What's in a Name?

What were you thinking?!? What were you thinking going out there? You knew that nobody could restrain him. You knew he was dangerous. You knew you were placing yourself directly in harm’s way. What made you think that this man, who rattled his chains, who broke the bonds that held him, would listen to you?

What did it feel like, going out to this man, whose family and friends had long ago given up on him? For so long, it was like he didn’t have a name, and the Bible doesn’t really give us his name either. He is named by his illness; it has become not just who he is – it has become his name, his defining feature. He is named “Other.” He is named “Different.” He is named “Sinful.” He is named “Possessed.” “Demoniac.” He is named all of the names that we give to people whom we keep at a distance. He is named all of the names that we give to the people we refuse to know because we would rather hate them. When you ask his name, he doesn’t even give his real name, “Legion,” he says, “for we are many.”

He doesn’t have a name, and he wears no clothes. He is vulnerable to us, vulnerable to us distancing ourselves from him. But we can’t see the irony of the situation, when we believe that demonizing a group of people – gay people, transgendered people, Muslim people, brown-skinned people – accomplishes anything. How far we have come from the faith that sends us out of our comfort zones, to love our neighbor as ourselves, in a world in which we are much more concerned with self-preservation. We try to keep our hands clean, but no amount of washing them makes our propensity for killing, our treatment of the deaths of innocent people, our ambivalence in the face of hatred… no matter of hand washing will make us clean. Hell-bent on making ourselves pure, on cleaning ourselves, we ignore you. We ignore what you ask us to do. We tell ourselves that you have asked us to do something other than love people; we ignore the parts of the Bible that are inconvenient and convict us, instead looking for someone whose sin we might regard as greater.

So long as we don’t recognize ourselves in the demoniac, so long as we can demonize someone else, perhaps you won’t expose our nakedness. Perhaps you won’t ask our name. Perhaps you won’t judge us too harshly for our ambivalence if we are ambivalent in the name of faith. Perhaps you will overlook our ambivalence in the face of needless death if we can make the lives of those who died less valuable. Perhaps the only parts of the Bible that matter are the ones that tell us what we want to hear, that we are loved, that we are forgiven.

We’re not quite ready when you come out to us, living among our dead, among those whom our society has killed because they are brown- or black-skinned or because they are gay. We’re not quite ready when you come out to us as we rattle our chains, having shackled ourselves to a society that insists we are kept safe by our suspicion of others, having sat by watching as the media asks survivors of assault what they were wearing and how much they drank. We’re not ready when you come out to us, naked and exposed, and we insist that we do not need you, and we try to send you away. We watch our churches send you away because you look like a stranger among us. We send you away because you look like the poor. You look like the disaffected. You look like the homeless. You look like a sinner because, well Jesus, that’s who you spend your time with. You look like a fool because you don’t care about what someone looks like or whom they love or what they did last night. You look like a loser because you go out to them, to the losing team, to the people who nobody loves. And we don’t want to be counted among them. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” the church asks. Please don’t answer that question just yet, Jesus, because I’m afraid that your answer is going to be “not much.”

“What is your name?” Jesus asks, exposing demon-possession for what it is: it is the demonization of another person, it is the assigning to them a name other than their own, it is the assigning to them the name of a particular skin color or an association of who they love or an association of their gender or the clothes they wear or the substance they use or abuse.

“What is your name?” Jesus asks again, only this time he is asking us. “What is your name?” he repeats. One simple question exposes us, because Jesus isn’t really asking what name our parents gave us at birth. He is asking “Who are you?” “What defines you?” “What have others called you?” Tell me all the names, Jesus says. Tell me all the awful things they have said about you. Tell me everything that is between you and me. Tell me all the things that you put between yourself and me, the things that keep you from following – really following – me. Tell me all your reservations and all your barriers and all your doubts and all your fears.

I wish that Jesus had made it easier. I wish Jesus had made belief more convenient. I wish that we could just keep doing what we’re doing and dab Jesus on like a little bit of cologne or perfume. I wish that faith were safe.

I wish that we could just stay in the boat with Jesus, so that we didn’t have to live differently, so that we didn’t have to go back to our communities and have them realize how different we are. Take us with you, we say. But Jesus says, “Go to your home, to the places where people will see you and say ‘Weren’t you the one who…?’ ‘Didn’t I see you…?’” Because faith is not – and was never – safe. It draws us out of ourselves, it exposes the fact that you come out to us as we live among our dead, our hands, faces, and feet dirty from trying to cover up our nakedness, from trying to judge others so that we won’t be judged. Faith brings us to realize that Jesus was in an Orlando nightclub, holding the victims as they died. Jesus is with a woman whose name society doesn’t know who went to a party at Stanford, giving her courage to speak, to tell the truth. Jesus sits with the person who doesn’t fit, who sits alone, who has been chained by the insults and shame heaped upon them.

And Jesus asks, “What is your name?” But he doesn’t really want you to tell him your name. He knows your name. Jesus comes, unshackles you, wraps a cloak around your shoulders, and says, “I know who you are. I know what your name is. Your name is child of God.” And there are no graves dead enough and no abyss deep enough that he cannot find you, because he has overcome the darkest grave – societal hatred and fear that would murder an innocent victim on a cross, and he has crossed the deepest abyss – the agony of loneliness and abandonment, just to be with you. Jesus asks your name, vanquishes all that stands between you and him; he refuses to be sent away; he refuses to give up; he refuses to hate. And his love – the love that moves mountains, the love that knows us fully – is what defines you. It names you. It sets you free. Whatever graves and deaths you have experienced, whatever abysses exist in your lives, Jesus crosses them to come to you, if only to remind you of your name: Beloved child of God.