectations about your connections.
As a matter of fact, if you started calling yourself Rockefeller or Roosevelt there might be some people who would object to it, because those are names with particular meanings and associations, and if you haven’t any right to it’s considered - if not stealing, exactly, not really honest.
But maybe you don’t want to go quite that far. What about just claiming acquaintance with the rich and famous in order to impress people, or to get access to privileges? That’s less risky, isn’t it? No harm in a little name-dropping, is there?
In a mystery I read not too long ago, a minor character named Eddie tried to set himself up as a free-lance hit man by representing himself as a contract employee for the local organized crime syndicate. I won’t name names, because after all the story was set in Philadelphia, and that’s a little too close for comfort. But at any rate once the word trickled upwards to the godfather - excuse me, chief executive - Eddie’s career took an abrupt and final turn for the worse.
It’s always a good idea to know what you’re getting into when you use the name of someone powerful.
Eddie thought he could borrow just a little of the power of the person whose name he was using - let’s call him Mr. Big. Just borrow it. But to use it for Eddie’s own purposes, to get something for himself. Either Eddie didn’t think Mr. Big would ever hear about it, or he didn’t think he’d mind. After all, Eddie wasn’t stealing anything, was he? Just - borrowing it. No harm done, right? It’s not like he was signing Mr. Big’s name to a check or anything.
But Eddie didn’t know much about Mr. Big. First of all, everything came back to him, eventually. You couldn’t keep secrets, in that community. And second, Mr. Big’s reputation was important to him. His reputation kept people in line even more than his enforcers did. He’d earned his reputation the old fashioned way, by eliminating his opposition, and it was expensive to maintain. If people started thinking Mr. Big was employing a two-bit thug like Eddie, they might start thinking he was either losing his grip or lowering his standards, and lose respect. So Eddie had to go.
Now, I don’t mean to imply that God operates like Don Corleone. Far from it. In fact, the offer God makes you can refuse. But there just aren’t any other people in our society who are able to wield absolute power with so little accountability whom I could use as illustrations. Vladimir Putin, maybe Xi Jinping. But YHWH God is far more jealous of his name, and of his reputation, than any thug or dictator.
You see, names are important.
The Israelites knew that. You can’t separate the name from the person. You can’t just use someone’s name without having the person it belongs to dragged along behind it, willy-nilly.
So before you start tossing anyone’s name around in conversation, you better know what you’re getting into. Don’t do it carelessly, and don’t do it ignorantly.
That’s what the third commandment is all about. “You shall not take the name of YHWH your God in vain: for YHWH will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”
The Hebrew word, ‘shav’, that is usually translated “in vain” means emptily, or falsely, or without substance. God gave his name to Moses and to the Israelites as a gift. God gave his name to the Israelites with the understanding that along with his name he was giving them the right to call upon him, that in some sense YHWH God now belonged to them as they belonged to him. It gave them the right to call themselves the people of YHWH, and invoke his name, that is his power, for protection and justice and wisdom. But they were not to call on him for purposes which he hadn’t authorized.
* They were not allowed to use God’s name to curse with.
* They were not allowed to use God’s name to validate a false statement.
* They were not allowed to use God’s name to take things that did not belong to them, to intimidate the powerless, or to justify any kind of moral or ethical infraction whatsoever.
And the reason why God had to give this commandment, the thing about human beings that this commandment reveals, is that given any leeway at all we’ll start borrowing God’s name for our own purposes. Borrow a little of the power, a little of the authority, a little of the glory. Little by little, we human beings tend to substitute our own agendas for God’s.
One solution, of course, would be never to use the name of God at all. That is what the rabbis decided to do, back in Biblical times.
But that’s not the right way to treat a precious gift. You might as well not have received it at all, right? God didn’t give us himself, either in the form of his name and his law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, or in the form of his son Jesus Christ, so that we might tuck them away in a safe and only bring them out to impress the neighbors. He gave us himself for every day, for all of life. So the only solution is to learn how to take care of the gift.
The biggest concern through most of history has always been to keep God’s name from being used as a curse. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that were true today? How many people only hear our Lord’s name when it is used as a curse? Though of course the reason why ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ are used as curses is because the names have power, even though those who misuse them would deny that reality.
Here in this place, most of us know how NOT to use the name of God.
But is that all it means?
I don’t think so. Because casual blasphemy wasn’t an issue in ancient Israel. They understood the real spiritual power of names, and there was a real danger that people would start using God’s name intending to invoke his power for improper purposes.
So the right way to take care of God’s name is to learn what purposes he has for us.
The purpose of the law is to conform us to the will and nature of God. And unless we are educated about the will and nature of God, we cannot possibly know how and when to call upon the name of God. And we call upon the name of God every time we close a prayer in Jesus’ name, every time we perform an act of charity in his name, and every time we so much as identify ourselves as Christians.
One of the many major differences between the laws of the Sumerians and the Canaanites and the Egyptians and the law that God gave to Moses was that everyone, from the least to the greatest, adults and children alike, were required to know the law. Everyone was called to the same duty:
"Shema Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad: Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God is one LORD; and you shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."
In most ancient societies, the common folk were kept in deliberate ignorance of the law, to make sure that power remained safely in the hands of the elites. But Israel’s God, our God, does not play favorites. Israel’s God, our God, calls each one of us to responsibility in the covenant relationship we have been called into.
The study of the word of God is a major priority and a serious religious duty. Spending time in God’s word is the only way we can keep our religious lives consistent with the character and purposes of God. It is too easy to slip into a way of life that has more to do with our own desires than the nature of God, and the requirements of discipleship.
The name of God is more than just a sound. The full name of God is the whole person of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The full name of God is the whole history of God with his people, the full name of God includes his requirements for and promises to all those who love him. God’s name is never empty. God’s name is the whole reality in which we live and move and have our being. Let us never act as if is smaller than it is, or full of anything other than his own truth.
And finally, misusing God’s name is, as are all the actions prohibited in the Decalogue, a symptom of a deeper problem. It tells us about our relationship with God. It tells us that we do not know him as creator and savior as he has invited us to. It tells us that we do not respect him as his power and justice require us to. And finally, it tells us that we do not care. And that is the most dangerous state of all.
Our challenge today is to ask ourselves how well we know God and his son Jesus. When we use any of his names are we aware how much it means? Do we remember how huge a privilege it means to know it at all? How much time do we invest in deepening our relationship with God, learning more about him, and coming closer to him?
When we do that, our lives as Christians will conform to the purposes and character of our Lord, and when we call ourselves Christian we will mean something significant. The apostle Peter told the early followers to “glorify God because you bear this name” and that “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God.” [1 Pe 4:11a, 16b]
Remember that every time you close your prayer “in Jesus’ name” you are claiming that Jesus himself might be saying those very words. If you do, they will never be in vain.
