What's in a Name?

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent II
February 28, 2021
 
Names are important things.  Think about how you got yours.  Likely, your name has meaning and connection to family, close friends, or some other major significance.  The people who named you thought long and hard for sure.  Nowadays, there are books and websites and all kinds of surveys about what names are most popular and, even, which names for people make them more likely to get noticed or become successful.
 
There is a story in my wife’s family that she, being the youngest of six kids, got named by her oldest brother.  No kidding.  Apparently, he had the chicken pox and the deal was that if he stayed away from her, he could choose her name.  As the story goes, he chose Janice, but being a good Catholic family, she had to have some form of Mary in there, thus, she is Janice Marie. 
 
That is such a great story, and far more interesting than my super protestant one as I was named for John Marshall, a notable relative who was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  But he had ten children so there are lots and lots of Johns out there.  My mother liked Feilding and Garland, but I can thank my father for nixing those choices.
 
When we have a baptism, we are deliberate in naming the candidate being brought into the faith.  We say their name, and not their surname as that indicates their earthly family.  Their first or given name is what matters in that ritual, because the family the person is joining is the family of God, so we call that their Christian name. 
 
As we look over our biblical passages for the day, there are lots of names in there.  Bible names almost always have deep meaning.  Adam, for instance, means, literally, first man.  Eve comes from the Hebrew word for breath and is indicates that she is one who gives life. 
 
When we meet Abram and Sirai in Genesis, God gives them new names indicating their role and function in initiating a forever covenant of love between God and all humanity.  Abram becomes Abraham which means father of many nations.  Sirai becomes Sarah, which means princess.  And given that she will birth a son at 99 years old, that is an apt title.  Not only does this give a clue as to their role in the story, it helps all those generations of storytellers keep it straight.
 
Much later, as he is reviewing God’s great love for all, St. Paul harkens back to that ancient naming story to talk about faith.  As he encourages the Romans to hold fast to their belief, he points to their common ancestor, father of many nations, to connect them to something really large and important for their identity.  Not only is Abraham a great patriarch, he is one who listened to God, and believed in God, sending him on a journey to a new land and a new way of being.  It all started with a promise and a new name.
 
When left his fishing boat to follow Jesus, he was called Simon.  Later in the story, Jesus quizzes his followers about who people say that he is.  Some say he is a giant like the fathers and mothers of old, like an Abraham or a Moses.  Others say he is like one of the marquee prophets like Elijah or Isaiah.  That is some pretty holy company.  But Simon says no, Jesus is the Messiah, the promised savior and deliverer that God’s people have longed for.  Seeing as they had been occupied, oppressed, and put down over and over, the Messiah was an almost unimaginable hope and grace bringer.  To call Jesus Messiah was to hope against hope that he, right there with them, is God in human form.
 
That rung the bell.  Immediately, Jesus gives Simon a new name, a great name, Petrus, the rock, Peter.  He will be the cornerstone of building a new thing we know as the church.  But good old Peter, who is so painfully human, misses the point so often that we could think of him as rock headed, dense, and hard to move too.
 
With that affirmation behind them, all they seek now is the plan.  What will it be Jesus?  Will we ride into Jerusalem, take out the Romans and set the chief priests straight?  What kind of army will we need?  Are you going to bring down all of the God powers of thunder, fire, and show them once and for all what real power is?  They are kind of giddy with anticipation.
 
But then we get to today’s announcement.  Jesus tells them that the way he will go is the way of suffering and death.  He points them to the cross, which is far from the brassy and adorned icon we hold up as a sign of our faith.  For them, the cross is an instrument of torture, shame, and defeat.  When Peter hears that, it makes no sense.  That is not victory.  That is not a plan.  That is suicidal.  Peter takes him aside and lets him know that this is no way to gain followers.  But Jesus calls him another name, a searing and harsh name: Satan, telling him that his mind is way to set on earthly things, and not heavenly ones.  Then, in terms they cannot understand on their side of the cross, he explains that they (we) all have to take up the cross and suffer too.
 
That is the hard news.  And it is not something that even centuries of theology can unravel sensibly.  It is the great paradox of following Jesus.  All the world shows and tells us is that success is all about winning, about coming out on top, about making ourselves happy and fulfilled on our terms.
 
But, then, there is good news here, if we stick with it.  Like Adam, Abraham, Moses and all those prophets, we are just human.  We flop and fail and flounder even when we try as we might to look like we are winners.  We miss the point again and again.  God knows that.  He does not ask us to be perfect, he shows us that we are being perfected in a life much larger than the one we know.  In his harsh and perplexing way, Jesus tells us that he, that God, has this.  God knows what God is doing.
 
We do church to remember that what we see is not all there is.  We tell the stories to remember that even when life is hard and does not make sense, God is still God.  What the cross shows us is that there is nothing so horrible, so difficult, so shameful, that God cannot redeem even that.   And in case we forget, God has a name for all God is, and all God does: the only thing that matters.  Love.  Amen.