How We Are His

We have all heard the song You Are Mine.

Do not be afraid; I am with you. I have called you each by name. Come and follow me; I will bring you home. I love you, and you are mine.

This is sometimes overused, but the power of it is still not lost on me or a lot of other people. It comes from Isaiah 43, where God tells us not to fear, for He has redeemed us and we are His.

One of our speakers at Vision used it as a cornerstone of her speech on self-love, telling us if she could read it to us hundreds of times she would. My spiritual director harped on it to me to try to connect me straight to God. David Haas put it to music for us to use throughout our worship.

The power of this passage is deep. And I want to take it in what was for me a newer direction.

I have noticed as my opportunities for leadership, especially in ministry, have multiplied that learning people's names and calling them exactly by name in conversation is huge. People respond more brightly and openly when you gently and lovingly call them by name, saying "Hey, Tim" instead of just "Hey" or sticking their name into conversation rather than using you's and he's and she's.

Your name is a beautiful thing. Your parents thought long and hard (hopefully) about what to name you, often with a friend or saint in mind.

And not only is our name on our birth certificate and in birth announcements, it is on our baptismal certificate. When our parents and godparents brought us before the Church to be baptized into it and the death and resurrection of Christ, we were baptized with the Christian name our parents gave us.

Our first name is not just a identifying item for attendance lists and driver's licenses. It is the way that we were first brought into the embrace of Jesus and His Church. It is the name that our parents offered to God as the way for Him to look with love upon the child of His that they were bringing into His embrace.

When Adam first came to know the creatures God had created around Him, he named them. God gave us dominion over the earth, and Adam exercised that by naming the animals. He named them to show his loving care over them, to show his lordship yet his love. The Jews abstained from saying God's name so as to not act as if they controlled or lorded over The Lord.

In this baptism by Christian name, our parents offer a gesture of loving care. But it is not just a power trip by them to lord over us. Nor does it stop with their love and care. They bring the child they have made with love to God, share the name with God, and promise, along with the godparents, to love the child and to make it part of the Church.

Parents name their child to show their care, but they embrace the support of the Church, especially the godparents, in raising the child and more importantly entrust the child to God. Our parents believe that by sharing the child with God by name, they have sacramentally celebrated that God has redeemed this child, as a Christian baptized into Christ's death and resurrection, that God loves the child, and that the child is God's.

Sometimes, our temptation is to be indifferent towards our names or prefer a nickname, and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. But let's not underestimate the beauty of this mystery enfleshed in our baptism.

Our parents and godparents entrust us to God who knows us by name, by our Christian name. God looks upon me and says, "Dan, I love you. And you are mine."