January 7th, 2007
When I was a kid, I always wanted a better name. I was never particularly attached to Connie. My dad was though; it was his grandmother I was named after. In my family, there are only a few names, and all of them get recycled to every generation. There has been at least one John, James, Crawford, Brown, Emily and Connie in the last four generations, including both sides of my family. My brother John was named after my Dad’s uncle and my mother’s brother; my brother Brown was named after my grandfather, H. Brown Reinhardt; my first name comes from the great-grandmother I never met and my middle name, Emilie, is my mother’s middle name, was my grandmother’s middle name, and was a relative of her’s first name. Truthfully, I’ve always thought my family showed a startling lack of originality in their name choices – and my brother Brown, who spent his childhood saying, over and over, b-r-o-w-n – Brown, like the color – probably has some thoughts on name choice as well. But then, there is something to having a name with a history. I guess ...
For many of us, our names come with a story. Emma chose her name as an adult, after the grandmother she was very close to; originally, her given name, was after someone her father met on a plane. My college friend Shura’s given name is Alexandra; her father’s heritage is Russian, and Shura is a Russian nickname for Alexandra. This did make it easy for her to know if the person calling on the phone was someone she wanted to talk to; we still laugh at the time in college someone called her looking for Alex. I don’t know the stories of the names you carry, but maybe that’s something you can ask the person sitting next to you at coffee hour: where does your name come from? Is there a story behind it? Sharing the stories about our names, knowing each other’s names, calling each other by the names we ask to be called – all of this matters. It might not seem to be important, but it is.
This business of knowing and calling one another by name was highlighted to me a few years ago, at St. Paul’s in Newburyport, my former parish. A new family came to church one Sunday. I met them that day, Paul and Susan, and their children. They were coming from another church, another denomination, and they had a lot of questions, that first day, about what the Episcopal church teaches, what the Episcopal church believes. I remember very clearly talking to them – it was in the corner of the sanctuary, we never even made it into the parish hall for the coffee hour, they were that intent. So we spoke for a bit, and they came back again, and kept coming back. A few weeks after this I was greeting them after the service: Hey, Paul, Susan, good to see you. I asked about their kids. And I remember how Paul got this funny look on his face, and said to me: I have been a Roman Catholic my entire life, and not one priest has ever known my name. We’ve just started coming here, and you know and use my name, and you know the names of my wife and kids. He was so struck by that, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Roger, the former rector at St. Paul’s whom I worked with for five years, made a real effort to know people’s names and to give them communion by name. I remember this one family telling a group of us how they had come to St. Paul’s: it was at a Christmas Day service, and Roger greeted them at the peace, introduced himself. And when they came up to communion, he gave them the bread using their names. They had never experienced that before, and they came back. And they are still there some twelve or so years later. Naming is important. Knowing each other’s names is important. Calling each other by the names we ask to be called by is important. It reminds us of who we are, and it shows a respect for our person that we miss when don’t use them. That’s why I try to give you communion by name. That’s why I ask you to wear your nametags. Because it’s more than just what you like to be called. It’s something fundamental about who we are, and who God is: God, the one who calls us each by name.
Our holy scriptures give us some sense of the importance of names, the names given to us and our ancestors, and what we call God. Think about this: every time we say the Lord’s prayer, we are reminded about the importance of God’s name. As we pray to God we say, ‘hallowed be your name.’ Hallowed – holy, is what that means. Holy be your name, we say to God. This is of course highlighted in an actual commandment of the ten: do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. This is very much an ingrained part of the Jewish tradition, as the name of God is believed to be too sacred to be spoken aloud. Some Orthodox Jews, when referring to God, call God Hashem, which means, ‘the name.’ We see this at play in the gospel of Matthew, as Matthew, Jewish himself and writing to a Jewish audience, says not ‘the kingdom of God’ but rather ‘the kingdom of heaven – the polite way of speaking, respectfully avoiding direct mention of God’s name.
This past week we celebrated the naming of Jesus. This happens every year during Christmastide, on January first, marking ‘the Holy Name of Our Lord’ as this day is called. It used to be called ‘The Feast of the Circumcision’ – on the eighth day after his birth, the gospel of Luke tells us, his parents had the baby circumcised, according to Jewish law, and formally named. Jesus, as the angel had told Mary. The church has been celebrating this naming ceremony for Jesus since the middle of the sixth century. Jesus, he was named. Yeshua, Joshua, in Hebrew. The Lord is salvation, Jesus’ name means. The salvation of God.
And so, naming is a theme of this time, especially as we hear the scripture lessons for today. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus is given another name as he is baptized: the Beloved. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” God tells Jesus, and all of us, as Jesus is baptized. This is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry; he is baptized, named God’s beloved, and starts his ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing, as we will observe these next weeks of the season of Epiphany. It starts with his baptism. As one of my adult confirmands pointed out in a class recently, it all comes back to baptism. Yes, it’s true. We celebrate Jesus’ baptism this morning, and we renew our own baptismal vows. This makes it a good time to be thinking about our being named in front of God and our community. If we had a baptism this morning, we would, after the sermon, ask for the candidates for baptism to be presented. Sponsors, godparents, parents do this by naming the person to be baptized: I present to receive the sacrament of baptism. Later in the service, the priest says, Rebecca, child of God, I baptize you. . . . Douglas, child of God, I baptize you. . . Regina, child of God, I baptize you ...
In our baptism, we are named and claimed as God’s own, called by name, that’s the important part. And this is echoed in the words we hear from the prophet Isaiah this morning. This is God speaking, to us: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior . . . you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” I love these words from our holy scriptures, and they tell us a few important things. One, this tells us something very important, vital even, about who we are: you, Rick, are beloved of God. You, Kim, are precious in God’s sight. Jeffrey, God has called you by name; Margaret, do not fear, for God has redeemed you. You. Me. Each of us is the beloved of God. Each of us has been called by God, by name, claimed and loved, redeemed and honored. Whatever else we are – a daughter or a father, a son or a friend, a godmother or a sister, we are also, each of us is, first and foremost, God’s beloved. Each of us precious and honored in God’s sight. Each of us has been called by name, and each of us is God’s own.
We are also being told some important things about God in this passage from Isaiah. One is that no matter what happens, God will be with us. When you pass through the waters, God tells us, I will be with you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, God promises. If we look at these words of God metaphorically, what they tell us is that in the difficult times – flood and fire being the metaphor for the painful times in our lives – we will not have to go through those times alone, because God will be with us. Ultimately, we do not have to be afraid, because God is with us, because God knows us and calls us by name, because God loves us. Because we are precious and honored in God’s sight, each of us.
And finally, all of this tells us something important, vital even, about who God is. In the names God uses, we are being told quite a bit. I am the Lord your God, we are told. I AM. This is the name given Moses at the burning bush; I AM – the name, the Holy name of God. I AM the Holy One of Israel, we are told. There’s an enormous amount of history in that name – the one who called Israel as a people and led them out of slavery in Egypt, that Holy One of Israel. The one who has loved and loved and loved this people, despite their flaws, despite their continuous falling short of loving God back, and loving God completely. That Lord, that God, that Holy One. And, God tells us, I am your Savior. I am the one who did save you, who saves you now, who will save you. I am the one who will send you my own Beloved, a part of myself, to be human like you, to bring you the light of myself. I am the one who will redeem you, call you by name, save you. That’s who our God is. That’s what we are to remember, every time we hear the name of God, every time we use the name of God. And that is the God we belong to – the God, whose holy name we use, is also the God who calls each of us by name, redeemed us, claimed us for God’s very own. We belong to God as much as Jesus does, we are God’s beloved every bit as much as Jesus is. That’s where we start this season of Epiphany today: named and called, beloved and chosen, by the God whose name we know as holy.
Amen.