See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
1 John 3:1
There is power in a name. It means something to be recognized. To be seen. To be heard. Last night during trick or treating it was beautiful to watch hundreds of little kids yell ‘Miles! Miles! Miles!” at our youth minister as he handed out candy. They didn’t all recognize Miles Weeks, but they did recognize his Miles Morales Halloween costume – a young black child turned superhero in a parallel universe where something like that is possible - because it doesn’t always seem that way in West Baltimore.
It means something that God knows our name. This is why we read the names of those we love but see no longer on All Saints Sunday. The good and the bad, the recently deceased and the gone for many years. We say their names to remind us that God says their names, and that God says our names too.
You are not alone in this world.
This is the promise of the resurrection. The promise of Christ on the Cross. Because Jesus became human and dwelt among us we know that God knows who we are, what we are like.
As a kid I hated when people got my name wrong. Hated it when they got it wrong on accident and more when they got it wrong on purpose. I have said “Grey like the color” more than I have said probably any other phrase in my life - including “our father, who art in heaven…” So imagine my relief when as a young person I stumbled upon this verse from 1st John - “we should be called Children of God.” Suddenly I had a new name. A name no one could touch. I was God’s child.
BUT! And this is a big but…
So is everyone else.
That’s right. Everyone else. You see it is tempting to read this as “The world” is everyone else and I am a child of God. Or worse, “The world” is everyone I don’t like, and my friends are children of God. But we need to read “The World” as Paul talks about the world and powers and principalities. These are spiritual forces of evil beyond our human understanding that seek to divide, destroy and manipulate us. There is no “us vs. them”, there is no “bad vs. good”, there is no haves and have nots, or oppressor and oppressed, or black vs. white. There is only one category of humans on this planet - children of God. And thanks be to God we are counted among them.
Now this does NOT mean that there is no such things as oppression, or evil, or racism, or bad things in the world. The world is full of those things. But these things don’t come from God and so they can’t come from the Children of God. But they do exist - and they tempt us. To grab power, prosperity and wealth. To lie and cheat and steal to get what we want from someone else. We convince ourselves that there is a conspiracy afoot, and this gives us the right to do wrong to another.
But that is not God’s will. You can call it the devil, or evil, or hell, or whatever words you want to ascribe to those powers and principalities but the effect is the same. Since the days of Cain and Abel jealousy has attempted to lure us to doing wrong to our siblings in order to take what they have.
So when we read these names we are reminding ourselves of our collective status as Children of God. In the same way as when we read the names of those killed by violence in Baltimore, or by Hamas terrorists in Israel, or by Israeli bombs in Gaza. When we put names to tragedy and loss we remind ourselves that those names belong to God. and that we should mourn their loss, even when it is uncomfortable, especially when it is uncomfortable.
On this November 1st, feast of All Saints, please know I am also praying your name. And every other name in our parihs directory - because you too belong to God.