Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:21-22
January 10, 2010
When I was home for Christmas, my family played a game called “Smarty Pants”. In this game, the group is given a topic and you have to come up with words or names on a given list that would fit that topic. For example the topic would be “Top household pets.” And one by one around the circle you would say “dog, cat, bird, etc.” One topic was to name the characters from the TV show “Cheers”. My dad was the first people to go – obviously an enviable position since no one had yet named Sam or Diane. But, he sat in silence for a long time. And then he said exasperatedly “I can picture each one, but I can not come up with a single name!” I found it really funny that my dad couldn’t think of a single name of a character in a show whose theme song is “Where everybody knows your name”.
“Cheers” was really popular when I was growing up. I think part of the appeal of this show, the appeal of any place one might go where everyone knows your name, is that it speaks to our desire to be acknowledged and noticed by others. Those of you who are regulars at Saint’s Rest know what I’m talking about. Surely you get a warm feeling walking into a place where you’re guaranteed to see people who know you – including the folks who work there. We simply like to be known by name.
In Isaiah the people are told that God will call them by name. But in this instance it must have sounded far more powerful than having people greet you by name when you’re out and about town. To understand the significance of this, we have to remember that the people to whom the prophet is speaking had lost their name when Israel was defeated by the Babylonians. They thought of Israel not just as a country but as an identity – as the name God gave them when they crossed over the Jordan into the promised land. Now, they are a nameless people embedded in a country that has no interest whatsoever in their identity – in who they are as human beings. With the collapse of the country – and with it the loss of political identity – came the loss of their spiritual name, their divine identity.
Israel was supposed to be God’s treasured nation – the chosen people. Yet here they are in Babylon and they feel like God has forgotten them…completely. Into this desperation and complete sense of being forgotten by God and the world, God speaks. And the very first thing God says in the verse that begins our passage – the very first thing God does is address them by their divine name: “O Israel”. They are seen and recognized for who they are. Then, God goes on to speak some of the most nurturing words found in our scriptures: “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…because you are precious in my sight, and I love you…I am with you.” I’m not sure I can even imagine how that felt to the Israelites. They existed again. Once again, they knew they were a people loved and known by Yahweh.
Fast forward about 600 years to Jesus’ baptism and we hear again about God naming people. The story sounds different but the similarities are huge. Yet again the Jews are living in exile, even though this time they are technically living within the borders of old Israel. They are nameless, mere numbers to the empire. Just two weeks ago, on Christmas Eve, we heard that when Jesus was born the concern of the Emperor was to count the people – to call for a census, changing people into numbers and statistics for the sole purpose of exploiting them.
Into this exile the author tells the people of Jesus’ baptism, and God calling Jesus by name. And just like with the Israelites, it’s not an individual, given birth name. Rather it is the name that is both his and the name that can be extended to an entire nation: you are my child, the beloved. I love this word: “Beloved”. I feel like it is so intimate and caring. It indicates a relationship of both tenderness and a fierce love that persists through everything. It echoes the mothering, nurturing God of Isaiah, calling Jesus my beloved.
Now the reason Jesus’ baptism must have felt as powerful to the 1st century Jews who heard about it as it did to their exiled ancestors is that by the time the gospels were written, they understood that Jesus was a stand in for them as individuals and for all humanity. This baptism is both particular and universal. It is particular because God chose to become particular just like us. Jesus was human, unique, bound by history and culture. God speaks to Jesus in his baptism – Jesus as the man, the unique individual. In this, because we share Jesus’ baptism, God speaks to us as individuals in all our uniqueness. God calls each of us, individually: Beloved.
At the same time, in speaking at Jesus’ baptism, God speaks to humanity as one entity. Writing after the resurrection, the authors of these gospels are reminding the early Christians that Jesus’ baptism was about more than God naming Jesus, the particular Jewish man. After the resurrection, they understood that Jesus is the Christ – the head of the body to which we all belong. What happened to Jesus happens to us and what happens to us happens to Jesus. Jesus is both particular man and the representative of all of humanity. Billions emerge from the water with Jesus and we all hear our name together: Beloved human kind, beloved creation.
Fast forward 2000 years, and I think we too are living in a sort of exile. Like the early Christians, we are in exile even as we live as citizens of our own country. We sometimes feel out of place because we know that how the world operates is not what we talk about in here – in church. I think because we have heard about, over and over…God’s realm, we know there is an alternate way to live. And so when we live in the everyday world, we feel this constant yearning for something else – for a different kind of existence. In the world, we aren’t addressed by name – one person called ours a nameless culture.
I don’t know that it makes sense to say ours is a nameless culture. I think of it more as a culture where we might have names, but when used they don’t indicate that we are known as people who exist as God’s beloved. Instead, when our names are used they are tied to something else that is far more mechanical, technological, and impersonal.
The most ubiquitous example I thought of was how now the government assigns you a number soon after you are born. Your name is meaningless to them: we are known by our number…our social security number. Add to that, we are approaching our own census this year – the goal of which is merely to be counted. And that’s just our government. Sometimes they actually use those numbers to help us, to give us voice in the form of a vote. Or to give us health insurance when we reach 65. But think about the private sector.
I am always a little disconcerted when I go to pump my gas at a gas station and as soon as I slide my credit card out, the screen says something like, “Welcome, Kirsten. Can I offer you a car wash?” It seems like such a distorted use of my name. It is meant to convince me that I am known personally, but think about it: this is a machine! It is an inanimate object, and all it’s really trying to do is sell me something. It can’t know me personally, and it certainly doesn’t call me “Beloved.” All it can do is try to exploit my name in order to entice me to buy something. They want me, in one way or another, to become the number they really care about: my credit card number. The only way I exist to them, my only and entire identity is that 16 digit number. My name to them is “consumer.”
Finally, think about one of the most significant economic measures in our world economy: the Gross Domestic Product. In this measurement, not only are we not understood as people with names, we are measured – our worth is measured – by what we produce. Here our name is “economic indicator”. We are only understood by what we do that adds to the wealth of our country. And God forbid you are unemployed or homeless…if you are, you are worthless in this system. If you are named in anyway it is as a large number representing the unemployed in our country…and it is understood that if you are a part of this number, you are definitely not “beloved”…you are a drag on our economy.
This is exile. When every day we are called “number”, “consumer”, “producer”, “economic indicator”, “statistic”, it hard to remember that God calls us by our true name: “Beloved.”
And so we come here to listen – to be reminded that we are called by our true names. This is an alternate reality where our names are spoken in the deepest love possible. We come as individuals, uniquely situated in our time and place, and God calls us by name. When we are lost, feeling abandoned and questioning the existence of this merciful, forgiving, compassionate God, we hear, “Kirsten, you are mine. Fear not, I am with you my Beloved.”
We also come as the church body, and we hear the more universal name. This reminds us that no place, no time in history is beyond redemption. It’s a message of hope for all who are lost.
But I have to admit that I am left wondering if we feel the same sense of salvation and profound hope as Israel did when we are reminded of our true identity. I don’t know that we do. Maybe things have to get worse, or maybe our exile feels so normal now that we can’t tell the difference. And so we forgot what God’s name for us even sounds like, and how it can call us to something so much more fulfilling and loving. We don’t see our exile for what it is.
And the price of that is acceptance of a world that counts deaths as statistics, and views people as economic pawns. The price of that is we misunderstand who we are – and it leaves us feeling like this is all there is. We believe our worth is measured by what we do, how much we make, who we know, what we own. We think titles are legitimate ways of naming people. We think it’s okay to know the names of our family and friends, but not the name of the people living on the streets and in their cars. If we don’t understand this as exile, then it becomes the inevitable reality – and no one expects it to change.
So what would it mean for the church, like God, to call people by name in such an intimate, nurturing, personal way? First and foremost, I think, it would mean exposing the exile we live in. It would mean helping each other realize we long for something more, that there is something more, and that the way things are robs us and others of our true names and identities. It would be noticing and helping others to notice the massive suffering that comes from forgetting that God’s calls us as individuals and human kind together, “Beloved.”
Once we become aware of the disconnect – of the exile – then the church becomes the place where everybody knows your name. The church is the antidote to exile. It is a culture of forgiveness and loving presence. We name people – we see them as God’s beloved child. When you step in here, you are known through God’s eyes. Each week we proclaim it in our assurance of pardon: In Christ – in God’s eyes – we are forgiven, freed and made whole. We are made whole – seen completely, not defined by what we can do or produce or accomplish or purchase. And neither are we defined by our mistakes. We are beloved! There is nothing a person could do that would cause the church to withhold forgiveness or abandon them to a nameless world.
And what would it mean for the church to call humanity by name, just as intimately, and lovingly? It would mean offering the possibility that humanity is not beyond redemption – Israel is not lost in the empire forever – we are not forever trapped by our systems that distort our names and alienate us from the kind of love God offers. The world is not beholden to the way things are. We can always speak and live that alternate reality and possibility. And the reason we can is because of our name: Beloved. May this be a place where everybody knows your name. Amen.
