SERMON OF JANUARY 11, 2009

M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim - St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
 
"Knowing Our Name as God’s Beloved”
 Genesis 1:1-5, Mark 1:4-11

My mother cut a deal with my father when it came to my name.  She agreed to name me after my father’s father with one clear condition.  I would go by my middle name.
My grandfather’s name was Murdoch Bruce McKay.  Calling a wrinkly, blue eyed infant Murdoch was more than my mother could handle.  And so I’ve been Bruce ever since.
When my mother and father handed me to our Congregational minister a few months later and were asked, “By what name will your child be called?” I can almost see my mother shooting a quick glance to my father, to make sure the conditions of their deal were clear, before they answered, “Murdoch Bruce.”
Those of us who were baptized as infants officially received the name our parents gave us, our Christian name, at the moment of baptism. 
In traditions that don’t practice infant baptism, the christening of an infant provides the opportunity to receive his or her Christian name.
Our Christian names identify who we are.  I grew up being Bruce, Joe and Polly’s son, Murdoch and Bertha’s, Aubrey and Thelma’s grandson. 
Our names identify who we are in our family of origin and in the human family. 
This is true for every human being – including Jesus. 
While most parents need to negotiate among themselves about what to name their child, Mary and Joseph had some significant outside assistance.  When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary he was very clear about the name of her first born son - And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”  (Luke 1:31)
In case Mary forget this part of her encounter with Gabriel, another unnamed angel of the Lord, appearing to Joseph in a dream, addressed this question directly by saying, “…you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)
The name Jesus comes from a Greek form of a common Hebrew name - Joshua, which means “he saves.”
Given this direct divine intervention Mary and Joseph weren’t left to negotiate the naming of the one whose baptism we celebrate today. 
Each year the Gospel text in our lectionary for the first Sunday after Epiphany tells the story of Jesus’ baptism.  In the course of a few days we move through three decades of Jesus' life, journeying from the manger in Bethlehem to the muddy waters of the Jordan.
As Mark tells the story, “John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mark 1:4)   People poured into the wilderness to receive John’s baptism. 
In doing so they heard him proclaim that another was coming who would also be a baptizer – “One whose sandals,” John said, “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.  I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:10-11)
“When Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased." 
When John dunked Jesus in the Jordan, he was washed with more than water.     He was washed with the Holy Spirit. 
He was washed with the wonder of God’s love for him.  
He was washed with the blessed assurance that he was the Beloved Son of God, with whom God was “well pleased” – with whom God was delighted! 
The baptism of Jesus defined who he was as the Beloved Son of God.
In the same way our baptism with water and the Holy Spirit defines who we are in relationship to God. 
Our baptism with water and the Holy Spirit defines who we are as God’s Beloved.
God gives us at our baptism the same name God gave Jesus.
No matter what name we received from our earthly parents our heavenly parent gives us all the same name – no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, no matter what’s been done to us, no matter where we are on life’s journey – God gives each of us the same name – whether we want it or not, understand it or not, like it or not – God names each of us Beloved. 
Knowing who we are – knowing our name as God’s Beloved – is no small challenge in a world that is always trying to tell us, one way or another, that we are someone other than a Beloved child of God.
William O’Brien works with a project that develops solutions to homelessness and poverty in Philadelphia.  He has devoted his life to working with the homeless poor, and mentally ill.  Last Easter, following months of dealing with increasingly severe depression, he found himself in the mental health ward of a local hospital.  Rather than being a visitor to someone on this ward people were now visiting him. 
He said, “In the midst of this painful experience, I sensed God saying  to me `None of this matters – I love you, I have always loved you…and nothing will change that.’”
He said that something he’d always believed became much more real for him – “God loves me,” he said, “not because of anything I did or anything I was, but because of who God is – God is love.  Love is God’s character and being.  Out of love God chose to create me and us, and love defines the entirety of God’s relationship to me, and to all of us.”
Knowing this meant that his gifts, talents and accomplishments didn’t matter any more than his disability or his disease mattered.  For, they weren’t the measure of God’s love for him.  Nor did they determine whether he deserved God’s love or not.  For the grace he knew in his life, the awareness of being named God’s Beloved, became most powerful when everything else in his life was stripped away.  (“Amazing Grace in the Mental Ward” by William O’Brien, Sojourners, January 2009, p. 29)
Knowing our name as God’s Beloved and being the Beloved child God created us to be is no small challenge.
As E.E. Cummings understood, "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
This was as true for Jesus as it is true for us.
Mark tells us that John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness.  For it’s in the wilderness places of our lives where we are most tempted to forget our own name.  It’s in the wilderness places of our lives where we’re most tempted to forget who we are as God’s Beloved.
In the very next verse, after Jesus hears the voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved,” Mark records that “the Spirit (then) immediately drove him out into the wilderness."  The Spirit drove Jesus to that place where he'd be tempted by Satan to forget his own name – to forget who he was.
In the wilderness around the Jordan, when he was hungry and tempted to live by bread alone, Jesus would remember the voice from heaven saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved!."
In the wilderness of a world that would persecute him for being guided only by the love of God, Jesus would remember the voice from heaven saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved!"
In the wilderness of dying the excruciating death of crucifixion as a common criminal, Jesus would remember the voice from heaven saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved!"
In the wilderness of the empty tomb his baptized followers would discover that God’s baptismal love for Jesus and God’s baptismal love for them was more powerful than even death itself.
By reaffirming our baptismal faith, as we’ll do in a moment, we remember our baptism when a voice came from heaven saying to us, as it said to Jesus, "You are my child, the Beloved, with you I am delighted."
Chances are we didn’t hear that voice, whether we were baptized as infants or adults.  And yet, the voice still came from heaven and we too, like Jesus, were washed with the Spirit of God’s love, in a way that names us God’s Beloved, no matter what names others may try to give us.
Knowing that God names us Beloved brings a divine purpose to our daily lives.  And it reminds us that God will give us the grace and the guidance, the courage and the commitment we need to both be who we are and become more fully the person God created us to be.
In addition to identifying and naming Jesus as God’s Beloved his baptism was the beginning of his public ministry.  It was his commissioning to live the life God had created him to live, knowing always who he was as God’s Beloved.
By reminding us who we are as God’s Beloved the church helps us find our way through the wilderness places of our lives to the God whose love continues to wash over us, long after the waters of our baptism have dried.
In explaining how civil rights demonstrators could respond nonviolently to the fires hoses turned on them in Birmingham and other cities, Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "There was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out.... We had known water. If we were Baptists or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodists, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water."
King said this the night before he died.  (Lauren F. Winner, “The Waters of Life”,  HYPERLINK "http://www.sojo.net"
www.sojo.net, January 11, 2009)
We too have known water – water that has washed us with the blessed assurance of being God’s Beloved – water that has washed us with the conviction that all God’s children have a place in the choir – for all God’s children are God’s Beloved.
Ruth Beck was the oldest member of our congregation.  She died on New Years Day, less than one month before her 101st birthday.  For the last several years of her life Ruth was afflicted with increasingly severe dementia, to the point where she didn’t recognize family members or friends.  She got so she didn’t know her own name. 
And yet, when I would visit her and begin saying the Lord’s Prayer, she would say it with me, word for word. 
Even when she had forgotten that her name was Ruth she remembered her name as God’s Beloved.  Because she too knew water – the water that washed over her at her baptism with a love that was stronger than any of the death dealing forces at work in our world.
May we too always remember our name as God’s Beloved.
Even if we get to the point where we don’t know the name our parents gave us – even if we get to the point where we start believing those who are telling us that we are anything but a beloved child of God – even if we get to the point where it seems like God couldn’t possibly love us - may we always remember our name as God’s Beloved.
And may we live boldly with this blessed assurance knowing that nothing else matters – no nothing else matters.
Amen!

MARK 1:4-11
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.  And he preached, saying, "After me comes one who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 
And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased."

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