For eight years, between college and seminary, I worked as a social worker for the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare.  One of the saddest experiences I had there happened one day when a young woman came into the office to add her new baby to her welfare case.  After I had congratulated her and oooed and ahed over the new baby, we sat down to get to work.  She presented the baby’s birth certificate, social security number application, and the like, and then, as I prepared the paperwork, I asked her, “What’s the baby’s name?”  She said, “Addidas.”   “Pardon me,” I said.  She said, “Addidas, you know Mr. Howell, like the shoe.”  I was absolutely flabbergasted.  It speaks to the poverty, both material and spiritual, of this poor girl’s life that the best name she could think of for her baby was the name of a shoe.  I wanted to say to her, “Go home and think about a relative, or someone you love, or an influential character in a book or in history, or a saint, and give your baby that new name,” but I couldn’t cay that.  How crushing to know that commercialism and advertizing were the most significant things in this young woman’s life.  And, how sad to think, that this child has gone through life named after a shoe.  She’s about 20 years-old now, and I hope that somewhere along the way she picked up a really good nickname.

Names are absolutely precious things, which often say something about our families and our culture.  Names are one of the first gifts we give to our children and, I think, to a certain extent shape us and determine our destiny.  For instance, I am named for my father’s good friend and mentor, Charles Elsworth Benison, who was a priest and later a bishop.  I’m certainly not suggesting that I will become a bishop, but who knows what influence carrying the name of a bishop had on my life and vocation.  And, of course, our children automatically get our surname, or the surname of our spouse, marking them as members of a certain family, a certain tribe.  When I was growing up, and one of my siblings or I were interested in a member of the opposite sex, the first thing my southern born and bred father wanted to know was, “Who are her people?”  The next thing he wanted to know was, “What church do they go to?”  Knowing a family name puts a person in context, and because we know the family we think we know something about that person, too.  Names identify us in a social context and maybe even play a role our destiny.

Jesus was given a precious name, and the Bible has two very different accounts of how he got that name.  According to the Gospel of Matthew, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him that Mary was carrying a son conceived by the Holy Spirit, and further said, “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  According to the Gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her, “’You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.’”  Although the Gospels differ as to whether the angel was talking to Joseph or Mary, both accounts agree that an angel gave Jesus his name.  The Gospel of Matthew also indicates the meaning of his name.  Jesus is the Greek version of Joshua and it means God saves.  It’s a common name, as it was in the first century, and it instantly place Jesus in the context of his Jewish family.  It connects him with Joshua, Moses’ second in command and successor who led the Children of Israel across the Jordan from slavery into the Promised Land.  In a similar way, Jesus leads us through the waters of baptism from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.  As the angel knew, Jesus’ name was an important part of indentifying him and shaping his destiny as Savior of the world.

As Christians we bear the name of Jesus and that inclines our ultimate destiny toward salvation. In the earliest days of the Church, before a definitive teaching about the Holy Trinity had been worked out, new Christians were baptized in only the name of Jesus.  To understand the significance of this you need to know that in Biblical thought there is a close relation between a name and a person.  In some cases the name is almost synonymous for the person, so, as we see in the Old Testament lesson, the Israelite priests bless in the name of the Lord and the disciples heal in the name of Jesus.  In Jesus’ name we are made children of God through adoption, and because we are part of the same family as Jesus, we have the same father, God, whom Jesus called Abba, Daddy.

In the past twenty years I have thought many times about baby Adidas, and what I understand now that I didn’t then is that her young mother was trying to do the right thing.  I know she loved her baby and only wanted the best for her.  I think in her mind that naming her baby Adidas associated her with the glamour and wealth shown in athletic shoe ads.  That was the best world she could imagine and she wanted the best for her daughter.  In Jesus, we have found the best thing in the world, not wealth and glamour but being part of God’s family and heirs with Jesus of eternal life. When someone looks at us and says, “Who are his people?”  Who are her people?”  The answer is, they are Christians; they bear the name of Jesus; they are members of the household of God. Amen