January 9, 2011 - The Baptism of Our Lord

Sticks and Stones
Matthew 3:13-17
The Baptism of Our Lord - January 9, 2011

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

That's what we say; even young children know this rhyme. “Sticks & stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

We say them almost as a magical incantation, as though by saying them loud enough, believing in them hard enough, they might come true.

But we know that they're not. We know that all too often, names have the power to hurt, the power to wound, the power to destroy.

Because names are powerful. Names come filled with meaning, layered with expectations. Names have a way of defining us and defining others. And all too often, the names we receive and the names we give are not positive, life-giving, life-affirming names. We all know what it feels like to be called names – and that's never a good thing.

I originally worked on this sermon from that angle – the power of names to hurt us when we are the ones being called names. When we are the ones who walk around with old names that haunt us and hurt us, that make us question who we are and the worth that we have. Names that define us in ways that we would not define ourselves, and yet somehow have power over our thoughts, our actions, our life course. Because the names we are known by are core to our sense of who we are. They say something about us. They give us identity, for good or for ill. And that's certainly one angle, and one thing for us to think about – the names we have been given, the names we call ourselves.

But yesterday's shootings in Arizona at Representative Gifford's “Congress on Your Corner” event, where Congresswoman Gifford's was shot along with several others and 6 people, including a 9 year old girl, died, made me think about it in a different light. Because we are not always the receivers of negative names and labels. We are often the givers. Oh, maybe not face to face, but in our minds, in the ways that we perceive others. The labels we give to them affect how we think about “those people”, whoever those people may be, and how we think about “the other” affects how we treat them, and down the line the story goes. So we may say that names will never hurt us, but we have seen countless times that names have the power to hurt – and not just in yesterday's events – because we don't know exactly what led this young man to mass murder, although I think I can safely say that whether it was related to this tragedy or not, the political dialogue in our country has gotten way out of hand -because we focus not on what we have in common, but on the things that divide us.

But it's not just yesterday's shooting that reminds me that words have the power to hurt. We saw it in the number of suicides that made the news this past fall – the young man from Rutgers who jumped off the George Washington Bridge, the teens around the country driven to kill themselves because they were tormented about their sexual orientation. The bullying that goes on every day in schools around the country against kids who are in some way different. Names have power.

Jesus too was called by many names... not so much the negative names that I've been talking about, but still, names that were filled with meaning, names that were filled with other's expectations for him. Names that had the potential to hurt him by drawing him away from what God had called him to do, because they sought to define him – who he was, what he was meant to be, what he should do. We heard a lot of these names during Advent and Christmas:

Jesus: God saves
Emmanuel: God-with-us
From Isaiah: Wonderful counselor; mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Son of David, King of the Jews
Light of the World, Word-made-flesh, Bread of life.
Good Shepherd, Lamb of God, Messiah.

Good names, for the most part, yet weighed down with baggage, with other's preconceived notions of who he was supposed to be. Maybe that's why John the Baptizer has such difficulty when Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized by him. Jesus, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, come to be washed clean? Comes to enter the waters of sin? No wonder John resists. Jesus' actions this day don't match the names John has for him or how he believes Jesus is to act.

And yet here in the river Jordan, we hear a powerful, life-giving, life-affirming name. There in the river, stepping down into the middle of the muck and mire of the sins of those who were there before him, Jesus takes those sins on himself. He lines himself up with us and stands beside us – and as he does, we hear God speak from heaven - “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Son. Beloved. That is who Jesus is. Before and alongside any of the other names he has been called, this name is the one that matters most. It is the one that reveals his core identity, the root and source of all he is. This is the name that will empower him and sustain him for all the work that is to come, for his temptations in the wilderness, for the rejection by his people, for his death on a cross. Here he sees the Spirit of God descend, here he hears the very voice of God, naming him, claiming him as God's very own: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.”

And these are the words we hear spoken over us in our own baptism – over and against any of the names that we may be called the rest of our lives. God says to us, “You are my child. You are beloved.” Before and beside any of our other names, we hear the name that matters most: Beloved child of God.

But that name is not just for us, for we are all children of God. We are all beloved by God. I wouldn't go so far as to say that God is always well-pleased with us. Certainly God is not pleased when we call each other the names that divide and separate us, the names that hurt and wound each other. And we here today have another name: Christian. Follower of Christ. We who have this name are called to step into those baptismal waters again and again, repenting of our sin, hearing our names called: Child of God, so that we may learn to see ourselves that way. We are called to stand up and speak out against the other names we use for each other, to learn to see and treat each other as fellow beloved children of God. May we learn to speak names that bring hope, that bring healing, that bring peace. May the names we call each other be grounded in love, God's love for us, and God's love for the world.

Amen.