A Sermon by
Don Tuttle

Based on Mark 1:4-11

Preached Jan 12, 2003

When Don and Violet came to the nurses’ station carrying their newborn son, the secretary asked them: "How do you want your son’s middle name to read on the birth certificate?"

"Middle name?" they asked. "What about his first name?"

That, they were told, had already been filled in. The nurses said their son looked too much like his dad to be named anything but "Donald."

I am not sure why my parent’s went along with that idea. Maybe they were just too tired to argue. Maybe dad was flattered and proud. I don’t know. But maybe it was a good thing that the nurses named me. After all, my parents were considering some family names—Silas or Frances, maybe Melford or Houston, even Alvie. They still were able to name me "Marion," or as my sister liked to say, "Mary Ann."

Given the possible alternatives, Donald doesn’t sound so bad.

Of course, naming and being named is important. In one of the services I use for the blessing of children, I note that naming a child is one of the first and most important tasks to which parents are called. In naming their son or daughter, the parents shape the child’s identity for a lifetime. Maybe that is why parents-to-be spend so much time and energy deciding what their child will be named.

BRIDGE

Despite the fact that our parents (or the occasional nurse) name us, it is also important to realize that people are all the time renaming us. In the 1700s, anthropologists in Europe started naming people. They looked at human beings and decided to name them based on skin and eye color, body proportions and skull size. They named human beings Caucasoid, Negroid or Mongoloid. And while those names have rightly fallen into disrepute, the legacy of such naming remains in identifying people by skin color and by the racism it fosters.

But there are other examples. William Willimon points out that it was a 19^th century Viennese psychologist who named people "homosexual." The psychologist wrote a book argue that there were three sexes—"male, female and homosexual." His work created a category of human beings—and expectations for how they will live.

But such naming of people is not limited to antiquity. It continues in various ways today. Who named you as "old" or "disabled" or "dumb?" Who stuck you with the moniker "successful," "attractive," or "rich?" These are not definable categories. They are names given to people for good or ill by our culture—a culture that loves to play Adam. You may remember the story. In the beginning, God created the world and all that was in it. And God brought all the animals to Adam and had Adam name them. That’s what the world still likes to do—to hang monikers on others.

Of course, it is not just a matter of being named. Each name comes with a set of expectations. Each comes with assumptions about how people are to think or to act or to live. Each seeks to determine who we are.

POINT

But this is where the Christian faith gets counter-culture. It rejects the culture’s attempts to name us in favor of letting God do it. Specifically, in baptism, God gives us the only name that really matters—the name "child of God."

EXAMPLE

Mark’s story of Jesus is different from the rest—or at least it starts out differently. There is not birth story in Mark. He doesn’t tell us about Mary and Joseph, the stable or the manger, the shepherds or the Wiseman. Mark’s story begins with a full-grown Jesus showing up at the Jordan River to be baptized by John. When he comes up from the water, Jesus sees the curtain between heaven and earth torn apart and the Holy Spirit descending upon him. And a voice from heaven—the voice of God—declaring who he is: "You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased."

God names Jesus "my Son." It is not that Jesus wasn’t God’s child before his baptism. It is that in his baptism, God confirms, validates, verifies Jesus’ identity.

There is a wonderful scene in the Indiana Jones movie The Last Crusade that captures that experience. Throughout the movie, Indiana Jones’ father never refers to him by name. He always calls him "Junior." But near the end of the movie, Jones finds himself hanging above a deep chasm, stretching and stretching, trying to reach the Holy Grail resting of a ledge below. But the more he stretches, the more tenuous the hold his father has on his one hand becomes. Finally, his father says to him, "Indiana, let it go." For the first time, he names his son, and the son, hearing his voice, knows who he is and what he must do.

That was what happened to Jesus. God’s voice verified who he was so that he could leave that place and begin his ministry. It confirmed who he was so that when the world into which he would go named him "healer" or "heretic," "prophet" or "blasphemer," "teacher" or "lunatic," he would not be dissuaded. He would know who he was and live as God’s beloved Son.

SO WHAT?

The same is true for you and me.

The author of the Letter to the Galatians points out that "as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says we were all brought into one body by baptism, whether we were Jews or Greeks, whether we were slaves or free.

The point is that no matter what the world might have named us, in baptism our identity is established. It is not based on social standing or economic status. It is not based on skin color or gender. In baptism, God names each of us "my beloved Child." God names us. God says who we are and how we are to live in the world.

She grew up in a home where there was very little love and lots of criticism. Her parents ridiculed her. They "named" her a "nothing" and they treated her as a "nothing."

Looking for refuge, Sarah found it in a nearby church. There, one Sunday, she made a confession of faith and was baptized. She didn’t see the heavens open or the Holy Spirit descend when she came up out of the water. She didn’t hear God speak her name. But she knew that something wonderful had happened. She knew it; she felt it. She had become a child of God.

Of course, that didn’t change her home life. The criticism and ridicule continued. But Sarah responded differently. In the middle of the fights, she would remember her baptism, stop the wrangling and ask for forgiveness. She began to say, "I love you, Mom. I love you, Dad." She began to give them hugs. She began to bless them when they cursed her, compliment them when they ridiculed her, forgive them when they wronged her. Knowing she was a child of God, she treated her family as she believed her Father would want them treated. And over a period of two years of giving blessings to parents and siblings, the entire family came to know Jesus as Lord and to baptism into Christ. They too became children of God.

She could do that because she knew who she was. She knew she was not a "nothing," but rather a child of God.

And if you have been baptized, so are you. God has named you his "beloved Child."