Sermon Title: "Her Name Was Roberta"
Date: November 7, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  2 Corinthians 5:1-10

I remember as a little boy, somewhere around 1953-‘54, riding around the Traffic Circle when my mother drove a friend of hers to Community Hospital for radiation therapy.  As a five- or six-year-old, I understood nothing about breast cancer, but I remember my mother talking about her friend being burned.  I had a conversation last month with a diagnostic radiologist and told him that story.  He replied that radiation in those days—now considered barbaric—bombarded a large area, compared to today’s pinpoint radiation therapy.

Fast forward about 15 years.  It was 1968 or ’69, and I was home from college for the holidays.  I was reading the obituaries when I ran across the name of my mother’s friend.  The next day, we attended her funeral at Forest Lawn.  There rested the open casket in front of us, and the minister the mortuary employed to officiate at the service referred to her by name once:  Mrs. George Bell.

About this time I was feeling the call to ministry, and maybe I was subliminally thinking of how I would conduct such a service.  ‘Mrs. George Bell?!’ I thought in surprise.  ‘Her name was Roberta!’

I have done my share of funerals for persons I did not know but, perhaps influenced by this college experience, I always make sure I know the deceased’s proper name, its correct pronunciation, and I use it enough in the service for those gathered to be assured of whose service they are attending.

In fact, in one such service, the name was the one thing I could use!  Back in 1988, the late Mac McDowell, a long-time member of our church and a CPA, called me with an unusual request.  He was the executor of the estate of one of his clients.  She requested a straight Congregational funeral service, with absolutely nothing said about her.  Mac said this was unfortunate, for she had been a charitable woman, and he himself as her accountant could have said several complimentary things about her generosity.  But he was bound to adhere to her final request, so I got my 1948 Book of Congregational Worship and literally read the funeral service in the Forest Lawn chapel, inserting her name, but nothing about her, where appropriate. 

As I approached this All Saints’ Sunday sermon, I wanted to say something about how God knows each of our names, and knows all about us, whether the minister eulogizes us at our funeral or not.  I looked at the Gospel references about five sparrows, and how they are sold for two pennies.  “Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight,” said Jesus.  “But even the hairs of your head are all counted.  Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”  (Luke 12:6-7)

But I was looking for something that said God knows our name.  And on Thursday I found it in the most unusual place.  The Rev. Lillian Daniel, in the online daily UCC Speakspeaking Devotional (11/4/10), related this:

“A seminary intern was offering the pastoral prayers one Sunday and received a request to pray for a woman who had a last name he found very difficult to pronounce.  It was a name from a country whose language most of us did not speak, Polish, and it sounded nothing like it was spelled.  But in the intimacy of congregational life, we had learned how to pronounce it over the years.

“So it was particularly painful to listen to the young man as he prayed out loud and kept stumbling over the name as he tried to get it right.  He would make one attempt to say it, stop himself, try to say it another time, then stop again, wincing, and then butcher the name all over again.  It was like it would never end.

“Finally he let out an exasperated sigh that the whole congregation was relieved to hear, since it meant he would finally stop.  Continuing with the prayer, he looked up to the heavens and said,   ‘Oh God, you know what her name is!’”

And that poor, frustrated seminarian had it as right as anything in the Bible.  God knows our name.  He knew Roberta’s name, even though the minister never used it.  He knew all about the woman’s charitable works when all I was charged to do was use her name but say nothing about her.  And God knew the correct pronunciation of the Polish woman’s name whether the seminarian or I, reading prayer cards, say the names correctly.  God’s knows us right well.

And the God who knows our name has a place prepared for us when we end this life.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus affirms:  “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”  (14:2-3) 

Whenever I conduct a graveside committal service, I use two scriptures.  One was included in today’s call to worship, again in the choir’s memorial anthem, and is cast in the bronze plaque in the narthex over the names of donors to the Endowment Fund.  It is from the Book of Revelation:  “I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.’  They rest from their labors and their works do follow them.” (14:13)  The second is from today’s Second Letter from Paul to the Corinthians:  “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”  (5:1)

There are three affirmations from the first century of Christianity—from Jesus, from Paul, and from John writing on Patmos—that there is a final resting place for those who believe in Christ’s promise of Eternal Life with God.

God knows our names—yours, mine, those included on these cards—and there is a place prepared for each of us in God’s Eternal Kingdom.