What’s In A Name

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.29.07; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Hosea 1:2-9

What is it with people naming their kids these days?

It’s always been difficult finding exactly the right name for the strange faceless little critter that’s growing in that belly. You can pick names from your family, you can pick names from the world around you...but how do you have any idea if that name will be right for your kid? How can you be sure you’ve got exactly the right one? ‘Cause, you know, it’s vital that you get it exactly right.

This whole modern anguishing over the right name started in the 1970s. As the me-generation grew up, the names of your kids became yet another way to show the world what a wonderful and creatively quirky person you were. Suddenly California classrooms were no longer inhabited by long identical rows of kids named John and Mary and Jane. “Ronald Bates? Here. Mary Johnson? Here. Michael Kim? Here. Sunblossom Moonbeam Unicorn Lee? Sunblossom? Sunblossom! Please stop hiding under your desk, young man.”

Despite the wonderful impact that such names had in providing a consistent stream of business for psychotherapists, it’s a little difficult to see what motivates parents to inflict those names on their kids. Yet decades later, an odd willingness to inflict the strangest of names on children continues.

Last month, there was the case of the New Zealand couple who tried to name their child “4real,” as in the number four attached to the word “real.” Apparently, they’d selected the name after having been amazed at actually seeing the first ultrasound. They finally realized they were having a child..for real. A judge in New Zealand tossed out the name...not because the name was stupid, or because it was basically a form of child abuse, but instead because there is a law there that kids can’t be named with numbers. Now his parents just call him “Real.” Much better.

A couple of years ago, there was that story of a couple in Texas who loved watching sports. They named their child Espen, which was spelled, appropriately enough, E-S-P-N. I suppose that’s slightly better than naming your child History Channel Williams.

To be fair, the tendency to name kids strange things goes well back before the seventies. Take, for instance, the most unfortunate name I encountered in my secular work. It was the name given to the philanthropist daughter of one of the legendarily flamboyant governors of the state of Texas back in the oil boom of the 1950s. She used her family fortune to support all manner of wonderful charitable organizations, including a foundation that helped support research into mental illness. She was a woman who had profound sympathy for the downtrodden and the rejected in society. Perhaps that was in part because her father, Governor James Hogg, inexplicably chose to give her the name Ima. Gee, thanks, Dad.

I’m sure the children of the prophet Hosea felt much the same way. Hosea comes to us from the same time period as the prophet Amos and the prophet Isaiah, in that intense period of transition that came in the eighth century. It was that strange period of peace during which the Northern and Southern Kings prospered. As we heard from the prophet Amos last week, this wasn’t necessarily the best of times for the poor and the downtrodden, as the wealth of those little nations poured into the coffers of the monarchy and the kings followers. But it also was a time in which the worship of the God of Israel began to falter. People began to drift away from the worship of the God that had led the people to the land, and returned to the hilltops to make sacrifices to Baal and Asherah.

It was this betrayal of the worship of God that was the primary concern for Hosea. We don’t know much about Hosea himself, other than that he appeared to have been a member of the priestly caste. What we do know from reading his words is that he was called, as are so many other prophets, to engage in actions that were intended to symbolize God’s intent for the Hebrew people. Each of the prophets managed to do that in their own unique way. Ezekiel, for example, made bread and wandered around in his birthday suit. Hosea, on the other hand, seems to have been called to do strange things in his family life.

Hosea’s strange home life becomes evident early on, when he describes how he named his children. He didn’t go out to Borders and buy 1001 Judean Baby Names. He got the names directly from God. Unfortunately, those names weren’t exactly the kind of names that most of us would be happy to get. The first, Jezreel, didn’t seem quite so bad, unless you knew something about the horrible bloodshed that had occurred in that region over and over again in the centuries that preceded Hosea. It’s like naming your son Columbine. It’s like naming your daughter Fallujah. The second child, a girl, was named Lo-Ruhamah. Sounds nice and breathy and flowy and exotic, until you realize that the name means “not pitied,” or “not shown mercy.” I’d have hated to have been her when she brought home a C-minus on her report card. Hosea’s last child was a boy, and he managed to get the name Lo-Ammi, which means “not my people.” That’s just got to build up a sense of self-esteem.

But as questionable as those names might be as a parenting strategy, they served a real purpose in reinforcing the message of the prophet to his drifting, benighted people. As each of the prophecies that followed the naming indicated, the people of Israel had almost completely fallen away from following their just and righteous God. The nation that relied on the blood spilled on the plains of Jezreel would be broken on those very fields. The nation that claimed that God always acted in their favor would find itself separated from God’s mercy. The people that called themselves God’s people but didn’t live according to His righteous commandments could no longer truly claim that name for themselves.

As harsh as Hosea might seem to us, it is that connection between how we name ourselves and how we act that we should ring in our ears today. Each of us has claimed for ourselves the name “Christian.” It’s the label we apply to ourselves. It’s the name that we claim as an identifier for our faith and as the label for the one that we follow. But just like the people of Israel in the 8th century before Christ, we’ve got to ask ourselves if we’re really deserving of that name.

Yes, it’s something that we call ourselves. We announce it proudly to the world, declaring our fealty and our salvation. We’re sure that we are deserving of the mercies of the God we claim in Christ, and we’re positive that we are His people. But simply applying that name to ourselves isn’t enough to make it real. If we lead our lives oblivious to the suffering in the world around us, seeking our own power and not caring whether the fields that lead to our glory are stained with blood and tears, perhaps we shouldn’t call ourselves Christian, but Jezreel. If we can’t bring ourselves to forgive others as we ourselves would be forgiven, perhaps we are Lo-Ruhamah. If we can’t find it in ourselves to to live lives that radiate the love and mercy of Christ, showing both his peace and his righteousness to all peoples, perhaps we’d be better named Lo-Ammi.

If that name does not tell the world who we are, if it doesn’t match how we live and how we are, then perhaps we should heed the warning of Hosea, and be cautious that God not choose us another name.