31.07.05 - What is your Name?

Romans 9: 1 - 5 This chapter begins a new section in this profoundly theological letter. It could be described as Paul??s meditation on the faithfulness of God in relation to the people of Israel. These five opening verses are a very personal statement. Paul expresses anguish when he reflects on how the people of his ancestral faith have rejected Christ. He recalls central moments in the story of God's dealing with the people of Israel, the last and greatest of which, for Paul, was that the Messiah had come out of them.

Genesis 32: 22 - 31 is a mysterious, complex and ambiguous story the origins of which scholars have identified as an ancient pre-Hebrew tradition. It was told and retold, developed and redeveloped and reinterpreted as a life-changing encounter between Israel's God and Israel's ancestor.

A great deal has happened as the background to today??s narrative. It begins with the birth of twin sons to Isaac and Rebecca ?± Esau and Jacob. Jacob continually tried to get ahead of his older twin, and he succeeded in cheating Esau both out of his birthright as older son, and out of the all-important patriarchal blessing of the oldest son. After tricking their ageing, blind father into blessing him instead of Esau, Jacob fled from his brother's understandable rage.

Today??s reading has Jacob returning to Canaan many years later. He returns having himself been tricked into marrying Leah, the older sister of the woman he wanted to marry, after working for his prospective father-in-law for seven years. Seven years later he married Rachel, the woman he loved. He returns to Canaan with his two wives, eleven sons, large household, and large flocks of livestock. He is successful and prosperous. But he is also guilty and afraid of facing his brother. The party of people and their flocks reach a river. Esau is on the other side with four hundred followers. Jacob sends his flocks, followers, two concubines ("maids" in the text), two wives and eleven children across the river, and remains alone. It is night-time, and he knows that tomorrow he must meet Esau.

I cannot remember a time in thirty-two years of ministry when I have enjoyed preaching quite as much as I have in the last few months. Sunday after Sunday since mid-May, readings from the book of Genesis have featured significant moments in the sagas of Israel??s patriarchs and matriarchs. Semi-mythical narratives from a time at least five hundred years before Israel??s history was first written down have, in my view, raised a whole series of situations which ?± despite being at least three and a half thousand years old ?± are as contemporary as today??s Sunday newspapers. Today??s narrative is no exception.

Who knows what powerful events in the collective memory of the people of Israel lay behind that nocturnal struggle beside a river? The story of Jacob on the night before he was due to meet his estranged brother certainly isn't biography. Nor is it history. It is in the realm of saga, of foundational myth. Jacob, the semi-mythical, archetypal ancestor of the Jewish people comes to a pivotal point in understanding his identity in this mythical, heroic, archetypal struggle with one who is both unnamed and unnameable.

The story is crammed full of archetypes found in ancient myths and legends from many cultures and traditions.

First, it happens at night. Night is when people so often encounter their nameless fears. When a story-teller or movie-maker wants to put us in touch with our deepest anxieties in order to induce uncertainty and tension and terror in us, key events will be set at night. In countless legends, in countless novels and contemporary movies, night or dark places create that sense of powerlessness, suspense and dread when the unexpected and the unimaginable may happen. Night is the time of dreams, and of nightmares. It is in the night, in darkness, when one's vision is severely restricted and one can feel most truly alone, that the demons in our memories and our imaginations come to haunt us. Is there anyone who does not know of the fear that comes in the night-time?

Second, it happens beside a river. Everywhere in every culture, in human experience and memory, water is a symbol of life and fruitfulness, refreshment, cleansing and renewal. For this reason, for Christians and Muslims and Jews, water is used ritually to evoke newness and purity. Equally, in human experience and memory, water is an untameable, dangerous and destructive element. We tame it from our taps, drink it flavoured with tea or coffee or whisky, luxuriate in it in the shower or bath, revel in it on long, hot summer days at the beach, smile when we see it poured over a baby's forehead in baptism. And we watch helplessly out our windows or on our television screens when it seems to fall endlessly from the skies, as it sweeps through homes, inundates farmland, washes away holiday makers, destroys communities and lives, and swamps our puny vessels. Water, like the Boxing Day tsunami, reminds us humans of our powerlessness against the elemental forces of this world.

Third, there is an encounter and a struggle with someone, or something, unnamed. Is it God? Is it the inner self? Is it conscience? Is it some nameless fear? Is it the past catching up on one??s imagination? Is it the future waiting to pounce? Is it coming to grips with a possible career change, a decision about a relationship, issues to do with personal or family health? There are elements of struggle in all the great myths of all ancient cultures, and also in the nursery stories with which we raise our children. Often, but not always, they are stories of good struggling with evil. Whoever the protagonists may be, these stories remind us time and time again what we know but do not want to know. They remind us that life is rarely ever straightforward. Identity and purpose, relationships and career, understanding who or what God is, and what all this may mean for my life: nothing that ultimately matters in our human existence is ever achieved without struggle.

Fourth, there is wounding. It can be physical; or it can be spiritual or emotional wounding. In all the great stories of humankind, people do not encounter the depths of reality without coming away scarred. It might be an encounter with the gods or their agents or their opposite numbers. In the Judeo-Christian context it might be God, or Satan. It might be that which lies within one's deepest self or in the push and pull of everyday personal relationships. Whatever it is, wounding is almost always an outcome. Wounding ?± this is some kind of recognition and experience of my humanity and vulnerability, which reminds me that I am not omnipotent. Whether it is the great heroes or mythical ancestors, like Jacob, or whether it is you or me in our life-journey and our life-struggle, experiencing wounding and accepting woundedness is part of attaining mature adulthood. Maturity, adulthood, is recognising and living with my limitations and with my brokenness.

And, fifth, there is naming. "What is your name?" we casually ask one another on a first encounter. In ancient cultures and ancient mythology a name is more than just a label by which one is known. One's name is one's identity. It contains something of the nature and character of the person. "What is your name?" means, "Who are you, really?" To reveal one's name, especially to a nameless adversary in the midst of the uncertainty and insecurity that is night, was to be put in touch with and to reveal the depths of one's personality, the good and the bad all mixed up together. To reveal one's name was to become truly vulnerable, keeping nothing hidden.

Naming, and re-naming, is at the heart of this epic saga. "What is your name?" "Who are you?" "I am Jacob." He tells his name. In so doing he opens up to another, maybe for the first time, the reality of who he is and what he has done. "I am the deceiver, the usurper, the liar, the stealer of my brother's birthright, the cheat, the coward?ñ" In naming himself to his nameless adversary, Jacob makes himself desperately vulnerable. What will this nameless one do with this knowledge and this vulnerability?

Without stating it directly the story makes it clear that the nameless protagonist is God. God takes Jacob's name, his character and identity, and God renames Jacob, giving him a new identity: "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God, and with humans". ?´Israel??, a footnote in the New Revised Standard Version tells us, means "The one who strives with God".

This is no, on the whim, changing of name by deed poll, as it were. It expresses a fundamental shift in self-perception and self-expression. The story suggests it happened in a brief, one-night encounter. But that is how foundational myths handle such things. In reality this shift in self-perception, this renaming, this acceptance of a new and deeper identity takes place over a long period of time. Having cheated his brother, fled to another country, himself been tricked into a loveless marriage; having become adult with adult responsibilities and all the insights adulthood can bring, Jacob came to the dawning of self-awareness and therefore of new possibilities for himself. "The sun rose upon him?ñ" says the story.

Maybe, someone might object, all that is reading an ancient story with western, ?´psychologised?? eyes. But that is the power of story and of myth. However the ancients heard and understood this story, and however other generations heard and understood it, each generation has to hear such stories anew and understand them in their own context and experience, and find in them their own meaning. This ancient story encapsulates and focuses in a brief moment of time, a deep and profound insight about the human predicament and the human journey to self-awareness and self-growth.

In our more prosaic modern times, we know this is a long journey over many years. But there is almost always something that precipitates the journey.

It may be a particular event: a serious illness, an accident, the collapse of a relationship, the loss of a job, the death of a beloved person. This can suddenly bring into focus those core values of life that we have spent so long avoiding. It may be a passage in a book, a flash of insight when in conversation with a friend, a phrase in a sermon, or a sudden awareness when alone or at prayer, that can open up a new understanding of self and of life and of one's place in it all. It might be an awareness of unresolved guilt from some past event, or an internal crisis of self-confidence. It might be an unexpected, irrational falling in love with someone. It might be an awareness of ageing and that one's personal or vocational future is shorter than one's past. It might be an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and vulnerability.

There is almost always something, or someone, that begins a journey of wrestling with self, or with angels, or with demons; or with God.

People come at it from different directions and from different experiences. And not everyone comes to it. Some choose to avoid it, shutting their ears to the prompting voices within, ignoring the signs around them.

But for those who don't, the story of Jacob's nocturnal struggle beside the river Jabbock is their story. It is for and about any and all who do not turn away from the questions, and who engage in a struggle of finding a truer self. It is a story for and about any and all who have been prepared to stand still, to seek to rid themselves of defences and excuse systems and the familiar props to their old self, like Jacob sending everyone else across the river and remaining alone in the dark night of his struggle. It is for and about any who are prepared to face the ultimate question: "What is your name?"

What is my name? Who am I, really? What is it that from the past has made me who I am now? And also, what can I become, how can I be re-named, re-shaped, renewed? "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel?ñ"

`The Christian way involves an invitation to journey inwards beyond our cunningly constructed defences, beyond excuses and self-justification. It includes an invitation to journey to adulthood and acceptance of responsibility for that which I have been and that which I have done: "My name (my identity) is Jacob?ñ" In that journey inward is the discovery that self-discovery might well involve being wounded, and needing to accept woundedness, that lack of personal omnipotence. Openness to a new identity and a new experience of being brings vulnerability, but acceptance of vulnerability is the beginning of maturity.

When I face the darkness, the temptation to give up is very strong. Sometimes the familiar old self is much more comfortable to live with than some unknown new self. It is tempting to surrender the struggle and to walk (or run) away from it and remain ?´Jacob??. One of the significant things the ancients drew from the story of Jacob wrestling in the darkness is that Jacob did not give up: "(You shall be called) Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Another footnote in the New Revised Standard Version gives an alternative translation: "?ñfor you have striven with divine and human beings, and have prevailed." The name that Jacob, who has been renamed ?´Israel??, gives to the place of this encounter is also significant ?± ?´Penuel?? means, ?´The face of God??. Jacob and God, face to face in a struggle of meaning and identity.

By example, the story says, embrace the struggle; do not give up, even when God is experienced as threatening - in whatever manner or in whichever person God comes to you. For, the great writers of spirituality tell us, it is when we embrace the struggle and enter into the darkness, that the darkness becomes as light. The great Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, speaks of the darkness becoming dazzling. It is through the struggle, amidst the dazzling darkness, that my true name which is my true identity, my true being, can emerge. My vulnerability becomes strength. Even though I may emerge wounded, it is the woundedness of wisdom, of self-awareness and of fuller living.

I last preached on this passage in 1999, eight days before I left Auckland and New Zealand to begin six months leave graciously and generously given to me by the Community. I had come to a point in my life where I questioned my faith, my calling, and just about everything else about myself. Just before I left, my older brother wrote to me about my going away to wrestle with angels. I wondered also about some of the demons who plagued my waking and my sleeping hours. I went away not knowing whether I would come back to resume my ministry, or to say "goodbye". I went away with a brand new and impressive-looking CV in my suitcase, to be presented if and when the time seemed right to begin a new life somewhere else. I felt I was going into night.

But in time the sun rose upon me. I came back six months later, my sense of faith and vocation restored. I came back with deeper certainty about who I am, more aware of my gifts and graces and more aware too of my vulnerabilities, weaknesses and failings.

There was no particular one moment I could identify as my night beside the river Jabbock, although I can identify some much less dramatic moments when, as it were, a veil was momentarily lifted and some shafts of light shone in. Not everybody has a dramatic, radically life-changing moment in their life, although some people do. For me that time of my reawakening, my rebirth even, was gradual and incremental ?± and that is probably what most of us could say about the whole of our life. It is especially so when we intentionally open ourselves to the possibility of some kind of reawakening or rebirth just as I consciously and unconsciously did when I took the gift of six months leave to try to discern my future.

I didn??t come back with a new name as such, but I did come back with some symbols of a new person as I discerned it at the time. I came back, for instance, with an earring in my right ear ?± an in-your-face statement to a denomination unwilling to accept gay ministers. Having gone away with hair over my ears, I came back with my head almost shaved ?± a product, some suggested, of maybe spending too much time in Buddhist temples meditating.

But it is an interesting business, this becoming a new person ?± because ?´becoming?? is never completed. ?´Becoming?? is ongoing, and what was once important seems less so later on. The earring quietly disappeared a couple of weeks ago on my 58^th birthday, and I??m curious to see what ?± if anything ?± will happen when I allow what is left of my hair to grow again.

However, much that I came back with remains ?± developed further, I think, I trust, six years later. Those of you who were at the first service on my return might remember me pointing out repeatedly during the sermon that I was wearing a new stole, this rainbow stole I am wearing today. I had taken anew onto myself one of the ancient symbols of ministry, the stole ?± the symbol, it is sometimes said, of the yoke put over the shoulders of oxen pulling a plough or a cart. The stole, the yoke, the responsibility ?± sometimes the burden ?± of ministry. A symbol of a kind of wounding, perhaps; a symbol worn like a lingering limp in someone who has wrestled with God and has allowed God to renew and to remake and to rebirth.

I say all this not from any desire to promote myself, but by way of illustration to promote our God who deals graciously with us in the nighttimes of our lives and brings us, all of us, into a new day. I say this because of the nights that all of us face from time to time, all of these deep, dark questions of identity and meaning, of purpose and of belonging. I say it because if it can happen for me, it can happen for you ?± as I know it has happened for some of you whose stories I have been privileged to hear.

Into the night there comes a dazzling brightness, a rainbow burst of glory, and life ?± wounded as it may well be ?± begins again.

Come, O Thou traveller unknown,

Whom still I hold, but cannot see;

My company before is gone,

And I am left alone with Thee;

With Thee all night I mean to stay,

And wrestle till the break of day.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,

But confident in self-despair;

Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,

Be conquered by my instant prayer;

Speak, or Thou never hence shall move,

And tell me if Thy Name is Love?

?´Tis Love, ?´tis Love, Thou died for me;

I hear Thy whisper in my heart;

The morning breaks, the shadows flee,

Pure universal Love Thou art;

To me, to all, Thy mercies move;

Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

Charles Wesley. 1707-88.