The Names We Wear

The Names We Wear--January 2, 2017

"After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb." [Luke 2:21]

Names are like sweaters: they may be given to you in the first place, but you choose to wear them or not.

I know plenty of folks--and you do, too, surely--who never go by the monikers by which they were called at birth, but instead some nickname comes along that suits them better.  Maybe it's a middle name, or a shortened version of their first.  Maybe it's a shorthand for some physical trait--Slim, or Red, or what-have-you.  Maybe it's just one of those mysterious names that gets thrown at you, and you discover it sticks (like why is "Peg" a nickname for "Margaret"?).

Anyway, all of those names are given--just by different people in different moments.  But among all of them, the names you choose to go by become reflections of how you see yourself.  You might have hated being named for your great-grandfather Thaddeus Sylvester as a kid, but if at some point you come to treasure the lessons he taught you, you might just change your mind and reclaim your namesake.  You might be fine with your mom calling you by some diminutive as a term of endearment when you are in kindergarten (Mikey, or Scotty, or Lizzie, or Katie) but then insist that you are "Michael" or "Scott" or "Elizabeth" or "Katherine" when you are itching for some independence as a middle schooler. Or, and we have all known folks like this, there are times when people get so full of themselves with their official titles and credentials that they correct you if you leave them out when you address them (getting an impatient, "Ah, that's Doctor So-and-so..." from them, or like Dwight Schrute from the old show The Office who would always insist he was "Assistant Regional Manager" and others would correct him and tell him he was merely "Assistant TO the Regional Manager").  All of those choices--the rejection of a family name, or the shrugging off of a childhood nickname, or the boastful use of a title to try to impress people--those are all ways we are revealing something about how we see ourselves, how we think about ourselves, by the names we allow to "stick."

Names, after all, are like gift sweaters--even if you didn't have a choice in picking it, you make a choice daily whether or not to be seen in yours.

So, here's one more historical example.  In the days when Jesus was born, the head of the newly minted Roman Empire was a guy who had been known earlier as "Octavian." He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and he was the one who had emerged still standing in the aftermath of his adopted father's murder.  Octavian took several names for himself, several titles to define himself, and soon the name Octavian was left in the drawer.  The Roman senate gave him the title "Imperator"--Emperor and Commander, and along with that the name "Augustus," which means "impressive" (like our word "august") or "illustrious one." And then on top of that he took the title "son of a god, Caesar."

He was, if you believed the official imperial hype out of the Rome News Channel, no longer a mere mortal who had won the position of leadership over Rome.  He was an honest-to-goodness son of the divine, the unquestionable voice of authority, and to cap it all off, he was officially decreed to be "impressive" and "illustrious." (Remember Thatcher's old dictum: if you have to tell someone you are... you aren't.)

You could rightly say that Octavian hadn't just come up with all of those names and titles himself--sure, they were "granted" by the Roman senate. But Octavian wore those names like sweaters.  He presented himself to the world as someone who thought himself "impressive" and "divine." And not just that, he felt he had to tell people those things so they would know. Talk about tooting your own horn, huh?

On the other hand, a baby eight days old who was born to poor parents in the backwater of the empire was given the name "Jesus" (or, in the Aramaic, "Yeshua," which means "God saves").  On the day of his naming, there were no angelic choirs, no lights from the sky, and no official news conferences or social media posts to declare it.  Nobody tweeted that Jesus was "impressive." Nobody needed to. It was a moment that looked entirely ordinary... because it was entirely ordinary.  An ordinary baby with an ordinary looking family was given an ordinary name ("Yeshua" was pretty common in the first century among Jewish families).

And yet, the Gospel announces that God's Reign, God's movement of mercy, came about through the one with the common name, while Augustus was all hat and no cattle. Jesus' name is a simple sentence of hope, with no hype necessary: God saves.  Who? You. Me. Everybody.  The whole creation.  That's what God does--saves. Goes through the fire with us and brings us out the other side.  Raises the dead in us.  Sets us free from the cells we keep locking ourselves inside.  God saves.  That's all you need to say--it's less than a hundred and forty characters, but nobody has to tweet it to get the world's attention.  Simply put, wherever Jesus went, whenever his name was spoken, there was the good news: God saves.

That name fits Jesus perfectly.  He brings hope, not hype.

Augustus, on the other hand, had to keep issuing press statements and putting his name on buildings to try and convince people he was impressive.  The people under Augustus' boots, however, were not fooled.  As one cheiftan plundered by Rome at the time put it, "They make a desolation and call it peace."  Calling that impressive and illustrious doesn't make it so--as the saying goes, a cat may have her kittens in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits.

Today, we are given the choice: whose names will we listen to and accept?  Whose titles will we believe? There are still plenty of voices who, like Octavian, want to convince us they are impressive... and then there is Jesus, who simply makes it clear every time he steps into the room that "God saves." In his words and his actions, God saves. In your life and mine, God saves.  In the path you follow today, the ways you will let the Spirit lead you to help, to listen, to speak, to heal, to reconcile... these things will all be opportunities for God to save and heal and bless... through you. 

Whose name will you wear today?

Lord Jesus, you have given us your name and claimed us as your own.  Give us then the wisdom and courage not to fall for the Octavian-voices propping themselves up around us, and instead to wear your name faithfully and graciously, bringing your saving love everywhere we go.