A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (William Shakespeare ‘Romeo and Juliet).
No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. (Genesis 17:5).
But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, Jacob, and formed you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine. When you pass through waters, I will be with you; through rivers, you shall not be swept away. (Isaiah 43: 1-4)
Back when I was in my late teens, I had a job working the desk for a dairy, handling all of the customer milk orders. For eight hours every Saturday, I would sit, calling store after store for their “milk order”, and entering it into a data base on a computer with a clacky keyboard, a monitor the size of the fridge in my dorm room and great big floppy disks. The days orders would be printed up, collated and then sent down to the loading dock for the truck drivers to sort and stack milk for delivery. It was a tedious job without a whole lot of opportunity for fun and company but it was a good student job and paid slightly more than minimum wage.
So, mostly a good experience. Except for one problem. My supervisor.
The Saturday Office Supervisor was an older guy who had been working at this dairy for more than 20 years. He would breeze in about 10:30 in the morning, yell at all of us who were working that we weren’t entering orders fast enough, then leave by noon with no information about where he was and what we were supposed to do if we ran into issues. He also never learned our names. Never in the whole two years I worked for this person, did he ever call me by my name, ask how I was doing, or generally show any more interest in me than the chair I was sitting on. He instead called us all by numbers, and the numbers coincided with the cubicle we were in. I was five. I was five for two years. I never was more than five.
I can’t tell you if I liked this person or not. I really had no opinion on him. I didn’t particularly like the job but it was a decent job for a student so I kept it. What I can tell you is that I never ever trusted this man, and because of that I didn’t trust the company. This company is a big-deal Canadian distributor of milk and ice cream, and to this day I won’t buy this brand.
Our names are important. Our names carry our sense of self and our sense of identity.
My name has changed a couple of times over my now almost sixty years of life. My first 15 years or so I was called ‘Lynnie’; a nickname that some of my extended family call me to this day. In high school I was nicknamed ‘Squirrel’ because of an unfortunate 80s perm than amused one of my long time friends who thought it looked like a squirrels nest (thank you, Dougie, I say, heavily on the sarcasm)(To be fair, I’m pretty sure Dougie isn’t called Dougie anymore). I have people in my life that call me ‘Mom’. I have people in my life who call me ‘Rev’. For a while I had a whole church call me ‘Pastorina’ – a story I’ll tell you another time. All of the names people call me reflect who I am to them. I’m pretty glad that I’m not called ‘Squirrel’ anymore; but the others? Those names are important to me.
Sometimes we see people change their names or their nicknames deliberately so that they are viewed differently. Just like I think its important that we learn names in the first place (no, I’m NOT a number), I think its important that we learn new names. Because new names mean that people are telling us what their sense of self is. And if we want to be trusted, and trustworthy, we will listen to those names and view people with that lens.
I don’t know about you, but I really DO want people to trust me.
We see this idea that names carry identity a ton in our scriptures, don’t we. This week, the lectionary gives us Abram and Sarai getting renamed Abraham and Sarah; and with that renaming comes a new Covenant with God and a new sense of who they are and their purpose in life. I was really struck when I was reading the scriptures that Abraham and Sarah were renamed before their sense of self and purpose was changed. And they just took the renaming. Took the renaming as a marker of trust that God was doing a good thing and that their change would mean they would be…..well…..Abraham and Sarah.
They would be what they were named. They would be what they were called.
So. My dear Bethel Friends, if God was renaming you today, (pretend for a moment that you do need to be renamed) what would your new name be? I’m no longer ‘Squirrel’. I haven’t had an 80s perm, well, since the 80s. I have been renamed by many as Rev – a name I love. I wonder what my next name will be.
(Secretly, I hope my next name will be Nana. But I’m not holding my breath and don’t tell my kids).
Also, when you think about your name, think about other people’s names and yes – call them what they say their name is. Because they are telling you who they are and that’s really important.
Blessings today, and remember you are loved.
~Rev. Lynne