A New Name - Baptism - Ss Peter & Paul

" To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it...." (Revelation 2.17)

Baptism of Charlotte Amelia Hillier on the Feast of Ss Peter & Paul, 29th June 2008

I’m glad I’ve never had to go through the agony of choosing a baby’s names. My most recent great nephew lingered nameless for a fortnight before he became James.

Charlotte can be grateful that she was not born to Puritan parents in the 17th Century. She might have that delightful American name: Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-kingdom-of-heaven – the girl wrote that her friends called her Tribby.

Amongst English Puritans, one of the most famous was Praise-God Barbon, the fanatic whose name is associated with the Barebones Parliament of 1653. His brother is said to have been baptized If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. He was of course known to his opponents as Damned Barbon.

There’s nothing much we can do about the names we are given at birth and most people stick with them all through their life.

But in different cultures and certainly in the Ancient Near East during the centuries our Scriptures were written, name changing was more common.

In the Old Testament we can think of Abram who became Abraham; his wife Sarai whom God renamed Sarah; and Jacob who became Israel.

In the New Testament we have Saul, who we are grateful was renamed Paul – St Saul’s Knightsbridge would never have worked, would it?

And then on this Feast of Peter and Paul, we remember Simon bar-Jonah whom Jesus renames “Peter’ – the Rock.

But what’s the point of these name changes?

In ancient cultures there was something sacred, even mystical about a person’s name. It was as if the name somehow contained their destiny.

[You’re fairly safe with Charlotte – petite, feminine; and Amelia – invincible or industrious.]

And this brings us back to my curious text taken from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St John.

In his mysterious and symbolic way of writing, John says that at the last, we will all receive “a white stone in which a new name is written which none knows save the one who receives it.”

George MacDonald, that great Scottish writer of the nineteenth century wrote about this text: “The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it.”

It is, if you like, another way of saying that in heaven we shall at last be the person whom God intended us to be. Here in our present life, we pick up all kinds of baggage which can slow us down and divert us from our full potential.

And part of the purpose of our spiritual journey is to discover that name which God has written on the white stone; to catch a vision of all that we can be in God and to pursue that dream.

That’s the pattern of life you see in the saints. It’s that same Christian understanding of society and of himself, that drove Nelson Mandela.

Sometimes, as with Peter and Paul, there’s an important moment of revelation. For Paul it was on the Damascus road when he has a blinding vision of Christ; for Peter it was the realisation as we have just read, that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

So Jesus renames him ‘the rock’ – the cornerstone of the church that is to come into being.

God’s name for someone, says MacDonald, is God’s own idea of “that being whom he had in his thought when he began to make the child”. In the mind of God, Peter was always meant to be what only Peter could be, and meant to do what only Peter could do.

On this feast of Peter and Paul, when we remember two men renamed to reflect their destiny in Jesus Christ; when we name a baby before God, with all the hopes and expectations we have for her…

It is also a time to reflect on our own spiritual journey.

Are we simply letting events round about us carry us along; shaped by the society and culture around us?

Or is there a spiritual dimension to our lives, which helps us to reflect on our own destiny; on the men and women we are becoming?

For Christians, gathering here around the Table week by week, taking the bread and wine for the journey of life is a way discovering the new name that God has for us. It helps to reflect on who we are and to remind us of who we want to be.

Of course it’s not easy to follow a spiritual path in a society that gently mocks Christianity to death. But if we conquer the temptation to live simply as secular animals and if we look for the hidden manna, the spiritual food which God provides us with, then we will know with St John the Divine and with Peter and Paul:

" To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it...." (Revelation 2.17)
(With acknowledgement for original idea to John Pridmore of the Church Times.)