January 19 -- Second Sunday after Epiphany

Listen to this sermon HERE.

For as long as I’ve been here at Shepherd of the Valley, I’d done preschool chapel with the children during the week, and for as long as I’ve been here at Shepherd of the Valley, there’s always been a child or two who will run up to me and call me “God” or “Jesus”.  “Hi, God!”  While there are some good things to that for me, in terms of what children associate with me, and a jolting reminder of part of my role here in this place, I’m always quick -- as I’m sure you’d be too -- to say, “No, I’m not Jesus.”    

But all that changed this last Christmas season, when I was teaching the kids and singing together with them Christmas carols everyday in here:  One of our 3-year-olds named Ryan, would always call me Joe.  “Hi, Joe!” he would shout in the friendliest, and most well meaning of ways.  For 5 years, I’ve been incorrectly named “Jesus”.  But for Ryan, and a few others, who have noticed us adults laughing about this, it’s now “Joe”.

It’s great.  And with all due respect to the great name of Joe, that’s not who I am.  And so this has become a nice reminder to me that I fall somewhere in between -- in between the divine name and the common name.  We all do.  In holy baptism our commonness is made new, reborn, and washed with a name that is above all other names.  Jesus is, of course, not who we are; but he is whose we are.  

Our gospel text today gives us an opportunity to think about names.  Last week the voice from heaven named Jesus “Beloved”.  And therefore you too are called “Beloved”, as we are joined to Christ in this post-resurrection era.  This week, more good name-calling:   John the Baptist points to Jesus and calls him the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  This name is all over our liturgy.  But there’s more name-calling: two disciples call Jesus “Rabbi,” and ask, “Where are you staying.”  At which point Jesus responds, “Come and see.”  Then Jesus calls another disciple by a new name: Cephas, which means Peter.  

Names are incredibly important.  And the change of a name means a lot too.  

I wonder if I’d be the same person if my parents didn’t name me Daniel.  [pause] And do you ever think about if you named your child a different name?  One of the names on my list for our son Micah was George.  

Often times parents don’t tell anyone what they’re going to name their child until the baby’s born.  That name is something special and sacred, that they’re living into for a bit before the rest of us get to share in the joy of that new name.  

So what do you make of Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter?  They just met!  Put yourself in Simon’s shoes.  I imagine we’d probably put up a bit of a fuss: “I’m not Cephas (which translated means Peter)!  I’m Simon.”  

But if we imagine this more as a nickname, it becomes very special.  He can still be Simon in all his legal documents, but Jesus has called him Cephas, which means “Rock” actually.  

Did you ever had a favorite nickname?  Turn to your neighbor and quickly share...

What is about our favorite nicknames that we love?  It makes us feel connected with whoever calls us that, and it says something about ourselves that we like.  Lately I’ve been calling Katie “Honey bee,” and the other day she told me, “Daddy, I like when you call me honey bee.”  Why do you think?   

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God calls us by a special name again this day, a name that connects us with Christ, a name that says something about us that we like.  From the busyness and the chaos of our worlds -- or maybe for you it’s more of a ho-hum existence, nothin’ fancy -- wherever we are God calls you out.  Christ finds you this day -- like he found Simon Peter.  

The disciples John and Andrew were looking for something.  “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  Simon Peter was not.  Which one are you?  Are you searching intently for something here?  Or are you just going about your business.  Either way, Jesus calls you.  

“Come and see,” he says.  What is Christ calling you to come and see this day, hooking you with your special name?  The Christian life is a life of taking risks, of getting out there, of trusting in Jesus to show us the way...even if that way might not be either what we wanted or what we had in mind.  

What is Christ calling you out into this day?  [pause]

In seminary we had to talk a lot about our “call stories”.  [pause]  But we also learned that call stories are absolutely not restricted to people who go into professional church leadership positions (notice I didn’t say “into the ministry”).  Like a name, everyone has a call story.  Maybe you’re right in the middle of yours.  What’s your call story?  Where is God calling you “into the ministry” now.  The ministry of bank telling, the ministry of interior design, the ministry of security guard, the ministry of nursing, the ministry of teaching, the ministry of construction, the ministry of public servant, the ministry of chemistry, the ministry of real estate, the ministry of parenting, the ministry of studying.  The ministry of aging, the ministry of retirement, the ministry of caring, the ministry of listening, the ministry of laughing, the ministry of hugging, the ministry of breathing, the ministry of dying.

You see?  Everything that at we do -- as named children of God -- is done in response to Christ’s invitation to come and see.  When we follow Jesus, the road of ministry can get rocky indeed, for it is a way of the cross.  That’s where Christ is “staying” (to answer the disciples’ question).  Christ is staying...in our pain to give us joy, (that’s the ministry into which Christ is calling us -- come and see); Christ is staying in our loneliness to give us comfort, in our grief to give us light. 

“Come and see,” Jesus says, “See that I am always with you, from before you were born to your final breath and into eternity.  Come and see that I am with you in your many and various ministries, right beside you in this hurting world, as you go about your daily lives.  [slowly] Come and see that I call you Loved, Forgiven, and Sent.”   

We continue now, loving and serving, following Christ-calling-us-out, into the world.  We continue now, in the name that holds us together, in the name of the One who never leaves us alone, in the strong name of the Trinity.  To that God be the glory this day and always.   AMEN.