What’s in a name?
by Marilyn Zehr
January 13, 2012
Texts: Luke 3:15, 21-22, Isaiah 43:1-7
Paraphrasing slightly the scripture we just heard
And the LORD says, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth–bring everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
Everyone who is called by my name….. says the One whose Name is so awe inspiring it should not actually be spoken according to some of our Jewish sisters and brothers. Hence the title for my sermon today.
What’s in a name? You may know that the question, “What’s in a name?” is not original to me. It is a line from Shakespeare, in the mouth of Juliet.
“What’s in a name?” She bemoans.
“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
without that title.
Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
If you recall the storyline – It is the feud between the family named Montague and the family named Capulet that keeps these young lovers apart.
In her lovers’ swoon Juliet finds herself longing for a different world. She longs for a world where
what matters most is what something is rather than what it is called.
And yet we also know that naming has the power to shape reality; to actually shape what is.
Knowing your name or the name of your parents has the power to create a sense of security and belonging; that is if your experience in family was one of comfort and security; if it was not, then sharing a name with family can also feel quite restrictive or binding as Romeo and Juliet discovered.
On the annual church calendar today is Baptism of Jesus Sunday and in the gospel of Luke the emphasis in our text is on the voice that names and claims Jesus.
Jesus’ actual water baptism is under-emphasized in this gospel compared to the other three where this event is recorded. In this gospel Jesus simply emerges out of a crowd of persons who were baptized,
In fact it actually says:
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Just as John had so recently noted that his was a baptism of water and that the One who came after him would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire,
we are told more about Jesus’ Holy Spirit baptism than his water baptism.
The Spirit descends in a visible form – a dove
and a Voice names and claims Jesus, as Son and as beloved.
When I mentioned to a young woman this week that my sermon was about God naming and claiming Jesus at baptism she agreed that this was a topic with potential.
In her experience, she told me, whenever she tells someone her name
and the response is, “that’s a beautiful name,” she says it’s hard to know how to respond because, “she didn’t pick it.” And so she told me that she normally just says thank you, because responding with, thanks, but my mother picked it, is a bit of a long and awkward thing to say even if it seems like the truest answer and thinks her mother should get some credit.
Our discussion continued. And then there’s that moment when we grow up where we come to some sort of terms with what we’ve been named and to whom we belong in the familial sense – it’s an important internal/external thing, this young woman I was speaking to pointed out to me.
I thanked her for her significant assistance with my sermon and received her permission to share all of this with you.
Ultimately who does choose to name the reality of who we are and to whom we belong? It is an important internal and external journey.
God names Jesus as Son and Beloved.
Luke also names Jesus as God’s son. The genealogy that follows this passage in Luke underlines Jesus’ “Son-ship of God, by tracing Jesus roots back to Adam, and beyond Adam to God – “son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God,” it says. Luke wants us to be clear about the external identifiers of Jesus’ identity.
But Jesus is also choosing. He chose to be baptized, opened himself to the gift of the Holy Spirit and regularly made choices about how the identity that was chosen for him would be lived out. I’m thinking in particular now about the wilderness story of temptations that follows closely on the heels of this one. In that story and a few others in the gospels we are given a glimpse of the internal/external struggle for shaping Jesus’ identity. In the desert, Jesus came to know the deeply human hunger to be powerful and relevant. The evil one who tempted him even challenged his allegiance to the One who had just named him and claimed him. Jesus had some serious choices to make and for both his and our sakes he chose a path of faithfulness to his truest identity; child of and messiah of God.
Retreats are a great opportunity to discover or explore important steps along the internal/external journey.
This weekend at the Youth retreat – if you happened to see this in our e-announcements, the youth, under the guidance of CMU professor, Irma Fast Dueck are going to consider some of this internal/external journey of naming and claiming as well. The topic for their weekend is “Going all the way: Love, sex and baptism.” For our purposes here this morning I will keep the focus on the last part of this topic – baptism. Linking baptism to the euphemism, “going all the way,” is really clever. If, “going all the way,” still means what it did when I was a young person – it brings to mind the importance of things like intimacy, mutuality, and serious commitment to something potentially wonderful and ultimate. What great words to apply to the moment signified by baptism when you and God before the community mark a point in the journey where you are named and claimed as belonging to God.
But it doesn’t stop there. Then we add belonging to church into the mix. Being baptized also means belonging in a community of people who make promises to look out for each other, take care of each other, try to encourage and inspire each other to live lives of faithfulness to the Jesus we follow.
And so why does all this matter? Why, in this age and nation where independence and individuation is so highly esteemed, would one want to or need to belong anywhere? It’s so much easier to be by yourself, isn’t it? No one to negotiate or compromise with, no one even to have heated discussions with about the right way to read and understand the Bible and what it means for faithful living.
I hope you know I’m not serious. Just like the people who came to John the Baptist at the beginning of our Luke passage today, we share with them certain longings and expectations. The people, all kinds of different people, came to see John the Baptist because they had high expectations for a Saviour. They were genuinely seeking something or someone to heal them and/or free them (and in Biblical language – save them) from a society that in so many ways wasn’t making sense t
o them anymore. The notorious violence of Herod then might bring to mind the use of torture in our world now. The pax Romana or peace of Rome then – experienced as oppression by those on the margins of the empire – might bring to mind our own complicity with hegemonic empire in our own world now. We could even number ourselves with the tax collectors – the ones who keep or use more than our share of precious resources. In our society today we are uneasy too about what we experience as unilateral government actions that threaten the strength of our democratic voice. And so a movement like the “idle no more” movement for example rises because in our longings and expectations we realize that to “belong” to something larger than ourselves has more of a chance to make a difference.
Coming back to the question I asked at the beginning, what’s in a name, and more particularly what’s in God’s actions of naming and claiming? God’s actions of naming and claiming a people for himself – goes back a long way. In fact it is part of the great narrative arc of our Bible. When God chooses the Israelites to redeem or set free, save – we see in the Isaiah passage that this claim that they are sons and daughters of God is rooted in the reality that God created them – formed them into a people and loved them. And God did all that for a purpose – so that they might be a blessing to the entire world.
When God names and claims Jesus, God again reveals God’s desires for all people and all nations. As we hear over and over again in the season of Epiphany, Jesus is a light to the nations and to all who sit in darkness. In this Christ moment – God’s longings and our longings meet. And one of the great mysteries of this Jesus according to the apostle Paul in Ephesians is that the God revealed through Jesus is now the one from whom every family on earth receives its name. If every family on earth receives its name from God then what becomes of the Montague’s and Capulet’s?
More seriously what becomes of the Tiessens and the Zehrs and the Taylors and the Ajak’s and the Latabu’s and the Schmuckers and the Allan’s and the Lafortunes and the Haresnapes and the Woolfear Toulouse’s and the Spence’s and the Harpers? Could it be that when we are named and claimed by God that we really belong not only to God but also to each other as family? I think that the best part of the “Idlenomore” movement is the solidarity it has created between children of God who are so very different from one another. Mennonite Church Canada has made a video that highlights the connections and relationships that are part of this movement. I’ll include a link to it in the online version of my sermon.
If any one of us has experienced a movement of God’s Spirit in our lives and realize that we have received our name from God, yes, we can dispute our chosenness and the relationships this brings our way. Every person needs to embark on his/her own internal/external journey with this reality. But in the end we are invited to go all the way so to speak – and embrace the intimacy, mutuality, and full on family-like commitment this requires.
And if any of you for whatever reason have not yet been baptized to signify the work of this movement of God’s Holy Spirit in your life, you would be welcome to consider it.
What’s in a name?
When it’s God’s name; a lot apparently.
If we all share God’s name – and through God share a family connection with every family on earth – just begin to imagine the gift and challenge that brings. Holidays just got a whole lot more complicated. I’ll have to leave the fleshing out of that for your imaginations or for another sermon.
Today, I leave you with the invitation to deliberately and consciously choose to be part of the powerful reality that God’s naming and claiming creates. God names and claims through the power of the Holy Spirit and fire – that power that John pointed to and Jesus experienced at his own baptism. This same Holy Spirit is available to make all families on earth part of the family of God. God’s longing meets ours.
What an opportunity. Amen.