A New Name - Isaiah 62:1-12

 

My name is Lee Roy Pittard III.  My dad was Lee Roy Pittard Jr.  My grandfather was Lee Roy Pittard.  Many folks, especially family members, assumed that when I had a son, there would be a Lee Roy Pittard IV.  So where is he?  His name is David Carl “Davey” Pittard, named not after my grandfather, dad, and myself, but named after the late Davey Allison.  Why?  The Davey Allison story is another story for another time.  Feel free to ask Anita or myself if you are curious.  However, here is why there is no IV.  My grandfather passed away when I was twelve years old.  I don’t remember the year, but somewhere between 10 to 12 years later, I received mail that actually was for my grandfather.  When I was in college, Sears accidently swapped my dad’s charge account and my own.  I made the decision then that there would not be a IV.  Only after two incidents?  Yes, but I knew the confusion would continue…and it did.  Both my parents and I bank at the State Employees Credit Union.  When I moved to Burlington, one of my bank statements was inadvertently returned to the bank instead of being forwarded to Burlington.  The banks policy is to freeze the accounts to make sure there is not some type of identity theft issue.  My accounts were never frozen, guess who’s was?  If you guessed my dad’s, you’re right.  It hasn’t stopped.  For those of you who have been around a while, you will remember the realignment of districts several years ago as the Burlington District was merged with portions of the Durham District, forming the Corridor District.  As it turns out, my parent’s church, Community UMC, ended up with us in the Corridor District.  Last year the Conference Office put layperson, Lee Roy Pittard, on the Conference Disaster Response team.  I was contacted to be assured by the Conference office that they knew I was clergy and not laity and to overlook the mistake.  I asked whether or not they had really intended to put my dad on the committee as, with the National Guard, he had disaster response experience and I didn’t.  That was the case.  End of story, right?  No.  Amongst the other issues, every reimbursement check my dad receives from the Conference relating to his work with the Disaster Response Committee is made out to Rev. Lee Roy Pittard, Jr.  If he isn’t now, Davey will be glad that he has a new name.

The story is a little different for God’s people.  It is a generational story, but has nothing to do with identity confusion.  There was no confusion.  God’s people had been disobedient.  They had forgotten who they were.  They had turned from worshipping God to worshipping idols.  They had ignored God’s commands to care for the widows, orphans, and the aliens living among them.  They had perverted justice—where those who had money won the favor of the courts and those without money were ignored, or worse, judged against.  They had allowed their worship to become mere repeated ritual and failed to put their hearts into worship—it wasn’t that the form of worship was wrong, it was that what took place in worship failed to impact their Sunday through Friday lives (remember they worshipped on the Sabbath—Saturday).  They ignored the warnings of the prophets to get their act together, and thus found God pronouncing judgment upon them.  Their punishment involved other nations overtaking them, destroying their cities, including Jerusalem, killing many, and taking others into exile, far away from their homeland.

Those nations that overtook God’s people did not see it as God punishing them, but, either their God had left them, or that their pagan gods were greater than the One True God.  The Hebrew people in exile began to feel that they had been abandoned or forgotten by God, many of them ignorant or ignoring the sin that had led them to be in their situation.  The found themselves, either by self-naming, or being named by the nations around them, being known as “Azubah,” or “Forsaken.”  The Promised Land, their homeland, became known as “Shemamah,” or “Desolate.”

Here, the prophet Isaiah, who first gave warning to Judah and Jerusalem that they would face the judgment of God, now, in the darkness of desolation and forsakenness, offers words of hope to those in exile.  “You shall be called Hephzibah—My Delight Is in Her, and your land Beulah—Married, for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married…The Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to daughter Zion, ‘See, your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.’ The shall be called, ‘The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord’; and you shall be called, ‘Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.’”  The promise of a new name for the people of God is the promise of a new beginning in their lives.

The promise to be called by a new name is a promise that all of us need to hear.  Every one of us here have a past that haunts us—times where we have, like Israel, have chosen to worship the pagan gods of the world--to worship at the altars of pride (refusing to admit that we need someone other than ourselves and that we are not the center of the universe), of wealth (seeking to gain all the money we can, regardless of what it costs our family, friends, or ourselves), of power (no caring who we have to walk over in our bid to get to the top), of fame and popularity (wanting to be loved by everyone, we ditch or even abuse former friends that aren’t popular), of pleasure (abusing alcohol, filling our body with nicotine or other drugs, participating in sex outside that of husband and wife)…choosing to pursue and participate in things that moved us away from God’s will and His worship.  At other times, we have ignored or failed or worse yet judged harshly the least of those among us—the orphans, the widows, and the aliens in our land (either ignoring their needs, figuring someone else will help them, or, worse yet suggesting they don’t need any help).  And still at other times, we have taken advantage of those who don’t have as money as we have, who don’t have as much education as we have, or who don’t have the connections that we have—sometimes it has been intentional, at other times it has been simply because it is the way our society favors those who are wealthy, educated, popular, or of a certain skin color (have you ever received more attention in a place of business when you walked in dressed nicely than the person who was already there dressed in a t-shirt or dirty clothes—or checked out in a store and written a check with no ID while the person in front of you or behind you had to show theirs, the only apparent difference the color of your skin).

As we come to the realization of our complicitness in these things, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and how wrong we have been, or maybe still are, the reality of our sin hits us full force.  The realization may leave us feeling abandoned by God, looked down upon by others, or even condemned by ourselves.  We distance ourselves from God’s people, from family and friends, and maybe everyone else.  The names come flooding upon us—some from those around us, but most often we put the names on ourselves.

Maybe they are the same names that Israel took upon themselves: Desolate or Forsaken.  More often they are: Sinner, Unworthy, Dirty, or Lost.  Some of the names are shaped by the sins we found ourselves in the midst of:  Narcissist, Miser, Thief, Addict, Promiscuous, Pervert, or Bigot.  The trouble is that the only time these names, whether placed on us by others or ourselves, really hit us is after we have encountered God and been moved by His grace—the moving of God’s grace that John Wesley would have called Prevenient Grace—the grace that brings us face to face with our sin.  The trouble is that that moment of realization is supposed to be momentary as we give our lives over to Jesus as we justified by Christ’s atonement for our sins and feel the overwhelming love of the Father claiming us as his own.

We have to let go of those old names because just as Isaiah offered words of the hope of a new name for God’s people—the grace of God comes into our lives and seeks to give us a new name as He sanctifies through that same grace to become new people.  As come into a relationship with the Father and He gives us a heart to worship Him, and writes His “new best name upon our heart” (as our choir sang this morning), the Father not only places His Name on our hearts, but bestows, through His love, new names upon each of us:

“Forsaken” becomes “My Delight Is In Her.”  “Desolate” becomes “Married.”  “Sinner” becomes “Disciple.”  “Unworthy” becomes “Invaluable.”  “Dirty” becomes “Cleansed.”  “Lost” becomes “Found.”  “Narcissist” becomes “Selfless.”  “Miser” becomes “Philanthropist.”  “Thief” becomes “Honest.”  “Addict” becomes “Freed.”  “Pervert” becomes “Holy.”  “Promiscuous” becomes “Faithful.”  “Bigot” becomes “Lover of All People.”

More than any of these, each of us is renamed, “Brother and Sister of Christ,” and “Beloved Sons and Daughters of our True Father.”  My Brothers And Sisters, my fellow Sons and Daughters…let go of those old names that have plagued us so long, and lovingly accept and embrace the new name that our Father wants each of us to live into through His unquenchable grace.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.