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The 2nd Sunday in Lent: March 8, the Rev. John Horn
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Have you ever noticed how names for children go in and out of favor? Maybe it’s because I’m a teacher, but it’s apparent to me that names seem to wax and wane in popularity. Some years I’ll have a lot of Jennifers and Jacobs, and other years I won’t have any. Right now I have several Jessicas and Allisons, and Krystal and Krysta and Krystina and Kristin – all spelled with a K.
When I was growing up there were a lot of Johns in my classes, and now when I meet a John he usually is about my age. A couple of years ago I met a John who said, “You’re the youngest in your family, right?” A bit puzzled, I admitted that I was indeed the youngest of six. “I thought so,” he said. “I’m the youngest of seven, and by the time I came along my parents had run out of names, too, so they called me John.”
I’ve always been a bit envious of the fact that my wife, Raisin, has an unusual name (although it’s not her given name). If you look up Raisin Horn in Facebook, for instance, she’s the only one that pops up. If you look up John Horn, you get a message that “there are over 500 John Horns in Facebook.” Good luck finding me!
The giving of a name reveals a lot about parents and their hopes for a child. Sometimes people are named for a favorite relative or a favorite actor. Sometime it’s to make a political statement. (My favorite example of the last is Frank Zappa naming his daughter Moon Unit.) We chose to call our son Noah, in part, because it’s a biblical name. He certainly got a lot of ark-related toys when he was young! My parents were a bit startled when we chose it, because one of the family jokes was that the first Horn to reach this country was named Abraham Horn. He left the land of his fathers and mothers to go to an unknown land – whether told to do so by God, we never knew. I used to joke that someday we would trace our ancestry back to an Adam Horn and then we wouldn’t be able to get any farther.
Naming someone or something creates a special relationship and bond with the person. That’s what we find in today’s reading from Genesis. God appears to Abraham several times, starting with the twelfth chapter of Genesis, and each time God promises to bless him. But here in chapter seventeen is the only time that God actually changes Abraham’s name. The change is slight, and semantically it’s a bit of a stretch to say that there’s a change in meaning. Up to this point he has been called “Abram,” which means “exalted father.” The new name, Abraham, is taken to mean “father of many.” The change is even slighter for Abraham’s wife, because Sarah is just a variant of Sarai.
Yet it’s not the meaning of the names that’s so important. What is more important is that in giving them new names, God is forging a new relationship with Abraham and Sarah. God promises that they will become the ancestors of a multitude of nations. (And I would add religions, too, for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all trace their origin to Abraham.) This is a covenant relationship, a two-way relationship, in which God makes certain promises and expects Abraham to respond in a certain ways in order to fulfill his part of the covenant.
Abraham’s response is what Paul picks up in his letter to the Romans. Paul is writing at a time when Christians were trying to figure out how they were different from Jews. Jews are followers of the Torah, the Law that was given by God through Moses. In Paul’s time, Jewish Christians maintained that the Torah still had to be followed even by Gentile converts. But Paul points out that God’s promise to Abraham was made long before God gave the Law to Moses. So it is Abraham that we should look to in order to see how we should respond. And what did Abraham do when God promised that he would be the father of a multitude? He believed God, even though he and Sarah had no children. And that belief, that faith, is what put Abraham in right relationship with God – or, as Paul puts it, “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
Abraham’s example, Paul tells us, was not only for the people of Israel. Abraham was the example for us as well, because God has also made a covenant with us. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has promised to stand by us no matter what happens to us, to be present and to suffer with us. By coming to the world in the form of a human, by becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, God has provided the most complete self-revelation of who God is. And we are to respond, Paul says, as Abraham did: with faith. That faith comes through nothing that we can do; it is not part of our own effort. It comes to us purely and completely by grace.
That’s a particularly important message to hear during Lent. Last week Barbara provided a very good list of Lenten disciplines, ways that we can reorder our lives and faithfully return to God. They are good ones, and I commend them to you. Yet sometimes I’ve found that I keep better track of other people’s Lenten disciplines than my own. Who isn’t showing up to midweek Lenten programs? Who looks like they’re enjoying themselves too much? Who doesn’t appear to be repentant enough? And before long I’m right there with the Pharisees, checking on who keeps the rules. I forget what Paul says: no one can make themselves right with God by following rules. It just doesn’t happen. Inevitably, we will break the rules somehow.
But being a slave to rules isn’t the point anyway. Salvation doesn’t come from us; it comes from God. Becoming right with God is a gift that is given to us by pure grace, not by anything that we do. Our response to that gift may and should include how we live our lives. After all, Abraham left his homeland in response to God’s call. He believed that he would become the father of many nations, even though he had no child. Stepping out in faith is certainly one important response, a response that you all have taken during your search for a new rector.
Because God not only calls individuals. God calls communities as well, especially communities of faith. And the response of the community should be the same as that of Abraham: to say yes to God and believe that God will provide the grace to lead that community forward on its journey. God has led you this far, and God will continue to lead you into the future, so that you may be a blessing to the people of Cedar Rapids and beyond. May you continue to say yes, and may you be greatly blessed by the God who dwells in your midst. May the grace and peace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and remain with you always.
Amen.