TO BE KNOWN BY NAME... An Easter Meditation

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene stood weeping outside the tomb... She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!”   ~from the Easter gospel of John 20:1-18

My favorite professor at the seminary – and the favorite of many – was Gerhard Frost, of blessed memory. He was a man of inner strength and outward gentleness. One day early in that school year we met each other out walking in the seminary neighborhood. I was one of dozens, if not hundreds, of new students he had that semester alone – not to mention all the semesters stretching back through the years – and we had not had much conversation beyond the teacher-student exchange in the classroom.

What I remember about that casual meeting on the sidewalk almost fifty years ago is how badly he wanted to call me by my name. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, until, with a sort of defeated sigh, he apologized as he asked for my name. Later, we became neighbors, colleagues, and friends, and I am proud to say that, to his dying day, Gerhard knew my name!

It’s an odd recollection, I know, remembering--all these years later--how someone wanted to say my name. But Gerhard Frost knew that one of the most deeply meaningful gifts we can give one another is to be called by name. It is, in fact, a godly gift. “I have called you by name,” says God in Isaiah, “you are mine.”

Baptism is sometimes called Christening – “a naming.” In infant baptism, the parents give their child her god-name, and they say, “God has called you by name, you belong to God. We have called you by name, you are ours.” In the Bible, to name is to know deeply.  “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me,” says Jesus.

I sometimes tell my confirmation kids that one way to understand why we don’t want to “take God’s name in vain” is to reflect on how none of likes to have our own name made fun of, or used to hurt or ridicule. And that silly old line, “Your mama wears combat boots,” whatever it means, means very little about combat boots, but it’s my mother’s name you’re deriding! (There is nothing so common, that is at the same time so uniquely treasured, as the name “Mom.”)

When I was five years old, my dad was taken away by ambulance in the middle of the night, with what turned out to be a burst brain aneurism. I don’t know if the doctors there in the Huron, South Dakota hospital stemmed the flow, or if it ceased on its own, but he was stabilized in preparation to be taken to St. Mary's in Rochester. Just before that departure, the doctors told our mom that Barby and Betty and little Bobby and I could come in briefly and say hi to Dad. But Mom had to tell us what the doctors told her: “He may not know you.”  

Perhaps it’s my earliest memory—the door opens into the darkened room, my dad, his head swathed in bandages, opens his eyes and says, “Hi, Dicky.”

I wonder if to be known is what it means to be fully alive. It is certainly at the heart of what it means to be loved.

Has a name ever been said with more gentle preciousness than there in the tomb garden? Mary is beside herself with grief and loss. Blinded by her sorrow at the unspeakable events she has witnessed, she doesn’t know Jesus. But he knows her. And he calls her by name. “Mary.”

We may not know, but God knows. And God knows us. This deep knowing allows us to be fully who we are. Like the toddler who—becoming himself—says, “I do it… I do it.” And of course he must do it – with Mommy and Daddy standing by. The ones who named him. Who will let him wander but never let him go. “I have called you by name, you are mine.”

 

A servant-girl, seeing Peter in the firelight, stared at him and said,

“This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I

do not know the man!"  ~Luke 22

The most profound thing about the story of Peter’s sad denial of his friend Jesus is not the part where Jesus tells Peter, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times,” or even Peter’s bitter tears when he hears that cock-crow in the lonesome distance. It is what Jesus said to Peter in the same breath with which he had predicted his denial: “...But, Peter, when you have come to yourself, you must turn and strengthen the others.” And he did! And he did. Jesus knew who Peter was. He knew him. Did this knowing help to make Peter who he was?

The tragic undercutting of the Gospel’s message—from the very beginning—has been the small-minded pronouncement that the Christian life is a matter of fearfully keeping a set of rules—even commandments—rather than what it is: A declaration of identity; belonging. The great guide for living will never be rules. (How good would we have to be?....) Or what is sometimes called “religion.” Or fear. (“Do not be afraid” is one of the most frequent assurances given to us in the scriptures.) It is identity: “Remember who you are.” “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.” “I have called you by name, you are mine.” “Mary.” “Dicky.”

And if we turn our eyes to the cosmos—if we feel, in the words of the song, that “we’re lost out here in the stars”—our faith is in a God who is big enough—and small enough – to know us each by name.

Terry Waite was held hostage in Lebanon for nearly five years—one of the longest of that 1980s hostage crisis period. He was in solitary confinement for the whole five years, blindfolded, and alone. After he was released, he said, “For most of that time I didn’t even know where I was, but I knew that God knew where I was, and that was enough.”

The empty tomb of Easter means nothing without the cross. The cross means that God knows – God knows – your loss, your tears, your highest hopes, your deepest fears. And who you are.

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Notes:

Thanks to son-in-law Joel for telling me about the marvelous painting, "The Denial of Peter" (above), c. 1623, by Gerrit van Honthorst, which is in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

I tried to find an equally compelling painting of Mary and Jesus in the tomb garden. This anonymous early twentieth century illustration (top) doesn't quite do it. Mary Magdalene, although something of a woman of mystery, is very much her own person in the gospels. In John's account, just before Jesus says her name, she has given him a piece of her mind when she thinks he's "the gardener" who has taken Jesus' body away! You can get a sense of this by reading the whole account in John 20:1-18.

My dad was in St. Mary's (Mayo) for nine weeks. After the doctors had suggested to my uncle that he should prepare my mom for the end of Dad's life--they saved him! They gave us forty more years of Dad! I breathe a prayer of thanks for this every time I climb the stairs at St. Mary's entrance to make a pastoral visit.

JOSEPH'S CAROL

When the Matthew Christmas story comes around in the rotation--as it did last Sunday--I see it as an opportunity, in my sermon, to give Joseph his due. However, my country church was cancelled last Sunday because of 24 degrees below zero (not counting wind chill). So I'll preach it here, and offer it as my blog Christmas card.

Scripture: Romans 1:1—7, Matthew 1:18—25

The full text of the carols cited in this sermon are printed at the end.

"St. Joseph the Worker and Christ" (I love this image, but was Joseph really an "old man?") Matthew's nativity account is, we might say, Joseph's story, in the same way that the more familiar Christmas gospel in Luke is Mary's story. It’s good to be reminded of Joseph’s part in Jesus’ life, because he often seems to disappear into the background. (Some scholars speculate that perhaps Joseph died at an early age, and thus gets little mention in the unfolding story of Jesus' life.) I was standing near a manger scene recently, and I overheard one person say to another, “Is that Joseph... or is it one of the shepherds?” Joseph perhaps could be excused for saying, in the words of the comedian, “I don’t get no respect.” Yet--alongside of our devotional admiration for Mary--it is completely appropriate for us to give Joseph his proper place in Jesus' family. Both Matthew, in his genealogy of Jesus, and St. Paul, in the companion reading from Romans (see above), emphasize that Jesus is descended from David through Joseph’s line. It is Joseph who adopts Jesus as his own. (As an adoptive father, I'm here to attest that that bond of love is exactly the same as the bond of biology.) It is through Joseph that Jesus gets his identity as the son of the carpenter. It is Joseph who names the boy "Jesus," and who is told by the angel of another name: "Emmanuel." In the way that we give affectionate nicknames to our little ones, I like to think that, when Jesus was a child, perhaps Joseph used his angel-given name--Emmanuel--and called him occasionally and lovingly by a nickname, "Manny." Little Manny--Little Emmanuel. "See, little Manny, here's how daddy smooths a piece of wood...." In Matthew's story, we see a man who is kind, brave, and faithful both to God and to his fiancée – even when she appears to be in a very difficult situation. So Joseph doesn’t deserve to be the man in the shadows that our traditions have cast him as: confused for a shepherd, or (and why is this?) often thought of as on old man.

Mary was most likely fifteen or sixteen years old, a common marriage age for a young woman of that time and place; Joseph was perhaps twenty, certainly not much older than that. But in one of our ancient carols, the “Cherry Tree Carol,” we sing

When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he,

He married Virgin Mary, the Queen of Galillee….

Now, there is one part of this old carol that I like--a verse that I find very true-to-life. When Mary asks Joseph to pick some cherries from the tree for her, he replies, “Let the father of your baby pick cherries for thee!”

In that brief line we see Joseph – no less faithful or loving – giving in to just a moment of exasperation. This is quite a miraculous idea, after all--the story of how Mary came to be with child. So perhaps it is understandable that Joseph should express just a bit of wide-eyed skepticism: “Let the father of your baby pick cherries for thee.”

We have the same human interplay between Mary and Joseph – put a little more tenderly – in another carol. Here the scene is on the road to Bethlehem. Night, darkness, walking along together. First, Joseph speaks:

Mary, the night is dark, you’re getting weary;

I thought we’d reach Bethlehem long before now.

I know a little inn – the keeper’s a friend of mine –

he’ll find a bed for you somewhere, somehow.

... Mary, of course I will stay with you always,

though your “angel’s message” I don’t understand.

Now, while we’re looking for light in the darkness,

I’ll hold the candle and you hold my hand.

Then Mary speaks, with just a bit of affectionate chiding, and with gratitude to this good man:

Joseph, the message is our little baby,

and you are the angel who guides us tonight

over this rocky road, under this starry sky –

Look at that one that is shining so bright!

Joseph, what keeps you so true to your promise,

when this isn’t anything like you had planned?

Could it be love? Do you feel love around us?

You hold the candle and I’ll hold your hand.

The great Christmas truth of incarnation – that God has come to us as a person – takes place in the heart of a family: Mother, baby, and father. We do not diminish our devotion to Jesus as Son of God when we acknowledge, as the Bible does, that Joseph is Jesus’ dad.

In his poem "Joseph's Lullaby," Ronald Klug offers a meditation on what Joseph might have been thinking there in the stable as Mary sleeps, exhausted, and he gently rocks the manger box that he has transformed into a cradle for his son, little Emmanuel. Little Manny. His little Jesus.

Sleep now, little one.
I will watch while you and your mother sleep.
I wish I could do more.
This straw is not good enough for you.
Back in Nazareth I'll make a proper bed for you
of seasoned wood, smooth, strong, well-pegged,
A bed fit for a carpenter's son.
Just wait till we get back to Nazareth.
I'll teach you everything I know.
You'll learn to choose the cedarwood, eucalyptus and fir.
You'll learn to use the drawshave, ax and saw.
Your arms will grow strong, your hands rough--like these.
You will bear the pungent smell of new wood
and wear shavings and sawdust in your hair.
You'll be a man whose life centers on hammer and nails and wood.
But for now, sleep, little Jesus, sleep.

“Joseph’s Lullaby,” by Ronald Klug, 
from “Poetry for the Soul,”
Moorings Publishers, Nashville, 1995

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Carols

MARY, THE NIGHT IS DARK

Joseph

Mary, the night is dark, you’re getting weary;
I thought we’d find Bethlehem long before now.
I know a little inn – the keeper’s a friend of mine –
He’ll find a bed for you somewhere, somehow.
Mary, of course I will stay with you always,
Though your “angel’s message” I don’t understand.
Now, while we’re looking for light in the darkness,
I’ll hold the candle and you hold my hand.

Mary   
Joseph, the message is our little baby,
And you are the angel that guides us tonight
Over this rocky road, under this starry sky –
Look at that one that is shining so bright!
Joseph, what keeps you so true to your promise,
When this isn’t anything like you had planned?
Could it be love? Do you feel love around us?
You hold the candle and I’ll hold your hand.

Shepherd boy & father
Father, I’m frightened; the whole sky was glowing!
The nighttime was brighter than sunshine at noon.
The sound of a thousand wings – something was happening,
And now it’s so dark – just that star and the moon.
Father, you fell to your knees in that brightness.
“Yes, till the angel’s song told me to stand!
Now let us go find that Bethlehem stable;
I’ll hold the candle and you hold my hand.”

People 
Dear baby Jesus, we follow the shepherds –
Follow a star to the place where you sleep.
Mary and Joseph rest; you sleep in gentleness –
A little light shining in shadows so deep.
Jesus, you’ve been the light from the beginning –
And, in these days when night covers the land,
You are the Word that we hear in the darkness:
“I’ll hold the candle and you hold my hand.”

Richard Jorgensen © 2002

THE CHERRY TREE CAROL 
a traditional English carol, very old

When Joseph was an old man,

An old man was he,

He married Virgin Mary

The Queen of Galilee.

Joseph and Mary walked

Through an orchard good,

There were cherries and berries,

As red as any blood.

Then Mary spoke to Joseph

So meek and so mild:

"Joseph, gather me some cherries,

For I am with child."

Then Joseph grew in anger,

In anger grew he,

"Let the father of thy baby

Gather cherries for thee!

Then Jesus spoke a few words,

A few words spoke he:

"Let my mother have some cherries,

Bow low down, cherry tree."

The cherry tree bowed low down,

Bowed low down to the ground,

And Mary gathered cherries

While Joseph stood around.

Then Joseph took Mary

All on his right knee,

"My Lord, what have I done?

Have mercy on me."

As Joseph was a-walking

He heard an angel sing,

"Tonight shall be the birth time

Of Christ our Heav'nly King."

"He neither shall be born

In house nor in hall,

Nor in the place of Paradise,

But in an ox's stall."

"He neither shall be clothed

In purple nor in cloth,

But in the bare white linen

That useth babies all."

"He neither shall be rocked

In silver nor in gold,

But in a wooden manger

That rests upon the mold."

As Joseph was a-walking

And an angel did sing,

And Mary's child at midnight

Was born to be our King.

Then be ye glad ye people

This night of all the year,

And light ye up your candles

For his star it shineth clear.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

Christina Rosetti

(revised with a verse for Joseph)

In the bleak midwinter,

frosty wind made moan,   
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter,
long ago.

Joseph found a shelter,

made a bed of straw,

laid down Mary gently,

knelt by her in awe

that he’d be the father

of this baby boy –

Emmanuel, God with us,

and the whole world’s joy!

What can I give him,

poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man,
I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him
give my heart.

MOTHER MARY, MOTHER MONICA, MOTHER VI: A PERIPATETIC MEDITATION ON MOTHER'S' DAY

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.... ~ God, in Isaiah 66:13

Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety. ~Mary, to twelve-year-old Jesus, upon finding him in the temple after a three-day search in the city. Luke 2:48*

In January of 2002, I was traveling back to Minnesota from South Dakota, where I had attended a winter pastors’ retreat at Outlaw Ranch, in Custer. I had also visited my mother—who was living in Custer, near my brother Bob and sister Betty—and had extended my stay for a few days longer than planned when it was decided that Mom would go into Rapid City hospital for surgery to remove a recently discovered cancer. She had entered the hospital with a sense of optimism, but an even stronger sense of assurance that all was in God’s hands, and that she was prepared for whatever the outcome of the surgery might be. The morning after surgery, while she was still in a very groggy recovery, I said a prayer for her, kissed her on the forehead, and said good-by, leaving her in the loving care of my brother and sister – expecting that I’d travel back in a few weeks to visit her in her recuperation.

Now I was heading east, across the open prairies of South Dakota, the landscape of my childhood, and—once I had crossed east of the river—the particular landscape I remembered from my early years in Pierre and Huron, before we moved west. When I’m traveling alone, I like to get off I-90 and take the smaller highways. This time I was driving highway 34, and listening to an audio book, “The Confessions of St. Augustine.” Augustine was a bishop in Carthage, North Africa—an outpost of the Roman Empire—in the fourth century A.D. As the narrator made mention of Carthage, I passed a road sign that said “Carthage, eleven miles,” and I remembered that this was one of the small South Dakota towns in which my dad had served as teacher, principal and coach in the first years of their marriage, before the war—before I was born.

On impulse – and because of the strange connection with St. Augustine’s Carthage – I turned toward Carthage, South Dakota, and a few minutes later drove into this very small town. On Main Street, I asked directions to the school from an elderly woman who said she remembered Mr. Jorgensen, but that she would have been too young to have had him as a teacher. I found the school building – boarded up but still standing, and I went up and touched my hand to the brick.

This was the town where Mom and Dad were living when the war broke out, and I recalled how Mom had said they lived in a small apartment in a house across the street from the school; it occurred to me that this was probably where they heard the Pearl Harbor broadcast. I studied the neighborhood, trying to guess which house had been theirs. Then I continued east; South Dakota highway 34 became Minnesota Highway 30, and in a few hours I was in Faribault.

When I walked in the door, Caryl told me that Bob had called to report that the biopsy after Mom’s surgery had revealed an unexpectedly large spread of cancer. In the middle of the night he called to tell us that Mom had died. We wept, we missed her, we miss her still, but we quietly rejoiced that her journey of suffering was over, and her life with her Lord – and Dad – was brand new.

~

Depiction,  in stained glass, of Monica and her son, Augustine.

St. Augustine – Aurelius Augustinus – was a wild, headstrong young man, full of pride. An extremely intelligent wise guy who used his smarts to get good grades,  good jobs, and girls. (He once prayed, “Lord, grant me chastity, but not yet!”) And he used his knowledge of philosophy to argue the impossibility of Christianity. After his conversion to Christ, Augustine became a bishop of the church in the stormy time of the end of the Roman Empire. His story – which is sometimes considered the first autobiography in western literature – is his own confession of what started out as a wayward and wasted life. (Augustine became one of the foundational theologians of the early church; over a thousand years later his writings influenced a young priest named Martin Luther.) I recommend the book, or the audio book (especially if you’re driving across South Dakota!). You may agree that it is a Christian devotional classic. But, on this Mothers' Day, I ponder and reflect on just one element of his story:  His mother prayed for him.

Augustine’s mother Monica was a devout Christian married to a non-believing husband. Proving that some things never change, Augustine writes that his father spent beyond his means to get his son into the finest schools to fulfill Dad’s own ambition, but that he had no interest in nurturing his son’s relationship with God.** 

Of his mother, he writes that “she never ceased to pray for me.” Monica prayed for seventeen years from the beginning of his adulthood before Augustine became a Christian. She used to go to priests and beg them for prayers, until some would try to avoid her or send her away. One priest encouraged her by saying: “A son who is the object of so many tears will not be lost.” Augustine’s mother was for him – in the word’s of St. Paul – “a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.” After her death, Augustine said, “She called me a devoted son, But what common measure is there between the respect with which I treated her, and the service she did to me? She made it her business to win me for Christ by preaching him to me through her way of life.”

I was surprised that I identified with Augustine – not because my life is that of a saint, and not because my youth was like his (I wasn’t half as wild or interesting) – but because our mothers prayed for us. As I look back, for all I know – even though my life has not been one of great drama or rebellion – perhaps my mother prayed me into faith. Certainly it’s true of myself, as I once heard a well-known preacher say when he began his keynote address to an auditorium full of people at a national church convention, “I’m here today because my parents made me come.” A friend of mine says that upon the death of his own mother, his first thought was, “Oh, now who’s going to pray for me?” I know what he means.

An enduring memory of my childhood is the muffled sound I heard after I‘d gone to bed – after mom or dad had said prayers with me – I knew it was the sound of mom and dad having their own nightly devotions.

In her funeral pre-arrangements, my mother had requested that my two preacher brothers-in-law and I wear our clergy collars at the funeral. We told her pastor that this was her wish – that we weren’t trying to intimidate him, sitting in the front pew in our collars. Of course this was a matter of old-fashioned parental pride for Mom – but it’s also an indication that she was a person of the church. At the funeral, the pastor shared a recent anecdote: My brother had brought Mom to Christmas services in what he thought was plenty of time, but which necessitated that they sit in the very back. As mom looked around, she lightly scolded Bob, “I’ve never sat this far back in church in my life!” (And, speaking of my brother – a gifted carpenter and home-builder, and the only one of us guys at the funeral without a clergy collar – we’ve always told Bob that he’s the holiest of us all, since our Lord Jesus was a carpenter!)

What was the prayer of Monica, Augustine’s mother? What was my mother’s prayer? What is your prayer for your children, or your friend’s prayer for you?  It is this: It is St. Paul’s prayer in Philippians: “I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Although perhaps not in those exact words, that is the prayer of a parent for a child, of a brother or sister for a wandering brother or sister, of a friend for a prodigal friend. It is a prayer I have shared more than once with a parent in my office, weeping for her child, “I am sure that he who began a good work in your beloved child will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Parents, brothers, sisters, spouses, friends: pray that prayer. Claim the promises of God; say to God “God, I know that, for Jesus sake, you will bring your good work to completion for my son, my daughter, my husband, my wife, my friend.” Like Mother Monica – take it to the Lord in prayer.

At the very genesis and heart of the gospel's story is the ordinary wonder that our Lord Jesus had a mom. We honor Mary not as a plaster saint, but as the mother of this kid. We know that being the mother of a headstrong twelve-year-old Jesus was a trial. And we know – although most of us don’t know – about the broken heart of a mother at the foot of the cross. Our creed is not only that Jesus is our Lord, but that he is Mary’s boy. Because she loved him enough to say, on that frantic day among the crowds,  “Where have you been! Don’t you know your father and I have been worried sick!” Like my mom would have said when I was twelve. Like your mom would have.

Mother Mary, Mother Monica, Mother Vi; your mother – or someone who is mother to you—are gifts of God to us, to set us on the path. It is perhaps, after all, not just sentimentalism to say that God couldn’t be everywhere, so He invented mothers.

And God himself says to us: “Like a mother comforts her child – so I will comfort you.”

Not a bad comparison. 
  
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*The story of Jesus' separation from his parents as he sits with the elders in the temple (Luke 2:41-51) is the only account of Jesus' childhood in all of the gospels (apart from the infancy narratives). It is usually lifted up as a pious example of the divine boy's spiritual acuity and promise. As a father and grandfather, I find much more comfort in reading it as an account of a somewhat mouthy pre-teen whose parents don't understand him.

**Monica eventually prayed her husband into the faith, too. Quite a woman!