Called by a New Name - Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany

 2^nd Sunday after Epiphany
January 15^th, anno + Domini 2023
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Called by New Name - Isaiah 49:1-7, 1 Corinthians 1:1 – 9, John 1:29-42

In the Name of the Lamb.

   There's a lot of name calling in our readings today.  The voice of the Messiah speaks through Isaiah, saying: "The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name."

   Paul is called .. to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.  He writes to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those  called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Paul further encourages the Corinthians by reminding them: you were called into the fellowship of his Son. 

   When John, who was called the Baptizer, saw Jesus coming toward him, he gave Him
a new name, calling out for the world to hear:  "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"  We call to this new name every time we celebrate communion and see Jesus coming to us in the bread and the wine. 

   Andrew believes this good news and follows after Jesus.  Then Andrew goes to his brother Simon and interprets the situation through Isaiah, announcing that this Jesus of Nazareth is properly called the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed Savior.  Finally, after Andrew brings Simon to Jesus, our Lord looks at him and says, 
"So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter). 

   Name calling is super important, in the Bible, and in life.  My mother Agnes had a habit that always bugged me, but now I’m rethinking it.  When a new person came to our small Southeastern Montana town, she always seemed to want to categorize them, to define who they were in her mind, to give them a name, figure out who and what kind of person they were.  Agnes seemed unsettled by a new person, until she could define him or her.  Once she had, in her mind, determined who someone was, that was that, and she could get on with her life, choosing to interact, or not interact with the new person, according to their label. 

   It seemed to me that Agnes was a tad rushed and inflexible in her approach.  And that may have been true.  However, these days I wonder if she was also reacting, consciously or unconsciously, to the reality that identity was slipping away from us.  That people over the course of her lifetime were becoming less and less sure who they were.  Or, that people were making up their identity along the way, which makes living in trust with your neighbors difficult. 

   I honestly don’t know what my mom was thinking.  But if my mother had her finger on an identity crisis, she was prescient.  She was like this already when I got to know her in the 1970s.  Now, 19 years since her death, our species-wide identity crisis has broken out into the open, and our society has gone insane.   

   At our best, we homo sapiens name our children with high hopes for their future.  And good parents try to help their children learn how to live up to their good name.  They model and teach, accentuate the positive, and try to help them when they fail.  We celebrate the milestones of life, cry at their confirmations and high school graduations, and expect great things, even when the young people we love struggle.  We hope because we love them.  And this is good and right, even if perhaps everyone would be better off with a bit more honesty and realism when it comes to our children and grandchildren. 

   With young people in general, however, we tend to be more realistic, and way less hopeful.  We lump everyone into giant, stereotyped generational categories, and shake our heads.  Millenials we label as snowflakes and narcissists.  Gen Z has never known a world without the internet, and their lives have been shaped by smart phones and social media.  Which is neither here nor there.  Unless perhaps this new digital environment is related to the frightening statistics concerning the depression, suicide, gender-dysphoria and anti-social behavior that afflict young people today.  And it certainly seems to be the case that screen addiction does play a role in these horrors that plague our young people, and many not so young people.

   I am quite sure that we, the old people who are wringing our hands over “the kids these days,” are guilty of sterotyping and over-generalization.  But as young people leave Christianity en-masse, and the fabric of our society frays and frays, I think we would be insane not to worry about the wildfire of identity crises that we are all living through.  We perhaps should get back to exercising our “call a thing what it is” muscle, for our own good, and for the good of our neighbors.

 

   A theologian of the Cross calls a thing what it truly is.  And the truth is that youth has always been wasted.  Without good guidance and discipline, the young have always tended to make up their own identities in ways that are self-destructive.  So also, adulthood and the senior years are by nature prone to false-identities and dissolution.  Dissipation.  If we are not working to live up to a good name, we will by nature descend to shameful depths of wasteful and pointless living. 

   We today have lots of free time for making bad choices.  But life used to be much harder.  And the struggle to get by, day by day, used to keep people grounded.  Fathers with children who lost their wives a century ago tended to quickly find a new one, because family life was too hard to go it alone.  In our best societal moments, widowed mothers were also quickly tucked into a new familial reality.  Because survival depended on it. 

   We, in contrast, have lived through an unprecedented age of economic prosperity, technological advancement, and ease of day to day life.  So it may be a paradox to us that the daily struggle of life of centuries past created some good results.  Fathers and mothers forced to work hard, outside and inside the home, just to keep everyone fed and warm, children forced to help out, to really work, with their moms and dads and brothers and sisters, this difficult reality of life had some remarkable benefits.  None of us are choosing to voluntarily go back to living without microwaves, electricity and running water.  But our ease of life and abundant free time do not seem to help us know who we are, or live up to a good name.      

   I am sure that exceptions to the contrary abound.  But in total, even though life expectancy was shorter and creature comforts were much rarer a century ago, it seems clear that way more people knew who they were.  Along with being an American, a person was a German Lutheran, or an Irish Catholic, or a Yankee Presbyterian.  Churches were way fuller.  Literacy was highly valued, and many more people truly knew how to talk with each other.  Changing your sex from man to woman or woman to man was understood to be a fantasy, and those who sought to pretend such a thing were vanishingly rare.    

   I don’t want to engage in nostalgia for the good old days.  They weren’t so good.  But if you know who you are, where you belong, and to whom you are important, just because you are theirs, well, then you can endure a lot, and even achieve a lot. 

   Lacking identity, on the other hand, not knowing who you are, is soul-crushing.  And we have as a society systematically dismantled the Church and the Family, the two primary God-given places that souls find a good identity.  Instead of building up Church and Family, we have instead have imbibed more and more of a fantasy culture found on screens.  The lies of the world about who we truly are overwhelm us, and souls become easy targets for those who would twist your identity to gain control over you.  So we should not be surprised that our national fabric is decidedly frayed, and our young people actively choose against Family and Church. 

   What to do?  What am I to do, as a pastor?  And what are you to do, Christians?  Fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers?  No doubt, we are called to stand up and say something valuable to society.  We do still believe in the power of God’s Word, right?  It is harder to get a hearing for the Gospel today; the crowds are not beating down our doors.  We will need to work to gain the privilege of evangelizing.  And certainly, to be able to speak a true and valuable Word to a society that largely rejects us, we will need to be well grounded in our true identity.    

   So what is your identity?  In what is your identity grounded?  Does your identity show through in your public life?  Your private life?  As Christians and parents, grandparents, citizens and neigbhors, these are all questions our Lord calls us to wrestle with. 

   The Lamb of God calls you to wrestle with your faithfulness to the identity He has given you.  Then, when you have been brought to repentance, He calls you to rest, to rest in His forgiving blood.  And then, to simply be who you are. 

   You are Christians.  You are a man or a woman, baptized into Christ Jesus.  You are
Christian fathers and mothers, children, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, according to life God has given you.  You are members of this congregations….  And none of these identities, none of these callings are your achievements.  You are a parent because God gave you children.  You are a son or daughter because God through your parents gave you life.  You are a Christian, because the Holy Spirit has called you by the Gospel, sanctified you, and kept you in the one true faith. 

   Your identity as a child of God comes from outside you, it is a gift.  In fact, you are entirely dependent on the One who calls.  And, in another divine paradox, this dependence is where true peace and confidence and freedom are found.  For He who has called you is faithful, faithful unto death, and beyond. 

   Be who you are.  In your life, in your service to family, neighbors, community and friends, be who you have been called to be by Christ.  And, in your vocations, in your various roles in life, be ready to share this good news of identity with those around you.  Because whatever generation they come from, however messed up their identity might be today, the promise of a true and everlasting identity as a child of God is the promise of Christ Jesus for them, too. 

   Simon received special name from Jesus; he was called Cephas, or Peter.  We might say Rocky.  Jesus gave this new name because He would use Rocky to be a cornerstone of His Church, a leader of the Twelve and of the Early Church.  Peter frequently failed to live up to his special name.  He refused to accept that Jesus would save the world by dying on a Roman cross.  In the High Priest's courtyard, Peter denied Jesus three times, because confessing Him could have gotten Peter arrested too.  Later, during his ministry, Peter put ethnic differences before the Gospel, shunning non-Jewish Christians when influential Jewish Christians came around. 

   But Peter recovered from each of these failures.  Not because he was so good or strong.  No, Peter recovered from his failures, his sins, because time and again the Lamb of God brought him back to his first call.  The call to be a saint, a holy one of God, called to be holy through fellowship with Jesus Christ.  Peter was again and again freely forgiven, and so was made free to start again, to try again to live for the One who had given him new life, and a new name. 

   You and all the baptized have, like Peter, been called into fellowship with Jesus Christ.  God has called you by name, and given you a new name: Christian, holy one, saint.  God is faithful, your sins are forgiven.  Rejoice in your new name, and live free, for your family, for your church, and for the world.  Live free in the Lamb of God, who calls you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.