Each of us has a name - Proper 8B

Sister Maggie and Suzy Roche collaborated on an album about 15 years ago entitled “Zero Church.” Strange name, I know, but its title comes from the address of the building where they were working. They began working on in and in the midst of their process, the attacks of 9/11 happened. The project took a different turn and, in collaboration with other artists, the music was a compilation of grieving, lament, and hope. On the album they set a Jewish poem by Zelda to a haunting tune. The poem was entitled “Each of Us Has a Name.” It speaks of the various names we carry in our lives and in our death. This poem reminds me of the Name Project – the quilt which was created in memory of those who died of AIDS, especially in the first wave of deaths in the 1980’s and early 1990’s.

I realize now we have young people gathered here today who may not even know about the Names quilt. It is exhibited in smaller panels now in various places and you can look up the panels online to see them. In the early days of the epidemic, the panels were largely for gay men but as the disease spread through the blood supply, people outside the gay community were affected – hemophiliacs, intravenous drug users, prostitutes, straight men and women who had been infected by intimate partners. The Names Project brought light to the scourge of HIV but also allowed us to see these people as something other than the single name of “AIDS death” – we saw them as more as their names were restored.

One panel is for a man who was a botanist – his specialty was bamboo and orchids. He worked in landscape design and even created an exhibit for the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park called “The Forest in the Clouds” made up of bamboo and orchids. His name was James and yes, he was gay. He died of AIDS as did his partner in the first wave. His quilt panel, three feet by six feet (the size of a human coffin), has bamboo, orchids and clouds on it. On each cloud is hand stitched quotes from the letters his mother received upon his death. The one that choked me up was written by a 5 year old girl named Erin. “I am sorry Mr. Jim died. He was my friend even though I am a little girl.” It was written on Snoopy stationary. His quilt panel restored part of his identity to him. How do I know this? Well, I did not know James in life, but I designed that quilt square and my mother made it for his mother to add to the names. Each of us has a name.

Today’s story from the Gospel of Mark is about two women – one young and one old. One who is known only as the “daughter of Jairus” and the other named by her malady – “the woman with a hemorrhage.” Outside the immediate family of Jesus the disciples and the main characters representing the power structure (Herod, Pilate), most people are mentioned by their other names – names surrounding their roles (chief priest, scribe) or their maladies (the man with the withered hand, the paralytic on the mat, the hemorrhaging woman). Both women in this text are bound by the span of 12 years – for one the span of her life and the other the span of her social exile. The woman with the hemorrhage likely had a gynecological illness for which there really was no cure in her day. This bleeding was seen by rabbinic law as making her, and anything she touched, defiled and unclean. So by this law, she was socially dead – she was not to touch anything or anyone. She was desperate to get her life back and spent all her money on doctors who could do nothing. She had nothing to lose when she saw Jesus.

In desperation, she slips through the crowd following Jesus to the home of Jairus. She says, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But when you are desperate, you’ll do anything no matter how crazy it sounds. Immediately she was healed and in the same instance, Jesus detects something has happened. There’s been a disturbance in the “Force” – power has gone out of him. He whirls around to see what happened and who touched him – the disciples can’t believe he’s asking that question, but Jesus is undeterred. He will not go forward until he finds out.

Imagine the terror of the woman. She knows she has ritually defiled this man! She knows he could retaliate against her! She had nothing to lose but to be called out. She falls on her face in front of him in terror and blurts out “the whole truth.” Jesus does not get angry or rebuke her or humiliate her. He gives her back her name: “Daughter!” “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” She transforms in this instant from the woman with a hemorrhage to … daughter. Each of us has a name.

Too often, the names we carry are given by others and by our circumstances. Some of the names are relational – daughter, son, wife, husband, father, mother, sister, brother – but others are not. The person who suffers from illness can find themselves named by it: alcoholic, drug addict, anorexic, mentally ill. A person might be named ugly, pretty, fat, skinny based on cultural standards of attractiveness. We even name people as a “success” or a “failure” – and those are the names I can mention. Some names are meaner and more vilifying – meant to destroy the image of God in us. Each of us has a name.

Yesterday, a number of us from Grace attending Frederick Pride – the fourth such event and I’m happy to say we have been there as a church since day one. Prior to the event on Carroll Creek, there was a Pride worship service at Grace UCC. Our speaker was The Rev. Allyson Robinson. She is the first transgendered female Baptist pastor in the world. Now wrap your mind around those four names: transgendered, female, Baptist and pastor. Not names you would generally expect to find in the same sentence, let alone describing one person. She preached a message of reconciliation and peace in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. She spoke of this journey as a battle – for that it surely was for the LGBTQ community and straight allies. But she now called us to put down the “weapons of battle” for tools of reconciliation. She quoted, not from the majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy, but from a dissenting opinion written by Justice Alito. She asked us to hear not the anger but the fear in it. Fear is what those who once oppressed now have because human history is filled with stories of how the oppressed, when the tide of opinion turns, become oppressors themselves. She exhorted us to be peacemakers rather than succumb to being oppressors. A powerful message of reconciliation from one who has a name: Christian.

Each of us has a name – a true name and identity in God. That name is “beloved child.” Too often, the names of the hurts and the wounds can drown out that real name and we are like the woman with the hemorrhage – desperate to find healing from those other names which would steal our real identity. All of us have those wounded places, those names which have claimed us and which we find confining. Like the woman with the hemorrhage who becomes “daughter” again, all of us can reach out to touch the garments of the living Christ. What does that mean? It depends on what you need. For the alcoholic struggling in recovery, it might mean one more round of rehab. Last week, we had a speaker at our recovery Eucharist who told us he went through 12 rounds of rehab and multiple jail terms to finally break his alcohol and crack addiction. He kept grabbing for Jesus’ garments, even when he didn’t know that was what he was doing, and now has serenity and sobriety one day at a time. For the person with an illness, it may be trying a new treatment option to improve the quality of life. For someone who lost their job, it may be reaching out for gainful employment. For someone who flunked a class, it may mean reaching out to try again or find another path. Each time we reach out to touch the garments of Christ, we stretch a little more. Each time we do, something of our identity gets restored. We know we cannot save ourselves, but reaching for the garments is the faith response to the grace offered by God in Christ. The grace is there but we have to reach out in faith to connect with it. Reaching for the garments of Jesus is how we can respond to the grace – it’s how we are drawn to it. In so doing, we get back our real identity, our real name … “beloved child.” Each of us has a name.

Each of us has a name - by Zelda (Translation by Marcia Falk)

Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.