10 Keys to Successful Living
3 - Mind Your Tongue
Ex 20.7

So… what’s in a name? Does it make a difference if you call a skunk a flower?

Maybe not… That’s the conclusion that Juliet comes to in Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet.” I’m sure you know the story, even if you haven’t seen the play or the movie. The story of Romeo and Juliet is the inspiration behind “West Side Story,” “Romeo Must Die,” and, believe it or not, “High School Musical.”

Romeo and Juliet are from two warring families. He’s a Montague. She’s a Capulet. The whole problem of their love is summed up in one line of the play, when Juliet asks, “What’s in a name? A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.”

She’s saying that she still loves Romeo, even though he has the “wrong” name, a name her family hates. In other words, a name is just a label that’s attached to a person or thing. It doesn’t have anything to do with the actual person or thing. You can change the name without changing the thing itself.

God’s name reflects his character

Or at least that’s what we think.

But that’s not how the Biblical writers thought. For them a name was more than a label. A name embodied something of the person themselves. It said something about their nature and character. If you’ve ever watched the movie “Dances with wolves” you’ll be familiar with this idea. The Sioux call Kevin Costner’s character “Dances with wolves” after they see him playing with a wolf he has befriended. He ends up marrying a woman called “Stands with a fist.” She got her name from a particular event in her childhood.

The same thing happens in the Bible.

Adam’s name is related to the word for “earth” and it reminds us that he is part of this creation, and that we are “earthlings.” Eve’s name is related to the word for life and in Gen 3 she is called “the mother of all living.”

Abraham’s original name was Abram, which means “exalted father.” God changes it to Abraham in Gen 17 as part of his promise to give him a great family. Abraham means “father of a multitude.”

Jacob’s name means “supplanter” (a bit like the trickster figure in first nations stories) but later in life, after he spent a night wrestling with God, he’s renamed Israel “he strives with God.”  

And when Moses asks God who he should say sent him, God tells him his name. Jews stopped pronouncing that name long, long ago, so we don’t know how it was pronounced, but it was probably something like Yahweh and it means “I am what I am “ or “I will be what I will be.”

God’s name isn’t just a label that is attached to the creator of the universe. It’s a statement of his character. It’s a statement of his utter dependability. Moses was understandably worried about going back to Egypt and facing down the most powerful man on Earth, and God says to him “I will be with you and I will be there for you. I will be for you whatever you need me to be.”

So the first thing we need to realise about this commandment “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God” is that, in Biblical terms, the way we use God’s name is an indication of how we feel about God himself. If we misuse God’s name, we are disrespecting and abusing God himself.

A few weeks ago there was an article in the Spec about a Flamborough woman who was getting abusive phone calls because she had the same name as another Flamborough resident, Shona Holmes. That other Shona Holmes has become famous as the face of the opposition to public health care in the US, mainly by trashing the Canadian system. People looking in the Flamborough phone book found a S. Holmes and decided to vent their anger to her over the phone. They said terrible things about her, and to her. Except it was the wrong woman.

It’s bad enough being mistaken for the wrong person. It’s worse when someone actually steals your identity. They get hold of your Social Insurance Number or your credit card information and they pretend to be you. They run up bills in your name. (When we were overseas someone in the US subscribed to a porn site using Marilyn’s credit card number. It was relatively easy to prove we weren’t in the country, but that isn’t always the case.) I someone steals your identity, you can lose your credit rating, which is the contemporary equivalent to losing your good name.

Shakespeare has a line about that too. “Who steals my purse, steals trash, but he that takes away my good name robs me of something which… makes me poor indeed.”

The third commandment says, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” Normally when people preach on this commandment they focus on cursing and swearing. That’s not where I’m going to focus this morning. I’m going to be focussing on how we misuse God’s name in other, less obvious, ways. For instance, there are the kinds of things that we attach God’s name to.

We have a dangerous tendency to attach God’s name to our own opinions and then use his name to try and justify our actions. Let’s take an extreme case. Over the last 10-15 years a number of abortionists in the US have been shot dead by Christians. Now, it’s normal at this point for someone like me to say that they couldn’t have been real Christians if they did something like that. That’s a bit like saying the people who flew airplanes into the World Trade Centre weren’t real Muslims. It’s an easy way to distance ourselves from terrible acts and make those people strange and different, not “one of us.” But those people who shot those abortionists saw themselves as doing God’s will. They attached God’s name to something that was pretty much universally denounced, even by their own community of faith.

Since I’ve given a right wing example I feel I should give a left wing example to balance it. I have friends in the Anglican Church who agonise over what their tradition is doing to itself in North America. Much of that agony comes from seeing the church leadership embracing the spirit of the surrounding culture and affirming things like abortion and ordination of active homosexuals; and doing all of this in the name of God. Once again, these are positions that are pretty much universally denounced by their own community of faith, the Anglican Communion around the world.

I have friends who consistently attach God’s name to a particular stream of politics. Since I have friends on both the left and the right of the political spectrum I now get emails telling me that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. I used to get emails from other friends telling me that George Bush was the anti-Christ. It seems that it isn’t enough to say you disagree with this or that policy, you have to demonise your opponent and invoke God’s name to give weight to your argument.

None of this does God’s reputation, his name, any good whatsoever. Because we carry God’s name, the things we do and the things we say reflect on him. This is what God is saying in Ezekiel 26.

²² “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. ²³ I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.

He’s saying that God will bring them home from exile. But he makes it clear that this is despite their behaviour, not because of it, which has caused his name to be profaned (other translations say “blasphemed”) among the surrounding nations. As God’s people we can misuse God’s name though our words and actions.

One way in which we can avoid misusing God’s name is by being careful what we attach to his name, either by our actions as his people, or by using his name to somehow add weight to our own opinions.

God’s name reflects his power

Names have to do with character and reputation. Names also have to do with power and authority.

It’s a classic scene from any number of historical movies. A bunch of men, armed with swords and spears, outside someone’s house in the middle of the night, pounding on the door and shouting, “Open up, in the name of the king!” Of course the king isn’t actually there. He’s fast asleep in bed hundreds of miles away in the capital city. When the soldiers bang on the door and demand entrance “in the name of the king” they mean “on the king’s authority.” They are acting as extensions of the king’s power.

This is the idea behind Jesus’ promise in John 14 ¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. And again in John 15 ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

Jesus is preparing the disciples for his departure. He tells them that, even when he is no longer with them in person, they can ask things from God on Jesus’ authority and they will be given to them. They will become extensions of Jesus’ authority, just as the soldiers were extensions of the king’s authority.

But there’s a catch. Soldiers, or police, can’t just go barging into people’s houses because they feel like it, even if they say “in the name of the king” or “in the name of the law” as they do it. They have to actually be about the king’s business, or keeping the law. That leads to another common theme in films, the bent cop who uses the authority of his badge to serve himself, taking bribes and enriching himself “in the name of the law.”

We can’t just tag “in Jesus’ name” on the end of our prayers as if those three words now obligate God to carry out everything that we said before them. That’s not how it works. We need to be about God’s business, and praying in line with his kingdom, if we expect him to answer our prayers in Jesus’ name. That’s because the authority side of his name can’t be separated from the character side of his name. His authority only extends to requests that are in line with his character.

That means that Janis Joplin’s song “Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz, my friends all drive Porches, I must make amends” doesn’t suddenly become an acceptable prayer just by sticking “in Jesus’ name” on the end. Not that God doesn’t want to give his people good things; just that they may not be as high on his priority list as they are on ours. Solomon is a good example of this principle. In 1 Kings 3 it says, ⁵ At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” ⁶ Solomon answered, …give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

Solomon asked for something that was in line with God’s character – his name; wisdom to rule well. And it says, ¹⁰ The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. ¹¹ So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, ¹² I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. ¹³ Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both riches and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. ¹⁴ And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”

Jesus says the same thing in Matt 6, ³³ …seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

God’s name has real authority and power, but it isn’t just something that we can tag onto the end of our wish lists and expect God to perform for us. Much less can we make it part of some magical ritual to get what we want.

You’re probably wondering what in the world I’m talking about. Magical incantations were common in Moses’ day. And anybody who has read the Harry Potter books or The Lord of the Rings knows that one of the central ideas of those kinds of books is the power of words spoken as a spell. So, part of what was being addressed when the 10 Commandments was originally given was a command not to use God’s name as part of an incantation of any type.

But what does that have to do with us, today? Well, leaving aside the fact that magic and witchcraft are alive and well in Hamilton – after all we have an occult bookstore at the end of the street – the urge to control God or the spirit world is deeply ingrained in us. We try to bend God to our will, instead us bending to his will. A common way of doing that is to find a particular set of words that we believe make God do what we want. That’s called an incantation, a spell. There are no incantations in the Bible; no sets of words that, if said in the right way, are guaranteed to give the desired results. There are confessions, statements of what is true about God, but no incantations.

Still, we make them. Many traditional Catholics believe that saying certain prayers for a certain number of times is a way to twist God’s arm to give you what you want. But evangelicals have done the same thing with “The Prayer of Jabez.” An obscure section of scripture has been turned into an incantation that will guarantee you success if you just pray it every day for a month.

That’s not faith; it’s magic. It’s misusing God’s name, seeking to manipulate God’s word and use it as a lever to get God to do something for you. And, not surprisingly, it’s usually the same things that are asked for – all the things that Solomon didn’t ask for – power, wealth, favour, success. When we use God’s name to try and get these things for ourselves we’re breaking the third commandment; we’re misusing the Lord’s name.

Watch your tongue, and your life

Sometimes it amazes me that God trusts us with his name. After all, he’s taking a huge risk with something that’s really valuable. It’s like a millionaire father giving his child an unlimited credit card to do with as he sees fit. He can use it to serve himself and end up dragging the family name through the gutter. Or he can use it to serve others and bring honour to the family name.

Our family name is Christian, the name of the Lord. Will you use that name to bring honour to God by serving others and extending his kingdom? Or will you misuse it and bring him dishonour?

The choice is up to you.