Genesis 17:1-8
Names are powerful things. They are markers of an identity that can be hard to shake - everything that we are gets hung upon the name that calls our identity to mind. Names connect us with a past, and they can also set a direction for the future. People who want to leave their past behind and start over with a new life will often change their name. The person who was is no more - there is a new name and a new identity. There are a bunch of examples of this in the Bible, where new identities are sealed with a new name. Think of Simon whom Jesus renames Peter, or Saul who is renamed Paul after his conversion on the Damascus road. And of course there is the story for this week - Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah.
But the interesting thing is that in all these cases, the new names are given to the people involved. Most of the time we don't get to choose our names. We receive our names from our parents at birth, and sometimes we receive new names from God as we are called into a new life. God offers new names to Abram and Sarai to mark them for the future that God has prepared for them. A future filled with what appears to be unlikely promise and hope: fruitfulness, multiplication and land for a barren couple in their 90's. It will take a significant leap of faith to embrace these new names, for Abraham and Sarah to learn to sign them as their own. And it will take a turning of repentance from old ways of self-preservation. This new name comes right after Abram tried to take a shortcut to the promise, producing a son Ishmael with Hagar.
And yet God returns to Abram and renews the covenant God had made with him: fruitfulness, descendants, land and God's own presence with them. How to take up and sign this new name? What will have to be left behind? The fulfillment of the promise lies on the far side of a substantial letting go. Giving up control, identity and life itself before receiving it back from God a thousand-fold. This is a tough movement to make, for Abraham as it must be for us. What new names have we been given? What will it take to sign them in faith that God will in fact be faithful to God's promises?
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Friday, 2 March 2012
God Signs us a Promise... or Handwriting Illegible!!!
Our Lent worship theme, "Where do I Sign?" hits me where I am most vulenerable - my handwriting! I simply have atrocious, unreadable, unbelievably bad handwriting! Just ask Karen or Wendy/Kevin or my family or anyone who has seen - you can hardly read it. It's some genetic default or something! And for Lent, one of the ideas for Spiritual disciplines is to handwrite out the Scrtipures each week. We even have someone doing a 'Scripture Doodle' each Sunday, handwriting, and then displaying and reading a Scripture. I am totally inadequate.
And yet, this week, I tried to handwrite out the Genesis and Mark Scriptures in preparation for preaching. What a disaster. I had to cross out the first word already! It's messy and unreadable - even double spaced. But then again, maybe Scripture itself is messy and gets us into all sorts of trouble. I did find that as I wrote, I started noticing different things - seeing things I might have missed. In the main Genesis passage (9:12-16), I was struck by how many times the word 'Covenant' was used - 4 times... 7 if you count the broader passage it is in. Must be important! I also noticed that the convenant is with humanity, BUT also all flesh - with every living creature. This handwriting got me going on my whole sermon. What is this covenant all about? What are we missing when we rely so much on our selves and our own technology (there was a power failure just before I started hand writing)? What have we done with the created order and what are we destroying? Are we keeping up our side of the covenant? Lots of questions.
This Lent, we are invited to pay attention to a whole series of Scriptures that have to do with God's covenant with us. I encourage you (even dare you!) to handwrite out the Scriptures each Sunday. Or come to the Prayer Room and write your comments in our Lent Prayer Journal. In Passion Week, we will even have the chance to all be Scribes and handwrite out the Passion story in all 4 Gospels. Maybe by doing so, we will catch something we had missed before, and be drawn into the full message and story.
Where do I Sign?
And yet, this week, I tried to handwrite out the Genesis and Mark Scriptures in preparation for preaching. What a disaster. I had to cross out the first word already! It's messy and unreadable - even double spaced. But then again, maybe Scripture itself is messy and gets us into all sorts of trouble. I did find that as I wrote, I started noticing different things - seeing things I might have missed. In the main Genesis passage (9:12-16), I was struck by how many times the word 'Covenant' was used - 4 times... 7 if you count the broader passage it is in. Must be important! I also noticed that the convenant is with humanity, BUT also all flesh - with every living creature. This handwriting got me going on my whole sermon. What is this covenant all about? What are we missing when we rely so much on our selves and our own technology (there was a power failure just before I started hand writing)? What have we done with the created order and what are we destroying? Are we keeping up our side of the covenant? Lots of questions.
This Lent, we are invited to pay attention to a whole series of Scriptures that have to do with God's covenant with us. I encourage you (even dare you!) to handwrite out the Scriptures each Sunday. Or come to the Prayer Room and write your comments in our Lent Prayer Journal. In Passion Week, we will even have the chance to all be Scribes and handwrite out the Passion story in all 4 Gospels. Maybe by doing so, we will catch something we had missed before, and be drawn into the full message and story.
Where do I Sign?
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