Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's September 5, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service.

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Names are important. The names we give God – warm father God, strong mother God, old aching God – are so important that we have been talking about them and fighting over them for literally hundreds of years. The names we give each other are important, too. There is power in a name, in knowing someone’s name, in naming someone.

Ask any parent who is in the midst of trying to choose a name for the new baby. Parents spend hours reciting potential names in their minds, poring over name-books, trying on different names. They make lists, compare lists, create new lists, until finally they settle on “the name.”

A good name says something about who a person is, or who you hope a person might become -- where a person has come from, and where a person might be going. Relationships begin with names: no name, no relationship.

A favorite ice-breaker for a group of people is to ask, “How did you get your given name?” All sorts of stories begin to emerge from that question – the desire of parents to keep a certain name in their family lineage alive for yet another generation or a desire to incorporate the name of a child into the sacred world of scripture. As my brother-in-law likes to say of me, I have four children and one of each: a boy, a girl, a river, and a garden.

One day, little Joshua, whom we will baptize today, will be asked the question: where did you get your name? And he will tell the story his family has told him of being born some 27 weeks premature, of his parents searching for strong name to define his struggle to live, both within the womb and following birth, and the name Joshua, a name which can literally mean, in Hebrew, God saves or God delivers, from which the name of Jesus derives, seemed like a pretty good choice to give this one whom God has saved. Names can be so powerful!

Baptism is, among other things, a ritual of naming. Here at the font we are named and called a child of God. Often, the minister will ask, “What name will you give this child?” Traditionally, this part of baptism, more rightly called Christening, was an occasion for the bestowal of a Christian name, as opposed to the family name, on the child by the church. In ancient times, in fact, the church quite literally named the child, often selecting the name of a great saint or a beloved leader or teacher as the name. But the church did the naming. Life then became a long, sometime arduous, process of trying that name on for size, growing up into that name, answering to it, giving shape to it, fleshing it out by the way the child grew and lived throughout his or her days.

Whether or not one’s name is actually given in the rite of baptism, our baptism continues to be an occasion for naming. At baptism we are given the name “Christian”. We are called God’s “beloved.” And, as with many names, there is always a story that comes with this name, “Christian.”

The writer of I John uses the term “beloved,” “those who are loved,” to address his readers in the Church. This writer knows that it is the idea and embodiment of love that is foundational to the survival and flourishing of the fledgling first century Jesus movement. But it is more than love in human relationships. It is, as this writer puts it in what I regard as the most important theological statement in all of scripture, he says, “God is love.” If theology, the mission and purpose of the church, human interactions and way we treat one another could but take this as the fundamental and indispensable point of reference for why we are put here on the earth in the first place, then imagine just how transforming such an affirmation could be. We are the ones who are the beloved ones of God, for God is love.

Now, the world has a hundred thousand different names for us: We are sexual beings, the movies, soap operas, and popular songs tell us – lusting and being lusted after. We are mostly a brain, mostly a rational, thinking, reasoning being absorbing facts and figures, the schools tell us. We are mostly a maker and spender of money, a consumer of stereos and computers and cars and homes, the advertisers tell us. We are surfers on the Internet, faceless names on the other side of a computer connection. There are hundred thousand different names for us.

But God has another name for us – and that name is, “Beloved.” Listen to what God has said: “I have called you by name from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my beloved. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I have carved you on the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided your every step. Wherever you go I go with you, and wherever you rest I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own and I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your spouse – yes, even your child. Wherever you will be I will be there, too. Nothing will ever separate us. You are my beloved.”

Now the word Beloved, as you can see, is a powerful word. It points to a powerful relationship. Think about it. This is no sentimental label. It is not meant to create warm fuzzy feelings. I am devoted to those people in my life who are my beloved. My life is tied up in their lives. We are intertwined like the bramble and the rose. Their tears are my tears, and their joys are my joys. They can break my heart like no other, and they can heal my heart like no other. This interdependent relationship is the kind of relationship that God is pointing to when God call us “beloved.”

As Jesus was God’s beloved, so we, too, are God’s beloved. This is a radical thing to say and to believe, isn’t it? This is a radical way to live in the world, is it not? We can’t live as God’s beloved and turn our backs on the fear and hatred and oppression that so often mark the ways of this world. Can we ignore the needs of Hispanic immigrants or inner city blacks or elderly whites on a fixed income and still act as God’s beloved in the world? Can we ignore the impact God’s love and justice should have on the world of politics and economics and law and still act as God’s beloved in the world? Can we ignore the cry of those whose right to life and liberty have been taken away from them and still act as God’s beloved in the world?

This name, Beloved, at whatever age it is given, is a gift and is something we grow into and flesh out over the years. We, who have been taught that our identity is a personal discovery, the end result of rooting around in the dark recesses of our own egos, or our fleeting glimpses of ourselves as we drift from one momentary high to another, or the result of a lot of hard work at self-actualization, or the sum total of our relationships and our accomplishments – we might, indeed, be shocked to learn that our core identity is something given to us rather than something we earn or create. You are my beloved, God says to each of us.

We didn’t discover our identity as a member of the human family. We didn’t earn our family name. We got them as gifts. We learned who we were through the day-to-day love and care that our families bestowed upon us. We teach our children who they are by the love and care we bestow on them. I learned what it means to be a Sherrod by growing up in a Sherrod family so that the identity of who I am became one with the air I breathed. We learn what it is to be one of God’s beloved in the same way, by growing up in the church, whether that growth begins in infancy or at the age of 15 or 25 or 47 or whatever.

The gift of this identity as one of God’s beloved means that we are no longer rootless. We are no longer alone. We are part of a community of God’s beloved and we are rooted in that community. And therefore when the advertisers want to tell us that we are buyers of goods, when the soap operas want to tell us that we are sexual beings and objects, when the schools want to tell us that we are only a brain, when the world wants to tell us that we are mere cogs in the great wheel of social history, we have a place to stand from which we can evaluate those claims and see them for the falsehoods that they are.

And voice came out of heaven at the baptism of Jesus, and said, “This is the Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And so the voice continues to speak today and call us “beloved.”

In times of great doubt, when struggling through his dark nights of the soul, Martin Luther would sometimes touch his forehead and say to himself, “Martin, be calm, you are baptized. You are one of God’s beloved.” And then, being grounded once again in this baptismal reality, he could face the hostile world around him.

In times of our doubt and inner turmoil, hopelessness and confusion, in times when we feel tossed to and fro by all the different causes, groups, philosophies, lifestyle choices, in times when the core of our being feels threatened by the forces of evil and oppression, we too would do well to touch our foreheads where the sign and seal of our baptism was made, and remember that we, too, are God’s beloved.

We are all God’s beloved. In a world that would deny the reality and power of love, we are all God’s beloved. In a world that denies this reality over and over again, it is the church, the community of God’s beloved, that is called to make this reality live in our lives and in the lives of those around us. In our baptism we are both named and called – called to create this new way of being together where all God’s people can live as God’s beloved.

In Alex Haley’s book Roots, there is a memorable scene the night the slave Kunta Kinte drove his master to a ball at a big plantation. Kunta Kinte heard music from inside the house, music from the white folks’ dance. He parked the buggy and settled down to wait out the long night. While he sat in the buggy, he heard other music coming from the slave quarters, the little cabins behind the big house. It was a different music, music with a different rhythm.

He felt his legs carrying him down the path toward those cabins. There he found a man playing African music, the music he remembered hearing in Africa when he was a child, the music he had almost forgotten. Kunta Kinte discovered that the man was from his section of Africa. They talked excitedly in his native language, of home and the things of home.

That night, upon returning from the dance, Kunta Kinte lay upon the dirt floor of his cabin and wept, weeping in sadness that he had almost forgotten, weeping in joy that he had at last remembered. The terrifying, degrading experience of slavery had almost obliterated his memory of who he was. But the music had helped him remember.

For me, this is a parable of how easy it is in the midst of life, with all of life’s confusing and often degrading messages, how easy it is to forget the music of who we are and whose we are and what we are called to be and to do.

So the church – you and I, are here to remind each other that we are God’s beloved. God has named us and called us. God seeks us and loves us with only one good reason in mind – so that we can be beloved for all eternity. So reach out and touch each other’s foreheads, touch your own forehead, and remember your baptism. And be thankful, be empowered, be encouraged, hold your head up high, for we are God’s beloved. Amen.