Sunday 16 January 2011, Second of Epiphany

I belong to only the third generation of my family to bear my surname. My great-grandfather was called Michael Hadjipappas. He was a priest of the Orthodox Church, whose village was Neo Khorio, in south-western Cyprus. My grandfather, Savvas, took the name Papadopulos, because it means ‘son of a priest’. I used to remind my own son of this meaning whenever he complained about having a long name. At least, I would say, his describes who he is. That’s probably more than can be said for most of the Stevensons and Clarksons he comes across.

This coherence between nomenclature and identity is rare. Had I never been ordained the name Papadopulos would have said as little about my son as it does about me. I am the son of an engineer (and that, translated into Greek, would probably be still longer and even more unpronounceable). In Great Britain in 2011 we do not expect our names to interpret us to the world. We still expect them to identify us (I am Nicholas Papadopulos, not Mark Lowther). But we no longer inhabit the brightly coloured world of Happy Families, buying our bread from Mr Bun the Baker and asking the time of Mr Constable the Policeman, and our names are not revelatory in the way they once were.

It is true that a certain revelatory quality is sometimes discovered accidentally and applied retrospectively, and when it is it is of immeasurable value to classroom jokers and to tabloid satirists. After the Barclays boss Bob Diamond gave evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee this week the sketch writers were delighted that he had lived up to his name: highly polished and utterly unbreakable. But for most of us, most of the time, our names reveal more about those who have conferred them on us than they do about us.

We may be named after a virtue (easier for girls than for boys), revealing our parents’ aspirations for us. We may be named after a beloved relative, revealing their familial preferences, or after an idol, revealing their cultural preferences. Our names may be a coalition, Vincent David, say, revealing a hard-won truce between parents of different political complexions, or they may commemorate a particular moment in history (I have one friend who named his unfortunate firstborn Halebopp, a folie de grandeur if ever there was). Kylie may grow up to sing like a crow, Rex may mature into the least regal man on earth, and Hope may be a whining nuisance, but their names tell us what their parents once dreamt of.

So can our names ever say anything of value about us?

Today’s Gospel suggests that they can, but that the names that can are names we are yet to discover for ourselves. They are names conferred not by our parents or by our contemporaries, or by ourselves. They are conferred by God. What they have in common with our own names is that they reveal something about the one who confers them – about God. But what they do not have in common with our own names is that what is thus revealed is not transient fashion or unlikely ambition. What is revealed is the identity that God imagines and intends for each of us.

In today’s Gospel two names are conferred, one on Jesus, and one on Simon brother of Andrew. Jesus already has a name, of course, but the words which introduce him to the Gospel reader and thus to the world are words that confer a new name, the inspired words of John the Baptist, ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. Like any such words they reveal the intentions of the one who confers. But the one who confers is not John, playfully inventing a new nickname for his cousin. The one who confers is God the Father, speaking through his prophet, and wanting the reader and the world to understand that Jesus of Nazareth is also Jesus the Lamb, the Lamb of God. He is the lamb who will be sacrificed in order that God’s people may be free. Just as the lamb’s blood smeared on the doorposts saved the children of Israel from God’s wrath and guaranteed them a place among the redeemed, so the blood of Jesus will save God’s people and seal God’s covenant with his people. ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. The mark of the Father is upon the Son. God gives Jesus a name which reveals not God’s preferences or his prejudices but the whole of his Son’s eternal destiny.

The weeks ahead of us in the liturgical year will recall us to the faithfulness with which Jesus lives out this destiny. Simon brother of Andrew, on the other hand, for a long time looks like a much less worthy recipient of his new name. ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’. His old name discloses his parents’ preferences; it identifies him and locates him within his family. His new name discloses his destiny, just as Jesus’s discloses his. ‘Simon’ has been the name of a small boy and a young man, one who has laughed and wept, been praised and admonished, has learned his trade and courted his wife. ‘Simon son of John’ is known to all Capernaum. Cephas, the Rock, is known only to God. Simon is given a name which reveals his foundational role in God’s new order, the name by which he is remembered still.

Last week the Pope gave an address which, despite the media reports, was not concerned chiefly with attacking the Beckhams’ choice of names for their sons. In it he called a child’s Christian, Baptismal name an indelible seal. It is. It identifies us with the tradition. But the Pope also said that Baptism was the beginning of a journey of faith. It is. It is the beginning of a quest for that other name, that name known only to God, that name by which we are known to God. Our Christian names tell us who we are. Our Baptism calls us to what we might be. Amen.