Names matter. Of course, we know what naming calling (the bad kind) can do to us. Many of us grew up saying, “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” A less-true thing was never said. Words matter and when words are used to negatively to describe us, identify us, objectify us, or name something about us, they can hurt deeply.

That said, they can also heal and guide us.

Have you ever really considered the meaning and power of your name, no matter whether or not you were named with much or very little intention?

In this sermon, I explore the power of names, the ritual of naming children, and their connection to the initiation ritual of Christian baptism. What’s more, I explore the power of the secret, inner, soul-name murmured over us all, no matter who we are, and how we can more fully live into the wonder of that name that’s above all other names.

It’s called Beloved: It Becomes You,” and based on Matthew 3.13-17 and the blessing, “Beginning with Beloved,” by Jan Richardson.

Find the audio link here.

BY WHAT NAME ARE YOU CALLED? That’s a rather awkward sentence by contemporary standards, but it’s intentional. I could have said, “What’s your name?” but “What’s your name?” doesn’t carry the same meaning as “By what name are you called?” “What are you called?” is so much richer, philosophically, and, I think, spiritually.

I am called Chris William Neufeld-Erdman. Erdman was my father’s family name. Neufeld is my wife’s family name. Chris William comes from my grandfather on my mother’s side. He was called Christian Wilhelm Augustus Bredemeier. I’m called by the English version of a German name.

I was born one spring morning in the early 1960s. A few months later, my grandfather, the Rev. Christian Wilhelm Augustus Bredemeier flew to Colorado from Florida and baptized me at the First Methodist Church of Boulder. In the early 1960s, my parents were among the forerunners of the counter-culture movement centered in Boulder, which was, at the time, the Haight-Ashbury of the Rockies. Though they’d both grown up in the church and had attended and met at a Christian college, they had, by the time I was born, abandoned Christianity entirely.

Whether it was to please my mother’s clergyman father, or because the ritual still held some kind of sacred mystery they didn’t want to miss, my parents had me baptized. And at my baptism, Chris William Erdman was the name spoken over me, the name by which I was called.

There’s a little humor in all this, some divine playfulness—

My parents had abandoned the God of Christianity, but God, revealed in part through Christianity, had not abandoned them or me. My mother, many years later, told me that they chose to call me “Chris” rather than my German grandfather’s full name, “Christian,” because they didn’t want to identify me too closely with the religion they’d left behind. But many years later, and after much wandering, I became a Christian despite their best intentions. The name I was called at baptism, “Chris,” which even though short for “Christian” is precisely what I became. It makes me smile when I think of the joke God seemed happy to play on my irreligious parents who figured the meaning of my name would have little influence on my destiny.

Names matter . . . more than we think they do.

Take bad names: “Stupid,” “Idiot,” “Loser,” “Horrid,” to name a few of the tamer ones. Each of us has been called a name or names we don’t deserve, names no one deserves. They can, whether we like it or not, shape us, define us. But bad names are never our true names.

For most of history and for most of the peoples of the world, the birth of a child meant the family performed a ritual—the naming ceremony. It was an important moment not only in the life of the child but in the life of the tribe or clan or community. The ritual linked the community to the past and carried the past into the future. It ensured the child had roots; with roots, the child could grow and grow well. But in modern times the naming ceremony, like most rituals, has waned and withered. Some say we as human beings are waning and withering with them. Losing our rituals means we’ve lost our connection with the past, and that loss jeopardizes our future.

Of course, we all have things—actions, gestures, habits—we might call rituals, things we do routinely as ways to anchor our lives—like a morning cup of coffee. But a morning cup of coffee is more of a habit than a ritual. A ritual has an element of ceremony to it—a hint at least of the sacred. Rituals are usually linked to religious rites. But if they’re not explicitly religious, they still have something to do with making meaning for our lives.

Human beings have never existed without ritual. And as the anthropologist Mircea Eliade tells us, we never will exist without ritual. We seem to need ritual to help us find our place in the universe and keep ourselves grounded in the midst of the many changes of life. Rituals are needed at critical times—birth, death, marriage, dissolution of a relationship, new beginnings, endings, and so on.

The word ritual relates to the Latin ritus, which means river. In a true ritual we do something that helps us enter into the flow of time and space, spirit and matter. And when we enter this river, we sense we’re connected with, or floating in, something ancient—not only a living human tradition, but also the rhythms of the earth, with Spirit, with Soul, with God. And so, rituals root us in time, ground us in our bodies, and connect with something bigger than we are—time, tradition, earth, space, the Divine.

When our ritual life wanes and withers, when we ignore its role in our lives, there’s little to connect us with the things that matter, little that helps us pay attention, set intention, and focus on the deeper or higher meaning of our lives. Our failure to consciously practice rituals creates a psychological and spiritual vacuum that leads to the disintegration of our lives, emotional instability, and spiritual malaise.

Of course, rituals can be dead, useless relics of the past. But they don’t need to be. We must recover, reinvent them.

Baptism is a ritual. It could be a dead ritual, a useless relic of the past. My parents certainly thought it was. They thought they were quite enlightened when they walked away from Christianity in the late 1950s. In the spring of 1962 when my grandfather baptized me, they put up with a little bit of religious mumbo jumbo and thought little of it.

But they called me by names that had power beyond their control, beyond their imagining. Chris, Christian, Christ-follower, Christ-bearer. And William from the German, Wilhelm. The first part, Wil-, means determination or desire, and the second part, -helm, means helmet or protection. They called me Chris William; they might as well have called me “one who is determined to safeguard the presence Christ,” “one who is resolutely committed to keep us walking the Sacred Way.”

They had no idea what they were doing when they called me by those names. The ritual of my baptism did something they did not intend. Rituals loose a power we do not understand. And in baptism, there is a new and hidden name murmured over us. The ancients new this. We’ve forgotten it.

Too bad.

But we can change that.

I wonder what it might mean for you to learn the meaning of your names. Most names have a long tradition, a depth of meaning. Your names mean something; you might be surprised at what they can mean for your life, by the mischief of God in putting those names on the lips of those who gave them to you.

No matter how your names were first spoken over you, no matter how formal or informal that moment was, there was ritual in it—even if those who first spoke your names did it sloppily or with very little intention, even if they chose your names with as little forethought as when ordering their favorite flavor of ice cream.

Here’s the good news: if you were baptized, you were called by your names in a ritual, a ceremony over which God presided. That ritual loosed a power neither they, then, nor you, now, fully understand.

And there’s more . . .

Our Bible reading today tells the story of the ritual of Jesus’ baptism. Jesus is baptized by John in the river Jordan. Jesus is a grown man. He’s given a name at birth. His name has a lovely meaning. Jesus, Yeshua, a form of Joshua which, in Hebrew means “God saves,” “God rescues,” “God sets us free.”

But as Jesus is coming up from the waters of his baptism, he sees in a vision the sky open up over him. And he sees in a vision the Spirit of God coming down upon him like a dove, resting on him. And then he hears with his inner ear a voice saying, “You are my child; I call you, Beloved, for you fill my soul with wonder; I am so pleased with you.”

In Matthew’s Gospel the baptism is a very personal experience for Jesus. The ritual is public, but what he receives is deeply personal. He is called by a new name: Beloved. Of all the important features in this story, I want to highlight this one: the naming, and in particular, the name: Beloved.

Jesus already had a lovely name: Jesus. Surely, he was called Jesus at a naming ritual with family and friends. Surely, he was called Jesus with intention. Surely, the name Jesus meant much to him, it proclaims what God does for us: “God saves,” “God rescues,” “God sets us free.”

But I wonder what this new and secret name, Beloved, did for Jesus. The name was spoken not by any human being, but by God. The name, Beloved, connected Jesus in a special intimacy with God. Beloved is a name not about God or what God does, but about Jesus and about what Jesus meant to God. Beloved.

No matter what happened to Jesus, Jesus knew that God called him by this name: Beloved. And no one and nothing could ever take that name from him. It was his secret name, his inner name, his true soul-name.

And if it’s the true name by which Jesus was called, it’s your true name too, my true name too—for you and I, like Jesus, are children of God.

This is the name God murmured over us all while we were being made:

Beloved

This is the name God whispers to us whenever we are afraid:

Beloved

This is your secret name, your inner name, your true soul-name.

It’s mine too.

When we are baptized, our given names are spoken over us: Chris, Sarah, Lucia, Marge, Lawson, Jaime, Mildred, Haroon, Eunbee, Kwabena. Let us learn what they mean, for whether intended or not, there’s a history to our names that can strengthen and guide us.

But as we are baptized, God also murmurs over us our secret name, inner name, true soul-name: Beloved; the name God whispers to us whenever we’re afraid, Beloved; the name no one gave us and so no one can take it away. Beloved.

It is a name more powerful than any other name.

It is a name that tells us we will never be anything other than Beloved; no matter what other names we might be called, no matter what we may believe about ourselves, we are always, forever, Beloved.

No other blessing compares with this name, this knowing . . .

A mercy to any ear that has never heard it murmured . . .

Healing to the soul that wants to begin again . . .

Beloved

Strange at first sound, maybe even unbelievable . . .

Beloved

But watch how this name helps you find a part of you, too long lost, buried, or forgotten . . .

Beloved

This name becomes you . . .

This name is you . . .

Beloved

The true name by which you are called . . .

Your soul’s true name—

Beloved