If you have ears, then, listen to what the Spirit says to the churches! ” To those who win the victory I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give each of them a white stone on which is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it”. (Good News) Revelation 2:17
This simple verse has a profound truth at its core that has been an encouragement to me. It is a message about a simple, seemingly insignificant object, a small white stone. The writer of the book of Revelation is a mystical writer, he is difficult to understand, his images are best left as images and allowed to affect us emotionally rather than over analysed and stripped of their art. Here in this simple verse John presents us with a picture, a picture of what happens to those who win the victory, who pass by the grace of God into the presence of their creator.
I will give each of them a white stone on which is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.
Here amongst a myriad of other pictures of beasts and seas and horns and eyes, John’s eye picks out a special moment for all of us. He sees the Almighty reach out to each of his children in turn and press something into their hands. As he looks he sees that it is a small white pebble, a small bright stone. Each stone is different, each stone that is given in this image is uniquely given to each of his children. He tells us that on the stone is written a new name, a name that no one knows except the one who receives it. In other words a name that is between me and God, between you and God. A unique name designed, chosen by God to represent you, to sum you up, to present your destiny to you and to describe the unique relationship that you and you alone share with God. In the light of this little picture of God’s opening ceremony of the new creation, what importance is any other fame?
It is of no relevance what name we have achieved in the eyes of this world and its history. For some we achieve a brief fame, for others it feels as though we were never known at all. It does not matter. If our names slip out of the history books, no longer appear in the pages of Google or are mentioned only for a few brief last moments in the family notices of the local newspaper it does not matter. For our lives that seem too short to count, it does not matter. For God presents us with the only name we will ever need.
Our true names are made permanent in the only place that matters, in the only history book that is eternal, in the only medium that cannot be erased. The white stones, gleaming and polished with secret, true names known only between each of us and our God are given to us never to be removed. When that name is given to us it will say everything about us, it is all that God wanted us to become, it is the flourishing of a seed that he sowed in the world and brought to the flowering he uniquely chose for us. None of us are copies, none of us are clones. We are not hidden in the mass with God, we are not lost in the crowd. To God each of us is peculiar (isn’t that true) so to each of us is given a peculiar name.
Many of us carry our names not with pride but with a burden. For some of us we have a ridiculous middle name, a humorous name that embarrassed us when read aloud in school or at formal occasions. We remember people sniggering at our unusual surnames. Perhaps some of us have names that link us to people we’d rather not be associated with, our names are tainted, their ancestry brings shame rather than pride. As I was looking my name up on the internet I got excited once in a while when I thought it really was me i was reading about. Its like those moments when you thinking someone is talking to you and they really are not. My place of work is by a sea shore and people often walk past and wave in the window… one man in particular used to wave enthusiastically at us and I would wave enthusiastically back… it was only a few weeks ago when I was standing outside that I realised he was waving all along to the people in the flat above us! It wasn’t me he was interested and enthused about after all!
Not so with this name written on the white stone. This name that is to be given to each of God’s children is of the purest ancestry, it comes from the hereditary of God himself, it comes freshly articulated from his own mouth, it was not thrust upon us by our families, it is a name that is not out of fashion nor a name that brings shame. It is not shared with anyone else, it shares no one’s limelight and cannot be mistaken for anybody else. When God waves he is waving at us, when he calls our name it is not someone else he intends. He gives us our proper true name that expresses all that he hoped for in us and all that he loves about us and the unique relationship that only him and us can have with him.
Many of us know what we mean by a unique relationship. For some of us we have friendships or relationships with family or others that bring out an aspect of our personality that only that other person could truly bring out. We notice it in others - when two people get together they resonate with one another, the humour they have between each other is rarely seen between anyone else. Perhaps when we witness something unusual in nature or with our children there is one person we think to ourselves, “they would really appreciate this story”. Perhaps someone that gets a joke in just a certain way, perhaps they share your taste in food that no other does, perhaps they just share your appreciation of quietness or the stillness of a landscape. We have a certain sense of those relationships. Here in this strange and powerful text we are told that God and each of us have such a relationship. There is something in our personalities that only we bring to God. There is a way of worshipping him that only we bring to him, something in the way we understand him that only we understand. The text says “a name known only to him who receives it”… God calls us something that is known only between him and me. In this little picture we are presented with the profound thought that none of us are bland in God’s eyes, each of us stands out, each of us shares a unique relationship with God.
In giving us this name that is not the end of the tale, it is only the beginning of the new tale. Just as a ruler on his coronation is given a new name, just as an ordinary citizen in the days of chivalry was given a new name on his knighthood so to we are given our true name in a ceremony that marks the end of our apprenticeship and the beginnings of our true service . God gives each of us a “knowing look”. All that we might fear about ourselves that he knows has been taken care of, there is nothing in this gaze to be ashamed of, nothing in this name to hide. No need to cough loudly when the teacher reads out our middle name anymore. This is who we have been created to be, purified, white, ready for an eternity of service in ways we cannot imagine.
As each of us stands before the Great white throne we seem insignificant, lost in the mass of humanity as the single Great white throne stretches above and before us and all around us the crowd of people. But in that place of seeming insignificance when we think ourselves lost in the crowd, just another faceless person who looks the same as so many others, same problems, same name as hundreds of others around us we are given a small white stone. And that tiny white pebble has the name that God has chosen only for us written on it. A name no one else sees, something between only us and God and suddenly we are no longer lost in the crowd, suddenly that tiny gift lifts us out of insignificance, lifts us up to the Great White Throne, face to face with our God, with the one who knows us, who shaped our lives, who reveals to us why he made me, why he made you. In that moment a tiny gift lifts us to the greatness of being uniquely made for God, uniquely known by God, uniquely loved by God. Jesus, our older brother, beloved by his Father has been given the Name above all names so that we might be given our own name and place in God’s heart. No other fame matters, no other name we could make for ourselves matters, God has been the one we’ve wanted to share the joke with all along, God has been the one we’ve wanted to tell our stories to all along, God is the one who knows and loves the secret us, the real us that we barely know ourselves. He gives us the name we need never be ashamed of, he gives us the knowing look that only we share with him, he asks us to arise with our new names and enter an eternity of dignity, service, worship and joy.
I will give each of them a white stone on which is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.
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I preached this sermon in church this morning or at least a version of the text above. As I stood at the door a woman whose husband I had visited on his death bed squeezed my hand and I could feel an object in our handshake… she smiled and I looked down to see a white pebble in her hand - “What about that then?” she smiled at me.
Vox O’Malley
