The strangeness of names. . .

For as long as I can remember, my first name has been a mystery.  While it would have seemed that my middle name would cause more confusion -- since it was my father's first name and a name invented by my grandmother, it is that Larry is the diminutive of Lawrence (or Laurence or Lorenz) -- which is not my name.  My brothers name is Murray.  Why German/Swedish parents who gloried in their ethnic and cultural heritage would choose names like Larry and Murray for their two sons is a complete mystery to me.  The joke was that my mother had chosen Erik (or Eric, I cannot recall the spelling) -- the name of her grandfather and a perfect bridge between German and Sweden -- but my father did not like the name.  Okay.  But where did Larry come from?  And then where did Murray come from?  The only Murray I knew growing up, other than my brother, was my father's tailor where he purchased his suits -- if and when he did purchase one.

I have had to return diplomas incorrectly made out to Lawrence and correct people who, trying to respect me and being formal, introduced me as Lawrence.  But we do not get to choose our names and so, unless we take the unusual step of changing them, we are stuck with the names we are given.  Neither the German or Swedish heritage would look kindly upon disdaining the choice of your parents so it is Larry I was and still am.  But that has not stopped me from wondering what got into my parents (something, I am sure, my brother also wonders).  Of course, today, names are invented all the time and nobody thinks anything of it.  Today names are creations fashioned from the imagination of the parents -- more so now than at any other time in history.  What was curious a very long time ago is routine today.  We attach more to the choice of names than respect for ancestors or even culture and ethnicity.  We imagine a name as a shorthand for all sorts of things -- especially for setting apart our child from all the rest.  While that may or may not be a good thing in the eyes of the child who grows up into an adult with that name, it is one mark of the name God has put on us.

God has put a name on us in the waters of our baptism -- a name of choice or fancy or imagination but His name.  We belong to Him.  We are set apart by His in water by the Spirit.  We are not who we were.  The whole character of the baptismal vocation is that God pulls us from the crowd of the earth and gives us a new identity, a new family, a new purpose, a new vocation, and a new future.  He has called us by name.  We are His.  The whole of the rest of our lives is lived in response to this new name and new birth.  It is the most profound shape of our identity.  Or, at least, it should be.

I have no clue what really led my parents to name me what they did -- or my brother, for that matter.  But as great a mystery as this is to me, the greater mystery of all is that God in His mercy loved this anonymous sinner who had become His enemy.  That He loved me with the love strong enough to send His only Son to stand in for me on the cross and pay the price of my sin and rebellion.  That He loved me so that this costly act of sacrifice would be counted to me as gift and grace.  That in baptism He would adopt me into His own family to become His own heir of His eternal mercy.  That He would cover me with a righteousness I did not earn and give me not only a clear conscience through forgiveness but a life that death cannot overcome and a future in heaven where He has prepared a place for me.  That He would bestow upon me the Holy Spirit to prompt my stubborn heart to faith and work in my the transformation of will and desire to love His commandments and do what is right in His eyes.

The name above all names was placed upon me in my baptism.  I am no longer who I was.  I am not yet who I shall be, but I am right now a child of God, called by name, given the new name of His family, and a new life death cannot steal.  Is there a greater mystery to behold than this?  No wonder Luther suggested the Christian had enough in his baptism to keep him busy for his whole life.