What’s in a Name?
Matthew 3: 13-17
August 29, 1999
It seems right on this day that we celebrate “Kick Off Sunday,” on this day of young people’s registration. On this day when we begin the boys’ and girl’s choir. On this day of beginnings, we start with baptism – the Sacrament of new beginnings.
When I was the age of some of you (and it was around this time of the year) after school, the kids in the neighborhood would get together to play baseball or sometimes softball. The way we often started was that two people, usually the best players, would take a bat, and each would put his hand over the other until they came to the end, and if you could swing the bat over your head, without dropping it, you had first pick. (Have you ever done that?)
Well, I’m going to tell you a secret. I was a terrible baseball player, and I was usually the youngest playing. As each person was picked, and my name was not mentioned, I always felt terrible. Then they would get to the dregs (maybe a few girls, and a few skinny underage youngsters) and one of the captains would say, “I’ll take Douglas, you can have the rest.” You can imagine how I felt trotting out to right field, hoping no one would hit a ball out my way.
But today is a different kind of day from that. At least it’s different for these people who are going to be baptized. It’s not like the captain of a team calling out your name when one is left. It’s more like being chosen first. We are declaring that these people have been chosen and they are important members of the team. In this service, these people are given a name, and it’s not Roger, or Suzie, or John. The name is the same name as Jesus got.
Do you remember what happened when Jesus was baptized? We just read it. The sky opened up, and a voice from on high spoke. And the voice said, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.” That’s the name God gave Jesus – “Beloved.” Wow, it wasn’t, “Oh well, I’ll take Douglas.” But, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.” So, what is in a name? Our real name, the name God knows us by, is “Beloved.”
The message this morning is that you can’t earn your name. You can’t win it like a prize. You don’t even deserve it. Nothing these people have done or will do makes them good enough to be chosen. It’s a gift from God. We receive our name, and it’s “Beloved.” We’re forever stamped with that name.
Have you ever noticed, when someone is born, the family gathers around and they say funny things like, he or she looks like the father’s or mother’s side of the family. He’s got his grandfather’s coloring or his aunt’s nose, or his mother’s hair. My son Matt had a baby boy a few years back, and he was a redhead. Now, no one in the Douglas or Santley family ever had red hair. And this little baby didn’t look like anyone we could think of. It’s as if he came out stamped with a sign saying, “I’m different. I’m special,” And you know what? A few years later, they had another baby, and he too was a redhead. It’s as if these two children belonged to some other family. Well, today, we are stamping on these people’s foreheads a stamp saying these kids were made in a different place and are a part of a different family. Do you get my drift? We’re making them different. I put on a shirt the other day it had written on the label, “Made in China.” That was its stamp. Well, after these people are baptized, we’re going to say “It doesn’t matter who you look like, what color your hair is, whose ears you have, because you are stamped, marked, “Made in Heaven. And your name is ‘Beloved.”‘
Several years ago, there was a musical that came out called Man of La Mancha. It’s the story of Don Quixote, who is a strange, crazy man. He goes around tilting at windmills. Well, Don Quixote meets up with a scullery maid. She’s a kind of loose woman of the streets. Her name is Aldonza, which isn’t a very pretty name. But Don Quixote keeps calling her by a different name, “Dulcinea.” (The sweet one – the loved one.) And with her new name, she begins to be transformed.
This morning we are going to baptize some people. And we’re going to call them Bill, Mary, Sue, that’s the name their parents chose. But God will come to know them by another name, like the woman in Man of La Ma7Lcba. God will call them beloved, forgiven, accepted, the one I love. And like all of us, these people will have a beginning today. A beginning where we, the community, acknowledge their specialness to God, their origins from God, and their destinations toward God. For their real names will be “Beloved”
Amen