What is Your True Name

Proper 16 - Cycle A

My name is Willa. I was named after my mother’s best friend, who was also the nurse in the delivery room. It’s not a common name. Whenever I hear somebody else being called Willa, I stop to introduce myself. The other Willa never thinks this behavior is strange. She tells me how she got her name, too.

 

My son Jacob has a last name with no vowels in it. It’s spelled K-R-C-H. He spends a lot of time spelling it for other people.

 

You have stories about your names, how you got them, the trouble they may have caused. For better or worse, a baby’s name will influence the rest of his or her life. If you think your parents made a mistake, our faith holds a special promise. According to the Book of Revelation, we get new names in heaven, the ones by which God already knows us. Those names ought to fit us better than the ones we got at birth, from parents who were strangers at the time.

 

Once, in anticipation of these heavenly names, Jesus gave a new name to one of his disciples, Simon son of Jonah. Jesus already knew that Simon’s true name was Peter. “Petra” is the Greek word for “rock.” “Your name isn’t Simon,” Jesus said. “It’s Rocky.” And that’s how we know him today.

 

The other Rockys I know are boxers. Rocky Marciano and, from those movies in the1980s, Rocky Balboa. Maybe they were named after Peter.

 

It’s a strong name, the name of a heavyweight. Sometimes we give heavyweight boxers credit for less brains than they actually have. In any case, brains are not their strong suit. What it takes to be a heavyweight is heart. They think with their hearts. They fight with their hearts. And if they lose heart, they don’t fight anymore.

 

Peter fits that image. He was born into a fisherman’s family, given a fisherman’s name, Simon bar Jonah. That was his trade before he met Jesus. Like Rocky Balboa, who was a meat cutter, he built his body doing a hard day’s labor. But in his heart, he was a heavyweight waiting to be revealed. When Jesus told him that the rulers of Jerusalem were out to hang him, Peter spoke from the heart, “Just let me at ‘em, Lord.” When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, it didn’t bother Peter that they were outnumbered. He grabbed a sword and swung.

 

Both times Jesus stopped him. Not that Jesus didn’t want Peter to be a heavyweight. Jesus was the one who gave him his name. Make no bones about it, the Church needs its boxers, as it needs its teachers and its dishwashers. But to be a boxer, sometimes you have to pull your punch.

 

I saw that happen once. I saw a boxer pull his punch.

 

I used to watch boxing on Sunday nights. Once, when the actions was “live from Atlantic City,” all the big matches ended early with TKOs, technical knockouts. They had to fill time. So they showed what are called “walk-ons,” bouts between newcomers.

 

There was this boxer named Greggs, who was beginning to make a name for himself, and somebody else who really was a “walk-on.” Charity draws a veil of forgetfulness across his name. I do remember that he was a police officer from Miami. He looked like a good man to have on your side in a parking lot brawl. That’s how he fought in the ring.

Greggs would set up a combination, and this other guy would charge him, pin him against the ropes, and swing wildly at Gregg’s kidneys and the back of his head. I think that’s called a “rabbit punch.” I know that it’s a foul. It might work in a parking lot. But it’s not boxing.

 

When Greggs escaped the pin, the other guy would spin around with a backhand punch, another foul. Some of these blows would land, some wouldn’t. Some the referee would catch, some he wouldn’t. The ref kept breaking up the clinches, giving a warning. Then they’d start again. Greggs would throw a punch, and the other fighter would charge, while the spectators and the boxer got more and more frustrated.

 

Eventually the referee would stop the bout and give the victory to Greggs. But meanwhile, the third round got messy. People at ringside were holding the fighters inside the ropes. The other guy was worn out. He had Greggs on the ropes again, but Greggs spun around. This time Greggs raised his fist for the backhand. He tensed, ready to deliver the blow—Then he shook his head and backed away. You could almost hear him say to himself, “I am a boxer.”

 

It wasn’t easy to be a boxer under the circumstances. He had a lot of power in that fist, and a lot of frustration and provocation to use it. But the punch wasn’t a boxing punch. And to be a boxer means to play by the rules, to let the referee end the match.

 

To be a Christian means to let God end the match. When the enemy doesn’t fight fair, we do what is right. If we have to, we take up a cross, and we follow the one who first carried the cross.

 

Jesus didn’t have to go that way. He certainly didn’t want to go that way. The night before he died, he struggled in the garden. He raised his fist to deliver the backhand. And then he dropped it, “Not my will, but thine be done.” He told the heavyweight at his side, “Don’t you know that I could call on my Father for help, and at once he would send twelve armies of angels?” But to be who he truly was, he had to pull the punch. To save us, the King of Heaven had to let himself to be taken.

 

Eventually Peter would know who he truly was, not a brawler, but the Lord’s own heavyweight. He had the strength and the heart to live, and then to die a martyr in the Lord’s service. To pull a punch is a sign of strength, a sign that you know who and whose you are.

 

There is struggle in this life. And we are much provoked. It doesn’t always look like the good guys are winning. Some of us are called every day to battle. You know the battle that you fight. It is first and foremost a spiritual battle, to remember who and whose you are.

 

We are called to give up our lives, our carefully guarded pride, our determination not to let the other guy get the best of us. Keeping the upper hand is not our job. We let the referee end the fight.

 

If we must struggle, we must do so with all the strength and the discipline and the heart of one who loves, who loves all the way to the end. Then we will live up to our new name. And they will call us – “Christian.”

                                                                                 Amen.

 

photos from pixabay.com

photo of rabbit punch from Hock's Close Quarter Concepts Facebook page 

painting of Peter from catholicsaints.info