Sermons

Minister: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman | Your name travels ahead of you like a portent of things to come, a thing from which others make assumptions about people.

READING ~ Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo -“Where Everybody Knows Your Name”

 
Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you’ve got;
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot.
Wouldn’t you like to get away?

All those nights when you’ve got no lights,
The check is in the mail;
And your little angel
Hung the cat up by it’s tail;
And your third fiance didn’t show;

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they’re always glad you came;
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same;
You want to be where everybody knows your name.

Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead;
The morning’s looking bright;
And your shrink ran off to Europe,
And didn’t even write;
And your husband wants to be a girl;

Be glad there’s one place in the world
Where everybody knows your name,
And they’re always glad you came;
You want to go where people know,
People are all the same;
You want to go where everybody knows your name.

Where everybody knows your name,
And they’re always glad you came;
Where everybody knows your name,
And they’re always glad you came . . .
 

Copyright: Lyrics © Original Writer and Publisher

READING ~ Each of Us Has a Name by Zelda (Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky ) Translated from Hebrew by Marcia Falk[i]

 
Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.
 

SERMON

It is well known that when a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they sing, chant, and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They believe that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique identity and purpose. When the women become attuned to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else.

When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the song to the child. Later, when the child’s formal education begins, the village gathers and chants the song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the newlyweds hear their songs sung once again. 

Finally, when a soul is about to pass from existence, family and friends gather around the deathbed and, just as they did at the person’s birth, they sing that person’s song as a part of “being with” the departing one at the very end of life.[ii]

 

In that African tradition, each person’s song is unique, given before birth, sung throughout life and finally at the time of death. Then, that song returns to spirit and does not come again in that same way. The soulsong is the way a person is known from before birth and throughout life.

In our culture, we do not typically have a soulsong given to us while we are still in the womb. For us, it is our name that most clearly identifies us. Each of us has a name and by that name we are known. Psychologists now tell us what the shaman and the priest have always known – that within the human being there is a deep longing to be seen and to be known. Really known, not superficially known. To be known is to belong and to love and be loved.

In the poem, Each of Us Has a Name, the Jewish poet, Zelda, speaks of all the names we are given and the ways we are known through these names. Her poem is offered in remembrance of the souls lost in the Holocaust. Millions of people were killed during the Holocaust and it is tempting to treat these people as a collective whole – – the victims of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. This is dismissive of these individuals. We honor them when we remember that each and every one who perished had a name. We say their names out loud.

A Jewish midrash tells us about the significance of our names: “All people have 3 names,” the midrash says, “one which God and their parents give to them, one that others call them, and one which they acquire themselves. And the one they acquire themselves in most important of all.”

Each of us has a name. We cannot be forgotten as long as there are those who remember us by name and tell our story.

Have you seen the Vietnam War Memorial wall of names?
I have not, but I did visit the traveling replica of a section of the wall that was installed in Bass Park in Bangor many years ago. Walking down that long black marble wall of names is deeply moving. We watched people there looking for the name of someone they knew – family or friend. We watched people making charcoal rubbings of the names. We watched Vietnam veterans weeping as they moved their hands over the names panel after panel after panel.

The AIDS Quilt with a separate panel for each one to be remembered by name and character. Today, The AIDS Memorial Quilt is an epic, 54-ton tapestry that includes more than 49,000 panels dedicated to more than 96,000 individuals, each one of whom has a name.

9/11 – On remembrance day, we read the names – 3,000 of them.

Sandy Hook – Each December we read the names of the 27 first graders and their teachers who died that fateful day.

Parkland Marjorie Stoneman Doulas High School – February 14th – we recite the names and we hold silence for 17 seconds.

What’s in a name? Lots. Our name is how we are known and identified.

We honor and respect each other by learning our names – and learning to pronounce them. Names are so important that sometimes we need to change our name from our birth name to a name that describes who we are now. Life changes us. Adoption. Marriage. Divorce. Emancipation. Immigration and Emigration. Some of us take a new name when we change our orientation to the world – religious conversion, taking on holy orders, affirming our true gender identity, release from terror or captivity. Re-birth.

Our name is the thing we offer to people as we meet them.

The name by which we want to be called and known may or may not be the name our parents gave us. We may choose or be given a family nickname that is more expressive of who we are within the family unit. We may or may not offer that name outside of our family.

Being called by the name we want used is a sign of respect and dignity.

Human beings have a deep longing to be known for who we really are and to know that we belong to someone or something or somewhere. Our name plays a role in achieving that knowing and belonging.

We want to know and be known by the divine, the ground of being, the energizing love of all of creation of which we are a part – however we conceive of that reality. We want to know and be known in human community.

James Bryan Smith, Associate Professor in the Religion and Humanities Department at Friends University, says, “In our world today people hunger greatly for two things: spirituality and community. We long to be close to God and to one another. We long for a place where we can know and be known at the deepest levels.”

Cheers – It’s the place where everybody knows your name and is glad you came. We can identify with the characters of Cheers – even all these years after the show’s final season, we can sing the song and feel the love. We want the assurance that there is a place for us – a place where everybody knows our name and is glad we came.

At our best, we are that community. We become beloved community when we offer and accept the deepest level of knowing and loving for each other and for all who come seeking a place for their spirit to thrive and revive.

It isn’t always easy. It takes work. It takes time. It takes forgiveness and forbearance. It takes love and compassion and determination and, oh yes, a sense of humor and humility. There is no higher or deeper longing than the longing to be known by our God. We may very well be the place where that longing can be realized for people, for us. Where is God in times of need? Look into the faces of the ones who show up to help and you may very well find God and find your way home to that love.

Jesus spoke often of the love of the divine for all people – saints and sinners – all of us, each of us. So often, his followers missed the point. We are quick to accuse and to see the speck in our sister’s eye and slow to see how divine love surrounds all of us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. Once, in trying to explain the divine love to his listeners, Jesus raised the image of the sparrow. In that time, sparrows were common and almost worthless birds – often thrown into a purchase as a small bonus to the buyer. Luke tells it this way:
6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. 7 But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. (NRSV Luke 12:6-7)
We are known and loved by the divine by a love that will not let us go – no matter what. We are each and every one of us known by our true and unique name. We belong.

As a community of faith, it is for us to be like that for each other.

Sometimes, often times, we get it right and we hold each other in an embrace of love and care and deep knowing that gives comfort and confidence to meet whatever the day brings.

 

Words of UU Minister, Bruce Southworth, may guide us on our way …

We live in faith —
faith in ourselves and each other —
faith that we can create bonds of the spirit
that proclaim we are not alone.
We have much health within us —
we can live through the heartache to new life.

So, for the grace of the world
and all the tumble, too,
this day we give thanks.

 

My Dear Spiritual Companions, we are the human expression of divine knowing and belonging. May we say to each other and to all who come to find a spiritual home here, you are my beloved. I will call you by your name and I will know you as your full and complete self and I will be glad you came.

May it always be so for each and every one of us.

 Blessed Be. I Love you. Amen.

 

[i] “Each of Us Has a Name,” excerpted from The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems of Zelda, translated from the Hebrew by Marcia Falk (Hebrew Union College Press, 2004). Copyright (c) 2004 by Marcia Lee Falk.  Used by permission of the translator.
Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky (1914 – 1984), known simply as “Zelda” to her readers and legions of fans, published her first book of poems, P’nai (Leisure), in 1967. The Russian native, who immigrated to Palestine at age twelve, went on to write five more books of verse. In addition to receiving critical acclaim and Israel’s most prestigious literary awards, Zelda’s books were and remain bestsellers.

[ii] SINGING YOUR SONG – An African Custom [Modified from an essay by an unknown author]