How Can I Be More Christlike? The Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson

Lord, take my lips and speak through them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. Amen.

And you thought this was New Year’s Day. You see, we celebrated the liturgical New Year on the first Sunday of Advent. So you’re late. But it does give us the chance to celebrate Holy Name Day.  Not, not a big important day in our liturgical calendar, but I hope you’ll change your mind about that.

Like every good Jewish boy, Jesus was taken to the temple and circumcised and given his name, Jesus. As the angel had communicated from God, his name should be on the eighth day. Names matter. My name is Vicky Gene Robinson. I hated it.  Actually, I wasn’t supposed to live. So when they came out and said to my father that my mother would probably die and that I would definitely die, and they needed a name for my birth and death certificates, he just took the girl’s name that they had picked out and changed the spelling, figuring it wouldn’t actually matter all that much on a tombstone. And I became Vicky Gene Robinson. And this was Kentucky where they call you both names, you know, like Billy Bob. And that name followed me everywhere.

In Kentucky they called me Vicky Gene, and it led to worse names, the least bad of which was “sissy”. My dad called me Vic. He’s the only person in my whole life that ever called me Vic, and I loved it. In the seventh grade, I decided I would change my name in two ways. One is when I went into seventh grade, I would introduce myself as Gene, as if a Vicky never existed, and that I would legally change my name.  But I didn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t because every time I sign my name, V. Gene Robinson, I remember where I came from, because names matter. So what are your names? All of them. Maybe you got your name from someone else. You were named for them. Maybe you liked them, admired them, but maybe you didn’t. Maybe you knew them, maybe you didn’t. What nicknames were you called? Which ones did you like and which ones did you not like? Was there a pet name that only one person called you? Did you keep your maiden name, so-called, or not? And what do you like to be called?

African Americans could tell us something about names. As could virtually any person of color in this white and terribly racist country. We moved, they moved from the N-word to Negro, to black, to Afro-American, to African American and other variations. Not because it was politically correct, but because it’s the gospel to move from indignity and not being seen, to dignity and identity and respect. When someone tells you that’s just being politically correct, correct them.  We call people, if we respect them, what they want to be called. Those of us who are LGBTQ could also describe our journey from faggot and queer to homosexual, to gay, to a variety of sexualities indicated by the letters, and back to queer as something good. And transgender people really know the importance of names, which is why they are so committed to often changing their name, changing their birth certificate or their driver’s license because they know themselves to be someone the world didn’t think they were. And they lay claim to it, and they have pronouns that they want you to use. And if you ever wonder which pronouns to use, just ask. Every transgender person I know loves to be asked because it means they’re being seen and respected. Because names matter.  

Names mattered in the ancient world as well. Many cultures thought that if you knew someone’s name, you had a lot of power over them because you could either bless them or curse them. Giving someone your name was an act of vulnerability. You made yourself vulnerable to someone by giving them your name. Jesus’ name means “savior”, or “one who saves his people”. It was a revelation, a beginning of the revelation of who Jesus actually was. It was God’s self-revelation. And it wasn’t the first time God had given God’s name. You’ll remember the burning bush. Moses is confronted by God in the bush that would not be consumed by the fire. And in great frustration, Moses having been told to go to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go”, says to God in the burning bush, “Who shall I say, sent me?” And God gives God’s name. It’s four letters four consonants. We don’t actually know how it was pronounced. We guess at it.  Sometimes we say “Jehovah” or we say “Yahweh”.  Jews don’t say it at all. When they come upon it in scripture, they just substitute “The Lord” because it is such a holy word.

And in that act, not in the name itself, but in the revealing of the name, God binds himself, God’s self to the people of Israel. And Moses is empowered to go to Pharaoh and free his people. So come with me just for a minute. We very easily think of God as being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing. But what if God were also all-vulnerable? As we begin this new year, contemplate this pattern in God’s behavior.  Maybe it will give us a more accurate and meaningful and insightful understanding of what is at the center of all that is. God creates us and the whole world and creates us free to love God back or not.  Incredibly vulnerable. God sticks with the people of Israel through thick and thin. They desert him at every turn. They are unfaithful to him, and Yahweh is never unfaithful to them. And then the most vulnerable thing that God has ever done. We Christians believe God chose to put flesh around God’s self and become one of us, to know us from the inside out, and to know what it was like to be one of us, in the person of Jesus.

And Jesus told stories about the vulnerability of God.  The Prodigal Son. The father in The Prodigal Son is not some cruel and angry and ornery father, but the one who sits in the rocking chair on the front porch, looking down the road, praying and hoping against hope that his boy will come back.  And when he does, he embraces him and puts a ring on his finger, and a robe around his shoulders, and sandals on his feet and throws a party. Think of the vulnerable years that father spent.

If your goal and mine as Christians is to be Christlike, then I’m suggesting that we ask, “How am I called to be vulnerable to the glory of God and for the love of my neighbor?”  Whether that neighbor be my spouse, my family, my next door neighbor or strangers around the world? And what, what does vulnerability sound like really? Well, it sounds like “my name is Gene and I’m an alcoholic”. It means to a friend or to a therapist saying, “I’m coming off the rails and I need help”. It may be to a spouse saying, “I loved you once, but now I don’t know”.  Maybe the most vulnerable of all. “I do love you. I do love you”. I need to do something. Stop doing something, make a change. Get outside myself. Begin a journey. Say goodbye or recommit to staying. And I’m afraid.  And I’m gonna tell you I’m afraid and I’m gonna do it anyway. Because courage is fear that has said its prayers.

So maybe our New Year’s resolutions, this New Year’s Day, should be less about losing weight and getting more exercise and joining a book club. And more about what kinds of risks do I need to take right now in my life, for my own good, that of my family or my neighbors and friends, perhaps the nation itself, perhaps for humankind. How can I be more Christlike? In vulnerably opening myself to some new and daunting and risky challenge, whether that challenge be a person or a task or a cause. And then how do I believe and trust God will be with me throughout, and love me no matter how it turns out? That would make for not only a good New Year, but a remarkably new kind of year, wouldn’t it? Amen.