What's in a Name?

sermon by Torin Eikler
1 John 3:16-24            Acts 4:5-10

Our family had a once-in-a-lifetime experience this past Thursday.  We went to the doctor’s office and watched – all together – as the ultrasound technician discovered that our new baby will be a boy!

 I’m quite sure the moment was lost on the boys who couldn’t understand the pictures they were seeing and who were, after an hour’s wait, feeling quite squirrelly.  But, to speak for myself, it was a very special experience.  It was almost as powerful as the first time I saw Sebastian on the monitor sitting comfortably with his fists up on either side of his head, and I will always treasure holding my first two children as I discovered that our family would soon be the mirror of the one I grew up with.

On a more practical note, this new information means that the work of choosing a name is now cut in half.  No little Rosemary or Claire is on the way.  So, now it’s down to Peter or Hugo or Patrick or any of the other dozens of names that we have considered (If you have any ideas …), and the real challenge has begun.

It may seem strange that this joyful task takes so much effort.  After all, a name is just a name, but, for us, it feels really important to choose the right name because names are important.  If they are too unusual – like mine – then a child might feel both unique and alone.  If they are too common, then the child might find themselves lumped in with all the other John Smiths they are bound to meet.  And there is always the issue of nasty nicknames, which seem to inevitable no matter how much care we might take.

Even beyond that, names hold meaning, and they grow more and more complex as we fill them with experiences – either our own or those we connect with others.  Names carry stories, and each story is as unique as the person who carries the name.

The story of my name, for instance, starts when my parents made it up.  They began with Thor (which is the name of the Norse god of thunder and warfare and seems an odd choice for pacifists), but my mother felt that was too harsh.  So they added the “in” on the end and dropped the “h” in the middle so as to any connection to the dwarf named Thorin in Tolkein’s book, The Hobbit….  A good story to begin with, but when they called my aunt and told her the name they had chosen, things got more … interesting.  Her response was, “That’s a wonderful name. We almost used it for Chad.  Are you spelling it with an ‘in’ or an ‘en?’  My mother, at a bit of a loss, responded, “in,” and wondered where my aunt had found the name.

For years I wondered about that too … and about what my name meant.  I knew the name was out there … somewhere, but I have yet to meet another Torin, and I have never been able to find a mug or a magnet or anything else with my name on it.  That may seem trivial, but it had an effect on me.  And it wasn’t until I finally discovered that Torin has come to mean “chieftain or leader” that I felt at home with my name.  I’ll never know how I would have felt if it had meant “mucker out of stalls,” but I think even such a humble meaning would have given me the sense of grounding that I had been looking for.

I will admit that my own history may color the importance I put on names … maybe just a teensy bit…, but in ancient times, names held even more importance than I attribute to them.  People understood names as an essential part of everyone’s personality.  They assumed that names would shape people from the very beginning, and that if you did happen to be named “mucker-out-of-stalls,” then that is what you would become.  Thus, the man we call Jesus was named ישׁוע (Yeshua) – “Yahweh Saves” – because he was to save the people from sin.

That names were important in another way is something we see in the story we heard from Acts.  When Peter and John were brought before the Sanhedrin to be tried for the healing of a crippled man (which we heard about last week), the first and only question they were asked was, “by … whose name did you do this?”  And after hearing Peter’s response, the council forbid the disciples “to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” because they were afraid that a name already made legendary by Jesus’ own teaching and healing would take on god-like power if it was linked to courageous men performing miracles after his death….  And they were right.  Such a name might become as rallying cry for rebellion.  It could even usurp their own sphere of power and take control of the remnants of the Jewish theocracy.

Sometime during the past couple of discussions, I remember someone commenting that in the West (and in the United States in particular) Christians seem to define themselves over and against one another.  We separate ourselves into denominations and more denominations based on the things that make us distinct from one another rather than holding onto the unity of beliefs that we hold in common. 

I wonder if that’s really helpful.  In some ways it points out significant differences in how we understand grace and mercy and the body of Christ and all manner of other theological questions, and it makes it a little bit easier to find communities where we can feel safe together as we worship.  It also puts a damper on important discussions – discussions that can be terribly painful but also hold the promise of growth and new understanding.  And it tends to create boundaries between us – boundaries that reinforced by stereotypes which often mislead us and can cause hurt and damage relationships between members of different denominations.

We have been talking for several weeks now about what it means to be Anabaptists.  The name itself means “re-baptizers” and carries its own stories of pain and fulfillment, but as we have discovered, it is not a lifeless object.  It is more than its history.  It has grown and changed over the centuries, and it crosses into the present with us.  All of our own experiences and beliefs have shaped its meaning, and to the extent that we have embraced the name as our own, it has bound us more closely to each other as a community of faith.  It has reassured us of certain beliefs we hold in common, and it has shaped our lives together.  But it also has the power to separate us from brothers and sisters who are part of the body of Christ.

There is a practice that has developed recently among those who work together across denominational lines that works toward healing some of that brokenness.  They call themselves Baptist Christians or Mennonite Christians or Catholic Christians as a way of recalling the power of our essential belief in Jesus Christ while still acknowledging their differences.  That seems more helpful to me, and it brings the question that we all struggle with back to the center of our lives….  What does it mean to claim the name Christian? 

Does it mean that claim Jesus Christ as our own personal Lord and Savior?  Does it mean that we should stand on the street corners and preach hope and love in the guise of judgment and fear as Peter did?  Does it mean, as John says in his letter, that we should follow Christ’s commandment to love on another?  What does it mean to be Christian?

During the year leading up to my baptism, I had several conversations about that.  Most of them centered on the question of whether or not Jesus is the only way to salvation (as Peter more than implied in his response to the Sanhedrin) or my willingness to claim Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.  But one conversation went a very different way.

I was talking with a friend as we walked back to our neighborhood when he asked me what it was that kept me from becoming a Christian.  Whether it was the way he asked the question or something else that was on my mind at the time, I didn’t respond with my usual review of control issues or my general feelings of being unprepared for the responsibility.  Instead, I surprised myself with a bit of tirade against the “Christianity” that I saw or heard about all around me.  I absolutely did not, I said, want people to think that I was like all those other hypocritical Christians who went around condemning others, supporting abuse and oppression, or claiming that their success proved God’s blessing.

My friend was kind enough to let me finish my rant, and then he pointed out that there were lots of Christians who weren’t like that.  There were probably many more people who tried their best to live out the teachings of Christ.  They didn’t just claim the name of Christian and stop there.  The worked at bringing the love of Christ into the world through their actions.

“As I see it,” he said, “you’ve got two choices.  You can choose not to be baptized, and you won’t have to worry about people thinking you are one of “those Christians.”  But then you have to stop complaining about them or you’ll be just as hypocritical as you think they are.  OR, you can commit to being a Christian and let your life help to change how people think.  I think you might find that it changes you too.

He was right, of course.  If I didn’t accept the name of Christian – if I didn’t claim it as my own, it would have no power over my life.  I would be free of the stereotypes I hated, but I would also be cut off from the good things that are a part of Christianity.  I might still hold the same beliefs, but I would lose the chance to grow and change along with brothers and sisters who sought to make their actions show a different truth – a different way of living out the love of God.

Names are important because they have the power to mold our character and shape our lives. 

That’s true of the ones we are given at birth, and perhaps even more true of the ones we choose for ourselves.  We have chosen to call ourselves Christians – followers of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God.  Let us live into the fullness of that name in truth and action.

Breathe Peace

sermon by Carrie Eikler

Acts 3:1-19, Luke 24:36-38

Can you recall your first memory? I think I can.

I remember being on a bike ride with my family, latched into the seat on the back of my dad’s bike. I feel like were outside of our little Illinois town, on some country road. And I remember being on the ground because somehow my dad skidded or lost control and we fell. Being in the early 80s, I’m sure I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I don’t remember falling, or the bike being out of control, I don’t remember much about after the accident. I just remembering laying sideways, still strapped in the seat crying.

So can you recall your first memory? Would you say it was a good or bad one? A delightful one or traumatic one? For most of us, memories are like pearls strung on a necklace. Life is one long string of small, forgettable moments, connecting the pearls which are the big memories we can recall. Of course, it’s the pearls, not the strings that get remembered for the most part. That space between the pearls is life as usual, nothing too remarkable.

But can you imagine what it would be like to remember everything that happened to you for the majority of your life. Jill Price can. Price is one of only six people in the world diagnosed with a condition called hyperthymesia. In her book, The Woman Who Can’t Forget, she shares what it is like to remember every single day of her life since she was fourteen.

She describes it as someone following her with a video camera and if you tell her a date, March 30th 1981 for example, she pulls down the video in her mind and can tell you: it was a Monday. I was wearing a red sweater. I was in the high school and a teacher told me President Regan was shot. Give her another date: My family and I were flying to Florida from New York for vacation. It was the one year anniversary of my mother finding out she had a brain tumor. “I remember I wasn’t much fun to be around” that day, she said.

She remembers small days too, those strings for most of that connect the pearls. What she wore. Who she hung out with. What they did. She can tell you the day of the week to the corresponding date. She has instant recall. She remembers everything. Every t.v. show. Every song she’s heard. Every joke that made her laugh.

She remembers every betrayal against her. Every lie she ever told.. Everytime she embarrassed herself or stuck her foot in her mouth. Every bad decision. People tell her she has a real gift. To Jill Price, it feels more like a burden. And the hardest thing, she admits about this gift or burden (depending on how you see it), is that she has a hard time forgiving herself for the things she can’t forget. Even little things she holds onto.

The burden of remembering. We’ve all experienced that to some degree. There are still things that come to my mind that seriously make me blush because I am so embarrassed that I said that or did this or did I actually write that in an email to someone? Memories, those misty water colored memories, as much as they can comfort us, bring us joy and security, can just as easily bring us shame. It can cause us to replay events and assign blame and start thinking of other possible outcomes.

Remember those books some of us read as kids? Those choose your own adventure books? If the hero should go down the tunnel with snakes go to page 80. If she should swing across the moat filled with crocodiles, go to page 93 in his story

We look back on life in retrospect with this sort of wonderment: If we just would have done this rather than that. If we never met so and so. If we went here instead of there, made this decision instead of that one.

This is sort of the biblical adventure story that seems to be playing out in today’s scripture in Acts. The crowds are amazed that Peter healed a crippled beggar, they’re clinging to him in the cool shade of the temple’s portico. And it seems like the sympathetic Peter we just saw, the Peter who healed a man, has a choice. He can continue practicing mercy, or he can choose to start assigning judgment, he could go to page 93 or to page 80.
He chooses judgment.

He reminds them that it is not he, but the power of the risen Christ who does these actions. Remember him? Jesus? The one you handed over, the one you rejected, the one you killed.

My dad likes to practice what he calls “selective memory” or especially “selective hearing”: he remembers or hears what he wants to remember or hear. It sure seems like Peter is doing a little selective memory here. Out of the twelve disciples, there were only two recorded that openly denied or betrayed Christ in his last days: Judas…and Peter. There seems to be a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black here, when he blames these people for the part in Jesus’ death.

Jesus, on the other hand, in the story read today gives a different invitation to remembrance. After appearing before his disciples, literally scaring the be-Jesus out of them, he says relax, don’t be scared, and by the way is there anything to eat in this joint? And he reminds them as he wipes the tasty bit of fish off the sides of his mouth: don’t you remember? I told you this before—many times in fact. It is written that this would happen, and it had to happen (or be fulfilled, as it says). The Messiah had to suffer, and to rise from the dead on the third day. I’m just doing my part of the bargain here.

And with these two scriptures we have one of the few…ok, probably one of the many…quandaries and inconsistencies that arise in Christian theology. I’ll put it to you straight from my own doubting Thomas lips:

if God intended for Jesus to die and rise again (first off, yes there is a problem with a heavenly Father wanting his son to die…sermon for another time), if it was supposed to happen this way, part of the plan that Jesus was to be tried and crucified so he could be resurrected, then weren’t all those implicated in Jesus’ death really just doing what needed to happen?
Weren’t they—from Herod to Pilate to the crowds calling crucify him, to Judas betraying him—weren’t they just unfortunate and grisly players in some cosmic drama? The necessary villains so the hero can save the day.

What do you think? Should we continue blaming the crowds for shouting hosanna on Palm Sunday and turning their backs on him and crying crucify him on Good Friday, and then balk at their audacity to praise Peter when they see the work of Christ being done?

Or should we be applauding them for handing Jesus over, for moving the crucifixion plot along so we could get to the dénouement of the resurrection? Saying, bravo, well done. Because of your violence, it is fulfilled.

I can’t say. It remains for me still a question for which I have no satisfactory answer. I struggle to understand why, and you probably do to and you know what? When we struggle to understand the meaning of these events, we’re doing theology together. Like those first disciples trying to figure out what happened, not believing or not knowing what to do.

But we miss something if the entire theology game is to stand with Peter and assign blame. Was it the Romans, or the masses, or the Jewish authorities responsible for Jesus’ death? We miss something when all our theological imagination spent wondering what sin it was in the beginning that we perpetuate that made Christ’s death necessary, or who gets the salvation because they’ve done or said the right things to make up for all the bad stuff.

And we miss something when we stand in the midst of our daily lives, like Peter, assigning blame: who’s to blame for the economy? Who’s to blame for the environment? Who’s to blame for your sadness? Who’s to blame for my misfortune?

You know what is so interesting about this whole “who did this to Jesus” thing? Is that Jesus never blames anybody. When we blame ourselves for our inner darkness, or blame others for their hurtful actions we can never forget… we are preaching like Peter, instead of claiming the Messiah.

As professor Amy Allen urges, instead of assigning blame, we must recognize that this risen Lord Jesus stands among the disciples, those who betrayed him to the core—who abandoned and denied him—and Jesus treats them neither as innocent or guilty, but as people in need of grace. Instead of looking out and shouting blame, he stands within them and breathes “Peace.”

Peace. The risen Christ stands within us, right next to the Peter within us with all our judgment and blame, and breathes peace.

I don’t know if there’s enough room in me for that Jesus. There are things in my life that I’m angry about, towards people who I think are responsible for all sorts of things. Things that will not let me go, no matter how much I want to forget.

So maybe for me, and maybe for you, this is the resurrection story that needs to find its way into our hearts this year.

[light peace lamp] – “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

Life is ...?

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 1:1-5 Mark 16:1-8

When I was a child I was a big fan of “Life” – the board game, not the real thing…. (Well, I was a big fan of the real thing too, but I’m thinking of the game by Hasbro.) Anyway, I liked the game a lot, and my brothers and I used to play it almost as much as Monopoly. We certainly played it almost every time I went to visit my older cousins because it doesn’t really matter how old you are, you just spin a wheel and move a piece to play. For those of you who don’t know the game or haven’t seen it in a while, let me explain a little.

According to one website, the “rules are simple, whoever has the most money at the end wins,” but it is a little more complicated than that. The game is played on a board with a twisting, forking path that leads all around a spinner wheel – the wheel of life – at the center. You start with a car, spin the wheel, and move the number of spaces that come up. Then you follow the directions on the space where you landed. Along the way, you go to college … or not, you pick a career, you get married (everyone has to do that), you may or may not have children, you pay taxes (of course), and you end up in retiring – either at the Country Estates retirement home, Millionaire Acres, or in the Poor House.

Despite the obvious capitalist overtones, Life is a fun game that does teach you a little bit about how the choices you make can change the way your life goes. The one thing that has always made me wonder, though, is that there is no death in the game of Life. There are no spaces that talk about accidents or severe illness. Everyone ends the game in more or less comfortable retirement.

I’ve never asked anyone about this glaring omission – certainly not anyone who has a hand in the game’s design, but I suspect the reason is quite simple. Parents probably would not buy it for their children if death was such a big part of the game. It’s too morbid, too scary, … too real for a board game that can be played by ages 6 and up, and in the end, it is all about the money.

While I understand that thinking – and I even follow the same thinking with my boys, there is really no way to keep the truth from children. They know that things die – that people die, and they need to understand that because death is an inevitable part of life. It can be scary, but we all face it eventually. It’s just the nature of things, … or is it? Christ’s empty tomb would say otherwise.


I had an interesting conversation about death with one of my professors at seminary … (count on fingers vaguely) ... a while ago now. We were studying baptismal theology, and we somehow ended up talking about death. The link was Orthodox theology – and by that I mean the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church where they understand “Original Sin” a bit differently than we do.

Original sin is the same thing for them as it is for us. It is the first decision by Adam and Eve to disobey God’s instructions and eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The big difference is that while we have a vague sense that it’s linked to sex somehow, they do not believe that. In their theology, original sin is linked to death and there they are in agreement with Paul who says that “the wages of sin is death.” The original sin got us all kicked out of the Garden with its Tree of Life. So, if there had been no sin there would be no death, and we and all the people who have ever been born would all still be living in the Garden.

And that is where I get stuck. Trained as I am in Biology and Environmental Studies, I have trouble with the idea that life can exist on this planet just as it does but without death. Imagine it, if you even can, all the billions of people who have ever lived crowded all together with the animals and plants. Even just the ants would probably cover the entire surface of the planet not to mention the dinosaurs….

It boggles the mind, and my comment during class was that if there was no death, then there couldn’t be any new birth either. There just isn’t space. To which my professor replied, “We’ll never know what God intended. Maybe the “Garden” was big enough to hold us all.”
“But things don’t work that way,” I complained. “No planet could be big enough.”

“But God is.”
God is ….

God is big enough to hold all creation and to love every living thing no matter how big … no matter how small. God’s love is big enough.

That’s a mind-boggling thought, too. And, it’s more than a little scary because it makes it absolutely clear that God’s power is beyond our assumptions and understanding. So far beyond that death and life have no power to limit God. So far that raising someone from the dead is just the beginning.

That’s the power that Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother-of-James, and Salome faced when they arrived at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. Until then they had known Jesus as a powerful healer, a teacher, a friend, … and a man. But when they stepped into the cave, they came face to face with a different reality. There was no body – no man shrouded with cloth and smelling of the beginnings of decay. There was no death there and no life … not the way they knew it. There was only something unknown and unknowable – an angel and a power beyond life and death.

Is it any wonder that they left in fear? … that they didn’t tell anyone what they had seen? I don’t think so. I’m not sure I would have stayed even as long as they did, and I pretty sure that I wouldn’t have gone around telling anyone such an unbelievable story … at least not right away.

And that bring up an interesting point. Where are the stories of Jesus’ appearances? … of the blessing of the disciples? Where is the happy ending? Why did Mark end the story here when there is so much more to tell?
Some scholars say that this is a literary device that Mark used to keep the focus on the suffering service of Christ rather than on a final, glorious triumph over death or to remind us that the resurrection was special – that it was “not just another event in the sequence of events that we catalogue as history.” And that may be true, but I think there’s more to it as well.

Leaving the story unfinished invites us all into the tomb. For a few moments we stand there with the women … facing the unknown, trembling with fear. We hear the words of the angel, and all of us run back into the comfort of the light and warmth of the real world where people who die stay dead … except … they don’t. What is going on?! What happens now?!


We know the rest of the story. We know that this wasn’t the end. The disciples saw Jesus again, several times. Jesus blessed them with the Holy Spirit and sent them out to the world. They continued the story with their lives. Lives that followed the path set forth by Christ… lives of service and selflessness… of hope and courage that came from knowing that life was more than marriage and children and college and retirement at Millionaire Acres and death. Jesus’ resurrection showed them that life didn’t end with death. It was bigger than death. It went on.

And even now, even here outside the garden, Christ is whispering the same good news in our ears. Life is more than just years of getting stuff and doing things. Life is bigger than that … more than that, and even if we must experience death (unless the end days come in time), it is not the end of the story.

Christ is the light of world, and if we follow that light, we find … life. “Come into the tomb,” Christ whispers. “Come in and see the truth. Come in … and then … go out, and Life - life in all its servant fullness … in all its selfless joy … in the brightness of its eternal hop – Life in the wondrous love of God will be yours … forever.

Hallelujah! AMEN.

Word of Unburdening-Possessions

by Carrie Eikler
Mark 11:1-11
Palm Sunday:

During Lent we are trying to speak less and listen more.  Talk less and explore more.  Some of the items of unburdening we have addressed may be just what you needed to look at.  Others, less so. 

As I was talking with Torin this week about our Lenten series, I remarked on how hard it has been for me to give these shortened mediations, so we can listen more.  The challenge to me, is to not simply sound like some sort of self-help book, giving seven to nine minutes of platitudes and worn out clichés.  It’s been hard to try to get to the fast and furious to the heart of the spiritual longings that we fill with spending, or media, or food. 

or possessions…  Those thing we have that really end up possessing us (wow, isn’t that a cliché). 

No matter how far along on the “simplify my life” path I go, I will always have farther when it comes to possessions.  Today we threw clothes in the aisle, remembering that the people didn’t only welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with palms but with cloaks…their clothes.  For some, clothes are a big deal they need to address. an obvious place to start unburdening. 

For me, clothes as possessions aren’t really the issue. Let me just say… I’m glad they didn’t line the path into Jerusalem with books.  Not only would it hurt to throw them at Jesus, or each other, but it would be too painful to decide which ones to throw out.

And things like books are possessions we can feel good about.  Clothes, electronics, lots and lots of cars (if we had the luxury to worry about itsd).  These are things (sigh) “we know” we don’t need as many as we have.  But books, for me…don’t make me reduce those.  Not my fiction.  Not that 1999 college text book on demography.  Not one out of 30 (or more) cookbooks.  Not that book about McCarthyism that I have never read, nor ever will read, but really just like having on my bookshelf because I want to people to think I have it…oh no.  I can’t get rid of that. 

This type of book I should say is in a category all of its own.  I like to call them my “ego” books.  Books that I think say something about me that I want to convey.  That I am the sort of person who would read that sort of book.  Ego books span the genres. 

These ego books are plentiful and are a problem for me. Even the non-ego ones.  Because what I realized this week is that while I can rarely speak to what is in them, I expect them to say something about me to others.  I want the books to speak for me.  We want our clothes to speak of us.  Or the fact that we have very unique kitchen gadgets.  Or the newest, fastest i-phone, or i-pad, or i-don’t-know-what-else. 

I want the fact that I own something to basically convey who I am, what I’m interested in, the type of person I want to be in this world, and what I value.

Essentially, I want the things, rather than me, to speak about my life

There is an old Quaker saying: “Let your life speak.”  Let your life speak.  Let how you act, what you say, how you live (not what you live with) be the definition of who you are.

 The books on the shelf, the movies in the cupboard, the clothes in your closet, the technology…they are part of your life.  But who are you without them?  When we speak of idolatry of stuff, we can probably better see what our idols all, not by what we acquire, but by what we simply could not part with.

What is the difference--or is there--between saying “Yes, I want that” and “No, I can’t part with that, now that I have it.”

So, right, I still don’t think I’m getting to that nitty gritty spiritual truth of the issue.  Maybe I’m just speaking still in self-help book clichés…probably from a self-help book I still have somewhere on my bookshelf.  So I’ll call on the help of Michael Lindvall, whose article in the Christian Century has helped me see a new see spiritual nature to our material world.  The following is from his article

It ought to be clear that God doesn’t hate stuff. Witness the creation story. God—none other—invents stuff. At the end of each of the six days of creation, God engages in self-congratulation. In litany fashion, God pronounces … the stuff created by the Divine word that day: “Good!” ,,,and then, on the sixth, “Very good!’

The problem, I think, is not so much that we like stuff too much; rather it’s that we don’t like it enough. Before you cry heresy, let me explain. We acquire things, but then quickly tire of the things that seemed so important when first obtained. We replace rather than repair because we have such fickle and passing romances with our things. The real soul danger is not exactly in liking things too much, nor in owning them, nor in caring for them well.
The soul danger lies in the insatiable longing to acquire new things one after another, more and more things, as if the getting of them somehow proves our worth in comparison with others, as if the having of them can fill the emptiness. It’s this insatiable drive to acquire stuff rather than the stuff itself that’s the problem.

In Jesus Christ, God has definitively entered into that very good materiality to claim it, bless it and transform it.”

What is the stuff in your life that you hope speaks for you, and what would happen if you tried parting with it?  Why aren’t you letting your life speak, instead?