Name calling.

By Donald Phillipps in Articles

Donald considers the importance of names -- both in the tragedy of the mine disaster, and our personal names

NAME CALLING

It was not until Wednesday of this week that, for me, the reality of the mining disaster really struck home. Up till that time we knew the number of the men missing deep in the mine, and while some of them had been identified, others were not.

Various reasons for this were given, and that of personal privacy was clearly a paramount concern for the police. I understand they felt they could not release all the names until they had the permission of the various families, and since some of these were from overseas, getting that permission would take time. Probably the police were correct in acting in this way, but it left those of us watching and waiting on the side-lines with a feeling of frustration. In fact, the whole of the last week has been a time of agonising frustration for those most affected by the tragedy.

But on Thursday morning our newspaper had all 29 photographs and names. Quite suddenly these people became real, though at the very time when hope for their recovery vanished. We looked at them, and somehow they and we came together in the same world. That remarkably brave man, Peter Whittall, the mine manager, had tried to help us understand the human side of mining - now it was made just a little easier by getting to know each one of them as an individual person. All along, however, he knew them, and it was that intense personal bond that sustained his slim (I guess) hope that they might be saved.

Peter Whittall has taught us all a lesson in caring.

Names are a treasure. They are our most precious personal possession. We may, of course, share a name with others, but there is only one of us. We may not like the name we were given as a child, and some will choose to re-identify themselves when they become adults. Then the name they choose becomes an even more powerful symbol of who they are. Our names are our history and our passport to the future.

But what about the name of God? In the Judæo-Christian tradition we are uneasy with the notion that God has a name that we can know and use. The story of wrestling Jacob encapsulates that whole idea that to know the name of another gives you power over them. Jacob did not prevail, and, strictly speaking, we cannot ever claim to have that knowledge of the Creator. The nearest we come is when God refers to God as "I am." And that is why, at this Advent time, we have to 'wrestle' again with the name given Jesus by the angel - he is 'Emmanuel', he is 'God with us'. What greater thing can be said about the child of Bethlehem, the travelling preacher from Galilee, the dying visionary hanging on a cross, than that this man is 'God with us.'

It is, of course, so much easier for us because the parents of the child gave him a perfectly ordinary name, Jesus. The folk from Nazareth would have been called Jesus bar Joseph - Jesus son of Joseph. Without such a normal name how could we talk about the man we believe to be the world's saviour. But let's not forget that this quite ordinary name is only part of the story - Jesus is 'God with us'.

And as we grieve for, and pray for, 29 men, and their families and loved ones, let us give each one of them the name that belongs to him. In that way they each become part of us.

-- Donald Phillipps

First printed as a Connections article in the Parish Weekly Bulletin, Nov. 28, 2010.