Bring Many Names
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Year B
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Let us pray: Teach us your names, O God, spoken in acts of mercy and justice and grace. May we learn your names, O Jesus, by trusting who you are for us and for all. May we recognize your names, Holy Spirit, in the renewing of our lives and communities. Amen.

“What’s in a name?” is the way William Shakespeare put it in his famous quotation from Romeo and Juliet. What IS in a name? What is it that makes names important? What value do names add in our understanding of the world and the life we lead in it? Does it matter to have names for things, or can we get by without them?

Of course we need names for some things - communication would be ever so much more difficult without them. In some ways you could say that the whole of scientific research is a quest to name everything, for names are at once a way to classify and identify. Whether they are galaxies, solar systems or planets; atoms, quarks or neutrinos; islands, isthmuses or peninsulas, human nature leads us to name things so that we understand them, so that we can slot them into neat categories and then quite often after we're all done, argue about whether they belong to one group or another. Human nature is such a fickle taskmaster.

I remember making an early trip down the Icefields Parkway from Jasper to Lake Louise, as it turned out, a trip I made many, many times. I learned to identify many more of the mountains in subsequent years, but in this early trip I was still able to identify quite a few of the various mountain peaks that were visible along the way. As we travelled along, my passenger expressed surprise that I could name so many of them, wondering how on earth I could tell them apart. As far as she could tell, one mountain looked much like another and it did her no good to single them out by name. Of course, this was sacrilege to me, the mountain lover, one who prided himself on knowing the names of the mountains and in many cases the reasons why the name had been given to this particular peak.

A similar kind of event took place yesterday as we cruised in a float plane (that talent auction we had last October just continues to make for great memories and experiences) over the land around Yellowknife. It is incredibly important for me to know where we are. Now I might be satisfied with some latitude and longitude co-ordinates, but “Defeat Lake” is ever much more interesting than 62 degrees and some minutes north and 113 degrees and some minutes west.

Names were also very important to the Hebrew people - they used them to remember important events in the story of faith, they used them as a container to hold everything they knew about a person, they used them as descriptive adjectives to add levels of meaning that spoke very deeply in just a word or two.

We also know the power that naming can hold in the history of a people. This land, the place where we live, has many examples of names being reclaimed - Tulita instead of Fort Norman, Uhlukhaktok not Holman, Fort Franklin replaced by the traditional name Deline, and Behchoko in place of Rae and Edzo, to name just a few. These new, old names say so much more than just a change in the maps. They tell of a change in attitude, a respect for what used to be, and an acknowledgement that naming holds power.

So, it should be no surprise that today’s readings, each in their own way, has something to say about the power of words. In the first case, it is not so much what the reading has to say - important and worthy of study that may be, but the discussion that is relatively knew in terms of what we call the author. This is Lady Wisdom speaking the words of the book of Proverbs. Much has been made of this female God image, and the strident, directive nature of the passage we heard today. This is no-holds barred kind of language, a clear example of the power that words can have over us. For me, it is powerfully instructive to hear these words of God described as coming from Lady Wisdom. How freeing and expansive it is to have a feminine image, and a strong feminine image of God. Words can open up our understanding and thinking.

Words can also limit and close things down. This is what James is in effect saying when he writes his clear warning about the negative power that words can have on our spirits. A commentator has talked about the difference between “balcony” people and “basement” people. “Balcony” people are those who by their words regularly call people to greater things by the positive encouragement they offer, while “basement” people are those who drag people down by the negative and critical words they use. Barbara Brown Taylor, a noted scholar, pastor and preacher, offers this insight. “Speaking of the harm small things can do, there is nothing quite so devastating as a carefully placed, interrogative. Here’s how it works: after someone has praised another person in your presence, telling you how much that person’s example of faith has meant to you, cock an eyebrow and say, ‘Oh?’. That’s all it takes to introduce doubt. That is all it takes to lay a match to a the dried twigs at the base of a redwood tree.”

It should be no small wonder that Jesus' question to the disciples, “Who do people say that I am” followed by the personal and more compelling, “Who do you say that I am?” should be such a momentous and poignant episode in the gospel record. These are Hebrew people. They know the power that names can have in the faith story. They know that the name they use carries with it more meaning than they might be able to give in even several paragraphs of explanation.

The point is that Jesus’ question is not just one reserved for the disciples. It’s a question that echoes down through the ages, speaking right to our ears, just as it did for the band of twelve as they made their way to Caesarea Phillippi. Who do YOU say that I am? Our answer says so much about our faith. Do we give an answer that identifies us as “balcony” people? Does our understanding of who and what Jesus is and the name we use to explain that understanding set limits or does it open new possibilities.

There are some who use Jesus’ name to describe a narrow way to faith, a way that is exclusive and dismissive of other faith expressions. I have a hard time reconciling that with what I see as Jesus’ intention to open up our understanding of God and God’s way. This is a way that sees God’s presence in ever new directions, in surprising circumstances from surprising sources. This is a way that holds up not the learned or the theologically deep, but the everyday, but no less faithful ordinary people, people dealing with any number of debilitating or pre-occupying issues in their lives. Maybe this is what he means when he leaves us with the penetrating description of what it really takes to be a true follower of God’s way.

Bring Many Names is what Brian Wren’s wonderful hymn tells us to do - for when we do we open up new insights, we expose ourselves to ever more creative and expansive understandings of the nature of God. Bring many names - names that tell a story - of a people, of discovery, of connection with the land - be it a mountain, a river, a community. Bring many names - names that tell a faith story, names that invite us to imagine God in brave new ways, names that say as much about ourselves as the Jesus we attempt to describe. Bring many names, and may new ones and the depth of meaning they bring never cease to get added. Amen.