Pentecost 5 B: Known and Named

Posted by DJL on Jun 22, 2015 in Dear Partner | 7 comments

Dear Partner in Preaching,

Do you remember what they called Harry Potter early on in the stories that bear his name? Folks called him “the boy who lived.” He wasn’t supposed to, you see. He had been struck by a killing curse from the dark wizard Voldemort and should have died, but he didn’t – he lived. And so that became his name.

Names – especially nicknames that are given by others to describe something about us – can be pretty hard to shake. Whether they are accurate or not, whether we like them or not, whether they are flattering or not, the descriptors hung on us have significant power. Why? Because in naming one reality about us – whether true or not – they tend to reduce all of who we are to that one dimension (think “Fat Amy” from Pitch Perfect).

I thought of these pop culture characters and the power of names because of the rather startling transformation of one of the characters in this story from Mark. Let’s set the scene.

You’ll remember that last week Jesus took the disciples across the sea of Galilee through a life-threatening storm and away from the familiar haunts of home into the foreign land of the Gerasenes. There – in the passage from Mark just between last week’s reading and this one – Jesus heals a many possessed by so many demons he was called simply, “Legion” (there’s the power of names, again!) Now he’s come back across the lake and greeted by a crowd as his fame and reputation have spread. Among that crowd is a man named Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, who begs Jesus to heal his daughter. And on the way to do that, Jesus is interrupted…and then it happens – someone’s name is changed and future is restored.

Among the crowd, you see, is a woman. She is given no name. She is described only as a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. Assuming this was most likely vaginal bleeding that condition would have rendered her both impure and unable to bear children. Which perhaps explains why she is there all alone, hoping just to touch the edge of Jesus’ garment, desperate for even the possibility of healing. She has no advocate, no family, no community to beseech Jesus on her behalf. She is nothing, just “the woman who had bled for twelve years.”

Yet after Jesus discerns what had happened – that power had gone out of him – and after she stepped forward in fear and trembling to admit her deed and her hope, Jesus gives her a new name, calling her daughter, calling her a person of great faith, and naming her healed.

I don’t know if something similar happened with either Jairus or the young girl. Was he “the leader desperate enough to run to the rabbi” or she “the girl who died and then was made alive,” but I do know that names are hard to shake. (Notice, for instance, that when Jesus names the girl as one who sleeps rather than is dead the people laugh.) Names – whether nicknames or some other descriptor – are convenient because they work to summarize a lot of things into one element. But they are also dangerous because they reduce us, strip us of our individuality and uniqueness, and label us according to what someone else sees.

With the tragedy of Charleston so recent in our memory, it’s difficult not to think of the way we name and label those who differ from us whether in skin color or ethnicity or belief, the names we have hung on and hurled at others to reduce and objectify them. Humans are, by nature, social, even tribal, creatures, and so we gather with those who seem like us and characterize those who don’t as different, naming them by some attribute that creates convenient definitions and borders for us by stripping others of their individuality and labeling and lumping them together.

And yet the pattern of Christ is exactly the opposite. Jesus is constantly crossing borders – whether geographic or social – to see people for who they are and to draw them into relationship. That’s why the woman who interrupts Jesus’ preaching and healing tour is no longer just “woman” or “the one who has been bleeding for twelve years.” She is now “daughter,” one restored to family and community and health and life.

This is, of course, Christ’s charge to us as well. To see people who for they really are, unique persons, each created in the image of God, and each worthy of our attention, care, love, and respect. Christ calls us to leave the comfortable and familiar behind in order to reach out to others as brothers and sisters, all children of God.

Yet let’s be honest: simply saying that isn’t enough. We know this. We know that what happened in Charleston is horrendously wrong and we probably didn’t need the thousand or so statements that flooded the press in the aftermath to tell us that. And we know that the discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or religion or economic status that happens on the streets of cities and towns across the country every single day is also terribly and tragically wrong. We know this, and being told once more will probably make little difference.

What might make a difference, however, is being known and named ourselves. What might help is recognizing that we, too, often are labeled, reduced to one attribute or incident that hardly captures our identity and yet has named and shaped our behavior and our future in ways that are unhealthy and unhelpful. So perhaps the task this week, Dear Partner, is to invite our people to call to mind those names they have been given – perhaps only by themselves – that seem to chase them through the day and haunt them at night. To name those illnesses or failures or missteps or regrets that somehow have come to name and define them. And then to say that Christ sees them differently. Christ names them differently. They are “daughter” and “son” and “person of great faith” and “faithful” and “wonderful” and “beloved of God” and more.

In Christ, you see, we are given a new name. In fact, in Baptism we are named as children of God and promised that no matter what happens, no matter where we may go in life, no matter what we may do or have done to us, yet God always sees a unique and beloved individual worthy of love, honor, and respect. And each week when we come to church we come to be reminded of this new name, to be reminded of our identity given and held in absolute and unconditional name. We come to be reminded because so much in the week has worked to make us forget and to undermine our confidence. So we come to church to be named anew.

And when we have remembered our new name and received again our new identity, perhaps then we can go out and resist the urge to use destructive names to define and label and reduce others. Perhaps then we can reach out in love to call those around us – and especially those whom society has overlooked – brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, all children of God.

The boy who lived, the woman who bled, the man who failed, the girl who dropped out of high school, the kid who got hooked on drugs, the family with no home. These are not the names God has in store for us. This week, it’s our privilege to name people anew – beloved child of God – and to set people free to walk into a future of hope and promise. Thank you for sharing this powerful word, Dear Preacher, and doing this wonderful deed of knowing and naming us children of God.

Yours in Christ,
David