Given a New Name
Preached at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on January 19, 2020 (The 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A) on the following texts: Isaiah 49:1-7, Psalm 40:1-12, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, and John 1:29-42.
Last week we talked about baptism. And here it is again!
This time it’s from the account of the Gospeller we call John rather than from Matthew. Unlike Matthew, John’s focus is at first on John the Baptist as the one who witnesses to the coming light. In fact, we don’t have a direct account of the baptism itself, only John’s remembrance of it. In overt contrast also to Luke’s portrayal of the two as close cousins, the Baptizer in John’s Gospel declares that Jesus was formerly unknown to him and only revealed as the expected chosen one by the appearance of the Spirit in the form of a dove.
We also find in John’s account, both the baptizer and the author, the first appearance of a new title for Jesus found in no other gospel—“the lamb of God.” Jesus as both lamb and shepherd will become repeated themes for John in addition to water, vines, and the contrast between light and dark. And even though the title “lamb of God” appears twice in this passage, it seems like Jesus is acting more like a shepherd as the narrative continues through the second half.
* * *
For Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus’ next step after the baptism is to go immediately into the desert to be tempted by h’Shatan, the Accuser. But John has a different narrative, as he does throughout much of his Gospel. To the best of our knowledge, John’s Gospel was the last one written and so the author was the most likely to have read the other versions—yet he seems to have deliberately chosen a very different way of telling the story, so different that we call the other three synoptic, or parallel, gospels to set them apart from John.
So what happens in this story? Well, Jesus immediately goes to work, not that he has a choice. Upon John’s second declaration, “Behold the lamb of God”, two of John’s disciples leave to follow this new person. And they give him a title: rabbi. That is, they recognize him as a Jewish religious teacher—for John the Gospeller Jesus is the Jewish religious teacher to follow instead of all others, which begins right here in the first chapter with Andrew and Peter.
* * *
Upon following Jesus, the two men receive a question in the first recorded words of Jesus in this Gospel: “What do you seek?” Now, this is the mystical Gospel of John, so we immediately should know that Jesus is not seeing if he can help them with directions to the nearest coffee shop.
“What do you seek?”
What a powerful question.
What are you seeking?
What am I? What would Jesus have us seek?
But the characters in the story, as typical throughout John’s gospel, take Jesus literally when he speaks mystically. This also becomes a theme—how Jesus is constantly speaking on a different level and how very few ever grasp this. They just wanna hang out.
“Come and you will see.”
So off they go, not having a clue what they’ve signed up for.
* * *
Once they’ve found where Jesus is staying, one of the two goes off to fetch his brother, Simon. Bringing him back, Simon is met with the second utterance of Jesus:
“You are Simon the son of John;"
Jesus immediately knows who this is, and where he comes from. But he doesn’t leave it there. > “you shall be called Cephas” (which is translated as “Peter” [Rock]). Simon is given a new identity before he speaks a word. From everything we know in other gospels, Simon had a job, family, a place in his community, but upon meeting Jesus everything changes. Even his name. Simon is now Peter.
* * *
This story reminds me of a more recent person’s life. Has anyone here heard of Richard Alpert?
Richard was born into a wealthy Jewish family, graduated with a PhD from Stanford, and began teaching psychology at Harvard by the time he was thirty. He had a nice house furnished with elegant antiques and drove nice sports cars. From the outside, he had it all, hiding his inner turmoil well.
But one day a friend convinced him to try a psychodelic drug and under the influence all the things he counted on to form his identity melted away. Relationships, career, friends, degree, job, money, and possessions—none of it was HIM. But in the midst of his panic, he discovered for a moment a root consciousness that stood alone from all the outward markers. This both terrified and excited him. Pursuing this allure over the next decade lost him his job, reputation, house, cars, and everything, but without anything lasting to hold on to. Eventually he found a spiritual teacher who showed him that all the drugs could do was strip away—they could not help him become something new. This teacher gave him an unconditional love that changed everything, a life mission—“to love everyone and tell the truth”—, and a new name.
For the next fifty years, this man devoted his life to teaching people to find the same depth in life he had found, giving away everything he earned through worldwide fame to help others. A few weeks ago he passed away—no longer Richard Alpert, but known by all under the name his teacher gave him, Ram Dass, which means “servant of God.”
Throughout the ages, those devoted to God have been given or taken new names. From Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel, new names long have signified lives that have found new identity through stripping away former markers of family, location, and livelihood. Even today it is a tradition in Christian monastic orders to take a new religious name as part of the vows.
This lies at the root of our Western naming rites as well. Our given names are generally referred to as “Christian names,” because for hundreds of years we were christened, that is baptized, with a name as a religious sign of identity with God.
To be baptized means to find a new identity with God, leaving behind the old surface effects for something rooted in the soul.
* * *
John’s narrative is clear from the beginning: to follow Jesus is life-changing. “It is to leave one’s familiar home; it is even to have one’s name changed. As followers of Jesus, we will be in danger of losing our history, our name, our very sense of self. Reluctant though we may be to accept a new identity, difficult as it is to abandon the ideas with which we have been raised and the assumptions that have formed our cultural identity, this may be what is required of us.”
* * *
Five more chapters pass before Simon, now Peter, shows up again in the story, let alone has anything to say. But it’s a crucial passage, as Jesus sees many of his disciples walk away and asks those remaining, “Don’t you want to go too?” Peter replies, “Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of life…”
Peter has found something worth giving up everything else.
One more famous re-named figure in the Bible, Saul who becomes known as Paul, has something to say about this as well. In the letter to the church at Philippi, he writes of how Christians are those who no longer base their identity on these outward things but only in Christ. He lists all the outward religious signs that could give him honor with others: his Jewish naming, ancestry and tribe, devotion to the faith, zealous for God, blameless under the Law. Yet in Christ he counts all this as loss “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”
* * *
As we end today, let us consider—what would it mean, what has it meant, to give up all the identity markers we cling to as Jesus and his Way of Love request? It does not have to mean literally abandoning family, friends, or job as some have done, but it does require the compromise-less work of disconnecting our identity from vocation, relationship, or possession in favor of finding our root in borderless love from which we can be poured out for the sake of all.
And let us ponder this question that reverberates through the ages: “What do you seek?”
AMEN.
