What's in a name(?)

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Feast of the Holy Name

It is the usual practice for parents to choose the name of their children. Most people stick with the name they were given at birth, others change it. For what reason? Some people who change their name do so because they do not believe that the name chosen for them fits who they are. It is clear that our name is something intensely personal, even to the extent of being part of our identity at the most personal levels. Indeed, the word name is essentially Greek in origin and has the meaning of "law". Our names allow us to be a law unto ourselves: they somehow give us an identity according to the rules that we live our lives by.

In the Second Chapter of Genesis, Our Lord sits down with the Man (who is not even called Adam then) and creates animals in front of him. The pleasure of naming the animals is given to man, who calls them cat, dog, bird, hippopotamus, okapi as appropriate. God has given man the power over animals and signifies this by him giving the law described by their names. The name of the animal describes its identity and its nature: the name of a man describes his identity and his nature.

Very occasionally, someone receives their name, not from men, but from God Himself. Both Our Lord and St John the Baptist have their names given to the parents by the message of an Angel of God determining the person of the people yet to be born. Thus we have John, and the Holy Name of Jesus. The name John conveys the idea of someone or something given by God. The name Jesus means God saves, or God is saving. In the Hebrew it is a continuous tense and describes precisely Our Lord's relationship with us. He is saving us from our sins.

St Paul tells us "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." "To impute" means "to call" and essentially God is saying that God can say that a sinner is not a sinner. However, this sounds very strange. Clearly if we sin, then we are sinners: we might call black white, but that doesn't stop it from actually being black. If we have sinned then necessarily we are sinners. Does that mean that God can stop someone from being a sinner by simply saying that he isn't a sinner? That would make the whole idea of God's law rather laughable, wouldn't it? God cannot be where sin is, because sin is precisely where God is not. There must be something wrong here. Either God's law means nothing, or God must call a sinner, a sinner.

There is a third possibility. Remember that Our Lord Jesus is Our Saviour. He does what He is called. This is the difference between how God names, and what Man names. Man sees what God creates and then names it. But look at the first chapter of Genesis. God says, "let there be light" and there is light. Light comes into being because God first speaks its name. Indeed, whatever God names then comes into being. This is the opposite of how human beings name things. This is why we honour the Holy Name. Some people use the name too little and in so doing forget that the Word was made Flesh. Others use the name too frequently, some even as a swear-word and thus forget that Our Lord Jesus is God indeed. Jesus is so-called because He is saving each one of us who believe in Him.

When God names something, it happens. The act of imputing by God is effective and not solely representative: it does something. If God does not impute sin to a sinner, then that person's sin ceases to be, just as the darkness vanishes when the light is switched on. Our Lord Jesus saves us by providing that opportunity for us to be reconciled with God and that find that transformation by being re-named. In the Revelation to St John the Divine, we are told that we each be given new names. However, no-one knows what these names are because no-one, not even we ourselves, truly know who we are. But we will receive a new name from God and we will become truly who we are meant to be in His name.