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.