2nd Sunday after the Epiphany Meditation

When Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, it was following a long-held biblical tradition that when God is bringing someone from one stage of life to another, particularly in pursuit of ministry, God changes the name. So it’s biblical, but it’s also something we could relate to as a culture as well. There are many ways in our society that names change.

The most common one, of course, is when people get married and traditionally a wife now takes her husband’s name. It’s a sign that she’s going from being a single person to a couple that her sense of identity is taking on a new and complex role of becoming.

We’re also watching it happen in this generation in new ways with the trans community. For those people who have never felt at home in their gendered body have permission to step into a new way of being. And accompanying that comes a name they choose, a name full of hope that there is a future yet to be where I will be more complete.

The same thing is being used more recently of people coming out of family trauma. People who were raised in a home by parents where there was abuse, the same parents who named them, part of their healthy moving forward in life can be this option of saying, I will now choose a new name. I will no longer be bound. I would define by this past that was so painful. So it’s a hope of a new world to become.

In the Catholic tradition, quite often people will take on a baptismal name of a saint. It’s a way of saying, “As I enter into this new mystical union with Christ, I also find union with this saint, that it would be a saint praying for me, but also whose narrative is one that I could aspire to grow into.”

And all of this makes sense, this name changing, because in our spiritual formation we see that God designed all of creation to be something that is perpetually becoming. There is nothing static. Everything is changing. God has made us to be creatures that become. And if a name can be changed along the way as a marker, it is very helpful for some.

I have this poignant memory from when I was in college. I was in a Christian fellowship. It was one night. And we were singing this song over and over again: “I will change your name.”

[Singing]:  I will change your name. You shall no longer be called: wounded, outcast, lonely or afraid. I will change your name; your new name shall be: confidence, joyfulness, overcoming one; faithfulness, friend of God, one who seeks my face.

And I remember that night so clearly, praying it over and over, crying, yearning for it to be true. And I’m thinking about this name changing today and recognizing: that was 35 or more years ago… and it’s true. My name was changed. Everything that my soul yearned for while singing that song, I can look at it and say: it’s happened and is happening. Life keeps going on.

And so, it begs the question: how does your name get changed in this broader sense? How do we engage in spiritual formation? And there are a lot of way. We’re complex people. It’s a complex process.

There’s studying and learning about this faith: Who is this God that I’m seeking to know?

There is discipline.

There are acts of piety. What am I doing with my life deliberately as a way of living into this identity? How am I modeling this way of Jesus?

Hopefully as we are seeking this life, over the course of our life we get a handful of moments, mystical moments that become ours to hold on to – things we couldn’t control – of God meeting us in our story.

But one of the ways that our names change, this “becoming experience,” is through community. It is the life of no longer being alone and isolated, but belonging to a whole. And for many of us that includes belonging to the church –  that the church can be a place where we are known, truly – where we are safe; where we cooperate together in living out the mission of Christ; where we can belong to others who might have gifts we don’t have ourselves, but – in watching them live out their gift of being Jesus for the world – we get to participate in it too, because we belong to each other. And, most especially, belonging to the church allows us to be loved – especially in those moments when we most need to be loved.

As you know, St. John’s is soon looking forward to becoming a safe parking site where families who are living in their cars can sleep in their cars safely overnight. We’re partnering with Family Promise. In preparing us to be a safe parking site, they advised us to make the experience “safe but uncomfortable.” And that sounded a little jarring at first because our impulse is to do everything we can to make it comfortable. But their logic was: we don’t want people sleeping in their cars forever. The whole point is for this to be a safe and stable place, where they could sleep overnight, knowing the police aren’t going to come banging on their window and telling them to move on, and their basic needs are met. But also: let them be a little uncomfortable. Let them continue to have the motivation to be moving forward to get in a home that will be theirs.

And as we’ve reflected on that phrase, “safe but uncomfortable,” we’ve recognized that might be a useful way to perceive all of our lives, and – indeed – to perceive how God cares for us. Because, obviously, God could make everything better instantly. God has that power. But all of us are living lives in different forms of discomfort. Life will be uncomfortable for all of us, unto the end, when death for most is a most uncomfortable experience. And so our spiritual formation then becomes an ongoing recognition that, “I am safe, even amidst the discomfort.” And that’s okay. We are all seeking healing and wholeness and belonging and true self-knowledge. We are all seeking for our names to be changed. And part of that growing belief can be that – amidst this discomfort – at the core of our being, despite the circumstances, we are safe because we are with God. And God is with us, and – not only that – but that God has been with us our entire lives: when we saw God not and when we see God yet to be. Our deepest reality is pure union with God. And therefore our union with all those with whom God is one. Which is everyone.

So we have been uncomfortable. We are uncomfortable.

And we are safe.

And one of the gifts the church has is love. It is the way we choose to love one another, especially amidst our brokenness, especially amidst our sense of not belonging and of not being safe. Together, we can grow into the knowledge that we do belong, and we are safe. And as we find ourselves to be safe with one another, that becomes a sacrament of our safety with God.

And so during the season after Epiphany, each week we’ll be asking one person to share their experience of how life is uncomfortable for them, and how they are discovering themselves to be safe through their experience, especially in the church – that the church would be for everyone a place of God’s safe parking.

And so today we invite Dennis Northway, our parish musician, to share his story with us.

The story is probably apocryphal, but it is said that there was once a husband that loved his wife so deeply that he almost told her.

When I was at the end of my master’s degree coursework, the very last week before my oral and written exams, we were at the end of the morning chapel service.  The chapel choir director, Carl Schalk, (I was his assistant), said, “Dennis, I need to see you in my office in a few minutes.”  Well, I panicked! Was he going to tell me that I can’t do my final exams?  Was there a problem?  Professor Schalk was always hard to read, so I just did not know.

Well, I knocked on his door, he said “come in” and I came in and just stood there.  He was sitting at his desk, smoking his pipe, it was 1982 and professors still did that then, and then he just looked up.  There was a pause.  He then said, “There is a phrase that says, ‘It goes without saying.’”  He paused again.  He then said, “And it should be said. I just wanted to say thank you for your help this year.”  I just stood there dumbfounded  I did not say anything, and he said, “Is there anything else?”  and I said, “No, sir, thank you, sir” and left

I learned that it is best to just say something.

When I was in my late 20’s one day I woke up with a terrible pain in my groin.  Phil, my partner, was out of town in Dallas singing a Mozart Requiem, so I just went to the emergency room.  Well, they immediately checked me into the hospital and scheduled surgery for the next day.  After a week of recovery after the surgery, I went to my doctor’s office to learn that the cancer they removed was not all of it, and that it had spread to my belly where I had a number of tumors, the largest was 2” in diameter.

I was completely vulnerable.  My chemotherapy was 5 days on, 24 hours-a-day, and eight days off; 5 days on, eight days off; 5 days on, eight days off.  The blessing of my days in the hospital was that I found out how loved I was!  My hospital room could only hold about five visitors, so we often had to go to the lobby to spend time together!   I was completely vulnerable, and completely surrounded by love.  Had I not been so sick, I would not have learned how loved I was.

I will never forget the day, April 10, 2024.  It was early in the morning and I was sitting at the foot of the bed about to take the dog on her morning walk.  I was talking to Tommy and I could hear myself talking gibberish!

After the walk Tommy checked on me and I was worse, so he got off work and drove me to immediate care, they then sent me to the emergency room.  At that point I had had a seizure so they took me by ambulance to Tacoma Hospital.  I was not conscious for more than a day.  Tommy did not leave my side for three days.  Only later did I learn that the choir had held a prayer vigil, Jeff Waters would paint a portrait of me, and many, many people visited me.  It would not be for a month before I learned exactly what had happened.  Because of an ear infection, it progressed to viral meningitis.  I was again, sick and completely vulnerable but surrounded by God’s love, prayer and unbounded support.

When we serve our neighbors who might be homeless and living in their car, they are, at that specific moment of their life, vulnerable.  I would do well to remember my vulnerabilities, around health, finance, national distress, or being a marginalized group and use that as a point of reference for compassion.