Sunday January 12th, 2025 Worship

What is in a name? I often find it interesting to think about the names that we are given or that we choose for ourselves. Whether that be legal names, nicknames, or other titles we go by with the people who know and love us. Because of the last name, Funkhouser, it’s safe to say that I have been given many, dare I say too many, nicknames throughout the course of my life. If anyone remembers in elementary school when you count the first 100 days of school… I once had a teacher try to come up with a different nickname for each of those first 100 days… It’s also something I think about every time I get a piece of mail at home addressed to Rev. Funkhouser or Pastor Funkhouser because I have had to accept that the title comes with my name now, whether I feel like it is too formal for my personal life or not.
I also think about the conversations that I’ve had with my parents about choosing the name that I was given. Had I been born a son, some of the potential names included both Nicholas and Harlan. Yet, here I am, given the name Sara, specifically without the h, at my father’s request supposedly. Sara(h), however, is such a popular name for people my age that I had the joy of being usually one of four or five in my classes once I got to high school. In grad school, when there were four of us in a class, our professor started calling us all by our first and middle names in order to distinguish to which he was referring… although all this did was make me feel like I was in trouble every time I would be called on.
But the names we go by matters. Whether it is the name we were given or the name we chose for ourselves, it is a sign that we are seen and respected when people get our name correct. Every time I get an email addressed to Sarah (with an h), my frustration increases just a little because my name is properly spelled in my email address! It seems like a little thing but think about all the times that you have been called by your name, properly pronounced, and it has been done so with care and respect. How did that make you feel? When someone calls you by your name or only a nickname that certain people are able to use for you, it can be a sign of love, of knowing and seeing us.
When we look at our Scriptures today, we are given several examples of this level of love and care from God. Be it the “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1b) from Isaiah or the voice from heaven speaking to Jesus at his baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3: 22b). These promises aren’t just for the Israelites or for Jesus, but God calls us all Beloved. When we think about the promise to not be afraid because God has called us by name and we are God’s (Isaiah 43: 1b), that says so much about the presence of God in our lives and the care that God exudes for each and every one of us. That God will continue to be present with us through the good days and the bad ones, and that on each of those days God will see us for the person we are, the one so lovingly created, and now cared for. We especially need a reminder of this in the midst of tragedies, like the wildfires in California and the earthquakes in Tibet.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that our Gospel reading today talks about a baptism by fire, and we cannot ignore the reality of what is happening down in California. Martin Luther talked about how a theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is. It goes back to this idea of naming, of seeing. The fires in California are a tragedy, countless people have lost their lives or their homes. The efforts to rebuild will be great.
While most people are focused on helping those impacted grieve and recover, there is also a narrative of wanting to point fingers in blame, honestly in a way that is similar to what happened when the COVID pandemic broke out. It makes sense that in our anger and our fear we want to find someone to blame, to yell at, but we also have to ask ourselves if that is what is most needed right now. This narrative can also be harmful when it goes against everything else our readings teach us about God today, most importantly that God calls us Beloved and cares about us. Because a small faction of people out there are trying to say that this is God’s punishment for the sins of America. Fire, in the sense of our Gospel, is supposed to be purifying, it isn’t a literal fire that is going to wipe out people. But, when we keep sticking to these narratives that God only loves some of us and punishes the rest of us, all we do is exacerbate the pain of people living through tragedies, creating systems of us vs. them where God loves us enough, but doesn’t love you enough. When the commandments talk about not using the Lord’s name in vain, this right here is one of the things it is talking about. Not using the Lord’s name as a cover for our judgment and hatred. So let’s focus on what God actually says in our Scripture.
God’s voice, that same one that the Psalm tells us is mighty and powerful, the one used for both creation and destruction, is also used to call us Beloved. God’s voice is used to control creation, to calm storms and speak from clouds. When we think about these other things that God’s voice was used for, how much more special is it that God uses this same voice to name us and claim us as God’s own?
I especially love looking at this from the perspective of Isaiah because the people were afraid and angry with God. They felt that God had abandoned them and couldn’t possibly care about them and their exiled state in Babylon, after all they had been there for generations and God had done nothing to fix their plight. Yet, God continues to speak, to remind them that God is with them through the good and bad in life, that this Belovedness doesn’t disintegrate the second we have a doubt or become angry with God. That our Belovedness in the eyes of God is something that is permanent. With all of the impermanence and conditional care in our world today, we are given the reminder that we are seen and loved exactly as we are. There is great freedom in that, to know that we are loved and that we will continue to be loved even when we make mistakes, or we get angry. God doesn’t just walk away from us in those moments.
This doesn’t mean that we never focus on improving ourselves and the world, but it is a reminder that we do not need to change in order to be loved. That we are loved as we are now and we were loved as who we were yesterday, and we will still be loved as who we will be tomorrow. In a world that tells us we are only loved if and when we do x,y, and z, this Belovedness that God extends to us is a radical form of love. It comes without strings, without conditions, and it isn’t going to be pulled from us at any second.
When we think about the baptism of Jesus, it is really easy to focus on just the event, however, I want to make sure we also understand that this title “Beloved” was just as true before his baptism and after his baptism, just as it also is true for us. Baptism is the outward claiming of the already inward reality, that we are named and called Beloved by God. The act of Jesus’ baptism is special because it creates a connection with Christ, a tradition that we are then able to follow as we seek to explore what it means to live into our Belovedness.
Baptism is a tangible sign of God’s love and care, an outward expression of an inward reality, one that we are invited into each time we witness a baptism or remember our own baptisms. It is a reminder that any water can be holy, whether it is the tears running down our faces, the rain sputtering from the sky, or the muddy waters of the Jordan River. That what makes it special is the meeting of God’s promise with this ordinary, everyday water. This seemingly mundane thing that in fact connects us back to creation, when God’s voice moved over the waters. That same voice that continues to call us Beloved today.
The promise of being Beloved doesn’t always feel as needed on the good days, but especially on our darkest days, the ones in which we feel hard to love or we have our doubts, may you continue to be reminded that you have been called Beloved and you will continue to be called Beloved. Like the sign of the cross on our foreheads at our baptisms, it is something that stays with us. It cannot be taken away from us and we do not become unworthy of bearing that title. So, even with all the other names and titles that we use or are given in life, may you always remember that Beloved is one of them.