What’s in a Name?
An address given at the baccalaureate service of Asbury University, Wilmore, Kentucky, May 2, 2025.
Names Matter
Years ago, when my wife and I were dating in college, she handed me a book gifted by her parents. The book was about Christianity and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. I was grateful for the gesture, but equally curious. “Why do they want me to read this?” I asked. She replied, “Because they said you’re a thinker.”
I won’t here enumerate the many ways I understood myself in those days—good and bad—but suffice to say I had never thought of myself as a thinker. But something happened. As I slowly and methodically read the text they gave me, my interests shifted. I read more. I paid attention to ideas. I began to ask different questions and seek out knowledge and wisdom. I approached the world around me with intellectual curiosity. A thinker.
Years later, upon completing my graduate work, I wrote a letter to my (now) in-laws. “Today, I have a PhD,” I said. “And it all started because you called me a name.”
The title of my brief address this evening is, “What’s in a Name?”—a famous expression from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is the person, not their name, that is important, suggests Juliet. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
There is, of course, some truth to this. Names may simply serve as an arbitrary label. The individual behind the name is what matters.
But sometimes a name is not merely descriptive. As my own story reflects, sometimes names are constitutive of who we are or who we become. And a name is especially powerful when it is conferred by a person or a community that can see attributes of potentiality, those un-stoked embers within another waiting to be fanned into flame.
Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about naming something that isn’t there—saying stuff just to say it. There is a humorous story of a children’s Sunday School teacher who asks the students, “What is brown, has a bushy tail, eats acorns, and climbs on trees?” After a long pause, one of the children breaks the silence, “This is Sunday School, so I know the answer is Jesus. But it sure sounds like you are describing a squirrel!”
Sometimes we are tempted to say things because we feel like we are supposed to. That is not what I am referring to. I am talking about accurately speaking to potential, described by author Jill Carattini as “seeing in a rough piece of stone the astounding possibilities of art.”
This is especially true in Scripture, where names are often associated with profound, trajectory-changing life-transformation. Abram was renamed Abraham, representing God's established covenant with His people. Sarai would go on to be called Sarah, "Mother of nations" (Genesis 17:5). Israel, Jacob's new name, marked a new direction and purpose for his life (Genesis 32:28). Simon was renamed Peter—Petras—Rock. “…[A]nd on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” said Jesus (Matthew 16:18). Christ also promised to give believers in Pergamum who conquered a “new name” (Revelations 2:17). Here, names are more than descriptive – they are a signal of what is to come, an inflection point representing a new bearing.
Transformative Naming & Identity
There is much to say on this topic, but in our brief time, I want to offer two important considerations relevant to what we are celebrating this weekend and your days ahead.
First, this kind of “transformative naming” I have described serves to ground our identity. Years ago, Scholar NT Wright was asked to address core questions surrounding identity: Who am I? What is a person? How do I know?
One particularly modern way of considering self-understanding is to reference Descartes: “I think there I am.” Philosophers often locate identity in the persistent attributes of the self. In other words, it is the continuity of our dominant psychological attributes that makes us…us (memory, personality, etc.). And much of Western Philosophy over the last 400 years has been cut from this cloth— “footnotes of Descartes,” says Wright.
Closely related is what we might call a “Promethean” understanding of the self—the illusion that individuals exist apart from social contexts and relational networks, forging their self-understanding in a vacuum.
Alternatively, Wright offers what I believe to be a better, more accurate way of considering self-understanding. When it comes to identity, it is not, “I think, therefore I am”—but “I am loved, therefore I am.” He elaborates:
Because it seems to me that as humans we discover who we are when somebody loves us…[I]deally, [in] some kind of a family or friendship or ecclesial or communal context, we discover who we are because of other people's love…If you are loved, then the most natural thing to do is to love in return and, in turn, to be part of that wider community…
According to this frame, we have a better sense of who we are when we are meaningfully embedded in a thickly webbed network of relationships. In other words, we are a "story-formed" people; because others are and because God is—I am. These networks root us, bind us, and obligate us. And they name us, place us, and shape us.
People "weave their stable selves out of their commitments to and attachments with others," writes David Brooks. "Their identities are forged as they fulfill their responsibilities as friends, family members, employees, neighbors, and citizens."
This concept was helpfully (and humorously) illustrated by author Will Willimon during a 2015 Podcast Interview. “I like to let guests explain themselves,” said the host. “There is, after all, no source like the first person, right?” In what must have been a surprise to the host, Willimon disagreed. “[The first person] is the least reliable testifier of who we are. Others are far better at that.”
The matter could be put this way. Do we know ourselves better than others? Or do we know ourselves better because of others? Consistent with Wright, I strongly assert the latter.
You Have a Name
So, names ground our identity and they give us a robust sense of self-understanding. But, importantly, this is what I really want you to hear this evening: you have a name.
Isaiah 58 begins with a critique of the Israelites for their outward expressions of religion while failing to meaningfully embody, practice, and live out their faith. Specifically, the Lord is calling out their shallow worship. This is reminiscent of a similar critique in the New Testament book of Jude, who condemns those who claim the Lordship of Jesus but who are, quite literally, good for nothing. They only feed themselves at potlucks, says Jude. They are clouds without water, seasonal trees that bear no fruit, and wandering, untrustworthy stars.
But verses 1-12 in Isaiah 58 do not end with a critique—they end with a promise. And, importantly, they end with a name. And here it is. If you live out your faith, love God, love others, serve others, live holy virtuous lives; if you practice a “true fast”—then…
The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Rebuild. Raise-up. Repair. Restore.
Graduates, may I humbly say, that is you. I think that is you. Commit yourselves to a right relationship with God and a right relationship with others. And receive this name. Rebuilders. Raisers. Repairers. Restorers.
This is you. This is your generation. Oh, I can trot out the stats. I could dwell on last month’s Barna data describing a “groundswell of commitment to Jesus Christ over the last four years”—a movement pronounced among Gen-Z and Millennials. I could reference the Religious Landscape Survey that cited the stabilization of Christian commitment—the first time that has happened in the 21st Century—and the contribution made by younger generations to that stabilization. I could cite the wave of student spiritual interest documented across US college campuses over the last 2 years. I could speak to the resurgence of commitment to Jesus Christ throughout the world, what the Bible Society described as “A Quiet Revival” among Gen Z. Or the focus on Gen Z teens and young adults at last fall’s 50th anniversary of the Lausanne Global Conference in Korea or this spring’s Gather25 which had 7 million participants across the globe.
So, I can cite data. But I’ve seen it, because I’ve seen you. And this weekend you are honored as graduates. But you’re more. You’re Rebuilders. Raisers. Repairers. Restorers. This is your potential, your capacity, your finished state. And there is, indeed, much to restore. Much to raise up. Much to repair and rebuild. There is a need for a well-watered garden in a sun-scorched land.
Toward the beginning of WWII in the late 1930s, the Saturday Evening Post published an entry by Robert Abrahams. He tells a story of friends playing a card game with each other while the world was at war; friends who are contemptuous, selfish, and apathetic. And as terrible as war is, equally corrosive and lethal, suggests the author, is the contempt, apathy, and selfishness within us. The entry ends with this memorable poem.
Tonight Shanghai is burning,
And we are dying too.
What bomb more surely mortal,
Than death inside of you?
For some men die by shrapnel,
And some go down in flames,
But most men perish inch by inch
In play at little games.
I think a lot about this poem. There is much going on in the world, and those challenges demand our attention and our concern. But these less visible but equally menacing diseases of modern life are slowly eroding our souls from the inside. We are dying. Look around. We are dying from contempt. We are dying from apathy and self-centeredness. We are dying from empty promises and broken scripts. We are dying from loneliness. And we are dying from sin.
We need a savior. And we need a people who embody the hope of Christ—a peculiar band of disciples whose actions only make sense if Jesus conquered death and came out of the tomb. A prototype of the new humanity who believes time has a narrative logic; that the world is created, animated, enchanted —a signpost toward something.
But that Savior won’t be found looking around us. The kind of Savior we need can only be found by looking up. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).
And this is the message of Isaiah 58. Look up. Turn to me. Live this out—a “true fast.” Live into your name.
So, I end this evening by simply naming those “astounding possibilities”—those embers of potentiality—within you. Rebuilders. Raisers. Repairers. Restorers.
I love The Message translation of Matthew 5:48: “You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
Amen.
You have a name. Now, live out your God-created identity.
Kevin Brown is the 18th President of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.