Second Thursday in Advent

Amos 9:1-10; Rev. 2:8-17; Matthew 23:13-26

The hard words just keep coming.  Reading these readings today, I’m reminded of a book by Walter Brueggeman, on the prophetic imagination.  He said that the job of a prophet is twofold: to warn and condemn, but also to encourage.  If all we get is criticism and dire predictions, we are as likely to tune out as to repent (witness the climate change deniers, for example).  No one wants to feel helpless.  Jesus’ brilliance was in calling us to a new way of being, a way that could lead us to naturally lay down what harms us and others.  He knew about encouragement.

But we don’t hear a lot of that today.  We hear condemnation: from Amos, and from Jesus.  And to make matters worse, Jesus’ charges against the Pharisees can seem hard to translate into our lives.  It’s easy to tune out.

But hidden at the end of Revelation there is a pearl of encouragement.  “To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.”  Hidden manna.  A new, hidden name.  As in the desert, that place of testing, I will find food when I least expect it.  And just when it seems my time is running out and I will join my anonymous ancestors, I will receive a new name.  This name signals a new life.

I can attest to the power of a new name.  I was not born with the name I have.  I heard the name Shane when I was 11, and I knew it was my true name, but I didn’t tell anyone for another 16 years.  Inside, I had a strong woman growing.  Her name was Shane.  I dreamed as Shane, but I lived as a pretty miserable and angry girl and woman.  Then, when I was 28, I let myself become Shane.  I changed my name legally.  It was awkward; it seemed crazy.  But that year was also the year I walked into the rooms of recovery.  It was the year I went back to school to finish my degree.  My whole life changed when I claimed my name.  Later I learned it means “God is gracious.”

This is the promise of baptism.  It’s the promise of all the traditions of initiation that allow for a new name.  But the deepest, truest initiation is not with a name chosen by others; it has to be a name discovered for oneself.  And the discovery does not come, I believe, without trials and little deaths.  The old self has to be worn away or transformed before the new can emerge.

Be faithful.  Stand in hope today, facing into the pain of the world and of your own soul without flinching.  You will receive hidden manna, and a new name.  I wonder what yours is?