Make a Name, or Praise His Name?

We grow small trying to be great.

–E. Stanley Jones

Fame. I Wanna Live Forever. Baby Remember My Name

I admit it. I’ve sung that song too many times.

We’re wired to seek significance. That’s not wrong. But how we go about it might be. At least since Babel, we’ve sought it the proud way. We’ve tried to make for ourselves a name.

Who doesn’t desire a little fame? Just enough to bask “in the wake of modest achievement” and to be quoted now and then?

Hand raise if you’ve hunted through honor-rolls back in the day or bought five copies of the local paper just to see your name in print five times? How many times a day do you go back and check the social media response after you post?

Hungry for fame, I am guilty of striving to make a name for myself, by myself.

Juxtaposed Names

Re-reading Genesis has me thinking about fame and names. Have you ever noticed how God juxtaposes the two?

Juxtapose means to place close together for contrasting effect. I think God set Babel and Abram side by side, in Genesis 11 and 12, to make a vital truth more obvious.

I think God wants to teach us that making a great name is like catching butterflies. If we run straight at it, it will flit away. 

Or, as E. Stanley Jones wrote,

“We grow small trying to be great.”

In Genesis 11:4 the people said,

Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

We know how that ended.

Genesis 12:2 offers a stark contrast,

The Lord said to Abram, “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

Those who sought their own glory were dispersed. But Abram, who by faith obeyed, received God’s unsolicited blessing. The LORD gave him a great name.

For the Christian, a great name is not self-made.

Throughout Scripture we see that great names are given by God, not made by man. After all, it was our Lord Jesus himself who said, whoever would lose his life would find it and whoever would be first must be last. This is our God, the Servant King.

The Old Testament book of Ruth reveals the same.

Do you recall the name of the man with “dibs” on marrying Ruth but “took off his sandal“ instead (Ruth 4:8)? The guy who rejected Ruth afraid that marriage to her would compromise his own name and inheritance, the Sandal Man?

His name isn’t recorded. The writer of the book of Ruth simply refers to this man with a Hebrew expression like, “So and So.” This ensured his name would not be remembered.

But you do recognize the name Boaz, don’t you?

In Ruth 4:9-10 we find the making of a great name.

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people,”You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.” 

Unconcerned with his own fame, unfazed by maintaining Mahlon’s name, we remember Boaz’s name. Boaz, the father of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David.

More Juxtaposed Names: Judas & Mary

Mark records a gathering at Simon the Leper’s home. Mary the sister of Lazarus (John 12:3) and Judas were there with Jesus. Mary pre-anointed Jesus for his imminent burial with, “an alabaster flask of pure nard worth a year’s wages.”

What about Judas?

On the verge of a spectacular sin, Judas scolds Mary for “wasting” the perfume.

Jesus responds (Mark 14:6-9),

Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.  For you always have the poor with you and whenever you want you can do good for them.  But you will not always have me.  She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.  And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.

And so Mary’s name is memorialized. Which explains why for ages “Mary” held the top honors for girls’ names, while, last I looked, “Judas” has never made it to the top 3,792 in boys’ names.

Mary’s name is remembered not because she sought fame but because she loved the One whose name is truly great, as did the other Mary. We don’t know who designed the Tower of Babel, but we know how God made Abram’s name great. We don’t know Sandal Man’s real name, but we do know the name of Boaz.

Boaz, the great-grandfather of King David. And we all know the name of Great David’s Greater Son. Because it is the only Name by which we must be saved.

Praise that name and you will live forever.

Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together!

—Psalm 134:3