William H. Willimon - "What's in a Name?" (August 23, 1998)
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| - | A woman with a spirit that crippled her for 18 years. | 0:03 |
| She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. | 0:08 | |
| When Jesus saw her he called her over and he said, | 0:13 | |
| "Woman, you're set free from your ailment." | 0:15 | |
| When he laid hands on her, | 0:19 | |
| immediately she stood up straight. | 0:21 | |
| She began praising God, | 0:24 | |
| but the leader of the synagogue, | 0:26 | |
| indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, | 0:28 | |
| said to the crowd, "There are six days on which | 0:31 | |
| "work ought to be done, come on those days to be cured, | 0:34 | |
| "not on the Sabbath." | 0:37 | |
| But, the Lord answered and said, "You hypocrites, | 0:39 | |
| "does not each of you on the Sabbath untie | 0:42 | |
| his ox or his donkey | 0:45 | |
| "from the manger and lead it away and give it water? | 0:46 | |
| "And ought not this woman, | 0:49 | |
| a daughter of Abraham, | 0:52 | |
| "whom Satan bound for 18 long years be set free | 0:55 | |
| "from this bondage on the Sabbath day?" | 0:59 | |
| When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame | 1:02 | |
| and the entire crowd rejoiced | 1:07 | |
| at all the wonderful things he was doing. | 1:09 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 1:12 | |
| Congregation | Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ. | 1:14 |
| - | And ought not the woman, who is the daughter of Abraham, | 1:18 |
| ought not | 1:23 | |
| she be set free? | 1:24 | |
| A young couple was pouring over a book of names. | 1:29 | |
| New parents can get these books, they're books | 1:33 | |
| with longs lists of proper names and their origins, | 1:35 | |
| and their meanings. | 1:38 | |
| They're having a baby, and they know that the choice | 1:41 | |
| of a name could be one of the most important decisions | 1:45 | |
| they make for their child. | 1:49 | |
| All of us have got friends that, | 1:53 | |
| it's just hard to imagine that friend with any other name, | 1:55 | |
| Like, Butch. See, you can already see him, can't you? | 2:01 | |
| He looks like "Butch." | 2:07 | |
| Or, Grace. You can see her, can't you, Grace? | 2:09 | |
| She is somebody who is her name. | 2:13 | |
| She is Grace, she is gracious, she is grace filled. | 2:16 | |
| It's like somebody saw these people | 2:22 | |
| and they got to know them and they said, | 2:24 | |
| "Oh, you, yeah, well, due to your personality, | 2:27 | |
| "you're Butch." | 2:30 | |
| Or, "Yeah, you, with your characteristics, you're Grace." | 2:31 | |
| but, of course, that's almost never the way it ever is | 2:37 | |
| with names. | 2:42 | |
| The way it is with names is, you're always given a name, | 2:43 | |
| and then you grow to it. | 2:49 | |
| A name is given, so maybe somebody is "Grace" because | 2:52 | |
| she got the name Grace and over time, she grew to it. | 2:57 | |
| And, I always think when I'm like baptizing a baby, | 3:02 | |
| and you take some little baby, | 3:07 | |
| and you hold that little baby there, and you ask the parent, | 3:09 | |
| "What name is given to this child?" | 3:13 | |
| And the parent will say like, | 3:15 | |
| "Arthur Edward Randolph Smith III," | 3:17 | |
| and you think, | 3:21 | |
| "This is way too small a human being | 3:22 | |
| "to bear that much weight of a name!" | 3:24 | |
| But, you know that over time, | 3:28 | |
| given enough time, | 3:31 | |
| that person will grow to that name. | 3:34 | |
| That person will become | 3:37 | |
| as he or she is named. | 3:40 | |
| Next week we will receive our first year students on campus. | 3:46 | |
| And and few days ago when the chapel calendar came out, | 3:51 | |
| and we had been calling it "Freshman Orientation Sunday," | 3:54 | |
| and I got a call from the president's office and said, | 3:58 | |
| "By the way, just to let you know, there aren't any freshman | 4:00 | |
| "at Duke anymore. They are called first year students, | 4:03 | |
| "not freshman." | 4:05 | |
| And, I said, "Why?" | 4:07 | |
| And they said, "Well, the word "freshman" was considered | 4:09 | |
| "to be a name that was sort of demeaning." | 4:11 | |
| And, I said, "Well, can we still call them ignorant | 4:13 | |
| "and uninformed first-year students?" | 4:17 | |
| Congregation | (laughs) | 4:19 |
| - | But, you could see their point, | 4:23 |
| because, a name is something bestowed upon us that makes us, | 4:25 | |
| and I remember a student a few years ago, | 4:32 | |
| we were talking about some issue, and he said | 4:34 | |
| with great earnestness in his voice, | 4:38 | |
| "I have a right | 4:40 | |
| to state how I shall be called. | 4:42 | |
| "That's up to me." | 4:46 | |
| But, it isn't really. Names are inherently gifts. | 4:48 | |
| Rarely do you pick your name for yourself. | 4:54 | |
| Or, rather, it's more true to say our names pick us. | 4:56 | |
| Our parents give us our names, | 5:01 | |
| or other people bestow names upon us. | 5:02 | |
| Sometimes these names, | 5:06 | |
| these nicknames are not at all | 5:09 | |
| the names we would have chosen for ourselves. | 5:12 | |
| In today's Morning Herald, one of the leaders of our city | 5:15 | |
| recalls a time when, in school someone gave him | 5:19 | |
| a not too flattering name, and a fight ensued. | 5:22 | |
| In the college fraternity, I remember everybody had a name. | 5:26 | |
| "Goofus" or "Zeus," "The Beast," | 5:31 | |
| "Slim," "The Kid," | 5:34 | |
| and sometimes these names were in loving jest, | 5:37 | |
| designating what you really valued and loved | 5:40 | |
| in another person. | 5:44 | |
| The one who was always asking questions | 5:46 | |
| in fraternity meetings, | 5:48 | |
| pondering the deeper significance of Saturday's party. | 5:50 | |
| We eventually named "Plato." | 5:55 | |
| And yet, there are other names which are not so generous. | 5:58 | |
| "Peewee," | 6:03 | |
| "Fatso," | 6:04 | |
| "Hunchback," "Crip," "Squeeky." | 6:05 | |
| Sometimes names represent not our love for others, | 6:09 | |
| but our cruelty toward others. | 6:13 | |
| I know a man, he's middle aged now, | 6:16 | |
| but he refused to join me | 6:20 | |
| in a bowl of ice cream not long ago, | 6:21 | |
| and I pressed him in joining him to eat with me, | 6:23 | |
| and I said, "Why are you so concerned about your weight? | 6:28 | |
| "You're not fat." | 6:31 | |
| "But I was," he said. | 6:33 | |
| "Must've been a long time ago," I said. | 6:36 | |
| "It was." He said, "As a kid they called me "Chubby." | 6:39 | |
| "That name stuck with me all the way through college | 6:44 | |
| "that name stuck with me. I hated it, and I smiled | 6:46 | |
| "when they said it, but inside, I always was dying, | 6:50 | |
| "and I swore to God that one day nobody would ever | 6:53 | |
| "be able to call me that." | 6:56 | |
| Imagine that pain of a middle aged man. | 7:00 | |
| The pain of a name | 7:03 | |
| that hurts, that traps, | 7:05 | |
| that fixes somebody's life. | 7:08 | |
| It makes a great deal of difference how you're named. | 7:12 | |
| Now, today's gospel is a story about a woman, | 7:18 | |
| But, in my bible when it tells a story about this woman, | 7:22 | |
| it has this heading, "The bent over woman." | 7:25 | |
| Other versions of the bible call her "the crooked woman." | 7:29 | |
| How would you like to be immortalized | 7:35 | |
| in scripture in that way? | 7:37 | |
| She was bent over. She had been bent over, crooked, | 7:39 | |
| staring at the ground, never able to lift her head up, | 7:44 | |
| straighten up her back, her back terribly contorted | 7:47 | |
| for many, many years, 18 years. | 7:51 | |
| If you'll notice, the woman in the story doesn't seem | 7:56 | |
| to have a name, | 7:58 | |
| for anybody in town, | 8:00 | |
| when they saw her bent over, creeping down the street, | 8:03 | |
| body bent, eyes attempting to lift up a little bit | 8:07 | |
| from where they were fixed on the ground, | 8:11 | |
| they didn't say, "Look, here comes Mary," | 8:13 | |
| Or, "Why, here's Elizabeth." | 8:16 | |
| They said, "Well, here comes that bent woman. | 8:19 | |
| "Here comes the crooked-back woman." | 8:24 | |
| That was her name, | 8:28 | |
| and like for all of us, | 8:30 | |
| a name in a way is destiny. | 8:32 | |
| It was her whole sad fate, her whole life caught up | 8:36 | |
| in that designation, "the bent woman." | 8:40 | |
| Part of us may be a bit amused at current attempts | 8:45 | |
| at political correctness, not to speak of persons | 8:49 | |
| by some of our traditional designations, | 8:53 | |
| such as crippled, or blind, or deaf, | 8:56 | |
| but "person with disabilities," "person with special needs," | 9:00 | |
| "the visually challenged," but surely that's a good attempt | 9:04 | |
| from persons who are different from the majority, | 9:10 | |
| to try to name themselves, to try to gain | 9:13 | |
| some measure of freedom from having the majority name them, | 9:17 | |
| label them, pigeonhole them, | 9:21 | |
| and thus fix them, | 9:25 | |
| and thereby hurt them. | 9:28 | |
| You notice this woman doesn't have a name, | 9:32 | |
| other than the one given to her by the whole town, | 9:34 | |
| and it is a name based exclusively on her disability. | 9:38 | |
| We don't know anything about her, except that she was | 9:41 | |
| the crooked woman. | 9:46 | |
| In other words, she doesn't have any identity, | 9:48 | |
| except that of victim. | 9:53 | |
| She doesn't have a family it seems. | 9:56 | |
| Doesn't seem she's married. | 10:00 | |
| Doesn't seem she's anybody's daughter. | 10:01 | |
| She's got no occupation. She has nothing but a deformity. | 10:04 | |
| Nothing but her victim-hood. | 10:10 | |
| She's the one who's bent, stooped, | 10:13 | |
| bearing upon her shoulders an invisible, | 10:15 | |
| yet very heavy burden. It's the burden of being different. | 10:18 | |
| A burden of not looking like everybody else. | 10:24 | |
| The burden of not being able to do what everybody else does, | 10:28 | |
| and go in all directions that everybody else goes. | 10:31 | |
| She's the crooked woman, the bent woman. | 10:35 | |
| And, I think she hobbles onto the scene | 10:40 | |
| for everybody who's ever known what it's like | 10:45 | |
| to be so named. | 10:48 | |
| She's the one who is just a drunk and always a drunk, | 10:51 | |
| or a retard, | 10:57 | |
| or the one that a teacher labels as "slow," | 10:59 | |
| or that somebody calls "stupid," or grossly overweight, | 11:04 | |
| or blind as a bat, or a gimp, | 11:09 | |
| and she comes out there | 11:14 | |
| and is encountered by Jesus, and I want you to note | 11:15 | |
| how Jesus refers to her. | 11:20 | |
| Jesus, without much discussion or trouble, just heals her. | 11:24 | |
| Jesus heals her, and that's wonderful, and that healing | 11:31 | |
| causes great controversy in the story. | 11:35 | |
| For the first time in her adult life she is able | 11:38 | |
| to stand up straight. | 11:42 | |
| She is able to look straight ahead at the world, | 11:43 | |
| and move out confidently, restored to what we call normalcy. | 11:46 | |
| But, maybe just as wonderful, | 11:52 | |
| here's what I want you to note, | 11:55 | |
| Maybe just as wonderful is the way Jesus speaks to her. | 11:57 | |
| He doesn't call her tragically disabled, or hindered, | 12:02 | |
| or victim of life's injustice, | 12:07 | |
| though from most points of view, she is. | 12:12 | |
| Jesus seems to have no need to make her a professional, | 12:16 | |
| life-long victim so that her disability comes | 12:21 | |
| to define her whole life. | 12:24 | |
| Rather, you will note how Jesus speaks to her. | 12:28 | |
| He calls her "daughter of Abraham." | 12:30 | |
| I think that's significant. | 12:35 | |
| This one, whom we, | 12:38 | |
| even my NSRV Bible calls | 12:40 | |
| "the crooked woman," "the bent woman," | 12:42 | |
| She is called by Jesus, "the daughter of Abraham." | 12:46 | |
| What does that mean? Who was Abraham? | 12:51 | |
| Well, Abraham was the great, great, great grand-daddy | 12:54 | |
| of all of Israel. | 12:56 | |
| Abraham was the one whom on a starry night, | 12:58 | |
| God called out there and said, "Abraham, I've got plans | 13:01 | |
| "for you. I'm going to make out of you a great family, | 13:03 | |
| "and the whole world is going to be blessed | 13:06 | |
| "because of your family. You will be the beginning | 13:08 | |
| "of a great nation that will be numbered | 13:12 | |
| "as numerous as the stars in the sky, and through you | 13:14 | |
| "all the world is going to be blessed." | 13:18 | |
| She is a daughter of Abraham. | 13:22 | |
| She is heir to the blessings of God. | 13:27 | |
| Moreover, as daughter of Abraham, she is called to be | 13:30 | |
| a blessing of God to the whole world. | 13:34 | |
| She's meant for more than superficial, cruel, limiting, | 13:38 | |
| labeling, and pigeonholing. | 13:42 | |
| She's meant for more than perpetual victim-hood. | 13:45 | |
| She bent over, though she is part of God's great plan | 13:50 | |
| of salvation for the whole world. | 13:54 | |
| She stands up straight. | 13:58 | |
| Even if her back had not been healed by Jesus, | 14:01 | |
| I think she stands up straight, | 14:04 | |
| because has been now caught up in | 14:09 | |
| the wonderful purposes of God for the world. | 14:11 | |
| Her life has been renamed. A name has been laid upon her, | 14:15 | |
| not as a long story of injustice | 14:21 | |
| and victimization and sadness. | 14:23 | |
| That's about the best our world can do for people like this, | 14:26 | |
| Just turn them into victims and form | 14:30 | |
| a victim's support group and then just | 14:31 | |
| the rest of your life, whine at the world. | 14:36 | |
| No, she is named "Daughter of Abraham" | 14:41 | |
| and caught up as part of God's great drama of redemption. | 14:44 | |
| She's part of the whole Jesus movement, end of the world, | 14:48 | |
| to save the world. | 14:52 | |
| Let us therefore remember this woman not as | 14:54 | |
| just one more victim, not as the woman | 14:56 | |
| with a bent back, let us remember her as | 14:59 | |
| Daughter of Abraham. | 15:02 | |
| Jesus means to name you, too. | 15:07 | |
| He will not let you acquiesce to the names | 15:11 | |
| the world lays upon you. | 15:14 | |
| It is my sacred duty as a priest to remind you, | 15:19 | |
| you are daughters and sons of Abraham. | 15:22 | |
| Your life is meant to count for something more, | 15:28 | |
| even than your life. | 15:32 | |
| Your life is part of a great drama | 15:34 | |
| of God's redemption of the world. | 15:37 | |
| Therefore, in church, | 15:41 | |
| say, when we baptize a baby | 15:44 | |
| we say, "what name is given to this child?" | 15:47 | |
| and then the parents who have named the child | 15:49 | |
| say something like, "Joan," or "John," or "Jack," | 15:52 | |
| or "Jacqueline," | 15:55 | |
| but in baptism, you a have much more | 15:59 | |
| determinative name laid on you even than that. | 16:02 | |
| We name you Christian. | 16:07 | |
| We predict, therefore, that this child's life is | 16:10 | |
| going to be a long story of growing into that name, | 16:13 | |
| trying it on for size, becoming accustomed | 16:17 | |
| to being so called. | 16:20 | |
| We, | 16:23 | |
| by the name, | 16:25 | |
| get to be part of God's gracious dreams for the world. | 16:26 | |
| You are a son or a daughter of Abraham. | 16:29 | |
| Your name, whatever anybody else may call you, | 16:33 | |
| you, | 16:37 | |
| Christian, stand up straight. | 16:38 | |
| Act like it. | 16:42 | |
| We don't have many students here yet, | 16:45 | |
| but I would tell particularly to those of you who are young, | 16:47 | |
| in life, if makes all the difference in the world | 16:52 | |
| who you let you name you. | 16:55 | |
| You live in a world where, the world wants | 16:59 | |
| to look at you and say, "Consumer," that's your name, | 17:02 | |
| Consumer, go out and get a lot of Pepsi, | 17:05 | |
| and get a lot of stuff. | 17:08 | |
| Consumer, | 17:11 | |
| or straight, or gay, or black, or white, or... | 17:11 | |
| No, you Christian, | 17:19 | |
| you, part of God's great cosmic plan | 17:21 | |
| of redemption for the world, now stand up straight | 17:25 | |
| and act like it. | 17:27 | |
| Fred Craddock, a great preacher tells us, | 17:31 | |
| one day going into a restaurant in rural Tennessee, | 17:35 | |
| and he's eating and this man comes up to him and says, | 17:39 | |
| "I can tell by looking at you, | 17:42 | |
| "you're a preacher, aren't you?" | 17:43 | |
| And, Craddock said, "Well, yes." | 17:45 | |
| And he said, "You preachers like stories, | 17:49 | |
| "let me tell you a story. You want me to tell | 17:51 | |
| "you a story?" | 17:53 | |
| And, before Craddock could say, "No, I don't," | 17:54 | |
| this man had pulled up a chair at his table and he said, | 17:57 | |
| "Preacher, I'll tell you a story. | 18:02 | |
| "Once there was a little boy who grew up sad. | 18:04 | |
| "He grew up not far from here. Life was tough. | 18:09 | |
| "Life was tough not only because | 18:14 | |
| "this little boy was poor, | 18:16 | |
| "but life was tough because my Mama had me, | 18:19 | |
| "but my Mama had never been married. | 18:25 | |
| "Do you know how a small Tennessee town treats | 18:28 | |
| "people like me? | 18:31 | |
| "Do you know the words they use to name | 18:34 | |
| "a kid who doesn't have a daddy? | 18:36 | |
| "Well, we never went to church. | 18:41 | |
| "We never really went out anywhere, and besides, | 18:44 | |
| "nobody ever asked us, | 18:47 | |
| "but for some reason or another, | 18:50 | |
| "there was this famous preacher that came to town | 18:52 | |
| "that came to our little Baptist church, | 18:54 | |
| "and he held this big revival, and my Mama waited | 18:57 | |
| "until the service had already started, | 19:01 | |
| "and then we crept in and we sat down on the back seat | 19:03 | |
| "in that little church to hear that preacher preach. | 19:06 | |
| "He was a big man, and he wore this great big, black suit, | 19:12 | |
| "and had this big, black tie, | 19:16 | |
| "and when he preached he would take that bible | 19:18 | |
| "and he would slap it and he would walk up and down | 19:20 | |
| "the aisle of that church preaching, | 19:23 | |
| "big, thunderous, bass voice. | 19:25 | |
| "We sat on the back. Mama crouched down, me couched down, | 19:28 | |
| "maybe so nobody would see us. | 19:33 | |
| "Well, that preacher was preaching, I don't know about what, | 19:36 | |
| "stalking up and down that aisle, staring this way and that, | 19:38 | |
| "and he walked all the way, during his sermon, | 19:44 | |
| "down that aisle to the back pew of that little church, | 19:47 | |
| "and he was preaching, and he looked around | 19:51 | |
| "and his eye caught mine and I looked the other way, | 19:53 | |
| "and he said, "Boy, look at me." | 19:55 | |
| "and I just froze, and he said, "What is your name?" | 19:58 | |
| "and I said with trembling voice, "John." | 20:05 | |
| "He said, "John, where's your daddy?" | 20:09 | |
| "And, I said, "I ain't got no Daddy." | 20:15 | |
| "And everybody in the church kind of snickered, | 20:19 | |
| and then that preacher leaned over there | 20:26 | |
| and grabbed me by my neck and said, "Boy, look at me. | 20:28 | |
| "You got a daddy. | 20:33 | |
| You, You are royalty. | 20:37 | |
| You are God's only one. You are a child of the Kingdom. | 20:39 | |
| Jesus has bought you with a price! | 20:44 | |
| Now, get on out of this church | 20:47 | |
| and get out there and claim your inheritance, Boy!" | 20:48 | |
| The man talking to Craddock said, | 20:55 | |
| "I never got over that moment. | 20:57 | |
| "Preacher, while you're out preaching, | 21:01 | |
| "I hope for God's sake you'll have an opportunity | 21:04 | |
| "to tell somebody something like that." | 21:07 | |
| Craddock said the man pulled his chair | 21:11 | |
| away from the table. | 21:14 | |
| There was something familiar about the man, | 21:16 | |
| but he didn't get the man's name. | 21:19 | |
| He turned around to his host, he said, | 21:20 | |
| "Who was that?" And his host told him the name, | 21:22 | |
| "That's John" so-and-so, | 21:26 | |
| the legendary former Governor | 21:29 | |
| of the State of Tennessee. | 21:32 | |
| Amen. | 21:37 |
