What Is Your Name?

Hello, my name is Hannah. Please allow me to introduce myself. How many times have you said your name over the course of your life? How many times have you introduced yourself, signed your name on a piece of paper, or maybe if you’re a Southern woman worn something with your name on it? It is the first thing we reveal about ourselves to someone, but is a name really just a name? Sometimes we even have nicknames that tell more about us and we say, “my name is this, but those who know me call me this.” Often our names have stories behind them. Jessica LaGrone in her study entitled Namesake suggests that to ask someone their name really means you are asking them to tell their story. My own name, Hannah, was given to me after the story of Hannah in the Bible who prayed for God to give her a child. My mother named me this after she was told she likely wouldn’t have another child after my sister. She named me Hannah, which means grace. My middle name is Lynn, named after one of my mom’s dearest friends- a retired nurse whose loud laughter and blunt words pierce through silence and fill the air with her presence. This is a woman of strength and strong substance. Thus, my namesake is comprised of grace and fire, humility and raw grit. It is interesting because rarely do I feel like I embody either of these ends of the spectrum, like somehow my story isn’t living up to my name. I wonder if you’ve ever felt that way?

I’m willing to bet that Abram did. Abram means “exalted father.” We find him first in Genesis 12 at 75 years old. Here God encounters Abram for the first time and begins to make promises to him. We are not told why. We aren’t given a record of Abram’s achievements or his moral upbringing. We are simply told that God speaks to him and asks him to leave his hometown to an unspecified land and that God will make a nation of him, that he will bless him so that he can then be a blessing to others. In order to have a nation come from you, you need to have kids. Not just a couple, but a lot of kids. Kiddos upon kiddos. But Abram, this “exalted father” and his wife Sarai had none. His story wasn’t matching up with his name. “Exalted father of who?” At 75 years old, Abram and Sarai were more likely to be considering a retirement home than planning a baby shower.

We might expect now to see the birth of this precious and long-awaited child, a little biblical bundle of joy, a marvel at 75 years old…….but there is nothing. Abram moves from Haran and builds an altar to God. He moves forward with his life, journeying to Egypt with his wife and is shown the land that his people will possess. Abram and Sarai move forward only to be welcomed with…..silence…..no cries of an infant, no room with a crib…no baby.

Abram and Sarai continue on and in ch. 15 the word of the Lord comes to him again in a vision again and Abram pleads before God. But still there is no child. Abram is thinking “I’m not an exalted father. I’m not even a father. My name and my story don’t match.”

So God takes Abram for a walk outside. It is here that God asks him to look at the stars and count them….saying so shall your descendants be.” God once again comes forth reminding Abram of his promise to him. But still there is nothing. At this point, Sarai is frustrated herself. She takes matters into her own hands and has a child via a surrogate Hagar who gives birth to Ishmael. Here in the story Abram is 86 years old, 11 years after God’s initial promise.

Then we move to Genesis 17, our text for today, and find Abram at 99 years old, almost a centenarian at this point. Sarai is 90 and well past her child-bearing years. Here God tells Abram to “walk before me, and be blameless” and I will covenant with you. I will give your people land. You are no longer Abram but Abraham. Now your name will tell that you are the father of many nations and your wife will be named Sarah, a true princess over kings. All of this shall be my everlasting covenant with you. Notice how the covenant here is marked as everlasting.

In other words, God is saying, I am going to change everything about your life Abram. I’m going to change not only where you have lived and how you have lived. I’m going to build a legacy through you. I’m going to do what I do best: I am going to take nothingness and fill it with life. I am going to do something so extraordinary that you may fall on your face laughing. Out of your age and emptiness shall rise life and homeland and communion with me, your God. Before you there is no one, but from you and Sarah shall come an entire nation. Now Abram, I shall give you a name to match your story.

And Abram laughs.Oh just think of the sound this laughter must have made. He is 99 years old. Maybe he laughs at the absurdity of all of this, the sheer impossibility. Maybe laughing to keep from crying. This is a promise that has a shelf-life of 24 years. Twenty-four years of waiting and wondering and hearing promises without any sign of them being fulfilled. I wonder what these years in between 75 and 99 were like. We get snippets of course, but I’m fairly certain there were lots of just putting one foot in front of the other. Another barren month. Another hope dashed. Another month without a word or a vision or a sign or …..anything at all. Have you ever been in a space like that, in that middle space between God’s promises and your reality? Walter Brueggeman calls this the “long uncertain season where faith in the promise wrestles with the loss of confidence in the promise”

And yet here God is telling Abram to walk before him and be blameless. I can only imagine what Abram is thinking at this point? Isn’t that what I’ve been doing God? I’ve been walking with as an “exalted father” with no child. I’ve been walking trusting in a promise I have no evidence for. I’ve been walking with a wife weary of watching others give birth around her. You keep promising, and I keep walking. Walter Brueggeman describes how Genesis 17 looks at faith “into the future.” He claims that God’s resolve to create goodness is greater than the presence of our circumstances that deny it.

Maybe you have had moments where you are holding out for hope when you don’t feel very hopeful. I recently went through a difficult season. Where we lived, there was a train track right behind our house and it was really loud and fast as it would pass by, almost like a roar. I would sit and listen to those trains whizzing by and wonder where they were all headed. Trains were on schedule and on time. Not much about my life at that point felt orderly. It was a season of chaos. But I remember a friend kept saying to me, “it won’t always be this way. There will be something on the other side of this.” This friend and myself would meet together and pray. I found myself speaking promises of God while living in a space where there was no evidence for their fruition. I kept moving forward. I kept giving God my story.

I was meandering in the meanwhile. Have you been there? We may be an Easter people, but every day doesn’t feel like an Easter. But maybe God is doing more in our meanwhiles than we can imagine, creating something far greater that you don’t even know exists yet. God called Israel before there was an Israel. Walter Brueggeman says that “While Abraham doubts and wonders, God is already fixed on the next generation, the one beyond the present hopelessness.”

I wonder what God is calling into your life that doesn’t yet exist? What promise is on the horizon waiting to break forth, making all things new and giving your name a new purpose.

Jim and I were hiking in the Smokies once and one day we went out to the Little Greenbrier School. The school was built in 1882 and had classes and church services there for over 50 years. Long after it was acquired by the park, volunteers helped serve to teach its history. One such volunteer was Miss Elsie Burrell. Miss Elsie came to the Smokies at 65 years old, after 35 years as a teacher and school administrator. But then she began to teach children about the Smokies, especially about the Little Greenbrier School. She began to share with all visitors about the school and became known as the “schoolmarm of the Smokies.” She served there until she was 95 years old.

When we think it is too late, or unlikely, God may have other plans. God may have something beautiful to add to our stories. God knows how to do quite a lot with the meanwhiles of our life. How are you walking with God in your meanwhile? I don’t know about you but I want a faith that is going to abide with me in the many meanwhiles of life, because that’s what most of our journey is. A life of faith isn’t built solely with all the many times we hear a word from the Lord, but on a life of obedience in the in-between, walking before God. Maybe we have to walk before we have the answers, before we have all the promises fulfilled, before things have turned out as we would have hoped. That is the faith I desire, a faith that is going to abide with me when I feel depressed and lost and a failure and terrified and paralyzed. I want faith that will enter with me into the wearisome places and tell me to keep walking when everything around tells me to just give up. Faithfulness isn’t a life of instant gratification, but a life of constant trust. Michael Allen says “the deepest calling of the covenant of works is the summons to consistent and perfect, unceasing and constant trust in the God who created, who promised, and who gives again and again.” That is the deep calling of covenant, to trust God with our stories and to mark us in a way that forever changes it.

So what is your name? Your name is child of God. Your name is beloved. Your name is redeemed. God has given you a name, and God is still writing your story, for God can do a lot in the meanwhile.