What’s in a Name?
Sermon — August 25, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
“Jesus said to them, ‘Who do you say that I am?’” (Matthew 16:16)
Who gave you your name? Do you go by the name your parents gave you at your birth? Is it a nickname that you got along the way? Is your name really your middle name? Has it changed, by marriage or by choice? Did it take time for you to discover what your true name really was? Do different people call you different things? (I can think of a number of people I know who affectionately call their spouses by their full, legal names, and not the nicknames everyone else uses.)
I’m named “Greg” in part because there’s no diminutive to change; there is no parallel in a young Greg’s life to the moment at which “Timmy” becomes “Tim” or “Jimmy” turns to “Jim” or “James.” I’ve always been called “Greg,” and never Gregory; except by cousin Hannah, who we used to babysit when she was six, who called me “Pwincess Gwegowy” for a while. My father, though born “Alastair,” goes by “Bruce”; his middle name, much easier for Americans to pronounce. My newborn nephew, now two weeks old, still didn’t have a name when I finished writing this sermon; his grandparents’ names were chosen by the first grandchild, as family tradition requires.
“Who gets to name you?” is one question. “Who gets a name?” is another. I suppose in practice, all of us have names. But not every name is recorded for posterity. I can’t help but notice, for example, that the Book of Exodus doesn’t bother to name the “man from the house of Levi” who’s Moses’s father, or “the Levite woman” who’s his mother, the “daughter of Pharaoh” who adopts him or even “Pharaoh” himself; “Pharaoh” is a title, not a name. But “Shiphrah” and “Puah,” these heroic women who save the lives of countless children? We hear their names.
We hear Moses’ name, as well, and we hear the story behind the name. It’s an ingenious plan. When his mother floats the basket down the stream, his sister watches by the shore. (Exod. 2:3-4) And then she goes and offers to find a nurse for the child from among the Hebrew women; it just so happens to be mom. The family stays united, at least for his childhood. And “when the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because,’ she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’” (Exod. 2:10) Grammatically, that’s a bit confusing. Which “she” was it who got to name the child? “She” the sister, “she” the mother, or “she” the daughter of Pharaoh? Well, you might ask, which one was it who drew him from the water? Trick question! It was Pharaoh’s daughter’s maid, wasn’t it?
“She named him ‘Moses,’” the text says, because she “drew him out of the water.” This kind of etymological wordplay is common in Genesis and Exodus. An Egyptologist could tell you that “Moses” is common in Egyptian names, as part of a compound meaning “gave birth.” So the Pharaoh Thutmose is “Thoth gave birth” and the Pharaoh Rameses is “Ra gave birth.” The text here explains it by the Hebrew verb “mashah,” “bring out”; “She named him ‘Moshe,’” Exodus explains, “because she said, ‘I moshe-d him from the water.’” If we blend the two origins together, you might say that she by placing him in the water, his mother gave him new life; she gave him new birth by drawing him forth. The name fits the man. Just as Moses was brought out from the water of the river, Moses would bring his people out from Egypt through the water of the Red Sea, giving them their own new birth—foreshadowing the new birth we receive through the water of Baptism.
We’ve lost the sense that names mean things like this. We don’t think every Thomas is a twin; that Gregs should be “gregarious” in every case. And even in the ancient world, it was true that names could just be names. But names do have power. Their meaning comes from the people whose memories they evoke, even if the original meaning has lost its power.
So “Caesar,” for example, started simply as a salad. Sorry, I mean, the last name of a family in Rome. But Gaius Julius Caesar and his family line became the founders of the Roman Empire, and “Caesar,” “czar,” and “kaiser” all came to mean the “Emperor” in various forms. The last name “Caesar” came to mean so much that Herod’s son Philip chose to name a new town “Caesarea” to curry favor with Rome. In fact, so many people had this good idea in the 1st century that they had to add additional names to tell one Caesarea from another. This small town wasn’t Caesarea Maritima, “Caesarea on the Coast,” but was known as “Caesarea Philippi,” “Philip’s Caesar Town.” (Like “Ruth’s Chris Steak House.”)
And it’s there, at Caesarea Philippi, a small town with a big name, that Simon first names Jesus “Christ,” and Jesus Christ names Simon “Peter.” Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and they gave him a list of all these other people’s names. Some say you’re John the Baptist, back from the dead; some say you’re Elijah, come down from heaven. Some say you’re Jeremiah, of all things, or maybe one of the other prophets. But the disciples have been traveling with Jesus for a while. They know that none of these rumors are quite right. Jesus asks them, “Who do you say that I am?” And Simon answers with Jesus’ true identity: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Like Rameses was “the Pharaoh,” he is the “Messiah” (in Hebrew), the “Christ” (same word in Greek). In English, “the Anointed.” Not a first name, not a last name, but a title: the one who had been anointed by God to restore the throne of his ancestor David. And not only are you “the Messiah,” you are “the Son of the Living God.” Somehow, through some combination of sudden divine inspiration and the everyday experience of being with Jesus, Peter has recognized something about who Jesus is and expressed it in a way that no one had before. He’s named Jesus in a new way.
And now Jesus names Peter in a new way. I keep calling him Peter, but that’s not quite right. The disciple who says “You are the Messiah” isn’t named Peter; the name given to him by his parents is Simon bar-Jonah, “Simon Jonahson.” And Jesus says to him, “I tell you, you are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church.” And this was such an obviously cool title that—just as Dwayne Johnson would one day become known as “the Rock,” so Simon Jonahson soon became known simply as “the Rock.” It happens immediately and in multiple languages. Paul sometimes calls him “Cephas,” from the Aramaic “Kefa”; we know him more often as “Peter,” from petros, which is “rock” in Greek.
Peter names Jesus with his proper title; he identifies his essential characteristics and connects them with his destiny, and names him for the first time as Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. And in return, Jesus names Peter. He takes this man Simon, and identifies his essence, and connects it with his destiny: he is a rock, and on this rock, Jesus will build the church.
We spend a lot of time trying to name God in our prayers, giving oh so many answers to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” We call God “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and “Almighty God” and “O merciful God,”; “Lord” and “Monarch” and “most merciful Father.” Some of these names are dear to our hearts, others no longer resonate, but there’s always room for more. God is a “God of abundance,” after all; now matter how many names we gave, we would never run out.
We spend less time, perhaps, thinking about how God is naming us. We don’t hear Jesus’ voice renaming us as clearly as Simon Peter did. But in a way, our names for God matter much less than God’s names for us. When Simon says, “You are the Messiah,” it isn’t quite a name; it’s the recognition of a fact. But when Jesus says, “You are Peter,” Peter’s life begins to change.
“Who do you say that I am?” is an interesting question; fair enough. But I wonder, how would you answer the other question: Who does God say that you are? Picture yourself in the place of Peter in this scene. Imagine Jesus saying, “I tell you, you are _______.” What is it that God sees in your inmost self? What is God’s true name for you?
