Finding Our True Selves
Why were you given your name?
What does your name reveal about who you are? Today we are given our names for
all sorts of reasons. Sometimes we even change our names to something we would
prefer. In the Bible names are pretty important things. A name revealed your
essence. And sometimes, when your essence changed, God gave you a new name. Today’s
reading from Genesis is one of two versions of the covenant between God and
Abram, which establishes circumcision as the sign of that covenant. It is a covenant
which changes both Abram and Sarai, and so God changes their names to Abraham
and Sarah.
Last week I proposed that
Lent is a time to slow down; to be still and silent; to listen more deeply. It
is, I suggested, a time to pay attention to the three questions that shape us: whose
are we, who are we, and what is ours to do? It is a time to reflect on how our experience
and understanding of God shapes how we see ourselves and what our lives are
about. Lent is a time then to hear the invitation to deepen that understanding,
to let go of some images and embrace new images. In light of that, what name
would God give you today, and what name is God inviting you into this Lent?
Our gospel story today should
shock us. Jesus says that the way to understand God is through crucifixion. It
should challenge so many of our ideas about God and what God wants of us. It
should challenge our ideas about ourselves.
William Loader[1]
says, “Clearly we are being offered an alternative model of being. It is for
our gain, in our interests, to consider it. That is the appeal. So there is no
thought of our abdicating responsibility nor of our being asked to do what we
do not want to do. We are being challenged to want something different. Instead
of thinking only of ourselves and believing that it is to our good to gain
wealth and avoid any path which leads to suffering, we are being challenged to
be generous, giving of ourselves, even when it may mean suffering. The first
image of ourselves and our good is to be set aside; instead we are to embrace
the way of Jesus, of self giving love. Then we will find ourselves, our true
selves. The merging of our will and being with God’s will and being, and
therefore with love which cares for others as well as for ourselves, is the way
of discipleship. It is also the way to real humanness - and the way of Jesus,
and ultimately also of God!”
May this lent continue to be
a time of making room to listen so that we might find our true selves in God’s
will and being.
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