The Redemption Project - Names

You've seen the pictures and heard the stories coming out of Portland, OR this week. The attention has been on the tear gas and the people shoved into vans and held, without charge, as if they live in some far-off authoritarian country. Federal officers have been called out against American citizens who the government has labeled violent anarchists. It is all so disturbing and so frightening that I have had to limit how much of the news I absorb each day.

 

But there is something that, while it has been reported, has not received as much attention. The officers in Portland wear no identification. Nowhere on their uniforms is there any insignia that identifies the governmental office they represent. In fact, none of them are wearing nameplates.

 

This, the Administration has said, is to prevent the officers and their families from being targeted online. That could be true. It could be in the officers' best interest to be anonymous, nameless.

 

But what does that do to you? What happens when your name is taken away?

 

Names are important. Scripture puts a high value on names. Humans, from the beginning, are given the power of naming all things in Creation. God changes people's names when they reach some turning point in their life: Sarai became Sarah, Jacob became Israel, Saul became Paul. It's a tradition we humans have picked up. We allow people to rename themselves when they find their own true identity.

 

But who are you if you don't have a name? More than that, what are you?

 

We know how we can change someone by renaming them against their will. People who were renamed communists back in the McCarthy era were outcasts, blacklisted from work. Black slaves were renamed after they were purchased in order to transform them from people to property. Mothers and fathers have been renamed terrorists to justify sending federal troops to subdue them.

 

But what happens when someone takes away your name?

 

I don't have an answer for that question, but it should trouble every Christian. God, we know, calls us by name. It was in saying Mary's name that she recognized Jesus in the quiet of that Easter morning. It was by name that Jesus called Lazarus back from the dead.

 

It is by name that I and others I know are called by Christ.

 

These are deeply troubled times. More than any time in my life do I see how much we are struggling with the powers and principalities of this world whose goals and agendas are so contrary to the Divine. And it troubles me more than anything I've yet seen to watch names being taken from people. Because, if you have no name, can you even hear God calling?

 

And what do we name such a place where we can no longer hear the voice of the One?